The China-Russia axis is dangerous for fossil-fuel-disarming America and the West
Don Ritter
The relationship between China and Russia poses the greatest danger faced by America and the West since the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939 initiated WWII. If alarm bells are not ringing all across Washington, DC, they should be. China was already a global power based on its expanding economy, modernizing military and diplomatic reach, but the burgeoning relations with Moscow provide Beijing with renewed energy, literally and figuratively.
What does that mean for the rest of the world?
The China-Russia symbiosis is easy to understand. Russia provides the oil, gas and raw materials at discount prices, while China trades its high technology and endless amounts of manufactured products. It’s a win-win.
Russia is fueling China’s technology-based economy and its military. Not to mention Russian agricultural production, which helps feed China’s 1.5 billion people. The relationship fulfills the long-term basic needs of the respective partners. It’s no wonder China’s President Xi Jinping gloats that “this hasn’t happened in 100 years.”
For the foreseeable future, China’s vast purchases of Russian natural resources perpetuates the war in Ukraine, making China wholly complicit in the ongoing death and destruction. Because of the China lifeline, Russian President Vladimir Putin can conceivably keep fighting until Western electorates lose patience and quit.
Since the Russians went on the warpath, the resulting global sanctions have so far not seriously wounded its economy, while fossil fuel sales at high prices have buoyed it. That’s thanks mostly to China – but also India, and to Europe itself! Russia’s GDP fell by only 2% in 2022, well below predictions, thanks to fossil fuel sales keeping it afloat.
Conversely, America’s economy is struggling with high inflation and bank failures, and experiencing a pressing need to mobilize its defense industries to keep up with its critical role in the war in Ukraine – producing ammunition, in particular. Perhaps worse, Biden administration climate change policies and priorities mean there’s been no mobilization of America’s vast fossil fuels capacity to push back on the current Russian and Saudi energy dominance.
Outside of America (add Canada, Western Europe and Australia), the rest of the world, including Eastern Europe, see Western democracies denuding themselves of the very fossil fuels that still-developing countries need to grow their economies and feed their people. These nations are committed to using fossil fuels and may only be giving lip service to climate change because they want friendly and financial relations with the West.
At the same time, the West will not help developing nations harness their own fossil fuel capacities. This is true for institutions like the USAID, World Bank and Asian Development Bank, among others.
Developing nations like India and Brazil are on the sidelines over the war in Ukraine largely because they see the West fossil fuel-energy disarming in the presentwhile over-focusing on the risks of climate change forthe future. These countries need oil, gas, coal and fossil fuel-derived fertilizers and petrochemicals to survive and prosper. Unfortunately for the West but fortunately for developing nations, these resources are readily available from Russia and the Middle East, along with manufactured products from China. This further marginalizes the U.S. and Europe.
America’s leadership is no longer the guiding North Star in the Global South, as the investments, products and markets of China and the fossil fuels and related products of Russia and the Middle East begin to supersede the advantages of tying their futures to Europe and the United States.
Adding to the West’s self-induced dilemma, most of these countries have traditional populations and governance that are not ready for the revolutionary social policies sweeping over the West – while Putin lays claim to “protecting traditional values” and such social policies have no traction in China.
The West faces a serious predicament: How to weigh the value of guarding against what many view as the potentially seriouslong-term effects of climate change versus the current phasing out of fossil fuels despite the risk of geopolitical failure. Unfortunately, the West is not even actually considering its options; it is denouncing and repressing fossil fuel production, thus inadvertently strengthening the China-Russia axis. Iran is already in the China-Russia bag and Turkey is more and more leaning that way.
Recently, oil and gas giant Saudi Arabia has made stunning moves in the China-Russia direction, in some large part because fossil fuels are their lifeblood, now and into the future – and the Saudis see America downgrading that life blood while at the same time seeking to cut back its presence in the Middle East.
Adding to the dilemma, China totally dominates the world in green energy raw materials, technologies and production. In that regard, “going green” means greater U.S. energy dependence on China for the foreseeable future – gravely affecting its ability to control its own foreign, domestic and defense policies.
The fact is, fossil fuels are by far the most indispensable component of all the world’s economies and the dominant weapon of war as militaries are built and run on fossil fuels. In fact, 85% of the world’s energy consumption comes from fossil fuels and we see China, ostensibly our main adversary, going full steam ahead on an “all-of-the-above” approach – which focuses on oil, gas and coal, plus some renewable wind, solar and hydropower. They are also actively engaged in nuclear power: 43 plants have been built, 13 are under construction and 45 are planned, while the West’s nuclear power atrophies.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently reported that, while the Biden administration is pushing for net-zero “carbon” emissions by 2050, a policy with potentially enormous negative impacts on the economy and military preparedness, the U.S. will still derive some 65% of its energy from fossil fuels as compared with some 79% today. But what will the geopolitical cost be for even a 14% reduction?
A long-term China-Russia axis is dangerous for a fossil-fuel-disarming America and West. France and the European Union recently urged Xi to hold back on supporting Russia, but begging or delaying is not enough to make us safer. Add a still developing, natural-resources-dependent Global South going along (by energy necessity) with this fossil-fuel-strong new world power structure, and the situation becomes even more precarious. It may soon give rise to a civilizational shift or true existential threat.
The “alarm bells” only ring for those willing to listen. It’s high time the West re-evaluates its energy and climate change approach – before it is too late.
