An interesting fact that he picks out is that coordinating shutdown periods between suppliers would be in breach of anti-competition rules.
The crisis has overall highlighted the fact that shared production can cause issues. Ammonia is worth about $50 billion whereas CO2 is worth about $7 billion worldwide. This makes the CO2 market about 7 times more inelastic in supply than ammonia.
I find the gasworld article hard to read in comparison to the atlantic one. Three paragraphs in, and it still doesn't say anything, it just jumps from one subject to another without touching the main issue.
>...that coordinating shutdown periods between suppliers would be in breach of anti-competition rules.
Is this likely to be true? My, perhaps limited, understanding is that collusion is only evidence of illegal anti-competitive behaviour and is not illegal in itself...
Its a slightly grey area. This would be seen as illegal because it is an "agreement" to "limit or control production" which is prohibited by EU law article 101(1). However article 101(3) allows these agreements if it "contributes to improving the production or distribution of goods" and "allow consumers a fair share of the resulting benefit".
In a case in Australia [1] LNG producers had to apply to the government in order to coordinate shutdowns. The regulator concluded that they could approve this on the basis that there it was "likely to result in a public benefit" and that "reducing competition in the acquisition of maintenance services is unlikely to be significant" [2]
You could also see it as limiting (and controlling) the production of plant maintenance work.
For an example of why this is anti-competitive imagine there are 4 producers A, B, C and D. A, B and C agree that they will co-ordinate shutdowns such that they are shut down for four months of the year each. D is not party to this agreement so must shutdown at a time when one of the other producers is shutdown. During this time their are only 2 producers online meaning increased prices and a net benefit to A, B and C whilst the cost of getting maintenance engineers will also increase because they are working simultaneously with either A, B or C which is a net loss to D.
> However article 101(3) allows these agreements if it "contributes to improving the production or distribution of goods" and "allow consumers a fair share of the resulting benefit".
According to the FTC [1], price fixing is almost always illegal. From the link: "An agreement to restrict production, sales, or output is just as illegal as direct price fixing, because reducing the supply of a product or service drives up its price."
I asked an expert in the beer trade about this recently and some of the big breweries (Molson Coors who make UK bestseller Carling, for instance) make their own CO2 for supply chain security.
This is possible because Molson Coors has the largest brewery in the UK and can brew CO2 producing ales and CO2 consuming lagers on the same site. For other brewers this investment wouldn't be economical.
Large scale breweries are CO2 consumers not producers small scale production with natural carboninzation can potentially produce CO2 but the majority of it is produced form lime stone and other minerals afaik.
I’m not aware of any breweries actually collecting it for sale the amounts produced will be so minute and the collection process will be so expensive that it can’t make financial sense.
Reading a bit into this and it looks like they are doing it because of emissions regulation, overall EU breweries are one of the largest consumers of CO2 in the food and drink industry.
German regulations ("Reinheitsgebot") explicitly forbid adding CO2. So pretty much every major brewery in Germany does not add CO2 into their product. They do use CO2 and other gasses to pressurize casks, however.
Reinheitsgebot isn’t mandatory and covers only Bavaria afaik if you don’t follow those rules you can’t use the trademark on the label but you can sell beer the vast majority of beer in Germany is not carbonated trough secondary fermentation.
Some fuel ethanol breweries collect and sale their CO2 byproducts. The article mentions them (but notes they are not a significant source). IIRC the small fuel ethanol plants in the US collect and sell their CO2, but the large ones do not - this is a factor of age, the small plants came first, but they time anyone was building big plants the CO2 market in the US didn't have room/need for any more suppliers.
It often is -- when yeast ferments a substance, it releases CO2. During the fermentation of beer (or again most anything, but I'll just use beer as a shorthand), that CO2 is released through an airlock. When the beer is bottled, any beer made in large quantities will be sterilized first with potassium metabisulfite (I think) so that fermentation doesn't continue in the can, bottle, or keg.
If you don't kill the yeast, or if you bottle your beer with an extra batch of yeast (called bottling yeast) and sugar, you'll get fermentation continuing in the bottle, which will result in the CO2 produced being absorbed into the liquid. Obviously this is not as precise and will create different flavors and mouthfeel as a beer ages.
