[Paul Ross]

Winter's been 50 years coming now. Predictions of it's imminent arrival are getting more dubious every day.

False. Your reply is dubious...and historically inaccurate. The Winter was often headed off by...those who heeded the warnings! Usually resulting in a significant boost in U.S. export production...most notably during the Reagan administration.

And those currently pirating U.S. industry...are only temporarily propping up the dollar.

They are just about done doing so...and will thence stop doing so altogether...presumably when the Cupboard is bare...and there is nothing left to filch.

And we will be without any domestic production capacity for the key elements of a military, etc., and such dependency can easily leave us at the mercy of foreign enemies. Which is precisely what George Washington and Alexander Hamilton struggled to prevent.

Don't blame us when the excrement hits the fan with China.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Usually resulting in a significant boost in U.S. export production...most notably during the Reagan administration.

We exported more than $900 billion last year. More than we did during the Reagan administration.

And we will be without any domestic production capacity for the key elements of a military

Of course none of our $1.79 trillion in manufacturing could be military production. While all of China's $780 billion is military production. If you include all the toasters and cheap TVs they make as military goods.

[narby]

we will be without any domestic production capacity for the key elements of a military, etc., and such dependency can easily leave us at the mercy of foreign enemies.

This is not 1940. Modern warfare will not revolve around who can out-produce who. It will happen with lightning speed, with the troops we have on duty at the time. There will not even be time to reconstitute boneyard equipment, and reactivate people like me that used to know how to run it.

I'll let others speak to the charts, but sufice it to say that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. They can be spun any direction one likes.

For myself, I'll take my lifetime experience that doom mongers are never right.

Y2K comes to mind.