Former Rep. Don Ritter (R-Pa.), Ph.D., served 14 years on the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce and Science and Technology Committees. After leaving Congress he created and led the National Environmental Policy Institute. He was a National Academy of Sciences fellow in the USSR, speaks fluent Russian and was ranking member on the Congressional Helsinki Commission and founding co-chair of the Baltic States-Ukraine Caucus. He is a trustee of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum and co-chairs its Capital Campaign.
(This article was originally published by The Hill as “China-Russia axis is dangerous for fossil fuel disarming America and the West.”)
The Biden crime family, and their enablers in the corporate media, have been paid very well to create these circumstances. Nothing will change until the U.S. Democrats are out of power, at least at the Federal level.
That’s exactly right.
Radical Democrats like Joe Biden are poison for the United States.
Please tell me you don’t believe the toytown Biden crime syndicate could even conceive of what’s going on in the western world right now.
The entire Biden family couldn’t think their way out a wet paper bag.
Biden’s the fall guy. The neocons are running the show in the US. You guys are being blindsided.
And our lot in the UK aren’t any better. We are the archetypal neocon poodles. We’re even providing the depleted uranium munitions for the Ukraine battlefield.
As Putin hits the tactical battlefield nuclear button all he has to say is “well you guys started it”.
You obviously don’t know who “neocons” are. Far left forces are running the show. Think Soros.
That’s the least of what the ignoramus doesn’t know.
And everything the putz imagines he knows is laughably wrong.
Not that you have anything to offer.
There is no way you can equate depleted uranium tank rounds with nuclear weapons.
Looks like ructions between Russia and China over Xi’s conversations with Zelensky.
Xi does not seem as onside with Russia as Stalin was with Hitler in 1939.
China’s stability is more tied to trade with the rest of the world than to trade with Russia.
China’s stability is largely an internal problem, but relies on economic imperialism for access to cheap resources. Eliminating the competition is part of that, and Russia is both a supplier if resources and a distraction for the West. I don’t think they have in mind power sharing with Russia, but using it in Chinese interests..
“I don’t think they have in mind power sharing with Russia, but using it in Chinese interests..”
That’s the way I see it.
Everything China does, is in China’s interests.
I mean how stupid is the woke west.
Let us de-carbonize, place at risk our energy security – meaning our very own people’s security, and at the same time, replace that dispatchable power base with thin intermittent renewables, AND outsource the production of the renewable infrastructure to China. Honestly, you just shake your head at the monumental stupidity of it.
“Everything China does, is in China’s interests.”
Why wouldn’t it be? Why would “China”, whoever that is, advocate for the interests of others, particularly others that resent their attempt to maximize the interests of their own people?
That’s what the US and every other government should be concerned with, the happiness of their own population. But the US insists on messing with large proportions of their own people and that of other places as well. It’s pretty obvious that there’s no general concern by Americans for the lethality of natural gas cook stoves but some obscure federal agency has deemed them such a serious threat that they must be banned by other, lesser entities. This, like much of the product of bureaucracy, is insanity in high heels and fishnet stockings. As is the US proselytization of similar thoughts internationally.
While the west debates what a woman is, China builds its army..
Gosh, doesn’t that just remind you of America’s ambitions?
The alliance of Russia and Germany gave Russia time to build up its army, with help of the West, and gave Germany a green card to invade Poland, which had been a thorn in the sides of both of them, so they divided it again.
The alliance of Russia and China was started by Putin at least 15 years ago, because he saw the EU going off the deep end with its wind and solar and batteries. The 2014 Ukraine coup d’etat, orchestrate/financed by the US, was the final straw.
In 2022, the China-Russia trade was more than $190 billion; the target was $200 billion by end of 2024.
That trade likely will increase by 25 to 30% in 2023
That trade is becoming more diversified regarding goods and services
It is a major part of Russia’s foreign trade, just a small past of China’s
Russia and China are increasing their trade with India, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Brazil, Saudi-Arabia, UAE, etc.
All those trade increases offset any trade losses with EU, US, etc.
The best part is, almost all of that trade is not in fiat dollars, because the US shot itself in the foot by weaponizing the dollar, immobilizing Russia’s foreign holdings of gold certificates and foreign currency, as it did of Iran, etc; about $500 billion of metallic gold is in Russia’s vaults.
Other countries will no longer store their valuables in western banks!!
The US has engaged in many very costly military mis-adventures since 1945. It has unwisely squandered its natural and other advantages.
UKRAINE A GEO-POLITICAL PAWN OF US/UK/NATO TO WEAKEN RUSSIA
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-plot-is-thickening-with-germany-and-france-no-longer-in
Russia Annexed Crimea, Because of at Least Four Major Provocations
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-plot-is-thickening-with-germany-and-france-no-longer-in
1) US-led NATO had more than doubled in membership, despite a verbal promise by US Secretary of State Baker to naive Gorbachev, in 1991, to not expand NATO “one inch” beyond East Germany.
2) The US had financed/instigated the Kiev coup d’etat on Feb. 22, 2014, that replaced the legally elected President Viktor Yanukovych with pre-selected, pro-Western leaders, who favored membership in NATO, a major trespassing of a well-known Russian red line.
3) The US had placed anti-ballistic missiles in Romania and Poland, and likely would have placed them in east Ukraine and Crimea as well, plus a NATO naval base, to encircle Russia.
Those missile sites, staffed with only US military personnel (the citizens of other countries have no access) could easily be converted to hypersonic missiles that would reach Moscow within minutes
https://www.rt.com/news/571981-elon-musk-victoria-nuland/
4) The 8-y genocide of ethnic Russians in the Donbas area, which killed about 14,000 civilians, as documented by UN OSCE observers in weekly reports. This genocide has been on-going, because Kiev refused to implement the Minsk Agreements
NATO, it could perhaps be argued, is used by the military/industrial complex as a sharp stick to poke Putin to increase tensions with Russia to keep military expenditures at an unaffordable rate. NATO. perhaps should have been dissolved decades ago within less than a year after the Berlin Wall came down.