If you do kill the yeast but still want fizz, you just force carb your beer with CO2 from a container.
Depends what kind. Real ale contains yeast is naturally carbonated as it continues to ferment in the cask or bottle. In keg beer, after fermentation the yeast is filtered from it, the beer is pasteurized, and CO2 is added.
Real ale is an arbitrary definition large scale commercial brewing will not risk secondary bottle fermentation for many reasons from quality control to health and safety.
In the same sense that any term has an arbitrary definition. The Campaign for Real Ale coined the term to defend the practice of cask and bottle conditioning of beer. Beer is only real ale if it's unfiltered, unpasteurised and is served without additional carbonation.
There are plenty of breweries producing real ale on a large scale; many of them are subsidiaries of AB InBev, the world's largest brewing business. Filtered and/or pasteurised beer is more convenient to ship, but other food and drink manufacturers cope just fine with perishable products.
My point was that by definition it's naturally carbonated and all other beer isn't. Cask conditioned ale is common throughout the UK and bottle conditioned ales are common in Belgium and elsewhere. (They're also usually higher rated than mass-produced beer but that wasn't the point I was making.)
Not mentioned here but relative cost of transport is an issue for CO2 - It’s pretty cheap on a nominal basis ($/CF) so transport becomes an issue. Which means it’s a local market, also since it’s a small market - transportation infrastructure hasn’t been built for it.
Point being there is no shortage of CO2 - just a shortage in certain places of demand (at non-exhorbinant pricing).
I hadn't quite caught that the manufacture of fertilizer is so carbon-heavy -- it's not just the energy sunk into cracking apart N2, but the H is also coming from fossil fuels. -.-
Don't go to the Yebisu brewery in Tokyo then - they pour a demonstration glass for you and let you watch as the head extrudes itself several inches past the top of the glass, like Arsenio Hall's haircut.
Beers on "nitro" are still carbonated with CO2. The nitro is used to achieve a higher serving pressure used to force it through a diffusing nozzle on the tap. N2 doesn't actually dissolve in liquid very easily compared to CO2. If you put the CO2 at higher pressure, it makes the beer more carbonated over time.
On the note of nitro craft beers, more often than not I find that nitro tap beers are a gimmick and that the beer would be better served be being conventionally carbonated.
It's the same story with cask ales. Some styles really don't work well on a handpull.
Because it's significantly easier to engineer a system using carbon dioxide than one using nitrogen. This is because carbon dioxide is heavier than air such that the system doesn't need to be enclosed. With nitrogen you need sealed chambers which are more expensive and the process will take longer.
I think this is poorly written in the article... Likely the Co2 gas is used to power bolt-guns which are in turn used to stun larger animals like cows before slaughter.
I didn't know about this. This is outrageous. I don't care that animals are being raised for slaughter – our ancestors would chase and spear animals and that was likely to be very stressful and painful. We can do better today. To actually make animals feel that they are suffocating is beyond inhumane. Even carbon monoxide would be better.
We (humans and other animals) are specifically engineered to detect CO2 and trigger the suffocation response, and no other gas. Then the idiots will use exactly the only gas that causes suffering.
Is it possible to figure out which companies are doing this?
CO or N would be completely painless. CO is often called the "silent killer" as many humans die from it every year. Doesn't need to be pure CO or anything. Nitrogen would need to be pure but is similarly silent and painless. There is a video online of a pig lured into a nitrogen filled chamber by food. He loses consciousness, recovers, and goes straight back to the food like nothing has happened.
As for CO_2, I recommend trying to breathe the gas at the top of bottle of pop without wanting to violently withdraw from the pain.
When I started reading this article I thought it was a work of fiction, imagining a world in which there's a CO2 shortage rather than the famous over abundance which we're currently all aware of. It's odd and sad that there is a demand for the manufacture of carbon dioxide in a world absolutely choking on the excess of it.
It's like saying that you have access to several tons of gold because you live on the beach. Sure, there's plenty of gold in the ocean. But you can't do anything with it.
>The caveat to this point, of course, is that this is also not as simplistic or straightforward as it might seem – despite the widespread perception, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually very minimal. In fact, it can be pegged at around 500 parts-per-million (ppm), which is less than 0.05%.
