Alex Cunningham @alexcunn

With apologies to TSE, November may be the cruelest month. Here's the latest update from NOAA for the CFSv2 forecast monthly Nino 3.4 sea-surface anomalies (I added the pink at the top for easy reference to the 4.0°C boundary): Source: cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2…

When Western carmakers win customers, it's called "the free market." When Chinese carmakers win customers, it's called "a full-blown assault." Bark at your daddy, not China.

El Niño formed faster in 1997, but 2026 has much more warm water in the tank. Relentless westerly wind bursts and a longer tongue of warm subsurface water suggest sea surface temperatures have much farther to climb. We're nowhere near the peak yet.

The World’s Largest Economies in 2026: Nominal vs. PPP 📊 visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-lar…

The funniest part of JD Vance’s speech is the ending: “I am angry about the rise of China… but I am most angry that American leadership let it happen.” Let it happen? As if China’s rise was an American clerical error. As if 1.4 billion people industrialized because Washington forgot to lock the door. China was sanctioned, contained, smeared, tariffed, and technologically strangled. And still it became the world’s strongest industrial economy. India had the population. India had English. India had earlier access to the WTO. India had Western approval, “democracy” branding, and decades of geopolitical courtship. Capital still chose China. Factories still chose China. Supply chains still chose China. Why? Because civilization is not built by flattering Washington. It is built by infrastructure, discipline, engineers, workers, logistics, electricity, education, and state capacity. America’s next ten years are not about competing with China. That phase is already over. America is now competing with India for who can disappoint capital less. China’s real opponent was never America. China’s real opponent is its own execution, its own discipline, its own ability to keep building without believing Western noise. Vance is angry because China rose. But what really humiliates him is this: America tried to stop it. And China rose anyway.

For years, China tried to boost its strategic industries by formally forcing companies to handover their technology.⁠ But there were some exceptions. ft.trib.al/MHME4Qz

Poland went from Iranian living standards to Japanese living standards in just a few decades. Not bad…

'India is a $4 trillion economy, China is $20 trillion.' 'India spends $12 Billion on education, China spends $800 Billion.' There's simply no comparison. Powerful insight by Vijay Kedia 🔥

🚨 A MAJOR WARNING SIGNAL IS FLASHING IN THE PACIFIC. June 2026 has already produced record-breaking westerly wind bursts across the equatorial Pacific — a key ingredient for supercharging El Niño. These powerful wind events are generating new Kelvin waves, pushing massive amounts of warm water eastward beneath the ocean surface. Why does this matter? 🌊 More warm water reaching the eastern Pacific = a stronger El Niño. 📈 Current signals suggest 2026 could challenge, or even surpass, previous record El Niño events. The implications are enormous: • Increased risk of drought across parts of Asia and Australia • Higher odds of weather extremes globally • Potential impacts on food production, water supplies, and commodity markets • Elevated global temperature anomalies The atmosphere appears to be adding fuel to an already warming Pacific. If these trends continue through the coming months, the world may be heading toward one of the most powerful El Niño events ever observed. Watch the Pacific closely. It may determine the weather story of 2026–27. 🌎⚠️ #ElNino #Climate #Weather #PacificOcean #Monsoon #Agriculture #ClimateChange

Brazil holds the key to the strongest material ever measured, and almost nobody has noticed. That material is graphene. Graphene comes from graphite, the soft gray carbon inside a pencil. Peel graphite down to a single layer of atoms and it becomes graphene. Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel and only one atom thick. Scientists won a Nobel Prize for lifting it off graphite with sticky tape. Graphite is also the single largest ingredient in an electric car battery by weight. China mines most of the world's graphite and refines almost all of it. In late 2023 China put export controls on graphite, and battery makers everywhere felt it. This year the United States locked in tariffs that pushed the cost of Chinese battery graphite to roughly 220 percent. Carmakers outside China are now hunting for graphite anywhere else. Brazil sits on the second largest pile of graphite on Earth. For years it dug up the cheap rock and shipped it away. A university project in Minas Gerais now makes graphene straight from local graphite. One company started by Brazil's biggest steelmaker already sells graphene products. Raw graphite sells by the tonne. The graphene you pull from it has been valued by the gram. Brazil holds the rock, the science, and a world that suddenly needs both.

🇨🇳🇧🇷 NEW: Brazil gets set to join the yuan financing club. Brazil is expected to become the 7th sovereign issuer in the past year, following the UAE, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan, and the 10th-largest economy to embrace the instrument.

