Bidenomics Blather

It seems that there are different rules involving basic economics when it comes to Washington, D.C. compared to the real world.

First, consider the federal debt.

Since the federal debt limit was expanded less than a month ago the U.S. Treasury has added $800 billion in additional debt outstanding.

Recall that the new debt limit passed into law does not have any debt limit number.

The debt can be expanded to any amount the U.S. Treasury desires until January 1, 2025 at which time borrowing authority must be renewed.

The original House-passed bill to raise the debt limit provided for a $1.5 trillion increase. 

At current levels of spending that was projected to be enough to allow for a year of borrowing.

Instead, under the new deal the Treasury has burned through half of that amount in less than a month?

As I pointed out in an earlier blog there is nothing to prevent Treasury from borrowing $3 trillion, $5 trillion or $10 trillion over the next 18 months.

If you want to know how out of control Washington is, you don't have to look much further than the chart above.

Do you remember what the name of the bill was that increased the debt limit?

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.

Only the government could conceive of a law that is sold as "fiscal responsibility" and leads to an increase in the national debt outstanding of almost $1 trillion in less than a month.

Second, the guy in charge in Washington, D.C. does not know the difference between what a deficit is and what debt is.

Biden is continually telling people that he has reduced the debt by $1.7 trillion in his first two years. Some times he says it is $1.7 billion.

He even has said that he has cut the federal debt in half in that time.

Source: Click here to view clip

Biden does not seen to know the difference between billions and trillions. Nor the difference between deficits and debt.

He clearly is referring to the annual deficit. However, how much credit should anyone take for cutting the federal deficit in half when you are comparing it to when D.C. was practically throwing money at everyone and everything during Covid?

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD

Third, someone in the Biden administration ( I hope it was not Joe) has now had the brilliant idea of branding the "success" of the economy under Biden as Bidenomics.

Credit: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1674165845138735104

The Biden brain trust has decided that the reason that Biden is polling poorly on economic issues with the American people is due to poor messaging.

They look at the polls and have decided that people just don't realize how great they have it.

Biden just needs to do a better job of messaging.

Don't believe your lying eyes. We will tell you what to believe.

For example, only 21% of voters overall think the country is headed in the right direction according to this recent AP poll.

Compare the numbers today to when Biden took office during the middle of the Covid pandemic.

Just 24% of voters overall believe the economy is good.

Do Democrats in D.C. honestly believe that Biden's economic policies have been great but people just don't realize it?

Consider this chart that shows personal consumption expenditure inflation.

This is the indicator that the Federal Reserve puts the most stock in regarding inflation.

Is it just a coincidence that inflation took off in 2021 just as Biden took office and started his attack on oil and gas? Is it just a coincidence that the prices of this key resource started rising at that time?

Of course, energy costs then go into all other components of consumer expenditures.

Biden keeps talking about wage gains.

However, when inflation is subtracted the REAL average wages of Americans are in negative territory.

Real wages have fallen in 19 of the 28 months that Biden has been in office.

Credit: https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1674378171179737089

When did real wages start dropping?

Is it another coincidence it started in January 2021?

The Department of Labor also just announced that the United States has just gone five consecutive quarters where productivity has been negative.

This is the first time this has occurred since this measure was first tracked beginning in 1948.

Productivity also seemed to start dropping just as "Bidenomics" came to Washington.

Another coincidence?

On the one hand we have reality as revealed in the data above.

On the other, we have Joe Biden telling us that we have undergone an economic miracle under his leadership involving "Bidenomics".

My question is if the economy goes into a recession, the stock market falls and unemployment rises will Biden or the Democrats admit his theory has been disproven?

I have a hunch that Bidenomics will not be a term that endures very long.

It is just another example of the blather that comes out of Washington, D.C.

Gradually And Then Suddenly

In January of this year I predicted that there was only a 1% chance that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump would be on the Presidential ballot in November, 2024.

I don't like making political predictions because it is too easy to be wrong. I prefer analysis based on data.

However, if I were to place odds on Biden 2.0 vs. Trump 2.0 right now, I would suggest there is only a 1% chance that both Biden and Trump will be the candidates on the final ballot in 2024.

