China’s climate con: full steam ahead – COAL-generated steam, that is by Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com        6/30/23                                           

There was an article in The Guardian last April that typifies the reporting, or rather non-reporting, about China’s use of coal: “China-ramps-up-coal-power-despite-carbon-neutral-pledges — local governments approved more coal power in the first three months of 2023 than all of 2021.”  

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/24/china-ramps-up-coal-power-despite-carbon-neutral-pledges

The article bends over backwards to avoid criticizing China, noting that in 2020 China’s Xi Jlnping had pledged that China would be carbon neutral by 2060, as if a goal that far out was meaningful given the climate change “crisis.”  Furthermore, burning more coal is OK for China because as the last sentence informs us, “last year Xi said that coal will remain a mainstay of China’s energy mix that ‘would be hard to change in the short term.’” 

Nowhere in the article do we learn that China and GE have teamed up and have spent a lot of time and money designing more efficient coal burning generation plants.  Sounds like long-term planning to me, given new plants will have an operating life of at least 50 years. 

papundits.wordpress.com/2021/05/29/coal-fired-power-dying-not-so-fast-part-one-introduction/ 

Also, nowhere in the article does it mention that new coal-fired generation plants are going up all over the world, by the hundreds. Add in China, which has 2,363 coal-fired power plants and is building 1,171 more, and it’s by the thousands. 

papundits.wordpress.com/2023/05/07/michael-mann-you-cannot-be-serious/ 

Thus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that China’s coal consumption continues to grow rapidly. A few years ago, they were burning less than 4 billion metric tons a year and now they’re up to five billion metric tons. They burn more coal than the rest of the world combined, and their CO2 emissions are greater than the rest of the developed world combined. 

energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-trends-june-snapshot/ 

www.iea.org/reports/coal-information-overview/consumption 

rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-countries/#:~:text=China%20alone%20contributed%20over%2027,at%206.6%25%20of%20global%20emissions. 

Speaking of the rest of the world, see if you can detect any cut in CO2 emissions that resulted from the Kyoto Protocol treaty of 1992, or the Paris Agreement of 2015. (The Keeling Curve) 

https://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/

The bottom line is that unless China reduces its CO2 emissions there is no chance that atmospheric CO2 levels will decrease. Add in India, where coal consumption is expected to increase by over 500 million metric tons in the next few years, and the CO2 Crusade is obviously a fool’s errand.  

Anyone brave enough to take the Chinese to task about this will be confronted with the argument that China’s CO2 PER CAPITA emissions are only half those of the US. When/if China’s emissions per capita equal that of the US, they will then say that what really counts is the CUMULATIVE amount of CO2 for capita put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Sigh. 

In addition, anybody who would criticize the Chinese about their CO2 emissions can count on being called a horrid-dirty bastard-racist-Gweilo-imperialist-oppressor, a charge that would have our “Climate Czar,” John Kerry, on his knees tearfully begging forgiveness.   

There are three reasons why China will be impervious to any criticism about their CO2 emissions: 

1. Even if the threat of CO2/Global warming is real, there are millions of Chinese who don’t have enough electricity to plug in a microwave oven, let alone a flat screen TV or an electric vehicle. These people need electricity, and the cheapest way to get them electricity is to build coal-fired plants.  If you think those people give a damn if Manhattan is under five feet of water, then I have a bridge to sell you, happens to be near to the soon-to-be-submerged Manhattan.  

2. Even if the threat of CO2/Global warming is real, renewable energy sources will do nothing to solve the problem and will only ruin the economies that try to substitute them for reliable, year around, 24/7, sources. China is only too happy to help the Western nations destroy their economies. This will make China’s manufacturing the cheapest and most dominant in the world, and of course, that means their military will also be the most dominant in the world. China is building coal plants and tearing down mosques, and we’re doing just the opposite. This is not going to end well for us unless we change our ways. Don’t expect China to change its ways.  