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

🚀This is huge! For the first time, China officially disclosed the launch footage of DF-17 hypersonic missiles. The DF-17 can perform extreme lateral maneuvers and change trajectory in near space (30–60 km altitude) at speeds over 10 mach, making it impossible for THAAD or Patriot to intercept. Its 1,800–2,500 km range can cover key targets across the first and second island chains.

The West keeps measuring AI by chatbots. China is measuring AI by industrial output. While Silicon Valley fights over subscriptions, personalities, and benchmark screenshots, China is deploying industry-specific LLMs into power grids, oil and gas, refining, equipment maintenance, energy trading, and production coordination. CNPC’s Kunlun model covers 152 application scenarios across the oil and gas industrial chain. China’s energy regulator has already announced 51 AI+ high-value scenarios for the energy sector. This is why China is hard to stop. AI is not being treated as a toy, a therapist, or a writing assistant. It is being turned into infrastructure. The West sells intelligence. China industrializes it.

By @RealXavier011 “China will always amaze us” | This Chinese bridge laying machine can build railway bridges rapidly, which makes the bridge building process as simple as - producing sausages #china #bridge #railway #bridges

You’re 400 million times closer in size to the observable universe than to the Planck length. Let that sink in.

FPSO vs FLNG vs FSRU vs FSO vs FSU 🚢 These offshore assets may look similar But they do very different jobs 🔸FPSO Produces, processes, stores and offloads oil and gas 🔸FLNG Produces, liquefies, stores and exports LNG offshore 🔸FSRU Receives LNG, stores it and converts it back into natural gas 🔸FSO Stores crude oil and offloads it to tankers 🔸FSU Provides floating storage for LNG, LPG, condensate or crude The simplest way to remember them 🔹 FPSO = offshore factory 🔹 FLNG = floating LNG plant 🔹 FSRU = floating LNG import terminal 🔹 FSO = oil storage on water 🔹 FSU = flexible storage unit Why they matter 🔹 Lower upfront cost 🔹 Faster deployment 🔹 Greater flexibility 🔹 Better access to remote fields 🔹 Stronger energy security Offshore energy is not just about production It is about choosing the right floating infrastructure for the right molecule

Wow. Chinese electricity generation keeps climbing and climbing.

Global LNG trade map. If prices are high the exporters benefit and folks in the importing nations pay big bucks. Have a look at which importers see their gas travel through maritime choke points. Great map to ponder when thinking about geopolitics.

🚨 MJO WATCH: A major atmospheric shift may be underway. The latest SCORPION methodology + GFS forecast suggests the currently trapped Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) could finally break free after mid-June. 🌊 Deep tropical convection is projected to slowly move into the Indian Ocean after June 20. Why does this matter for India? 🇮🇳 ✅ Increased thunderstorm activity ✅ Potential support for monsoon revival/strengthening ✅ Improved rainfall prospects in several regions if the signal sustains The pace remains slow, and forecasts can change, but this is one of the most important tropical signals to watch over the next 2 weeks. If the MJO successfully establishes itself over the Indian Ocean, India's weather pattern could look very different heading into late June. 🌧️ Monsoon watchers, are you expecting a stronger second half of June? #India #Monsoon2026 #MJO #WeatherUpdate #Rainfall #IndianMonsoon #Climate #ElNino

🇦🇷Argentina just greenlit the largest liquids processing investment in its history: $ 3B But the headline number isn't the story. The story is what's been quietly capping Vaca Muerta and what happens when that cap comes off. TGS will expand its Tratayén plant to 43M m³/d, build a 550 km multiproduct pipeline to Bahía Blanca, and add fractionation + an export terminal there. Output: 2.7M tonnes/year of NGLs for export. $1.2B/year in hard currency. Startup 2029–30. Vaca Muerta gas is "rich" loaded with propane, butane, gasoline. No way to process and move those liquids = constrained gas output = capped OIL output too. This isn't a liquids project. It's the cork coming out of the whole basin. The tell that this is real: 80% of capacity is already contracted YPF, Pluspetrol, Chevron. Producers don't sign long-term throughput deals for fun. They sign when they know the molecules are coming. Same rule as Gunvor in the Haynesville watch what's bought, not what's said. Add it to the map Petrobras in Campos, Shell in Venezuela, Gunvor in US shale, now $3B into Vaca Muerta. 4 deals, 1 direction energy capital is rotating to the Atlantic, where barrels never meet a chokepoint. The Gulf has the crisis. The Atlantic has the order book. I wrote an article on my favourite stock in the Argentinian oil&gas industry, link in replies