THE GREAT BIG CHINA THREAD

[PeanutButter]

57 minutes ago, Giraffe said:

Yes the spread of the army worm is disturbing. Watching that story with interest. Eclipsed of course (no pun intended) by the Grand Solar Minimum we are just starting to enter which will be the defining event of our lifetimes. Assuming you still have 20 -30 years to live of course.  If you can shuffle off this mortal coil in the next decade you might be one of the lucky ones. Expect mass crop failures in 2021, followed by decades of struggle and strife on a global scale on our cooling planet. Best case scenario is 30-40 years of lower temperatures. Worst case? -You don't want to think about it.

 

No it won't. 

[Giraffe]

22 hours ago, PeanutButter said:

No it won't. 

yes it will. Climate change is REAL

[MarkG]

I wasn't convinced about the Grand Solar Minimum, but I gather NASA is now predicting that the next solar cycle will show even less activity than this one.

Maybe it's time I got my hunting license.

Edit: also, if this means that North Africa becomes a bread-basket again due to the increased rainfall, I wonder who'll be first to invade and take it over? I'm guessing China, because the EU no longer has an army worth speaking of.

Edited June 19, 2019 by MarkG

[PeanutButter]

8 minutes ago, MarkG said:

I wasn't convinced about the Grand Solar Minimum, but I gather NASA is now predicting that the next solar cycle will show even less activity than this one.

Maybe it's time I got my hunting license.

Edit: also, if this means that North Africa becomes a bread-basket again due to the increased rainfall, I wonder who'll be first to invade and take it over? I'm guessing China, because the EU no longer has an army worth speaking of.

You don't need to invade Africa. They're happy to sell the place to you because they need the money.

https://www.ft.com/content/9f5736d8-14e1-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e

Meanwhile:

Quote

The 'imminent mini ice age' myth is back, and it's still wrong

We can’t accurately predict solar activity, and a quiet solar cycle would have a small impact on Earth’s climate anyway

Roughly every two years we’re treated to headlines repeating the myth that Earth is headed for an imminent “mini ice age.” It happened in 2013, 2015, and again just recently at the tail end of 2017.

This time around, the myth appears to have been sparked by a Sky News interview with Northumbria University mathematics professor Valentina Zharkova. The story was quickly echoed by the Daily Mail, International Business Times, Sputnik News, Metro, Tru News, and others. Zharkova was also behind the ‘mini ice age’ stories in 2015, based on her research predicting that the sun will soon enter a quiet phase.

The most important takeaway point is that the scientific research is clear – were one to occur, a grand solar minimum would temporarily reduce global temperatures by less than 0.3°C, while humans are already causing 0.2°C warming per decade. 

So the sun could only offset at most 15 years’ worth of human-caused global warming, and once its quiet phase ended, the sun would then help accelerate global warming once again.

When a story conveniently allows business to continue as usual I tend to question who benefits from our continued pacifier-sucking somnolence. 

[NoHPCinTheUK]

News from China are not good. Tariffs slow down the economic activity, banks cant get their money back and suffer. UK banks are exposed to China. More than their US-EU-Japan positions combined. This is the elephant in the room. 

[Giraffe]

On 19/06/2019 at 15:47, MarkG said:

I wasn't convinced about the Grand Solar Minimum, but I gather NASA is now predicting that the next solar cycle will show even less activity than this one.

Maybe it's time I got my hunting license.

Edit: also, if this means that North Africa becomes a bread-basket again due to the increased rainfall, I wonder who'll be first to invade and take it over? I'm guessing China, because the EU no longer has an army worth speaking of.

Yes NASA sneaked the news out in an article about space exploration:

 

June 12th 2019............ "The forecast for the next solar cycle says it will be the weakest of the last 200 years. The maximum of this next cycle – measured in terms of sunspot number, a standard measure of solar activity level – could be 30 to 50% lower than the most recent one. The results show that the next cycle will start in 2020 and reach its maximum in 2025."

 

So the next cycle (25) will have us in Dalton minimum like conditions. (if we're lucky). 

 

 

 

 

[Will!]

Guardian: Trump fact check: is China really 'going down the tubes' ?

If even the Grauniad can resist reflexively opposing Trump and see that there's a problem then things must be pretty far along.

[simvastatin]

Just heard on the grapevine that Huawei met EE, O2, Three and Vodaphone and all want Huawei kit based on it being the cheapest 

[felix]

CNH has past 7 against the USD:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/159240866

[Will!]

Something cheerful to take our minds of Covid-19.

Bloomberg: Is the US in a new Cold War? China has already declared it by Niall Ferguson

[DarkHorseWaits-NoMore]

Quote

...The tone of the official Chinese communiqué released after Pompeo’s June 17 meeting in Hawaii with Yang Jiechi, the director of the Communist Party’s Office of Foreign Affairs, was vintage Cold War. On the persecution of the Uighurs, for example, it called on "the US side to respect China's counter-terrorism and de-radicalization efforts, stop applying double standards on counter-terrorism issues, and stop using Xinjiang-related issues as a pretext to interfere in China's internal affairs."...

Anyone remember what happened to ~1m Arabs in Iraq and Abu Ghraib? Rendition, Guantanamo bay?
Ever seen the great historic city of Mosul with its 600k population? You never will, we leveled it.
Israel knee capping thousands for standing in a field?
Saudi and Yeman...

Yet suddenly the west is getting on its morally bankrupt high horse about how China deals with so called insurgent Islamic extreme ideas.

I think pretty soon we're going to know fairly loudly the Chinese for "Phuck off!" 

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by DarkHorseWaits-NoMore
typo's

[Will!]

32 minutes ago, DarkHorseWaits-NoMore said:

Yet suddenly the west is getting on its morally bankrupt high horse about how China deals with so called insurgent Islamic extreme ideas.

