Why are 50M Pakistanis suffering historic floods while China suffers a historic drought?
Because of humans and tectonic plates:
When the minister says a third of the country is submerged, it's literal.
1. The human factor is clear: global warming causes higher average temperatures
And this summer the entire Northern Hemisphere is going through one massive heatwave
Why is a small increase of 1.2°C in global temperatures causing so many dramatic heatwaves? Because a small shift in the average can cause a huge shift in extreme events.
But why does it translate into a drought in China but a flood in Pakistan?
2. Tectonic plates.
The Indian Subcontinent Plate hits the Eurasian Plate, with the Indian Ocean just below.
This causes 2 things:
a. India's region is the only one in the world with a big ocean in the south and a big continental mass in the north.
In summer, when it's hot, water evaporates and loads the sea air with humidity.
Meanwhile, the land air gets hotter faster (no evaporation to cool it). Hot air dilates, goes up, and sucks in the humid air from the sea.
This is the monsoon.
This happens at continental magnitudes in Eurasia
In summer, it goes from the southwest of the Indian Subcontinent to the northeast.
It hits Pakistan in August.
A historic heatwave causes a historic monsoon.
But the tectonic plates hit each other causing the Himalayas!
And the Himalayas stop the rains due to the rainshadow effect
That's why west of the Himalayas, on the Indian side, it's green (left).
But it's rather drier on China's Tibet side (right).
So all that historic monsoon water stays on the Indian/Pakistani side.
China's water usually comes from its own monsoon, which comes from the Pacific and is earlier in the summer. So the heatwave has not caused floods there, but drought.
b. The glaciers.
Pakistan has thousands of them.
A historic heatwave means historic melting, which adds to the massive monsoon rains.
Here's the thing: India & Pakistan would be a desert if it weren't for the Monsoon because they're in the horse latitudes
In fact, a big chunk of Pakistan is a desert. The only part that is habitable is the Indus Valley, which is the river that gathers *all* the water from the Himalayas/Hindu Kush, and makes its banks fertile.
You can see Pakistan's population through its nightlights: only visible in that valley
So when a heatwave melts glaciers and causes historic monsoons, all that water concentrates in that single Indus Valley, which hosts 220M Pakistanis.
30M of them are caught in these floods.
Summary:
• Summer heat causes imbalances in humid/dry air in the Indian Ocean vs Eurasia ➡️ monsoon
• Climate change ➡️ Historic heatwave ➡️ Historic monsoon
• Tectonic plates ➡️ Himalayas, which concentrates monsoon water on the Pakistani side
• The plates also causes glaciers, which melt during a massive heatwave, adding to the monsoon
• All that water concentrates in the Indus Valley. That makes it fertile ➡️ 220M ppl
• They get flooded
• Himalayas stop the water ➡️ China only gets drought
Did you know the West's trade deficits to China are not recent, but started 2000 years ago? This is the story of how silk, porcelain, tea, opium, and silver have determined the history of the world 🧵
The Romans already complained about deficits to China! Mainly because of silk
Back then the Chinese already preferred manufacturing and selling products than consuming foreign products. Chronicler Solinus ~200 AD: The Chinese "prefer only to sell their products, but do not like to buy our goods."
Why did 🇮🇱Israel strike 🇮🇷Iran now, and not months or years ago or in the future?
A unique combination of a dozen factors converged to make the moment unique for 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵 1. No Hamas to its southwest 2. No Hezbollah to its north 3. No Assad threat to the northeast
4...
4. No more Syrian army to attack 🇮🇱Israel's planes: As the new forces of HTS took over Syria, Israel bombed all the existing Syrian military. No more fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to threaten 🇮🇱Israel
5. Ability to fly over Syria to refuel
This is critical, because 🇮🇷Iran is ~600-1000 miles away from 🇮🇱Israel, so 1200-2000 miles round trip
The range of Israel’s stealth F35 is only about 1,350 mi
To operate inside 🇮🇷Iran, 🇮🇱Israel needed refueling over Syria
1. From Feb 2025 to Jun 2025, it increased its amount of enriched uranium by 50% 2. It now had 400kg of highly enriched uranium, enough for 9-10 bombs 3. This is 60% enriched uranium. Fuel only requires 5% enrichment.
4... 🧵
4. It's easy to go from 60% to 90% (weapons grade), it only takes weeks 5. The only country on Earth with such enriched uranium and without a bomb is 🇮🇷Iran 6. The IAEA (nuclear watchdog) found 3 secret nuclear sites
7. When 🇮🇷Iran didn't respond to this accusation, the IAEA censured it 8. 🇮🇷Iran responded to the censoring by saying it would open a 3rd enrichment site in a secret spot
Now that the 🇺🇸US has bombed 3 of 🇮🇷Iran's nuclear sites, where will the war go from here?
It depends on 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵
🇮🇷Iran never wanted the war, and its forces are being decimated. Its ability to send missiles to 🇮🇱Israel is being degraded every day. If it could sign a ceasefire while saving face, it would
Meanwhile, 🇮🇱Israel has kept striking Iran non stop. Its daily airstrikes didn't go down substantially in the first few days. Its ability to keep striking 🇮🇷Iran remains unabated
Can there be an invasion of Iran? Hardly. Two maps explain why, and also why Iran is the way it is today, whether its regime will fall, what other superpowers will do, and in general why Iran is the way it is today
The only truly exposed area is the southwestern corner of Khuzestan, which is a swamp
The biggest superpowers lie to the west, and there the very broad Zagros make it really hard to conquer Iran. The mountain range is tall and wide, making logistics similar to Afghanistan. Very hard.
Iraq learned it the hard way when it tried to attack there in 1980
Listening to the debate, it looks like 🇮🇱Israel & the 🇺🇸US intelligence community disagreed, but that's not really the case!
Both thought Iran was weeks to months away from being able to develop the bomb
So what's the disagreement?
Here are more facts:
• Tehran had just announced a 3rd enrichment site in an undisclosed place
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had recently produced a report censoring Iran for the 1st time in 20y
• It accused Iran of 3 undisclosed nuclear sites
• It claimed Iran had enough enriched uranium for 9-10 nuclear bombs
• All the other countries in the world who have enriched uranium at the same level also have nuclear weapons. Iran is the only country that doesn't have these weapons yet enriches uranium as much