In fact, I believe there is less than a 50% chance that even one of them will be on the ballot in November, 2024 as I forecast the next Presidential race at the present time.

There are too many cautionary signs out there for both Trump and Biden right now.

The principal reason I placed those odds as low as 1% was not because I believed that Donald Trump would not be on the ticket (although Trump has his own issues to overcome to make it to the 2024 ballot), it was because of a number of risks that could derail Biden.

His age. His physical and mental health. His ineptness. The economy. Any one of these could do him in where the Democrat establishment and /or the mainstream media might turn on him.

However, I believed that the biggest risk for Biden was the fact that the Republicans had just taken control of the House who would have the power to investigate Biden without being protected by his Department of Justice.

This is what I wrote in January.

Biden's biggest problem over the next two years is that he is going to have the cloud of investigations hanging over his head. House Republicans are going to dig deeply into Hunter Biden's business affairs and Biden's connection to anything that Hunter was doing. The focus will be on possible influence peddling with Ukraine, China and other countries.

This is all playing out right now and the optics do not look good for Biden.

The most explosive piece of evidence that IRS whistleblowers produced last week was this WhatsApp text message to a Chinese businessman with ties to the Chinese Communist Party that the IRS obtained based on a search warrant of Hunter's iCloud account.

Of course, Joe Biden has always claimed he never spoke to Hunter about his business dealings. He claimed he knew nothing about what he was doing.

Here is a small sample of just a few of the times that Joe Biden made those claims during the time he was running for President. These claims were repeated over the last couple of years when Biden sat in the Oval Office.

Interestingly, the response of Biden's White House counsel to the IRS whistleblower testimony says nothing has changed. Counsel wants you to believe there is nothing new here. However, if you look closely at the statement that wss made in response to these allegations, they are no longer saying that Biden never spoke to Hunter about his business. They are now saying that Joe Biden "was not in business with his son."

“As we have said many times before, the President was not in business with his son. As we have also said many times before, the Justice Department makes decisions in its criminal investigations independently, and in this case, the White House has not been involved," Sams said Friday. “As the President has said, he loves his son and is proud of him accepting responsibility for his actions and is proud of what he is doing to rebuild his life.”

We have gone from "never spoke to him about his business" to "was not in business with his son".

There were reports this weekend that Joe Biden is in the process of retaining individual legal counsel.

Take what you will from that and the change in messaging.

The scent of scandal is circulating around Biden pretty strongly.

It appears that the mainstream media is even starting to take notice whereas in the past stories about questionable activities of Joe and Hunter Biden were ignored.

The DOJ's friendly plea deal with Hunter and the revelations that came out last week from the IRS whistleblowers seems to have changed the political landscape in all of this for Biden.

Contrary to the past when almost any negative story about Joe or Hunter Biden was never covered or buried deep in the back pages of the paper or the nightly news, we are seeing changes in news coverage.

Both The New York Times and Washington Post have covered the IRS whistleblower story,

ABC, CBS, NBC, and even CNN, have devoted considerable air time to the story.

The White House press corps seems to have awakened from their slumber since Trump left office and are beginning to actually practice journalism by asking some direct questions about Biden and his son.

It appears that we are nearing a tipping point for Joe Biden.

He may soon find he has a lot fewer friends and supporters than he thought he had.

For example, I thought it was interesting that CNN is now fact-checking Joe Biden.

This is what is now appearing on its "Facts First" section of its website regarding false claims that Biden made just over the last two weeks,

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/21/politics/fact-check-biden-guns-africa

CNN reports Biden made five false claims just about guns.

Here is one of those.

Biden claimed that gun manufacturers are the only industry in America you can't sue. That is not true. They can't be sued if someone uses the gun criminally but they can be sued for defects, negligence etc.

On the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry has near total liability protection for vaccines.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/21/politics/fact-check-biden-guns-africa

Here is another claim Biden made about traveling 17,000 miles with Chinese leader Xi. The only way you could get that number is if you counted the miles Biden flew to his meetings with Xi.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/21/politics/fact-check-biden-guns-africa

Here is Biden claiming Texas is getting 70% of its energy from solar and wind because it is cheaper. The most recent usage of wind and solar in Texas? 26%.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/21/politics/fact-check-biden-guns-africa

All of this suggests to me that Joe Biden is going to be getting more and more scrutiny over the next few months.

