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Luke 13. Jesus kept telling the religious Jews “Unless you repent you all perish.” The fig tree is a symbol of Israel, and until then God has been patient with the barren Fig Tree. Moving on, like Jesus so often did, a woman was healed on a Sabbath, which made the ruler of the Synagogue angry. Jesus took issue with that, asking why can you save animals on Sabbath but not people? He then told the parable of faith like the Mustard Seed, the Leaven and the narrow Gate and explained why not all will enter. Finally, Jesus lamented over Jerusalem.

1 Kings 6 retells in great detail how Solomon had the Temple built.

And the retelling continues in 1 Kings 7, how Solomon had his palace and the other buildings built. He hired Hiram the Craftsman, and he completed the bronze pillars for the Temple, the Sea and the Oxen, The Carts and the Lavers and had all the temple furnishings made.

Philippians 2:12-29, shining as stars, Timothy and Epaphroditus.

This emphasizes who was, is, and will be performing the salvation, as was written in Philippians 1:5-6 “ For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day (past) until now (present); ⁶Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it (future) until the day of Jesus Christ:”.

Give in to the evil Chinese

pollution will greatly increase;

for they lie, cheat and steal,

human rights they repeal.

We must stand, no more time to appease.

The United States, the world’s second-leading emitter after China, seeks to reclaim global leadership in the fight against global warming after former President Donald Trump withdrew the country from international efforts to cut emissions. President Joe Biden unveiled the goal to cut emissions by 50%-52% from 2005 levels at the start of a two-day virtual climate summit attended virtually by leaders of 40 countries including China, Russia and India.

How can that be?

China burned 51.2% of the world’s coal in 2012, USA produced 12.5%. China’s production was more than four times larger. This has now stabilized and was in 2018 47%, because India and the real developing world are increasing their dependence on coal for electricity production, and also for cooking meals.

This of course is with the Paris accord in mind. U.S. and the European countries are to limit their emissions and slowly diminish them, down to a per capita emission comparable to the mid 1800’s, while China, being a “developing” country is allowed to increase their emissions until 2030, and then stabilize them, not decrease them.

How can they be burning nearly half the world’s coal mined?

One reason is they are the world’s state controlled manufacturing company. They are also responsible for half the world’s Steel production. China produced 50.3% of the world’s crude Steel in 2015, USA produced 4.9%. China’s production was over 20 times larger than the U.S.Some of this steel was dumped below production cost to crush our domestic low end steel industry. An example: Rolled steel to make steel cans were exported at about $200 a ton, the production cost in the U.S. is more like $400 a ton. They can do this, since their environmental regulations only pay lip service to pollution. Remember how Pittsburgh was 60 years ago? China is much worse.

Cement production. China produced 51.4% of the world’s cement in 2015, USA produced 1.8%. China’s production was almost 30 times larger.

It takes a lot of concrete to build artificial islands so they can take control of the South China Sea. But they are building many other things, Ghost Cities, but also an impressive infrastructure with high speed trains on elevated concrete tracks.

Worrisome as that may be, it is nothing compared to China’s dominance in Rare Earth Metals. Let me explain why rare earth metals are so important to our modern economy.

First, rare earth metals re not rare at all, they exist in small quantities together with Thorium and sometimes Uranium wherever other metals are mined.

The Lanthanides occur in quantity in Monazite, a byproduct of mining Phosphates, but also as a byproduct of mining Titanium, and even from some Iron ores. The rare earth metals are free to begin extraction if it was not for one thing, they also contain Thorium, and Thorium is very weakly radio-active, so in the mid 1980’s the NRC and IAEA reclassified Monazite and anything containing Thorium as a “Source Material” and after that it became too costly to comply with all the regulations for nuclear material, so all production of rare earth minerals ceased in the U.S.

China saw an opportunity to grab the world market for Rare Earth Metals and is now controlling about 85% of the supply of all rare earth metals.

So what are rare earth metals used for?