You uncritically spout Russian lies.
The overall number of estimated deaths in the Donbas war, from 6 April 2014 until 31 December 2021, was 14,200 to 14,400. This includes about 6500 pro-Russian separatist forces, 4400 Ukrainian forces and 3404 civilians. This number includes non-combat military deaths, as well as deaths from mines and unexploded ordnance, almost entrely Russian in origin. The vast majority of the deaths took place in the first year of the war, when major combat took place before the Minsk Agreements, almost immediately violated by Russia.
If you’re not ashamed of your blatant lies, you should be.
Right, so there’s a real difference between 3,404 civilians and 14,000 people in total.
One death is too much but it seems your pretty cool with the prospect of genocide being perpetrated on the ethic Russian Donbas. You bleat about what the Chinese are allegedly doing to neighbouring countries but it’s OK in Donbas.
It also appears you are picked your numbers from Wikipedia, a source even one of it’s founders called a left wing outlet which is economical with the truth.
The German/Russian alliance gave Germany the means of building its air and land power in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles.
Long gone history now mate.
Did you read the entire thread?
Yes I did. Did you?
History repeats, Russian Nazi stooge.
How can anyone possibly be a “Russian Nazi”?
They fought each other in WW2………🤣
No, they only signed the pact a week before invading Poland. 3 weeks before the soviets invaded the rest.
What you refer is simply weak English and French politicians that let it happen
Stalin thought, with his new Pact, Hitler would not invade Ukraine, then part of the USSR, but he did anyway, to get to the oil of the Caucasus.
Bandera, a Ukraine, pro-Nazi leader, fought with the German Army against the Russian Army, but eventually lost.
His main goal was independence from Russia, with him in charge.
He helped the German Army round up Jews
Polish collaborators similarly helped the German Army round up Jews
About 6 million were exterminated during a few years. That is quite a feat.
At present, Banderas is feted as a national hero of Ukraine
The post 2014 Ukraine governments have been committing genocide of the ethnic Russian people in East Ukraine for at least 8 years, with full knowledge of the UN, EU, NATO, and the bought-and-paid-for Media.
Hollande, Merkel, Poroshenko and Zelinskyy, a Jew, stated at various times, they had no intention of implementing the Minsk agreements, which meant the genocide continued unabated.
How was Bandera “pro nazi” and when did he round up anyone?
He was pro-NAZI, and he told his followers the invading Germans had come to liberate Ukraine from the USSR. Just do some googling
He ingratiated himself with the Germans by offering to round up Jews, as did collaborators in Poland.
It took a while for the USSR to organize its army and weapons production, and with weapons from the West, via the port city Murmansk, the USSR finally drove what was left of the Germans back to Germany, and if captured, to Siberia, from where very few returned.
Germany (and Japan) was doomed from the get-go, because it lacked the oil products to keep its army in motion, and was short of ammo, because of long, vulnerable supply lines.
Blitzkrieg, I.e., “shock and awe”, was the only viable option.
Anything long-term, was doomed to fail, due to relentless attrition by the USSR.
When it comes to geopolitical chess, Biden is a complete novice. His eye has always been on the corrupted fast buck – eg Ukraine. He cannot see two moves ahead and I doubt he or his handlers ever will.
In the end I see two sides. Those who hold to the climate crisis mantra and in hair-shirts hand over all major [emissions] production….
To those that soak up that extra production and use the alleged climate crisis when it suits them.
Put simply: birds of a feather tend to flock together.
Czar Putey Putin will achieve 200,000 dead Ruzzians by June 1. Xi is not too happy about the Ukraine situation…..Outer Mongolia was once Chinese…..maybe Xi wants it back from Ruzzia?
Mongolia is a nation state… Its people undertook the peaceful Democratic Revolution in January 1990 and the introduction of a multi-party system and a market economy.
It isn’t within Putin’s gift.
Russia could not keep China from taking Mongolia. But for now, China can afford to wait until it defeats its main enemy, the US, which is obligingly disarming itself.
Outer Manchuria, not Outer Mongolia
China claims both.
Whose fault is that, China’s?
It is definitely the fault of the Communist Party of China that Mongolia, East Turkestan and Tibet have been subjected to genocide and slave labor, and Falun Gong practicioners’ organs been harvested.
Look to home first. How many people has the west killed in the middle east alone since WW2?
Glass houses and all that.
So was SE Siberia. One of China’s long-term goals is recovery of the territory lost to Russia in 1860 and to set up puppet states in the rest of Siberia.
But for now Russia and China are de facto allies against the West.
China has issued a new map of that region using old Chinese names for the region and communities and features.
Gosh, how it must be to have knowledge of the inner desires of the CCP.
LOL. The west sanctiones the life out of Russia. Shock horror! Russia begins trading with China.
The CCP has openly stated its intention to overturn the unequal treaties of 1858 and 1860, since at least Mao in 1964. But every Chinese regime since 1860 has expressed the same desire.
This occurred in your lifetime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
No excuse for you not to recall it.
Please study history before presuming to comment on subjects about which you are so woefully and blatantly ignorant.
Thanks!
Scotland has sworn to create a border between itself and England for the last 40 years+.
It’s not happened.
What’s your point?
Outer Manchuria, not Outer Mongolia
China also claims Tannu Tuva.
