From The GWPF:
China will talk a good game at the UN Climate Conference in Paris, but won’t make any binding commitments, concludes The Truth About China, an important new report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. “China’s Communist Party has as its highest priority its own self-preservation, and that self-preservation depends overwhelmingly on its ability to continue raising the standard of living of its citizens,” states economist Patricia Adams, the study’s author and the executive director of Toronto-based Probe International, an organization that has worked closely with Chinese NGOs for decades. —Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2 December 2015
More than 2,400 coal-fired power stations are under construction or being planned around the world, a study has revealed two weeks after Britain pledged to stop burning coal.
The new plants will emit 6.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year and undermine the efforts at the Paris climate conference to limit global warming to 2C. China is building 368 plants and planning a further 803, according to the study by four climate change research bodies, including Ecofys and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. India is building 297 and planning 149. Rich countries are also planning new coal plants. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima has prompted Japan to turn back to coal, with 40 plants in the pipeline and five under construction. –Ben Webster, The Times, 2 December 2015
Adams’s report is worth reading in full not just because of the fascinating light it casts on the Chinese, their economy, their corruption, their political mindset and the tensions between the populace and the Communist party but also because of the very basic fact it underlines about Paris – and about all future COP negotiations. Even if China believed in keeping to emission targets, which it doesn’t, its officials are so corrupt, uninterested and growth-driven they would never police them. So it will be stalemate. Any agreement reached in Paris will be meaningless and toothless. And thank goodness for that. Or rather, thank China. –James Delingpole, Breitbart London, 2 December 2015
New GWPF Report: The Truth About China
Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2 December 2015
China will talk a good game at the UN Climate Conference in Paris, but won’t make any binding commitments, concludes The Truth About China, an important new report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“China’s Communist Party has as its highest priority its own self-preservation, and that self-preservation depends overwhelmingly on its ability to continue raising the standard of living of its citizens,” states economist Patricia Adams, the study’s author and the executive director of Toronto-based Probe International, an organization that has worked closely with Chinese NGOs for decades.
“With China’s economic growth faltering, the last thing the Communist Party wants is to hobble its economy further by curtailing the use of the fossil fuels upon which its economy depends. A major cutback in fossil fuel use represents an existential threat to the Communist Party’s rule. It simply isn’t going to happen.”
Adams’s report includes another important finding: tackling CO2 emissions would do little if anything to curb the serious air pollution – dubbed “airpocalypse” – plaguing China’s major cities. On the contrary, the measures needed to curb China’s smog of life-threatening pollutants such as nitrogen and sulphur oxides – scrubbers on power plants, for example – actually increase CO2 emissions.
“A programme to rapidly reduce pollutants harmful to human health would be at odds with a programme to reduce CO2,” Adams states, noting that human health is unaffected by CO2, a colourless, odourless, tasteless gas. Next to keeping its economy afloat, the biggest challenge to its credibility that the Communist leadership faces is its need to reduce smog. “I have never heard of a public protest in China against carbon dioxide emissions,” Adams states. “CO2 is a major concern for Western NGOs with offices in Beijing but it’s a non-issue for Chinese citizens and environmentalists at the grassroots.”
All that China will commit to, says the Adams report, is to continue to improve the energy efficiency of its economy as it grows – a goal it has long pursued, independent of global warming concerns. In doing so, China aims to increase its GDP along with its fossil fuel use, and by 2030 or so will depend on fossil fuels for 80% of its energy use, down from today’s 90%. When it reaches 80% 15 years hence, its energy makeup will largely resemble America’s today.
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The picture on the front page is a nuclear power plant, isn’t it?
No. Those are natural-circulation cooling towers, but the stack shows this is a coal plant. Nuclear plants do not have smoke stacks.
Michael Moon
True. But! Nuclear plants almost always have “vent stacks” that do “look like” and “act like” smoke stacks but are not processing the hot air/gasses/water vapor that are common from coal-fired stacks. With no other instructions or specific knowledge, you could not tell one from the others.
I think many nukes do have a smoke stack or two because of a separate turbine or diesel generator for emergency outages. Notice there’s no smoke or steam coming out of the stacks, which indicates they’re not operating, even though the cooling towers are clearly exhausting heat. The two squat rectangular green and white structures look like reactor containment structures to me.
If they have a dry scrubber, they won’t have either steam or smoke.
The majority of America uses wet scrubbers for their final control device (effectively, passing the gas through water to capture all the ash), which is the cause for the normal steam plume.
This is a photo an electric plant in Ukraine (the photo most used by the French medias):
http://www.francetvinfo.fr/image/750qo96ym-70af/1000/562/5215131.jpg
Which is which? (There is a trick.)
Both stacks could have effluent, picture is not that good. If there is something coming out of the much much smaller stack of a nuclear plant, head for the hills…
Hint: journalists love the photo.
Because the photo is lying.
“Hint: journalists love the photo.
Because the photo is lying.”
Photos never lie … just ask Joseph Stalin (/sarc. off)
Look a lot like Fukupshima Di’ichi before the triple melt down, to me. Is that the trick?
Media is already the plural. You can’t have “medias”. A medium of communication. Grouped together they are referred to as mass media, so French media, “not medias”.