3. The Chinese do not accept the “science” that CO2 drives climate change. I detailed why in an article I wrote two years ago, “China’s Climate Con, Part 2”, reprinted below.  (Anybody interested can read part one at: https://wordpress.com/post/silvercityburro.com/863) 

China’s Climate Con, Part 2 – 6/17/21 

Why is China building military bases on coral reefs in the South China Sea? Don’t they know that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is going to inundate entire island nations, not just coral reefs?  Are they crazy?   

They probably didn’t see this 2011 article from Scientific American that details a grim sea-rise scenario, which today reads more like a Grimm scenario, as in Grimm’s Fairy Tales:   

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/which-nations-most-risk-climate-change/

That same year, a special edition of the Chinese Science Bulletin (October 2011) had eight articles about a climate project begun in 2009: “Research on tree-ring and millennium climate change in China.” The introductory editorial noted that “research on global climate change has been at the frontier of contemporary sciences.” That, and “whether the greenhouse effect produced by human activities is a major factor responsible for modern global warming.”     

The most important conclusions of the Chinese study were: (1) that temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period (950 AD to 1250 AD) were “comparable to those in the current warm period over China,” and (2) that “the effect of solar activity on climate cannot be neglected in any period of the millennium.”  

Both conclusions were at odds with the idea that carbon dioxide, CO2, is the driving force behind climate change. Most importantly, the Chinese not only confirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, MWP, they determined that temperatures in that 300-year period a millennium ago were as warm as today’s.   

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Since the MWP was not caused by increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, perhaps the same is true today. Thus, both the political establishment and the scientific establishment are desperate to eliminate the MWP. It reminds me of the old Soviet Union rewriting history by air-brushing out-of-favor people from official photos. Goodby Trotsky.  

The poster-child of the effort to eliminate the MWP is climatologist Michael Mann. In 1999 Mann published a study of the climate history of the Northern Hemisphere over the last 1000 years.  That study was both a political and scientific sensation because it purported to show that the MWP — drum roll, please —NEVER EXISTED!!  

Mann became an instant celebrity. His graph of temperature changes since 1000 AD was reproduced five times in the UN’s 2001 report on global warming.  This was the now-famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, that showed flat temperatures for 900 years and then a sharp upward trend in the last 100 years or so, thus resembling a hockey stick.   

If you are unfamiliar with the ongoing controversy surrounding Mann’s research, you can Google up thousands of pages of material in only a minute or so.  After over 20 years, the fact that the ‘hockey stick’ is still controversial is proof of a hopelessly politicized scientific establishment, at least in the U.S.      

Not in China, however. The 2009 tree-ring study was only one of many that disputes the general CO2 hypothesis. A study detailed in Chinese Science Bulletin 58 in 2013 showed that sediment cores from two lakes on the Tibetan Plateau “clearly identified” the MWP and the Little Ice Age of AD 1350- 1850, which had also failed to show up in Mann’s ‘hockey stick.’   

Chinese Science Bulletin 59 published in 2014 detailed the results of studies on giant clam shells collected from the South China Sea that showed sea surface temperatures in AD 990 and AD 50 averaged .8C to 1.4C degrees HIGHER than sea surface temperatures in 1994 – 2005. The researchers said their “well-calibrated high resolution” findings “did not agree with the results of the IPCC fourth report, which suggested that the recent decades were the warmest in at least the past 1,300 years.”  

The IPCC is the UN’s “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” and is essentially a political body tasked with proving that CO2 is causing global warming. Chinese research does not support that hypothesis, and while there is plenty of other research that also questions the CO2-climate connection, China’s is the most unassailable.    

This is because, rightly or wrongly, research done by a government has instant credibility with leftists, and leftists dominate climate science.  Also, China has no financial interest in promoting the use of fossil fuels. In fact, China is a heavy importer of coal and petroleum and can’t be accused of being paid off by the Koch brothers, or some such nonsense.  