After all, when you are a Democrat and CNN starts to turn against you the future does not look bright.

It may not be long before Joe Biden is no longer in the conversation for 2024.

In fact, it would not surprise me if few are willing to even admit that they voted for this man for President when all is said and done.

As we see how all of this plays out it might be worth keeping in mind what Ernest Hemingway wrote in his 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises".

The subject was bankruptcy but the same thing can be said about how a politician descends into disrepute and irrelevancy.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

            ---Ernest Hemingway, "The Sun Also Rises"

Joe Biden has been sowing the seeds of his destruction over a 50 year political career.

As the veneer of his political privilege and power is subject to the harsh light of real scrutiny I would expect his final fall from grace will come suddenly.

What Powers The Plug-in?

China has established a policy that by 2030 40% of all the vehicles sold in that country must be electric.

This objective is being enforced by mandates on manufacturers which must meet these goals or face significant financial penalties each year leading up to 2030.

China has the largest vehicle market in the world.

It is almost twice the size of the United States market.

Source: https://fiatgroupworld.com/2022/03/30/the-global-vehicle-sales-by-country-in-2021/

It is projected that China's vehicle sales will grow to between 30 million and 36 million units by 2030.

Therefore, to put all of this in context, China is projected to be selling about the same number of  electric vehicles in 2030 as the number of all vehicle units (gas and electric) that the United States is selling in total today.

The electric vehicle mandate will put enormous pressure on China's power grid which has already been under pressure due to its industrialization and increasing consumer wealth.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/27/china-approves-biggest-expansion-in-new-coal-power-plants-since-2015-report-finds

Two-thirds of China's electricity generation is currently provided by coal. Only 5% comes from natural gas and 2% from nuclear. Renewables make up the rest.

China currently has over 3,000 coal fired power plants. Those plants alone generate about the same amount of electricity as the entire Untied States power grid. Coal now only comprises about 20% of the energy source for electricity in the U.S. compared to 68% in China.

China is mining more coal than it ever has. More than half of all the coal mined in the world is in China.

China has been on a power plant building binge to meet rising demand that will only be exacerbated by the electric car mandate.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/energy/china-new-coal-plants-climate-report-intl-hnk/index.html

 

China is surging ahead with coal, a new report shows, rapidly approving and building new power plants despite its own promises to cut back on carbon as the world plunges ever deeper into the climate crisis.

“China continues to be the glaring exception to the ongoing global decline in coal plant development,” said Flora Champenois, a research analyst at GEM.

“The speed at which projects progressed through permitting to construction in 2022 was extraordinary, with many projects sprouting up, gaining permits, obtaining financing and breaking ground apparently in a matter of months,” she added.

China’s emissions are more than double those of the United States, and though the country’s leaders have previously vowed to cut back on carbon, its reliance on coal poses a significant challenge.

Throughout 2022, China granted permits for 106 gigawatts of capacity across 82 sites, quadruple the capacity approved in 2021 and equal to starting two large coal power plants each week, said the report.

You get a sense of how much coal China has been using to power its electric grid from this chart.

 

If one believes that carbon emissions are somehow related to climate change what sense does it make to mandate electric vehicles if the power source that is going to power the electric grid you plug into is relying on coal?

Credit: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/coal-powered-electric-cars-still-cleaner

Carbon emissions from coal are 36% higher than that of motor gasoline.

Despite the large transition in the United States from coal to natural gas for power generation over the last 25 years, natural gas still only provides about a 25% reduction in carbon emissions compared to motor gasoline.

The production of electric vehicle also causes more carbon emissions than that of fuel vehicles. A lot of this is due to the mining of minerals needed for battery manufacture.

An academic study from China found that electric cars actually increased carbon emissions compared to the use of fuel vehicles considering the entire life cycle of both based on the current power grid composition mix in China.