I think the Chicoms claim the Moon and the rest of the Universe as belonging to them, too.
America (NATO?) has over 100 military bases in Italy.
What’s your point?
Time to take your meds. NATO, shared with the US, has seven bases in Italy.
Please take the time to google before embarrassing yourself with ignorance 14-fold.
The 100 was a typo…….obviously.
America doesn’t claim Italy, unlike the CCP’s plan for world domination.
But you’re free to welcome your ChiCom overlords, if that’s the world you seek.
Commie-Nazi Brits like you are why the US should have let the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin take over the UK, rather than expending trillions in treasure and a million lives in saving your pussy arses.
What do you imagine Ukraine is about?
This is the western lunge at globalism. Defeat Russia and break it up then China is next.
You need to get more informed about current events. This is what every informed commentator is saying.
Are you sticking your wittle tongue out?
Grow up child.
Please state the ignorant, idiotic point you’re trying to make.
Please state the 100 bases on NATO member Italy which you imagine in your alternative universe Italy hosts its fellow NATO members.
Thanks, lying fool ignoramus.
The 100 was a typo obviously, however what’s with the 700+ US/NATO bases across the world?
How many does Russia and China have outside their respective countries?
Every NATO base is in a country whose government wants it there. Eastern European countries have good reason to join a defensive alliance, having been repeatedly invaded.
“Czar Putey Putin” If the medium were not “anonymous”, nobody would use words like these. It’s embarrassing for anyone over twenty-five to be associated with Southpark cartoon voices.
NetZero relies entirely on western countries de-industrialising. Wind/solar/storage using present technology is a carbon sink. The energy extractors and energy storage systems of current technology will not reduce carbon globally. The only way it can happen is for China to mine and burn the coal needed to make all the stuff. The transition just shifts the carbon production to China.
This transition away from manufacturing in the west has been occurring at an accelerating rate throughout the current century and will need to be completed if the west is to ever achieve NetZero.
Can you post a similar graph, one that has the total consumption in tonnes instead of % – that will show the futility of any Western reductions. Not only is China, India, etc., replacing Western production but they are producing for themselves and customers in the non-West. There’s billions more people in the non-West than West who are pulling themselves out of poverty and those emissions will vastly outstrip anything the West does… not that there is anything wrong with that!
In other words, China and Russia have nothing to do with our self imposed destruction.
Western governments, elected by hordes of (woke) voters detached from reality are the only weapon China needs to dominate the current world order.
China isn’t trying to dominate the current world order other than by trade, and we have handed them the tools to do it.
We say “Go Green”.
China says “Go Coal” because we don’t believe in your green, LGBT, defund the police, Net Zero nonsense. We just say we do.
Meanwhile the west cuts it’s own throat.
What would you do when your neighbouring business competitor implodes? You pick up the pieces, right?
Is that wrong?
Your neighbouring businesses customers don’t think so because you do good business without the distractions of climate change and all the other woke crap. They get a good deal and you get good profits.
Capitalism writ large.
There are allegedly more Rolls Royces and Tesla’s sold in China than anywhere else in the world.
The Chinese descend on Harrods in London every summer on spending spree’s.
Convince me China isn’t a Capitalist nation.
You apparently also don’t understand what “capitalism” is. Noting to do with consumption.
HotScot understands nothing.
It’s a generalisation and shorthand for free trade. In common use.
You are a blithering ignoramus fool if you truly believe that Communist China isn’t bent on world domination.
How are its military bases in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and South China Sea for “trade” alone?
You’re too ignorant and stupid to be alive.
What are the 700+ US/NATO bases for? Peacekeeping?
Didn’t work out too well for Iraq/Afghanistan and the innumerable other wars the US has created around the world in the name of “Peace”.
Was Saddam an enabler of Islamic terrorism?
Abolish Citizens United (const change) NO excuse (they want it repealed with excuse for MSM making MSM literally above the law).
Count everything.
The MSM budget = gift to Dems (and RINOs)
Accuse the Dems of collusion with US media, intl media, all intl NGO. Treat each and every public statement of NGO as gift in nature. Prosecute every Dem for undeclared gift in nature. Treat everything as gift in nature, undeclared on (inexistant) FEC form.
Dissolve the Dem party.
Change back const with a country without Dem party.
Let a decent lib-dem party emerge.
The argument depends a lot on what “ de-industrialising” means. Some things that American humans used to do 50 years ago, that Chinese humans do today, will be done by machines 50 years from now if historical patterns hold – that would be a philosophy-based linear projection I’m making but it has held up for at least 200 years.
My point is …. some observers conflate industrial production with industrial labor. One of those might not be coming back.
The computer was predicted to replace humans in the workplace. Instead it spawned an entire IT industry no one ever expected. It created online shopping and instant deliveries. It has generated massive employment and wealth no one ever imagined.
Why would AI be any different?
Umm shouldn’t that read “is a carbon (dioxide) SOURCE? If it was a “sink” that suggests it is removing or reducing CO2 emissions, when the reality, as you say, is that wind/solar/storage is going to actually INCREASE “emissions” (not that they matter).
Wind/solar/storage is an ENERGY sink is perhaps what you were thinking, which fits with what follows.
This is a faulty graph of world coal consumption .
World coal consumption was level at around 4.7 billion tonnes from 1999 until 2008 .
Since 2009 world coal consumption has soared to over 8 billion tonnes twice since then .
This graph does not show the steep rise in world coal consumption .
China is now using over 5.3 billion tonnes of coal which is more than the whole world used during those ten years .
The graphs are available on the internet and some one here will be able to post it .