I think pretty soon we're going to know fairly loudly the Chinese for "Phuck off!"

This is about more than just the Uighers.

23/07 speech by Michael Pompeo, Secretary of State: Communist China and the Free World’s Future

Edited July 26, 2020 by Will!

[reddog]

I'm interested to see what is going to happen in China with the not very heavily reported floods. 

[A.steve]

On 18/06/2019 at 09:17, Giraffe said:

yes it will. Climate change is REAL

Of course.  All that is up for debate is what it is changing from and what it is changing to; when that change will happen and if each person thinks the change desirable or not.

When I was at school, "acid rain" was what it was insisted that we should worry about.  I was shown pictures of  lakes allowing you to see rocks beneath the crystal clear water (in Sweden, allegedly) and was told to be scared that everywhere might end up the same.  Sadly, it seems, we didn't get enough acid rain... everyone gave up caring about that insurmountable issue - and I didn't get to see ubiquitous beautiful sterile lakes.

[DarkHorseWaits-NoMore]

I thought that was largely bacause coutries like the UK cut back on burning fossal fuels that were high in sulphur from its industry and closed the worst offending power stations.

[Confusion of VIs]

On 14/07/2019 at 14:57, simvastatin said:

Just heard on the grapevine that Huawei met EE, O2, Three and Vodaphone and all want Huawei kit based on it being the cheapest 

It is the cheapest and more importantly it is the best, which is why the US is so upset.

It's probably also the most secure as it has had CQHQ crawling all over it for over a decade now.  

[DarkHorseWaits-NoMore]

CQHQ ? To obfuscate against the AI and troll bots, crafty ?.

[felix]

On 27/07/2020 at 02:32, reddog said:

I'm interested to see what is going to happen in China with the not very heavily reported floods. 

Me too!

Problem is that everyone focusses on a possible collapse of the Three Gorges Dam, but China will do everything possible to avoid that from happening. In doing so they ruin whole cities, which gets little attention.

[Confusion of VIs]

4 hours ago, DarkHorseWaits-NoMore said:

CQHQ ? To obfuscate against the AI and troll bots, crafty ?.

Sorry, shouldn't have mentioned CQHQ.

The PTB will have to organise a memory wipe.??   

[MarkG]

3 hours ago, felix said:

Problem is that everyone focusses on a possible collapse of the Three Gorges Dam, but China will do everything possible to avoid that from happening. In doing so they ruin whole cities, which gets little attention.

Yes, exactly. The dam is unlikely to collapse, but it doesn't matter much when they've already opened the floodgates to flood the countryside and cities downstream of it; a dam collapse would be worse, but they're already wrecked masses of factories and farms.

[A.steve]

On 27/07/2020 at 16:25, DarkHorseWaits-NoMore said:

I thought that was largely bacause coutries like the UK cut back on burning fossal fuels that were high in sulphur from its industry and closed the worst offending power stations.

My point is that when "Acid Rain" was the evil everyone was told to be scared about, it was also presented as a problem with no plausible solution other than to send mankind back to live in the stone-age.  Acid rain was not presented as being an engineering challenge to deal with sulphur - but as being a necessary consequence of wanting electricity. 

I suppose this is 'solved' by making carbon dioxide the boogeyman.  Everyone contributes to the appocolypse even if all they want is to breathe...

[Hope_Prevails]

On 28/07/2020 at 02:24, MarkG said:

Yes, exactly. The dam is unlikely to collapse, but it doesn't matter much when they've already opened the floodgates to flood the countryside and cities downstream of it; a dam collapse would be worse, but they're already wrecked masses of factories and farms.

Yes, I have been following this on twitter, it does seem the dam will be able to handle the pressure being put on it and the tales of impending doom are exaggerated.

It would be good however to get some data on how much flooding they are allowing to happen in order to relieve pressure on the dam and what impacts it will have.

Despite everything which has happened the Chinese economy does still seem very resilient and I believe they are trying to stop outflows of cash outside the country.  As the Arab spring has shown us this can all change very quickly.

Kyle Bass is fanatically anti China to the point of obsession, but he has suggested a few simple rule changes by the USA can have a major affect on the chinese economy, but vested interests in USA are preventing this.

[felix]

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20200807.aspx

In my opinion it is the rich Honkies that are in big trouble. They used to have it both ways, but now it is both the West and China forcing them to choose one side. They should have been the bridge builders between East and West. It is clearly not happening!

Regarding Kyle Bass and his rants on the HK/US dollar peg. He might turn out to be right, but in my opinion for the wrong reasons. Kyle is of the opinion that China is doing everything to not let (the) HK (peg) go down. In my opinion China is doing everything to make HK as insignificant as possible and it seems they are succeeding very well. 

[shlomo]

10 hours ago, felix said:

In my opinion China is doing everything to make HK as insignificant as possible and it seems they are succeeding very well. 

This makes sense, if the decision you make comes from different places, and they do.

[Saving For a Space Ship]

On 02/08/2020 at 23:20, Hope_Prevails said:

Yes, I have been following this on twitter, it does seem the dam will be able to handle the pressure being put on it and the tales of impending doom are exaggerated.

It would be good however to get some data on how much flooding they are allowing to happen in order to relieve pressure on the dam and what impacts it will have.

Despite everything which has happened the Chinese economy does still seem very resilient and I believe they are trying to stop outflows of cash outside the country.  As the Arab spring has shown us this can all change very quickly.

Kyle Bass is fanatically anti China to the point of obsession, but he has suggested a few simple rule changes by the USA can have a major affect on the chinese economy, but vested interests in USA are preventing this.

Got any links, Ive been following https://twitter.com/UndergroundSilk