This graph from the study compares electric and fuel vehicles based on various levels of usage over their life cycles.

The solid lines are electric vehicles. The dotted lines are fuel vehicles.

In all instances the fuel vehicles resulted in lower total carbon emissions over the entire life cycle based on the current grid mix composition in China.

Source: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/19/3612

Electric vehicles have the potential to lower carbon emissions but it is wholly dependent on what is the energy source for where the power is coming from that the EV is plugged into.

The reality that few will admit to today is that nuclear is the only energy source on earth today that can provide the energy at scale that is necessary to realize the potential of electric vehicles.

Renewables such as solar, wind, hydro and other alternative energy sources are not as available and reliable as is required to power a 21st century world economy.

It seems that some in Europe have now recognized this fact and pulled back from the "green agenda".

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/eu-climate-diplomats-rethink-push-to-phase-out-fossil-fuels/

You begin to understand how crazy all of these "net zero" greenhouse emissions goals are when you consider that if the UK were to achieve that level of emissions reduction by 2050 the benefit is being wiped out currently by China's current emissions increases EVERY QUARTER.

 

To get to "net zero" UK it needs to reduce carbon emissions by about 350 million tons.

China just increased carbon emissions by an estimated 4% on 12 billion tons of emissions in the first quarter, 2023 alone.

As I considered all of the above I wondered what Greta Thunberg was doing in the week after the five-year mark had passed in which she warned that climate change would wipe out all of humanity unless we stopped using fossil fuels by 2023.

I found that Thunberg was in France last week supporting a radical environmental climate change group that uses blockades and land occupations to cause public disruptions to protest that not enough is being done to restrict carbon emissions,

As a result of the disruptions and accompanying violence the group has caused the French government has shut down the group.

Thunberg has decried the government action as systematic repression.

 

What is nonsensical about all of this is that no other country in the world is generating a larger percentage of its electrical production from zero emissions nuclear power than France.

Does Great Thunberg even understand what repressive is?

She might want to take a trip to China and find out.

The Smartest Man Who Can Do No Wrong

Joe Biden has said that his son Hunter is "the smartest man he knows".

Source: https://newschannel9.com/news/videos/joe-biden-calls-son-hunter-the-smartest-man-he-knows

Joe Biden has said a lot of outrageous and bizarre comments in his career. There is nothing that comes close to that statement.

I can understand a father's unconditional love for his child.

However, what possessed him to say something like that?

First, consider the fact that Hunter Biden left his laptop at a Delaware computer repair shop and never returned to pick it up.

A smart move?

Then consider some of the images and documents on the computer.

Consider as well that Joe Biden and the Democrat establishment pushed a narrative during the 2020 election and beyond that the laptop was a product of Russian disinformation.

However, Hunter Biden knew that the laptop story was true.

Joe Biden knew it was true.

Hunter Biden's business associates who had emails on the computer knew it was true.

The foreign nationals he took money from and communicated with Biden by email knew it was true.

Nevertheless, the Hunter Biden laptop story that first broke a month before the election was immediately dismissed as Russians interfering in the election by Biden, the Democrats and the mainstream media.

The FBI had been in possession of the laptop for almost a year by that time and never said a word.

Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter censored the story. It is now apparent that the FBI was responsible for quashing the laptop story with the media even though they knew it was accurate.

51 so-called U.S. intelligence and national security experts signed a letter stating that the story had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.

We know now it was all based on a lie.

In fact, it appears the intelligence experts were recruited to sign the letter by the Biden campaign in order to provide a "talking point" for Biden to push back on the story when Trump brought it up in the October 22, 2016 debate..

This is exactly how it was used by Biden in the debate as later reported by CBS News.

During the debate on Oct. 22, 2020, in response to Trump's taunts of "it's the laptop from hell, the laptop from hell," Mr. Biden pushed back, "There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this — he's accusing me of is a Russian plan — they have said that this has all the characteristics — four — five former heads of the CIA — both parties, say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him…and his good friend Rudy Giuliani."

The Russians were interfering in the election?

No.

It was our own government and media establishment.

We now also have the news that the smartest man that Joe Biden knows has pled guilty to tax evasion and federal gun charges.