Western governments are walking blindfolded into Net Zero as world emissions are not dropping and never will with Asia ramping up their coal use .
What will it take for western countries to wake up and tell the UN that untill Asia stops increasing their coal use age any further attempts at de carbonizing are futile .
The West was hoping to pay for the low-cost, imported goods with printed, fiat dollars and euros, but that game is over, because the five BRICS countries, plus 19 applicants, will NOT be using the dollar, or UK/Swiss-controlled gold certificates, because they saw the West can instantaneous castrate you, if you do not follow their “rules-based” orders.
China, Russia, Oil, Gas, Coal, Climate change
Now ChatGPT
Be scared, be very, very scared they’re determined to get you !
“I’m a socialist,” Hinton added. “I think that private ownership of the media, and of the ‘means of computation’, is not good.
Explains a lot.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/04/bernie-sanders-elon-musk-and-white-house-seeking-my-help-says-godfather-of-ai
AI is nothing to be feared.
We adapt, we overcome.
Didn’t Clint Eastwood say something like that in a movie?
Somehow this reminds me of a great Russian-German friendship of 1938 memorized in a Molotov-Ribbentrop act. It postulated an eternal friendship between the 1000-year-Reich and the socialist Soviet Union.
That’s what our western governments would have you believe.
The same system that didn’t work in 1980 might also not work in 2030?
What if one person on one tiny desert island could produce all of the world’s material needs for a year in an hour on a Tuesday morning? Nineteenth century philosophers were brilliantly working in an alternate paradigm where all of the people on all the world’s land were needed all of the time to produce less than enough material needs.
Will chatbots be 21st century philosophers with updated philosophy, or were those dusty old guys exploring difficult-to-manage human qualities that humans still live with? Maybe chatbot is smart enough to answer better than a guy on a message board.
Can AI imagine?
Perhaps not. But surely the major problem will be that people begin to believe that everything AI tells them is the truth.
We’ve moved the needle one percent-
A decade of global funding to renewable energy increased its usage by ‘one per cent’ (msn.com)
Feel the climate change out there folks.
…of a total that is INCREASING OVERALL, which means fossil fuel use continues to RISE.
We need one of those posters with a good illustration titled “FUTILITY” With some nice summary of the mass stupidity of the fortune being squandered on so-called “green energy” to no avail as GLOBAL emissions, the only thing that WOULD count if it mattered at all, continue to rise.
The Jobs Most and Least at Risk of AI DisruptionAnalysis was provided by a variety of human-made models as well as ChatGPT-4 models, with results from both showing below:
Jobs Categorized By AI Exposure
Accountants AI 100%
Admin and legal assistants AI 100%
Climate change policy analysts AI 100%
Reporters & journalists AI 100%
Mathematicians Human & AI 100%
Tax preparers Human 100%
Financial analysts Human 100%
Writers & authors Human 100%
Web designers Human 100%
Blockchain engineers AI 97.1%
Court reporters AI 96.4%
Proofreaders AI 95.5%
Correspondence clerks AI 95.2%
Survey researchers Human 84.0%
Interpreters/translators Human 82.4%
PR specialists Human 80.6%
Animal scientists Human 77.8%
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/which-jobs-will-be-most-impacted-chatgpt
not climate scientists? AI could probably do a better job than most- for one thing, it’ll be smart enough to see what skeptical climate scientists have to say- rather than ignore them- and AI will read all of WUWT. 🙂
I refer you to Matt Ridley who observed that since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when the world was a poverty stricken wasteland, technology has only ever ushered in employment and prosperity.
I hope the trend continues. I need the robots to take over before 2040 because nobody in the workforce seems to be training kids how to do what they did not learn at extended-childhood school.
We don’t teach kids, we learn from them.
My old man thought I was a dead loss. By his standards I was. He was a celebrity in the far east as a young man but died in harness at 71 years old scraping a living.
I’m now retired and, largely thanks to my wife, am enjoying early retirement with enough money for a comfortable life.
Our kids will make their own life. In fact studies have found that the children who breeze through school are less motivated and less successful than those who struggle.
Deprivation is a great motivator. Our children and grandchildren will look back on the current period with amazement that we could let our moral and social compass get so screwed up.
“Tax preparers Human 100%”
I disagreed with what I perceive to be the intent of the metric (odds that a profession can be replaced by AI?) for many, but the idea that a computer program won’t be able to figure out how to do taxes is especially crazy.
A computer can figure out how to fill in a spreadsheet, no problem. But if you have ever worked with accountants you begin to understand the good ones recognise the profession as an art-form, not a task.
We should remember what President Obama said about his own Vice President Joe Biden.
“ you can always rely on Joe to f..k things up”
He made that prescient observation on camera and on record.
He was not wrong.
The west is actively destroying its own security by destroying its infrastructure necessary for resisting enemies.
This is an incredibly dangerous situation for any country, but in geopolitical terms, for the USA to adopt this bizarre stance could be terminal for the ‘West’.
Yes, Joe Biden and his insane policies are an existential threat to the United States.
The enemies are not who you think they are.
The BRICS nations like their nationalism. The west is convinced globalisation, with the west dictating terms, is their destiny.
We are doing this to ourselves.
Rod Evans, please consider how much power someone walking into the top leadership role at a 300 year-old business run by lifers (and some children of lifers) really has. At most he’ll hold the job for 8 years. Either the guy is an empty suit (as some here say) or a mastermind (as no one has said in my presence). In either case one would expect to see more of whatever one has seen for about 300 years. “Whatever” has been working for “them”. I do not know who “they” are, you’ll have to ask George Carlin.