China now has a de facto monopoly on all usages of rare earth metals, and in the case of war or an embargo, not only are our precious cell phones and computers in jeopardy, so is our defense, night vision goggles, aircraft engines, navigation systems, laser guidance, just to name a few uses.

And not only that, we import the completed parts from China, even for our most sophisticated military equipment, such as the F35 aircraft, after telling the Chinese how to make the components. The very same components are now in China’s version of the F35, still under development, but in a year or so China will have their faithful copies made! A F35 aircraft contains about 935 pounds of rare earth metals.

This is clearly unsustainable, so in 2014 Congress tried to pass HR 4883 and S 2006 to remedy the situation, but the bills got killed in review by none other than the defense department, citing National Security! Our only major rare earth metals mine reopened, only to go bankrupt in 2015. It has since reopened, but the ore is shipped to China for refining! One good point is that the Mountain Pass mine was scheduled to reopen the processing facilities late 2020, but full processing operations without the help from the Chinese rare earth refining giant corporation Shenghe Resources have been delayed to 2022

The idea was that we should change our electricity production into renewable sources, such as wind and solar.

Wind power uses a lot of rare earth metals to get the most efficient generators, all made by China. Wind power is about maxed out, that is, if you care about birds, especially eagles and raptors. The allowable bald eagle kill was upped from 1200 to 4200 a year for all U.S. wind turbines during the Obama administration. Killed golden eagles and storks has a S250,000 fine, paid by the electricity users, and if we build it out more, we may exterminate some species.

Solar power looked promising until pollution was taken into consideration. China added 53 GW solar capacity in 2017. The forecast for this year i 45 GW, and for next year 35 GW.

The efficiency of solar panels are drastically reduced by the layer of soot accumulating daily from air pollution. They have to be cleaned daily with water, and water is in short supply in northern China. The yellow river no longer reaches the ocean during large periods of the year, all water is spoken for. In southern India a solar farm used up so much water that the wells went dry and there was no more water for agriculture and people, except during the monsoon season. Germany has given up on their solar program except for special needs. The best places for large solar farms in the U.S. are in Arizona and Nevada, both are having severe and growing water problems. In addition, that is not where the energy is needed, so transmission losses must be taken into account, as well as the need to expand an increasingly vulnerable and in many parts undesirable national grid.

I am not against solar panels, and as soon as we are freed from total Chinese dominance on the material used in solar panels we should install them in open spaces, such as parking lots around factories and shopping malls, wherever there is adequate sunlight. Park the cars under them and the summer heat will be so much more bearable, and in the winter you will not have to scrape the windshield. When it snows, solar panels do not work anyway.

Burkholders grocery store on Rt 45 in central Pennsylvania, complete with solar panels over the parking lot.

Where it rains, China pollutes. The Yang -Tse river carries nearly half the plastic waste that is dumped in the ocean. It can be stopped, but it will consume a lot of energy, both man-power and electricity to do all the cleanup.

The most practical solution is found in creating a massive effort in developing and installing Thorium nuclear power. Here is a list of reasons why we should jump on the opportunity to solve the energy crisis:

1. A million year supply of Thorium available worldwide.

2. Thorium already mined, ready to be extracted.

3. Thorium based nuclear power produces 0.012 percent as much TRansUranium waste products as traditional nuclear power.

4. Thorium based nuclear power will produce Plutonium-238, needed for space exploration.

5. Thorium nuclear power is only realistic solution to power space colonies.

6. Radioactive waste from an Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor decays down to background radiation in 300 years compared to a million years for U-235 based reactors. A Limerick.

7. Thorium based nuclear power is not suited for making nuclear bombs.

8. Produces isotopes that helps treat and maybe cure certain cancers.

9. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are earthquake safe, only gravity needed for safe shutdown.

10. Molten Salt Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors cannot have a meltdown, the fuel is already molten, and it is a continuous process. No need for refueling shutdowns.

11. Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors have a very high negative temperature coefficient leading to a safe and stable control.

12. Atmospheric pressure operating conditions, no risk for explosions. Much safer and simpler design.