It's more than enough to cause problems without being trivial to take out and concentrate. Water may very well have enough lead in to damage someone's health without having enough to be economically beneficial to extract for the material alone.
On its face, you're casually suggesting vapor trails from aircraft as the cause of Europe's CO2 shortage. Rather than elaborate on your chain of thought, you go right towards predicting distopia.
I'm guessing your image isn't a vapor trail reference, but a reference to "chem trails". Chem trails are controversial and widely regarded as a conspiracy theory.
The main criticisms I'd have for your contribution are these: Your comment is erratic, has spurious relation to the article, makes vague references to controversial conspiracies and provides no evidence.
In my opinion, this is an inappropriate forum for it simply because it's a better without it. Someone smarter than me could probably point out specific HN rules though.
There's absolutely no scientific basis at all for chemtrails.
If these were real the cost would be staggering in terms of equipment, supplies, and of course, unbelievable amounts of hush money paid out every single day to keep a lid on the conspiracy.
Just as there's things too big to fail, there's conspiracies too grandiose to be real. They'd collapse under their own weight.
Do you honestly think in an age where terabytes of data can be stolen by insiders and outsiders alike that something as massive as chemtrails can be kept under wraps?
Here's some empirical evidence of chemtrails, in case this is the first of its kind that you've ever received I also suggest paying attention to the sky in your local neighbourhood at around 6am and 6pm.
Saying "conspiracies too grandiose to be real" may be akin to saying "organization too grandiose to be real" when only talking about one program within a multi billion dollar black budget.
That said there are indeed grandiose conspiracies that do make chemtrails look simple by comparison: https://i.imgur.com/SbCArRO.jpg
That "empirical evidence" is a load of garbage. Contrails occur differently at different altitudes due to temperature gradients. Anyone who's been up in a small plane or who's climbed a mountain knows this. Planes are also "stacked" at different altitudes (flight level) to simplify controller operations, anyone who's casually observed local airport activity knows this.
You really need to read up because this YouTube junk is poisoning your ability to think rationally.
Now multi-billion? No. For chemtrails to be real it's a multi-trillion dollar undertaking. Nothing in aviation is cheap. Everything is unbelievably expensive.
In order to produce "chemtrails" that have the same volume as contrails you would need to have an equivalent amount of whatever loaded into tanks as there is fuel. Do you have any idea how much fuel is loaded into a passenger plane? It's tons. A 787 contains around 33,000 gallons of fuel, or about 162 tonnes.
Now you're telling me they have to sneak on another ~160 tons of chemtrail stuff somehow without anyone noticing?
Many of us have real life experience (me from sw engineering, large distributed systems, parts of security), others from aviation etc.
I agree with the rest here:
I'd say there's no way such an operation could be hidden.
While I could be wrong, - it seems I was wrong about the depths of the capabilities of NSA etc, I'm more often right than wrong it seems.
If there is a conspiracy going on then I'd say it is to keep people busy with this instead of the huge global issues we should see: the west meddling in the middle east, millions of refugees, huge health problems (both because of obesity and because of lack if food).
> That's a figure you've pulled out of your behind.
Oh, and your "multi-billion" budget is real? You know what that gets you in terms of aviation? A handful of planes for less than a year. What part of fucking expensive don't you understand? Running a commercial jet is so expensive you'd be hard pressed to flush stacks of $100 bills down the toilet as fast as a typical jet consumes an equivalent amount in fuel. These planes cost in excess of $25,000 USD per hour to keep in the air.
Airlines are notoriously cheap and always push for maximum efficiency. They installed winglets to save 5% in fuel costs. They install seats an inch closer to fit another row of seats in.
Now you're telling me they're willingly lugging around millions of tons of this chemtrail stuff just because?
You've pulled this entire nonsense out of your ass. Chemtrails have zero plausibility due to how massive an undertaking it would be to make that happen.
The closest "conspiracy" to this was the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. That was exposed within years of the first spraying. It was thoroughly documented. It was too big an undertaking to hide.
Now you want me to believe that this is a worldwide phenomenon and nobody, absolutely nobody, has ever found any hard evidence?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Come back when you have some.