“The average years of service for Members elected to the 118th Congress, as of January 3, 2023, when the Congress convened, was 8.5 years for the House and 11.2 years for the Senate.”
So for every newly elected year-1 US senator, there would be an incumbent year-22.
“The median age of voting House lawmakers is 57.9 years”
Applying some assumptions about distribution and std dev… USA’s 80 y/o president is not so extreme an outlier.
Hello!!! The FBI Whistle Blower ties Biden to Fracking/Natural Gas in The Ukraine. This Green Energy sham is a scam for Politicians to get rich. Biden works to destroy the US Energy Industry while getting rich overseas and promoting conventional energy. It is all a scam. WATCH: Grassley Explains Bombshell Linking Biden To Criminal Bribery Scheme: “Very Credible Whistleblower Information” Link
Hello!!!!! This would make Joey a traitor!
The green energy scam is a lunge at globalisation. Only Russia and China ain’t playing, they like their nationalism.
Globalism Lite doesn’t really work.
This just demonstrates more than ever that the FBI and the “Justice” Department covered up the Hunter Biden laptop, and this evidence of bribery on the part of Joe Biden, to help Joe Biden get elected president.
This is election interference orchestrated by the radical Democrats. And it worked!
The FBI and “Justice” Department need a drastic overhaul. At present, they are a danger to our personal freedoms, because they don’t follow the law, they follow their political masters, the radical Democrats.
If radical Democrats are not voted out of office at the next opportunity, we are all in big trouble. There may be no stopping these Democrat dictators if they remain in power. They may consolidate their power to the point they are unassailable. They are close to it now, and are working hard towards that goal.
Let’s see how cooperative the FBI and the “Justice” Department are with Senator Grassley’s investigation.
How does a country vote out an administration that used corruption to seize power?
If we truly believe Biden rigged the election we must also accept that the 2024 election will go the same way. If it doesn’t and a Republican wins we must accept there was no (or very limited) cheating.
Yes, I did watch DeSouza’s documentary and it was very convincing, bearing in mind I’m a Brit so politically neutral.
I’m also certain Republicans know how to rig elections, just not as well as Democrats on this occasion.
“If we truly believe Biden rigged the election we must also accept that the 2024 election will go the same way.”
That’s the problem, and that’s what Republicans need to focus on eliminating, as best they can.
So 2024 will be a test of whether the Democrats have managed to corrupt the system enough to keep them in power in perpetuity. By any normal standard, Joe Biden wouldn’t stand a chance of being elected again.
To fundamentally transform/destroy the country, could it be done any more effectively? Mass illegal immigration, rampant inflation, reliable energy replaced by intermittent and expensive energy, men in women’s locker rooms and sports, all white people declared to be racist, attack on meritocracy, censorship, decrying freedom of speech, a Supreme Court justice who is unable to define a woman, calling for an all electric military, weaponization of the FBI and justice dept.? All this in two years. The move to ‘green energy’ must be part of a scheme to eliminate individual liberty, the founding principle of the US.
“To fundamentally transform/destroy the country, could it be done any more effectively?”
No, the radical Democrats/Communists have a good plan to destroy the United States, and they have the President of the United States leading the charge, which makes it extremely difficult to turn this ship away from its collision course with disaster. We (the Good, law-abiding, People) are hanging on by our fingernails.
We need a Bull to come into the radical Democrat china shop.
I know one that would be perfect for the job.
Great summation.
This is what western run globalism looks like.
I’m sorry, but whose fault is this? The west has sanctioned the bejeezus out of Russia and no one but the BRICS nations will trade with it.
What was Russia supposed to do? Throw up its hands, walk away from Ukraine and invite NATO to set up a nuclear armed base a few miles from Moscow?
It’s internationally recognised that the west engineered a political coup in 2013/14 in Ukraine to install a puppet government. Thereafter Ukraine embarked on a project of cultural genocide, if not actively murdering ethnic Russian citizens then banning their language and victimising their religion.
They then set about attacking the Donbas region, an almost entirely ethnic Russian region since Catherine the Great in 1776, handed over to Ukraine on an alleged drunken night by Nikita Khrushchev. 14,000 Donbas residents have died from shelling by a western armed Kiev government. There has been limited response from local militia but they are not a western trained army with sophisticated weaponry and access to western intelligence.
How about Biden hands over Texas to Mexico in one of his frequent blank moments?
The west has screwed up monumentally, nor do I mean just America where the blame is usually laid. I mean the UK and Europe in partnership with America has caused this with an aggressive foreign policy that has eventually been called out on someone else’s terms.
What did we think would happen? We provoke a war on the soil of a nation that is not in NATO and are surprised when we can’t just march in and help out without it being a declaration of war against Russia? Instead, we stand by and witness the destruction of an entire nation.
On the eve of an early ceasefire or perhaps even a peace treaty being agreed in March last year, Boris Johnson is wheeled out to dictate to Zelensky not to sign it. WTF!? A ceasefire offered when Russia had a mere 180,000 troops against a Ukrainian army estimated at 400,000+.
Oh right. I get it now, that was Johnson’s game plan. Ukraine would crush the invading Russian army so lets just continue with the war, never mind the human suffering and the global implications of another European war which is on the brink of another global conflict, let’s just show Putin whose boss.
This from a Prime Minister who has never been near a battlefield, he’s a goddam journalist whose only notable success was as Mayor of London, having entered the national political fray only a few years earlier and ridden the populist wave of Brexit, then betrayed it and campaigned in the strongest possible terms for NetZero.
See what I mean? Joe Biden isn’t the only dumb B’stard with his finger on the nuclear button.
