If you don't follow China closely, you may not realize how bad a shape China is in. The real estate sector has collapsed, their customers are leaving China as a manufacturing center, they have enormous national and local debt, and their demographics stink; they may be the first country that gets old before they get rich. With all the problems China is having, the last thing they need is a war with the US.

Somehow, China believes that Taiwan, for historical reasons, belongs to them. The people of Taiwan do not share this belief. They want to be an independent nation with a thriving democracy like they are. So it seems kind of silly when China does a lot of saber rattling and threatening war against the United States because we are having conversations with Taiwan and helping them.  We are also their biggest customer, so that makes it as stupid as it gets.

It's also a country that is the best at making chips of anybody globally. TSMC is the best and most advanced chip maker in the world. If something happens to this plant, the whole world will spiral into a deep depression, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. For example, 10 to 20% of the chips in every car come from this factory: and the ironic thing is no one else can make the chips PERIOD in the entire world.

China has to import the majority of its fuel and food. Its navy can protect the South China Sea and maybe even beat the US Navy in that corner of the world. But they would not be able to stop us from blockading their country and stopping the flow of foot of food and energy. Their entire economy would collapse within six months. Who would win a  war over Taiwan? Who knows? And what does winning even mean? Millions of Chinese could die. Tens of thousands of Americans could die, and millions of Taiwanese could die. And, of course, the chip factory will be destroyed. There's no way our military will let that technology fall into the hands of the Chinese. I suspect we would try very hard to get the technologist that runs that plant to come to the US. But in any case, China starting a war over Taiwan is absolute insanity for themselves and everybody else.

The one big elephant in the room is nuclear weapons. China can destroy America or at least some of our biggest cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. They can put enough rockets into the air loaded with nuclear weapons that they will overwhelm our defensive systems. It's kind of insane that nuclear weapons still exist. It's a kind of insanity that the world has accepted their existence as normal, but it's not normal. It is absolutely insane. The fact that we as humans can't sit down and get rid of nuclear weapons and can't avoid war like in Taiwan or Ukraine speaks to the state of development of the human race. We are in a critical period of development. We are capable of destroying the world with our technology but not capable of settling disputes by dialog and reason.  That is a very dangerous stage of development.

 We keep saying climate change is an existential event without even noticing that the real existential event is a nuclear war that hangs over everyone's head. If I hear global warming is an existential threat one more time, I think I'm going to slap somebody upside of the head with a balloon labeled nuclear weapons and perhaps pound some sense into their head.  Humanity is hopeless, it seems to me today.

Let's see how energy usage has increased for the Western World over the last sixty years.  Now, the other half of the world wants to be prosperous like us with food, cars, houses, appliances, etc.  In the next fifty years, our global energy supply will have to double to make that happen.  If we double the status quo, that might happen in 50 years.  Trying to make it happen primarily with renewables is crazy.  

We need to spend a few billion on preliminary engineering studies to show how foolish our current policies and pipe dreams are.  That is the opinion of the Ancient Texan, an engineer with 56 years of experience, but what do I know?

#AncientTexan

Steven is a respected climate scientist.  The book covers what climate science tells us, what it doesn't, and why it matters.

This book will challenge what you think you know about climate science.  For example, did you know forest fires have declined since 1998 when records were started?  Did you know that bad storms are no more common than they were in 1900?  Did you know human activity has had no impact on the number of hurricanes?  

Well, you are probably getting what you know about climate change from the media, not scientists.

There is a belief that the fossil fuel industry are the bad guys in carrying out its mission to find fossil fuel deposits and make products out of them.  This ignores that fossil fuels drove the greatest rise in prosperity in human history.    There is also the belief that we should suppress the production of fossil fuels and let the Putins of the world dominate the supply chain. 

 Somehow, the production of fossil fuels is blamed for the lack of growth in renewable energy.  We are willing to decrease the supply of fossil fuels and hence increase the price of fossil fuels despite the impact this will have on the poor people on the planet.   We are telling the poor people on the planet that they do not have the right to do what we did .... use low-cost fossil fuel to increase their prosperity.  We are willing to sacrifice these people's well-being for the sake of some poor people in the future that may be harmed by climate evolution.

When is making mistakes good?  Perhaps when you learn from them?  Perhaps when you go a new direction and it becomes obvious that it is a better path than you were on before.  For example, California is moving toward EV's and renewable power very rapidly.  I think this will waste a lot of the money of the citizens of California.  They will get higher electricity bills for their effort and more CO2 into the air.  I think they are making a huge mistake, but the rest of the nation will get to learn from their experiment and this may save the nation trillions of dollars in the long run.  So, is what the state of California doing a mistake?  You judge.

It takes much more mineral resources to go Green than to maintain the Status Quo.  Resources the world does not have and resources that NIMBY and our liberal legalism do not allow us to access.   Much of the resources we do have are controlled by China, Russia and other places that are not friendly to us.    

Plan A to go green is not going to work.  Does anyone have a Plan B.

(61) Mark Mills: The energy transition delusion: inescapable mineral realities - YouTube

When you fill out a form that asks for your race, do you fill it in or do you chose not to answer?  Are you saying race is an important issue and do you fill it in so they won't think you are black.  

Does the phrase 'black lives matter' imply that race is important?  Let's discuss it.   What personal values do you use to decide your what you think about the phrase and the movement 'black life matters'.

A poem, a lyric, by Alicia Keys and Brandi Carlisle, "A Beautiful Noise" speaks of us joining together to create a beautiful noise for all those whose voice needs to be heard.

Allegedly, the CCP in China uses organ transplants to allow many party members to live to a hundred or more.  Reportedly, the supply of organs comes from harvesting organs from Uyghurs, "excess boys" from the street, and those unfortunate with rare blood types.  The few hundred officers that are granted this fountain of youth create a significant demand for organs that often exceeds the demand that can be hidden from the public eye.  Those receiving these organ transplants must take immunosuppressants.   With the enormous outbreaks of covid in China, these people suffer many deaths.

We look at the assumptions in Greta's How Dare You Talk in 2019 and propose that humanity needs to agree to two concepts:  1) We need to spend our money efficiently on global problems with the goal of doing the most good for humanity with our limited funds, and  2) We need to rank global warming among the world's problems and spend money according to the relative need versus the other problems.  A great deal of effort needs to be devoted to a large engineering study to put teeth into the two concepts above.  We then need to evolve as humans to implement the recommendations of such a study independent of national borders.  Without such a coordinated effort, it is unlikely we will make significant progress on global warming or any of the other problems on the list.