Buy from China, warm the planet

Buy from China, warm the planet

Heat causes global warming. Everybody knows that now. It is common-sense obvious when you look at a few facts.

• Globally, 8 billion tons of coal were burned in 2022.

• In 2008 the U.S. burned 1,171 million tons of coal, the most ever, then 541 million tons in 2021, the least since 1964.

• In its fiscal year 2020-2021 India burned about 1.1 billion tons of coal, second most of any country behind China.

• China is responsible for more than half of the global consumption of coal since 2011, with its share growing each year, reaching 56% in 2020 before declining to 53% in the COVID year of 2021.

• For the next few years the People’s Republic of China will build a new coal-burning power plant every two or three weeks.

• Electricity costs about 9¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in China, a little less in India. On average we Americans pay almost 17¢ per kWh for electricity (27¢/kWh for residential use in San Francisco).

• Last year, 2022, just from burning coal, China dumped around 81,700,000,000,000,000 (eighty-one quadrillion, seven hundred trillion) BTUs of heat into the Earth’s atmosphere, warming it, contributing to global warming. The Red Dragon will dump even more BTUs in 2023.

Therefore, every time you buy something “Made in China” you are contributing to global warming, hurting American workers, America’s economy, and hurting our way of life. That is just plain common sense when you look at facts.

— EJ Donmoyer, Paradise

GOP telling lies about an ‘open’ border

As Ruben Navarette has repeatedly pointed out, Biden’s immigration policy is essentially the same as Trump’s, minus the sadistic part where children were separated from their parents. Far from an “open border,” there were over a million expulsions of undocumented immigrants each of the past two years. So why do so many people from other countries continue to trek thousands of miles in extremely hazardous conditions to flock to our southern border? Reporters have asked immigrants that very question, and their answers fall into two categories: (1) they are fleeing poverty, corruption, persecution, drugs, and crime in their home countries, and (2) they heard that the border was open.

Where would they hear such a thing? Certainly not from Biden and Harris, whose message to potential immigrants has been consistent: “Stay home.” “Don’t leave your town or city or community.” “Do not just show up at the border.” “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders. If you come to our border you will be turned back.”

So who’s lying to these desperate people by assuring them that the border is open? Yep, you guessed it, Republicans and conservative news outlets. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Kevin McCarthy, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and countless others fulminate incessantly about the non-existent “open border,” but the truth is, if they really cared about the “border crisis,” they would discourage immigrants from coming to America by telling them the same truth Biden and Harris do: the border is NOT open.

— Scott Paulo, Chico

A fresh look at the ‘Bedford Incident’

From the 1965 film “The Bedford Incident”:

During the cold war, a US Farragut Class destroyer was on a NATO patrol for Russian submarines in The GIUK gap.

The Bedford had a crew of 160, was commanded by a maniacal, anti-communist skipper who operated the ship under General Quarters. On board was a reporter, a pragmatic NATO military advisor, formerly a WW2 Nazis submarine commander, and a young, bullied, erratic junior weapons officer.

The Bedford hunts down a Russian submarine inside Greenland territorial waters that moves into international waters. Initially, NATO refuses a hunt request by the Bedford but then concurs to this dangerous, stunning cat and mouse pursuit. The Bedford, realizing the Russian submarine can only remain submerged for 24 hours, initiates a vicious hold down / hunt to exhaustion attack. The Bedford captain pushes his crew to the razor’s edge, hoping to force the submarine to surface, at one point crashing into the snorkel.

The NATO advisors stern rebuke to the captain that the submarine crew is desperate and to de-escalate is ignored. There is a heated discussion on the destroyers’ bridge to abort the destroyer attack. The Bedford captain exclaims to the NATO advisor, “The Bedford will never fire first, but if he fires one, I’ll fire one.” The distraught weapons officer hears only “fire one.” An antisubmarine rocket is launched.

The submarine is destroyed but not before it unleashes 4 nuclear armed torpedoes at the Bedford. A nuclear mushroom cloud vaporizes the Bedford and its crew.

— Terrance Wilson, Chico