So this is where we are and the author of this piece utterly ignores all this, and that China, and I have no doubt Russia, would far rather engage in mutually beneficial trade to lift their own people, especially China’s, from poverty.
Strangely, despite London being full of Chinese tourist’s every year few, if any, defect.
Just as strangely, of the floods of illegal immigrants across the Mexican/US borer I doubt there’s a Chinaman in sight despite them being free to ‘holiday’ where they want.
Certainly none are crossing the English Channel into the UK. Our illegal immigrants are all ‘refugees’ from the war torn middle east, crossing innumerable peaceful countries as a destination of first resort before paddling across a sea to take advantage of Britain’s over generous welfare state, or from the entirely peaceful Albania and many other European nations. Indeed, there are few, if any Russians amongst those numbers either.
Perhaps they figure that having a communist/authoritarian government isn’t nearly as bad as having to tolerate a cancel culture/LGBTQ+ minority running our countries/a geriatric President with mental health problems/criminal fraternity that goes unpunished/nations that think defunding the police is smart etc. etc……Please fill in the blanks.
Instead they can stay in China and enjoy the same media censorship we enjoy in the west. The difference is they all know about it.
The fall of empires is always from within. Stop blaming everyone else for our home grown problems.
PS
The US essentially waged a proxy war on the UK in Northern Ireland by pouring money into the IRA (Irish Republican Army) until 9/11 when America understood what terrorism was all about and the funds dried up.
‘Peace’ broke out shortly after but the malicious Biden, on the pretence that he has some tenuous Irish connection, decided to slap the UK in the face by breaking with diplomatic convention.
What a despicable little toad.
The US never gave the IRA a dime. Some misguided Irish Americans might have helped the IRA, but the US government, never.
You are a fool, a liar, or a lying fool.
Please don’t be so dim. The US laundered money to Ireland through their “misguided Irish Americans”. I lived through the conflict and worked with the RUC. They were confiscating truck loads of cash. They knew precisely where it was coming from.
The RUC’s paranoia was mistaken.
The US government pressured Britain into cease fires with the IRA, despite the USSR and its client states paying and arming the terrorists.
“What was Russia supposed to do?”
Russia was supposed to know where it begins and where it ends. She is a proud guarantor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, as recorded in the Budapest memorandum. BTW, so is the US.
So what happened to the Minsk agreement? That just gets ignored I guess, especially since Merkle admitted it was all just a scam to buy time to arm Ukraine.
Sure it does. In which case Ukraine need to follow this rule as well and surrender the Donbas peacefully as it was just a political bribe in the first place.
The fact is this is a localised skirmish that’s been escalated into a potential global conflict because the west thought it was tougher than everyone else, and has ended up with egg on its face.
The west provisioned and trained probably the best army in the northern hemisphere. Russia pitched up with less that half its military strength and took Donbas.
It’s not surrendering it, and as that was its objective, Russia has already won the Special Military Operation.
The question is what happens now? The probability is that with certainly upwards of 500,000 troops, and possibly approaching a million according to informed military commentators, if Ukraine continues to throw men and materials against Russia it is just sacrificing troops at a rate estimated by those commentators of 7:1 to 10:1.
This is just unnecessary bloody murder driving Ukrainian civilian refugees from the country into bordering nations by the millions, pressurising those nations economic health.
If there are no approaches from Ukraine (read, The West) to Russia for a peace treaty, Russias objective is demilitarisation of the whole of Ukraine.
Meanwhile Poland, whilst rattling sabres at Russia over the conflict, is smacking its lips at regaining historically Polish lands in western Ukraine.
I really don’t think Americans get this. Europe kicked off two world wars. The Russians ain’t playing games, nor are they a nation of troglodytes. Make no mistake, they took on Hitlers best and beat them.
Americans like to think they won WW2 in Europe. They didn’t. The Russians did, at great personal expense.
Screw with the Russians at our peril. We don’t need to like them we just need to respect that Putin polls around 80% whilst Biden is polling around 30% (I believe) and Americans have no appetite for another expeditionary war in Europe.
A peaceful settlement needs to be agreed right now, in fact yesterday, or Europe tears itself apart.
But then that’s what Biden want’s, isn’t it?…..
I don’t get you. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 – not even openly, but using “little green man” in uniforms without insignia, coming from Russia. A clear violation of Budapest Memorandum. Why, then, would Minsk agreements mean anything? What does the name Litvinenko mean to you? To me it is an illustration of Russian methods.
BTW, Hitler’s approval in polls was over 90%. This should tell you something about Nazional Sozialism.
Good old Reds under the bed syndrome. I guess Trump was in on that deal too?
The Litvinenko murder investigation was undertaken by the British, it’s not like they would blame anyone else other than Russia especially when they couldn’t interrogate the suspects.
I also wonder how many Russian ‘spy’s’ the British and Americans have murdered that are never reported in the western media.
Ukraine gave up its 3000 nukes in the 1990s in return for Clinton and Yeltsin’s guarantee of its borders.
Big mistake.
But if need be, Ukraine could make 300 tactical nukes basically overnight. It probably already has. Which is why Putin’s nuke threat is empty.
Ukraine didn’t give anything up. The Nukes were Soviet weapons and belonged to Russia.
You would trust the actor Zelinsky with nukes?
You’re as mad as he is. 🤣
They didn’t belong to Russia. All the successor states to the USSR owned the nukes on their soil. Clinton and Yeltsin negotiated giving Ukraine’s nukes to Russia. Ukraine was dubious, but went along, in exchange for a worthless promise from Russia to respect Ukraine’s borders.
