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News & Current Events Apr 21, 2026 at 6:24 PM

Oil spills from the Iran war are visible from space

Posted by DoremusJessup

Oil spills from the Iran war are visible from space | CNN
CNN
Oil spills from the Iran war are visible from space | CNN
Satellite images show oil swirling in the water after Iranian and US-Israeli strikes on oil facilities and ships. Experts fear an environmental catastrophe
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SlowRunner2026 Apr 21, 2026 +146
More damage from a feckless war.
146
Yourself013 Apr 21, 2026 +74
Don't forget to recycle, ride a bike to work and use paper straws!
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ThePlanck Apr 21, 2026 +54
Tbf in the mid to long term, this war has been a fantastic advert for renewable energy
54
RhubarbAfter4008 Apr 22, 2026 -7
Everybody wants clean, readily available energy. We haven't yet found it, not on a level that would support an industrialized planet with 8.3 billion apes trying to survive on it. A few of us can cosplay that we've found it, by installing solar panels and riding little e-bikes around for a few hours a week.
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DaemonPrimarchJ Apr 22, 2026 +2
I kinda like the paper straws TBH, they just feel nicer to use, to me anyways.
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RhubarbAfter4008 Apr 22, 2026 +5
Hard to bite flat and use to pick meat chunks out of your teeth with, though.
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Plenty_Beautiful_547 Apr 21, 2026 +75
Brilliant. So glad this bullshit war with absolutely no point whatsoever is also harming the environment. Fuckin A.
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TheLoneTokayMB01 Apr 21, 2026 +20
War is always extremely pollutant, it just turns out if you bomb oil refineries it is even more.
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Idiot_Savant_13 Apr 21, 2026 +10
Well said. Most folks don't understand about the dangers of expended ordinance & the problems with living long-term afterward.
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gao7on Apr 22, 2026 +8
Even during peacetime, first term Trump from 2016 - 2020 lifted hundreds if not thousands of environmental protection policies in favor of heavy pollutant industries. Many EPA regulations and related jobs that were meant to protect natural habitats, once enacted by Democrats and Obama, revoked out of spite. The orange turd cares more about his wallet than saving the planet based on scientific data.
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Royal-Hunter3892 Apr 21, 2026 +20
Coincidentally in the recent week there were many reports of fire , explosion , blasts on the oil infrastructure accross the world .
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OstrichOk2793 Apr 21, 2026 +13
Everything is visible from space if you have a good lense
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Koala_eiO Apr 21, 2026 +14
Except 79 years old Donald Trump's hands.
14
it_diedinhermouth Apr 21, 2026 +4
Having such small hands make it easier for him to handle his mushroom
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no-more-depravity Apr 21, 2026 +13
The war was completely useless. Trump spends every waking minute figuring out ways to, "look strong." He made the decision to bomb Iran because he felt it would make him, "look strong." **Iran was nowhere close to a nuclear bomb, experts say** [**https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iran-was-nowhere-close-to-a-nuclear-bomb-experts-say/**](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iran-was-nowhere-close-to-a-nuclear-bomb-experts-say/) “Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right?” Trump thundered when asked about **his call for then-President George W. Bush to be impeached**. “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none.” Trump added, “George Bush made the mistake. We can make mistakes, but that one was a beauty.” [https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-george-w-bush-lied-1364681108684854.html](https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-george-w-bush-lied-1364681108684854.html)  
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SporksInjected Apr 21, 2026 +12
Hey btw, this article you linked has this in it > “It is not impossible to imagine that Iran had maneuvered itself into a ‘breakout’ situation,” matching Trump’s claims of an imminent weapon, says nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein of the Stevens Institute of Technology. “But it is also quite possible that they have not done so. Big claims require big evidence, especially when lives are at stake.” > A handful of smaller bombs might be crafted from the material in its present 60 percent concentration, according to physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. And the IAEA found 84% uranium traces back in 2023 that Iran says is a conspiracy. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov2023-8.pdf > 34. During the monthly interim verification (IIV) on 22 January 2023, the Agency took environmental samples from the product sampling point at FFEP, the analytical results of which showed the presence of high enriched uranium (HEU) particles containing up to 83.7% U-235. The Agency informed Iran that these findings were inconsistent with the level of enrichment of the UF6 produced at FFEP, as declared by Iran, and requested Iran to clarify the origin of these HEU particles.