Stop doing lines of YouTube videos and visit the real world once in a while.
"Now you're telling me they're willingly lugging around millions of tons of this chemtrail stuff just because?"
No dude, I'm telling you they're doing it for money.
"You've pulled this entire nonsense out of your ass. Chemtrails have zero plausibility due to how massive an undertaking it would be to make that happen."
No offense taken. To be honest, HN is often very receptive to controversial ideas, but there's certain unwritten shibboleths. You break one by effectively saying "I think chem-trails are to blame" without more foundation. That sentence in isolation is like a hand-grenade. It's pretty much exclusively divisive.
Maybe try acknowledging people's skepticism, list a few reasons why you personally believe in it, and bring it around to something a little more focused on the article (your picture was too big, it's hard to follow). I bet something like that wouldn't get dismantled like this was.
I agree now that the basis for chemtrails could have done with being established in my initial post.
For some reason I assumed other HN users had had similar experiences I've had with seeing them right next to contrails in real life.
Wasn't intending to produce entertainment to consume. Just wanted to provoke serious, thoughtful discussion of the likelihood that these phenomena are related.
I value perspectives like yours specifically because they are different than mine. I hope you stick around. My only other suggested shibboleth is to try and avoid barbs in your posts.
"I didn't elaborate on my train of thought because it's a three-point train of thought. No offense." is a subtle jab at my intelligence. I am not offended, especially since people are dog-piling you, and that sucks to be on the receiving end. However, subtle insults like that'll get you in trouble here.
"[quoted text] is a subtle jab at my intelligence." -- No it's not. It just means the initial post was very simple and wasn't intended for readers who're in denial when experiencing reality.
Jeez man. I'd like to remind you that I live on the same planet you do. I'm slave to the same physics and I go through similar struggles.
If I am skeptical of something you believe, that does not mean I am in denial. I hope you can figure out how to navigate this place, because if you want to have a polite discussion about chem trails, lizard people, flat earth theory, who shot JFK, drop bears, the gold standard or whatever else, a polite version of you could really spark great discussion here.
I hope beyond hope to experience THAT reality. I believe in you.
I didn't read your other comments, so it's not an ad hominem. I'm just saying that I'm confident enough that this particular comment of yours or others like it will just be 'noise' here, and possibly an exercise in frustration for you.
But you're right that you didn't ask me. I just felt like responding, considering this is a public forum where both you and I have the ability to just say stuff.
Anyways, by all means keep at it, if that's what you feel like doing!
I feel confident enough that I don't think it will, and I wouldn't describe myself as generally very confident in matters of group psychology.
Anyways, I checked out your other comments and I regret getting into an argument about this. You seem much smarter than me in many ways, and I welcome your contributions, and while I personally feel that 'the collective' here will consider some of it noise and very downvotable (possibly even hellbannable), I hope that doesn't happen and that you stick around. Again, my apologies for what I suppose could be considered participating in or enforcing groupthink.
EDIT: let me add that I'm certifiably weird and perhaps that's made me sensitive to these kinds of things. sometimes it's best to 'soften' the edges so that engagement is possible in the first place, and sometimes that increases the chances that I can actually discuss my 'weird' beliefs without being dismissed. I've not figured out the right balance, and I'm not even 100% sure that finding a balance is the right thing. but it's what prompted this.
My approach has been, for about the past decade or two, to spend a lot of time, energy, and possibly happiness, on figuring out how to blend in and be inoffensive. I'm not entirely sure it was worth it, but at least I feel it's allowed me to be my 'authentic' self without being dismissed in many situations, so that's something. And there are even times when I feel validated, which I think is quite valuable. We're social creatures ultimately, most of us anyways.
Considering my uncertainty about this approach, though, I shouldn't be lecturing others!
I've enjoyed that as well, I used to read it when I eas younger. Now I've just read the ESV2 version of the last few chapters in parallell with my native language during the last few days. :-)
An interesting fact that he picks out is that coordinating shutdown periods between suppliers would be in breach of anti-competition rules.
The crisis has overall highlighted the fact that shared production can cause issues. Ammonia is worth about $50 billion whereas CO2 is worth about $7 billion worldwide. This makes the CO2 market about 7 times more inelastic in supply than ammonia.