Thus, there has been little or no criticism of China’s climate research in the leftist-dominated media. There hasn’t been any publicizing of it either, which is a disgrace. The politicization of Western science means that the Chinese are only a generation or two from world domination.  Maybe India and Japan can hold them at bay, but certainly not any nation that teaches “white math.”    

China won’t be burdened with such stupidity. Chinese science has persuaded Chinese leaders, most of whom have technical educations, that the Western CO2 climate-change hype is, in a word, bullshit. Hence, the coral reef build-outs, the continued push to build new coal-fired generating plants, both domestically and abroad, and lip-service only climate diplomacy.   

If you think they are making us look like fools, you’re wrong: We ARE fools.   

Sources:   

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V15/N3/C3.php  

notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/evidence-of-mwp-in-china/ 

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V16/N34/C2.php  

www.skeptical-science.com/science/the-medieval-warm-period-myth/  

judithcurry.com/2021/06/09/death-spiral-of-american-academia/ 

gineersnow.com/leadership/chinese-government-dominated-scientists-engineers 

China’s electricity and China’s Muslims by Peter Burrows 6/15/23 

I wish every elected official in the country would read Anton Lang’s articles about coal-fired electrical generation: Coal Fired Power Dying – Not So Fast. That might, might, change a few minds about the best way to go about the so-called threat of climate change. In short: Developed nations’ efforts to reduce carbon dioxide are ridiculously expensive and simply won’t work, even if the threat is real. 

I hope to address that point in a future post, but here I would like to amplify on something Anton wrote in his second article: “When it comes to China, there’s not much I agree with, in fact very little I do agree with. However, one thing I do agree with is the way they are going about their electrical power generation policy.”  

I would add, and speaking only for myself, that the way the Chinese are handling their Muslim problem is also something I agree with. The reality is that every nation, even every community, that has a Muslim population has a Muslim problem; the bigger the Muslim population, the bigger the problem. 

For those of you who disagree, please look at what’s been going on in Europe. Many European nations have pretty much allowed unfettered Muslim immigration and as a result are suffering increased crime rates across the board: rapes, murders, gang violence, etc., all in the name of Allah. Sweden seems to be waking up, but I think it’s too late to avoid bloodshed.  

China has taken the position that to avoid bloodshed, at least amongst non-Muslims, the Muslim population must be severely restricted.  Eventually, through age and demographic attrition, Muslims will no longer be a threat. If you can think of a better way to effectuate such a change, I’d like to know about it. 

Here’s something I wrote almost three years ago. The YouTube link still works but now has a viewer warning.  

China’s Muslims: A different perspective by Peter Burrows 10/2/20  

The Grant County Beat has recently run a number of articles, “Education About China,” that have focused on China’s persecution of its Muslim minorities. Unsurprisingly, the Muslims are portrayed as victims while the Chinese government is accused of implementing “a system that allows evil to thrive and harm the Chinese people.”  

The irony is that Islam is at least as evil as Communism, although communism has less than 200 years of proof vs over 1,400 for Islam.  If forced to choose between the two, I think I’d take communism. You can reason with communists, but not with people who think they are obeying God.    

I was surprised to learn there were any Muslims at all in China, but there are some 25 million, about half of whom are Uighur Muslims, pronounced ‘wee grr,’ who until recently were the majority in the province of Xinjiang.  Xinjiang, about three times the size of France, is on the far northwest border of China. and has been governed by China only since 1949.  

For hundreds of years it has been the land of the Uighurs, who are Muslims with roots in Turkey, and are of both a different race and culture than the rest of China.  In recent years the Chinese have been resettling large numbers of Han Chinese into the province, and today they outnumber the 12 million Uighurs.  The Han Chinese constitute the great bulk of China’s population, and at 1.4 billion people are the largest ethnic group in the world.  They are who we think of when we think of “the Chinese.”  