Of course, a month ago what was Joe Biden saying about Hunter possibly facing federal charges?

“My son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him,” 

I guess that is true if you ignore the fact that Hunter was addicted to crack cocaine, he fathered an illegitimate child with a dancer at a D.C. men's club, he is in a legal battle trying to avoid paying the mother child support, used his political connections in D.C. on behalf of foreign principals and never registered this activity as required by law (FARA) lied on a federal gun application and did not pay taxes on millions of dollars of income.

That may only be half of the story.

We may never know the full extent of Hunter's wrongdoings or how he traded on his father's influence.

Or how Joe Biden might have profited from it as well.

How much faith can we have in our justice system when we see what has already come before regarding Joe and Hunter Biden?

It appears that the federal charges that Hunter has pled guilty to will result in no jail time.

For perspective, consider these reactions from some attorneys who have experience in this area of the law.

What I also find interesting in the Hunter Biden case is that the federal charges align almost perfectly with two issues that Joe Biden likes to talk about the most.

The need for more gun control.

The rich not paying their fair share of taxes.

Joe Biden talks incessantly about the need for more gun control. However, his son violated one of the gun control measures already on the books by lying on a form that is required to buy a firearm. 

Biden also complains about the rich not paying enough in taxes but his son failed to report millions of dollars on tax returns for 2017 and 2018 (when his father was Vice President).

This the smartest man Joe Biden knows?

This is a man that Joe Biden says has done nothing wrong?

Let's also not forget if someone does not report income on their tax returns it is often because that income has come from illicit or illegal activities. It may involve cash receipts off the books, bribery or income from illegal activities such as drug dealing etc. This may not be the case with Hunter Biden but any responsible prosecutor should have been investigating this angle.

It appears the IRS agents on the case wanted to charge Hunter with multiple felonies several years ago but were continually rebuffed by the DOJ.

An IRS whistleblower (the supervisory agent on the Hunter Biden case) revealed several bombshells that were disclosed by House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith yesterday.

Source and Link to Video: https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1671931171071049733

In addition, to not reporting income, not filing tax returns and hiding taxable income, the IRS whistleblower states that Hunter Biden was taking tax deductions for payments to prostitutes and membership in an elite sex club. 

Somehow I never thought to recommend that to my clients when I was practicing tax law.

Source: https://nypost.com/2023/06/22/hunter-biden-deducted-payments-to-prostitute-sex-club-from-his-taxes-whistleblower/

 

In addition, here is a WhatsApp message that the IRS agent had obtained in which he wanted to follow up on with subpoenas and search warrants but was told to stand down.

It seems that Hunter wanted to know where the money was that had been promised from a Chinese businessman. Notice that Hunter says that WE would like to know why the commitment has not been fulfilled.

I thought Joe Biden has always said he knows nothing about Hunter's business deals?

Was Hunter using his father's name without his knowledge or approval or has Joe Biden not been truthful about his involvement with Hunter's business deals?

 

The New York Post reports that Zhao had connections with the highest levels of Chinese intelligence and reportedly funneled $5 million to Biden in business deals.

Source: https://nypost.com/2022/01/27/chinese-elite-have-paid-some-31m-to-hunter-and-the-bidens/

This, among many other things, did not warrant more scrutiny?

In the meantime, while Hunter Biden is being given a pass by the U.S. Justice Department they are arguing that Donald Trump should be be jailed for 75 years (effectively a life sentence) involving a dispute over Presidential records.

I am sure that it is also a mere coincidence that the Justice Department announced the plea deal with Hunter Biden shortly after the indictment of Donald Trump. 

DOJ has been investigating Hunter Biden for five years and it just happens to result in what we saw this week?

"See, there is equal justice under the law. We will bring charges against a former President or the President's son. No one is above the law."

If only that was true.

I have seen a lot of things in my lifetime that have given me pause about America's future.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. The Vietnam War protests. The Pentagon Papers. Watergate. Iran-Contra. The hanging chads of the 2000 election. 9/11.

However, I have never seen anything that compares with the combination of questions about election integrity, election interference and the unequal application of the law and justice that has given me the concerns I have today about the survival of the union.