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happy-cig Apr 21, 2026 +8
So this tidbit has been spread and I don't think it addresses it specifically in your article. Please correct if wrong - Countries need single digit enrichment for nuclear power. 60% enrichment is closer to 90% weapons grade than 9% to 60%.  It is much harder to go from 0-60 and a short stonesthrow from 60-90.  So there is no reason for Iran to have 60% if they truly were striving for nuclear energy. 
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ChillFratBro Apr 22, 2026 +1
That's not entirely true.  It is true that you can build power reactors with enrichments so low that you could not build a bomb, but you can (and people do) build power reactors with higher enrichments - and it's not inherently malicious to do so, there are a lot of technical benefits to using high enrichment in a reactor core. You can also build reactors that make weapons-grade plutonium using natural uranium with no enrichment whatsoever - granted, plutonium bombs are a lot more finicky to design, but there's enough literature on the subject that it's not impossible. I think Iran is almost certainly working on a nuke, to be clear - but it's not as simple as knowing that level of enrichment maps to an intention in either direction.
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SporksInjected Apr 21, 2026 +4
Is Iran not also trying to look strong?
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johnlocke357 Apr 21, 2026 +3
Iran didn't start the war
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SpiritedCatch1 Apr 22, 2026 +2
They did by enriching their uranium way above the civil level. Biden said it was a red line as well and there was simulation of Iran strike in 2024. That was inevitable in the moment Iran was dead set in getting the bomb. They have no reason for gathering 450 kg of uranium and raising the enrichement above 3 % if it's not to make a bomb.
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2ball7 Apr 21, 2026 +5
[The International Atomic Energy Agency](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-stored-highly-enriched-uranium-underground-site-iaea-report-says-2026-02-27/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) disagrees with the “nuclear bomb expert”.
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Halvdjaevel Apr 22, 2026 +2
What a stupid, useless, idiotic war. They haven't even managed to depose the IRGC, the only hypothetically good outcome.
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satanzhand Apr 22, 2026 +2
It's fucked. Hopefully no one hits the nuclear power plants.
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IIIllIIlllIlII Apr 21, 2026 +4
Ronald McDonald, if your’e listening.
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AbyssFren Apr 22, 2026 +4
Wow this CNN article casually attempts to suggest the US is striking oil tankers with obscure phrasing.
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MachineSpirited7085 Apr 21, 2026 +5
if you see it from space then does that mean the spill is really big?
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Loose_Skill6641 Apr 21, 2026 +7
not really as today's satellites can see a person wearing a hat on a sidewalk, so saying you can see something from space gives you no indication of the size of the object unless they also tell you how much they zoomed in to take the photo
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andruszko Apr 21, 2026 +14
"see it from space" doesn't mean much of anything considering how far you're able to zoom in. With that being said, yes. It seems this is a very large amount of oil.
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Halinn Apr 22, 2026 +1
It's a large amount of oil, but at the same time it might be less than what most people would expect from the area covered. A visible film of oil can be quite thin, it can settle to be just a single molecule of thickness. Anecdotally, Benjamin Franklin would use it as a party trick, calming about half an acre of water with a spoonful of oil hidden in a cane.
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Broad-Lobster7470 Apr 21, 2026 +2
Technically I can see my house from space. Doesn’t mean it’s big though
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Individual_Door_3251 Apr 21, 2026 +2
Crazy man with high cholesterol is causing the planet to get cholesterol too.
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Loose_Skill6641 Apr 21, 2026 +2
oil that will wash up on Iran's shores
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Idiot_Savant_13 Apr 21, 2026 +1
That's patriot juice, if you're a Pentagon approved reporter.
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Elegant_Emu952 Apr 21, 2026 +1
shit
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Feeling_Reindeer2599 Apr 22, 2026 -1
a total of almost 19 billion liters of crude oil, according to data from Greenpeace Germany. Ok, sorry, but I am in USA. Can someone please convert liters to Barrels. Where in the world do they write about 19 Billion Liters?
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Metro2005 Apr 22, 2026 +1
Everywhere except in the US
1
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