The people of Donbass and Crimea voted in favor of Ukrainian independence in 1991.
Your ignorance knows no bounds.
Zelensky is less untrustworthy than Putin.
You are just spouting Media dross
Ukraine had no say in the negotiations between the U.S. and the USSR.
The media embellished for the gullible, to keep them semi-lobotomized
Ukraine has killed more than twice as many Russians as Russia has killed Ukrainians. Other casualty categories are even worse, ie missing, wounded, captured and deserted.
You are a perfect Russian propaganda conduit, ie a useful idiot ignoramus fool. Congrats, stupe!
All this from Wikipedia I guess, your favourite source.
You are a slave to legacy media chum and we know it lies to us.
Go and seek out some informed commentators. The kill rate in Ukraine is estimated to be anywhere between 7:1 and 10:1 in Russia’s favour.
What about all those rockets the media told us Russia was running out of every month from day one of the conflict?
Now the west openly admits it can’t supply Ukraine with much more ordnance, but Russia is still firing those rockets.
You’re ion need of reliable sources of information. Russia jhas lost twice as many killed, wounded, missing, captured and deserted as Ukraine.
The absurd 7:1 lie was crudely inserted in the leaked briefing papers, and uncritically repeated by the loons and traitors you’re gullible enough to fall for. The unedited, original version showed US intel assessed Russian dead as more than twice comparable Ukrainian military. Civilians murdered by Russians of course increases Ukraine’s death toll.
Van der Leyden inadvertently released Ukraine casualty numbers, which were much higher than “published”.
Her office immediately took them down, after “objections” from the UK and US
That is a great summary.
The BRICS countries and 19 applicants, with a GNP and natural resources much greater than the West, and about 60% of the world population, will increasingly trade with each other, using their own SWIFT system, and their own currencies; no more fiat dollars, and fiat euros for them.
That printing-press fantasy/ponzi/robbery game is over.
They will deposit their funds and gold certificates and gold bullion in their own banks, not in Western banks, which could expropriate them, if these “unco-operating” countries do no follow the Western-promulgated “rules-based” order.
Russia is steadily grinding down the Ukraine armed forces, no matter how much of diverse weapons and ammo arrive from the West.
How can such equipment diversity be efficiently maintained and repaired? A sheer nightmare!
Soon, Ukraine will have no suitable people for its armed forces, just as Germany during WW2.
“”The China-Russia symbiosis is easy to understand. Russia provides the oil, gas and raw materials at discount prices, while China trades its high technology and endless amounts of manufactured products. It’s a win-win.”
Providing raw materials at discount prices is a win for a former global Superpower?
Those “discount” prices are higher than Russia was getting before Ukraine, so a win for Russia and India and China, all BRICS, which helps their economies grow faster than the West, which gets no discounts.
The biggest scare of US elites is formation of integrated self-sufficient Eurasian market that involves Europe, Russia, India and China. Russia is right in the middle and could join them all, which is a nightmare for US dollar as global reserve currency. This is the ultimate reason why US is vehemently anti-Russian. Cooperation of Russia with Germany was really strong before WWI, and WWI was mostly about preventing their further integration.
“A long-term China-Russia axis is dangerous for a fossil-fuel-disarming America and West. … Add a still developing, natural-resources-dependent Global South going along (by energy necessity) with this fossil-fuel-strong new world power structure, and the situation becomes even more precarious. It may soon give rise to a civilizational shift or true existential threat.”
Totally disagree. US and West are disarming themselves.
Neither Russia nor China control the West investment policies in the so-called “fossil” fuels or nuclear energy. If the West is determined to commit suicide, how is Russia or China to be blamed?
Until Western sanctions and destruction of those pipelines (and I suspect Mr. Don Ritter is fully aware who did it), Russia was all happy selling natural fuels to the West.
The “civilizational shift or true existential threat” to US global dominance is Eurasia forming a market that does not need US.
They struck oil in southern Namibian waters last month. Again. In the last year, oil companies have hit oil three times in the same area, making Namibia one of the hottest offshore oil exploration destinations in the world right now.
Two more wells are being drilled at the moment and after that, up to 10 more wells will be drilled this year. By year-end, Namibia may have as many as 5 or 6 fields having had exploration and appraisal wells drilled
One industry insider says in ten years, Namibia’s government receipts from oil and gas will exceed their current income and will be equivalent to those of Norway.
https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/south-africa-capable-of-lucky-strike
Their neighbour, South Africa, has been made huge promises by the USA and EU if they switch to renewables. So the politicians are betting on this and hampering searches in the adjoining areas. Considering the economic mess in the EU and USA, they are betting on a donkey in a horse race.
I am not too concerned with the Ritter rant.
“while the West’s nuclear power atrophies”
The US nuclear industry is doing fiend producing about 30% of US electricity over the last 30 years. The biggest problem was our success. We built more plants than we needed during the boom period.
My new reactors job went away when Clinton got elected but came under Bush. My last job before retiring was a new reactor in China.
China could no longer produce enough slave labor coal and had to import coal from places like the US.
China needs to import energy and food. The US does not need to import solar panels or ping pong balls because we do not need them.
Last week Iran seized two oil tankers. What did the US Navy have to say about it. Not US flagged vessels, not our business.
Being in the navy during the cold war this surprised me. In the day, we put some Iranian war ships on the ocean floor. It is not that we can not do it now. Of course that Russian – China axis can not do it period.
The Russian arm and navy is not doing very well. How will the Chinese do against Taiwan?
As an American I am not too worried. China and Russia have been historically good and killing their own people.