We have reached a very dangerous point. 

In a free country there are no more sacrosanct bedrock principles upon which it all rests than faith in the election process and fair and equal treatment under the law.

These principles have clearly been under assault. Not from a foreign enemy. It is a domestic one and appears to trace back to those we trust the most to protect those bedrock principles.

We sit upon a very slippery slope. 

Our country appears to be slipping over the edge as we watch it happen right in front of us.

Living On Borrowed Time?

 Noted climate activist Greta Thunberg made this statement exactly five years ago today.

She was all of 15 years of age at the time.

It astounds me that she would have had any credibility to begin with on this subject in the first place.

However, Time Magazine named Thunberg its Person of the Year in 2019.

In 2020 she was spreading the news that the Great Barrier Reef was dying because of record-breaking water temperatures.

Two years after that these were the reports about the Great Barrier Reef.

Of course, this climate hysteria was going on long before Great Thunberg was even born.

The United Nations had some of their experts predicting back in 1989 that entire countries would be wiped off the face of the earth if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000. 

Thunberg was not even born until 2003. I guess she is fortunate to even have the opportunity to be brought onto this earth. 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.

The most conservative scientific estimate was a temperature rise of 1 to 7 degrees by 2019?

The fact is that most climate models have been proven to be wildly unreliable.

For example, consider this comparison of various climate models for the 1973-2022 period for the 12-state U.S. corn belt summer temperatures vs. observed temperatures.

These are the models that are being used to promote changes in U.S. energy policy and justify trillions of government dollars to fight "climate change".

Source: https://twitter.com/_ClimateCraze/status/1670575228093702151

This data would indicate that observed temperatures have risen by about .2 F degrees in 40 years in those states. In other words, 72 degrees had become 72,2 degrees since 1973.

However, it should be kept in my mind that although we have seen some modest warming over the last 40 years, summer temperatures were much warmer in the first half of the 20th century than they are today.

Source: https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/

I shudder to think what the policy response would be today if we saw anything close to the temperatures and drought conditions that created the Dust Bowl in the Midwest in the 1930's.

Eco-refugees? 2.5 million Americans were forced to move from the Plains states during the 1930's (2% of the entire U..S population) because they could no longer support themselves by farming and allied businesses. It was the largest migration in American history. 

Of course, none of that "climate change" had anything to do with fossil fuels or greenhouse emissions. 

The Maldives would be enveloped by rising ocean levels?

It hasn't happened.

In fact, The Maldives are thriving.

It has opened five new airports in the past few years.

Massive amounts of investment have been made by a number of luxury resort operators.

Did they do this believing they would soon be underwater?

Keep all of this in mind as you are told we have to ban fossil fuels and The World Economic Forum is calling on global governments to reduce the private ownership of cars (including electric vehicles) by 75% over the next 25 years.

The WEF is also stating that the public will not be able to justify the need to travel by commercial air by the year 2050.

Source: https://slaynews.com/news/wef-calls-75-reduction-private-car-ownership/

This led to this question on Twitter.

Wildfires last year were estimated to produce 1.76 billion tons of CO2 in 2021 in North America and Eurasia in 2021.

I wonder if Greta Thunberg will notice today that we are five years later, China and India are using fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow and humanity shows no signs of disappearing.

At the same time it should be noted that in the last 20 years the United States and the European Union have reduced their annual carbon emissions by 2 billion tons while China and India have increased their emissions by 10 billion tons.

In fact, the United States and the EU could reduce their carbon emissions to zero and worldwide emissions would still be higher today than they were 20 years ago due solely to the increases in emissions in China over that period.

It makes you wonder why Greta Thunberg does not spend all her time lecturing the Chinese about their part in all of this. After all, it is all one planet we are talking about.

Then again, perhaps Greta realizes that the climate might be a little too hot for her in China.

What do you think?

Take time to enjoy what time you have left.

We all are living on borrowed time.

The only thing I know for sure is that humanity has a much greater chance to live a long and fulfilling life with fossil fuels than without them until such time that innovation and technology provides us a new and affordable energy source that we know nothing about today.