I don’t know when this resettlement of Han Chinese began, but it is an important part of Beijing’s plan to dilute the influence of Islam in Xinjiang.  If you have to ask why they would want to do that, you have not been paying attention.  All around the world, Islamic terrorists are killing people in the cause of Islam, especially in non-Muslim ruled nations.      

Xinjiang is no exception. Starting with a Muslim population of way over 50 percent, ruled by far-off pagans, acts of terrorism should come as no surprise. You Tube has lots of boo-hoo documentaries bemoaning the fate of today’s Uighurs, but here’s the one that you should watch first.  Its title is “Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang.” It’s 50 minutes long and has lots of nasty stuff. Before you criticize China’s treatment of the Uighurs, you MUST watch this:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4cYE6E27_g&t=55s  “Between 1990 and 2016, thousands of terrorist attacks shook the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, killing large numbers of innocent people and hundreds of police officers.”  

The question then becomes: How would YOU combat the terrorism? Would you recommend that China simply abandon the region to the Muslims? This would consign the Uighurs to centuries more of poverty and Islamic oppression.  It would also create a very hostile nation on China’s northern border.  If that’s your recommendation, China is not going to accept it.   

China has instead taken a number of actions designed to eliminate the threat of Islam in Xinjiang. Given China’s history of forced assimilation and indoctrination, e.g., The Cultural Revolution, The Grear Leap Forward, and Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, to name a few events from Mao’s reign, China’s handling of Muslims today is surprisingly humane.   

No one doubts that President Xi Jinping has the power to order the deaths of millions of Muslims, or any other group he deems a threat to China.  Seen in that context, China’s response to acts of Muslim terrorism should earn Xi commendations, but, of course, in today’s politically correct world of Islamic apologists, Xi is demonized.   

In spite of daily acts of terror around the world committed by terrorists screaming, “Allahu akbar,” apparently not enough people have been killed by Muslims to drive home a lesson that should have been learned centuries ago: Islam and its adherents cannot peacefully coexist with the rest of humanity. Their religion commands them to wage war until the world is ruled by Islam.    

In the short-term, China is doing what any government should do: flood the terror-afflicted region with law and order.  The next most visible response has been to demolish the mosques used by Uighur terrorists.  The mosques are the loci of terrorism. They are where the terrorists receive inspiration and funding.   

Also, in 2014, China began to build a vast system of concentration camps that have been the subject of intense international criticism. Thanks to satellite imaging, it appears that China has about 400 of these camps. Estimates are that they house about a million Uighurs.  These have been built in the wake of the terror attacks committed by Xinjiang’s Muslims, and one has to wonder if Mao would have been so “gentle.” By all accounts, these are NOT death camps.   

China claims these are “reeducation” camps, and there may be some truth to that. The typical Uighur does not speak Mandarin, the official language of China, and is an unskilled farmer-herder. Critics have said that most in the camps are only guilty of practicing Islam, which indicates to me that the Chinese have got it figured out.     

Uighurs are not the only Muslims in China. About half of China’s 25 million Muslims are ethnic Chinese, called Hui Muslims, pronounced ‘whay,’ spread throughout China where they have lived for centuries, the descendants of Chinese converted by Muslim traders over a thousand years ago. Up until recently, the Hui enjoyed a surprising amount of religious freedom, attending mosques, observing Ramadan, and some even undertaking the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.   

This began to unravel in the wake of terrorist attacks such as the one that killed five in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 2013, and one in the southern city of Kunming in 2014 that killed 31.  Uighurs took credit for both, bringing terrorism to the homes of the Han Chinese and sparking an anti-Islamic backlash throughout China.    

Critics say the Chinese government is encouraging this anti-Islamic trend, which is probably true.  The pragmatic Chinese have noted that if the terrorists are Muslims, maybe it has something to do with their religion.  Gee, you think?   

There is simply no gentle way to deal with Islamic terrorism, and as much as China’s treatment of the Uighurs may offend some people, there have been no acts of terror in Xinjiang since 2016. To see how that compares with the rest of the world, go to thereligionofpeace.com and look at what the jihadists have been doing lately. I warn you: it ain’t pretty.    

Coal Fired Power Dying – Not So Fast – Part One – Introduction

//silvercityburro.com/2020/10/02/chinas-muslims-a-different-perspective/ 

PLEASE take 20 minutes to understand Islam! By Peter Burrows 6/13/23 

Contrary to what Biden and the Liberal media pound at us every day, climate change and white supremacy are NOT existential threats to our society. Islam, however, is. In fact, given that the Islamic Republic of Iran is developing nuclear weapons, Islam is both an external as well as internal existential threat.  

You won’t hear that from ANY of our politicians or from anybody in the mainstream media. From them we hear that Islam is a religion of peace and violent Muslims must either suffer from mental illness or that they have misinterpreted their religion. Right. And we can power our economy with solar panels and batteries. 

As a non-Muslim who has studied Islam for a number of years, I can honestly say that there is not one good thing about the religion of Islam. Not one. Oh, you say, there must be something. Nope. To make my point, all I ask is that you spend 20 minutes to learn the basics of Islam. In no way do those basics agree with what the Pope, the President or the New York Times tells us. 

Twenty minutes. Just read from the “Introduction” to the “Summary” in my essay, “How to read the Quran (and understand Islam)”. It will take you more than 20 minutes if you want to go into the appendices. 

//silvercityburro.com/2020/10/26/how-to-read-the-koran-and-understand-islam/

One of the problems with studying Islam is that is difficult for a non-Muslim to NOT misunderstand the religion. For starters, Allah’s infallible word, the Koran, is full of contradictions because “Allah” frequently changed “His” mind. The non-Muslim is usually unaware of this little detail or how to deal with it. 

Secondly, much of the religion of Islam is based upon the life and sayings of Muhammad, none of which is covered in the Koran.  To cover that aspect of Islam, you have to read the equivalent of about another hundred Korans. Finally, scholarly interpretation of the Quran and Muhammad’s example is the final arbiter of what Islam is all about. Add another ten or so Korans. 

You don’t have to do any of that. Just spend 20 minutes on the above essay. Next time you run across a non-Muslim who insists on defending the religion, or even a Muslim for that matter, just ask the question: “Has the Verse of the Sword been abrogated? “ 

I would like to thank PA Pundits International for inviting me to be a commentator. In the last 10+ years I’ve been writing a column, Libertarian Leanings, for an online newspaper, the Grant County Beat, in Silver City, NM.   

https://www.grantcountybeat.com/columns/opinion/libertarian-leanings

All of those articles can be found at https://wordpress.com/home/silvercityburro.com 

By way of introduction, I’m 83 and my main hobbies, since I gave up golf, are Islamophobia and Climate Skepticism. Hey, keeps me off the streets.  

Peter Burrows, aka El Burro 

Reparations, again.  by Peter Burrows  

Reparations are back in the news, and some really big numbers are being thrown around. California, for example, is considering paying up to $1.2 million to descendants of slaves, which is chump change compared to San Francisco’s $5 million proposal. The lowest number I’ve seen is $350,000 from a Black economics professor. (Duke University, no less!) 

I touch on some of the absurdities and dangers of reparations in “White math vs. Reparations,” in which I also touch on the legitimate possibility that if reparations are owed, perhaps it’s from blacks to whites!   

I explore that thought in a 2019 article, “Reparations? No thanks,” in which I also have a little fun with the underlying assumption that there is no statute of limitations for the crime of slavery. Given the historical fact that everybody was subject to slavery at one time or another in the history of humanity, it’s Bon Appetit! for Anglo-Saxon pizza lovers.   

Ridicule beats logic when dealing with bullshit, don’t you think?  Here are the links to the above articles: 

silvercityburro.com/2023/05/22/1084/ 

silvercityburro.com/2019/04/09/reparations-no-thanks/