Nuclear power plants to indeed have ‘smoke stacks’ because they all have large back-up power supplies on site in the event of ‘an event’. They usually have diesel engines (Japan) or natural gas turbines (Pickering Nuclear Power station) and they are normally not running except for testing and maintenance.
Both emit CO2 and water vapour and a small amount of PM2.5.
The big difference between the Japanese (USA-sourced) reactors and the CANDU reactor at Pickering is the back-up power in Japan is needed to keep the unit safe when shutting down. In Pickering the backup power is used to keep the lights on as the design is inherently safe when the reactor is suddenly turned off. If the entire grid went down, the generators would be used to bring the nuclear reactors back on line.
simple-touriste, if not photoshopped, looks like one fossil plant (prb’ly coal) on the left and the others are nukes. Not a bad construction scheme as the transmission/distribution lines & cooling water sources are already there.
China is where we were at during the 1960-1980 era when the Clean Air Act took hold and all the SO2 polluters had to clean up their pollution.
Did that SO2 have any detrimental effect, should volcanoes be banned? Acid rain was a scary name, but did it do any real harm? Genuine question, I don’t know the answer.
Volcanoes don’t sit beside cities producing SO2 day after day, year after year. If you had ever visited China, especially during a hot day in Beijing, you would not have any doubt that, yes, coal has a big detrimental effect.
On a recent trip to China I travelled by bullet train from Changchun to Dalian. Looking out the window there was a grey haze hanging over the fields the entire way there and back. China is covered by a blanket of coal smoke.
If there was some way to get the electricity as cheaply as coal nearly everybody would be happy to get it.
China is also building nuclear at a very rapid pace. They are also working very hard on a molten salt reactor design. That is because they have lots of Thorium, and because MSR designs might in fact produce electricity as cheap as coal.
Thanks Dan, but a bit of googling shows that Chinese coal smog comes from burning it for heat, and from industrial processes, not from power stations, but you won’t hear that from the CO2-obsessed.
Non CO2 impurities in all coal burning has a detrimental affect on health and creates smog. As an odorless and colorless gas, we can’t see CO2, regardless of the source. Smog is usually nitrous oxides and ozone pollution. Which is why in the US, we have scrubbers and other means of removing unwanted elements such as Mercury and why the US uses low sulfur, not brown coal.
Sulfur is an essential ingredient for healthy plant life. It is used directly to fight mildew problems and as a fungicide.
@climanrecon: I am old enough to have observed this first hand. The soot coated the trees and buildings, and protected them from the acid rain. It was the soot that was removed first, and the unintended consequence was trees dying off.
Yes the western Clean Air Acts followed by the Anti-Acid Rain Laws required massive particulate carbon and SO4 emission reductions in the West.
Coincidently, Hansen recently produced a Paper accepting that the current flattening out of average global temperature rises that Jones and some others have acknowledged. However, he states this is due to the screening out of significant incoming solar energy from the massive on-going increase in China’s and other Developing Countries’ uncontrolled particulate carbon and SO4 emissions which impose a cooling effect. This effect was known about in the 70’s and was called Solar Gloom.
What Hansen has effectively admitted is the recorded temperature rises from the early 60’s to the late 80’s, prior to the Developing World’s massive increase in uncontrolled industrial and power station emissions, was as much to do with the western reduction of global particulate carbon and SO4 emissions as CO2 rises.
If you strip out the Solar Gloom effects of the period of these emission reductions followed by the later post 80’s period emission increases as determined by Hansen, you get a much shallower temperature rise curve than is used in CAGW/Climate Change theory. When you match this adjusted real temperature curve with the recorded CO2 rise graph you have a far lower gradient in any temperature/CO2 curve, i.e. AGW is occuring – something that virtually everyone agrees is happening but with a slow, longer temperature increase that can easily be managed well into the future and at relatively very little cost, and not the catastrophic AGW, or CAGW preached by the warmists which supposedly “substantiates” the need for histrionics and the spending of £billions of our money.
Having flown over 80% of China as a helicopter pilot ( 5 years) I can only say, World, watch out, you ain’t seen nothin yet !!
In what way have “ain’t seen nothing yet”?
From looking at all from above everything has a different prospective, The Chinese histrionically are the most advanced race on earth, if you have seen a Documentary on ants ? The Chinese are ten thousand light years more advanced, What problems have we with the Chinese ? ( Just love the food )
“China’s Communist Party has as its highest priority its own self-preservation, and that self-preservation depends overwhelmingly on its ability to continue raising the standard of living of its citizens,”
Wouldn’t it wonderful if the western leaders were taking as important raising the standard of living of its citizens instead of trying to ruin their economies.
Nothing like the old tribal custom for maintaining the tribe – holding your leaders responsible for the tribe’s safety and welfare and suitably imposed by an occasional chief’s head on the village fort gatepost – “pour encourager les autres”. Something similar happened in Paris in the late 18th Century: Robespierre received a token of the population’s appreciation for what he had done for them from Madame Guillotine! Some say that history repeats itself! If only…?
Clever, these Chinese.
<i….“China’s Communist Party has as its highest priority its own self-preservation, and that self-preservation depends overwhelmingly on its ability to continue raising the standard of living of its citizens,” …</i.
Perhaps Communism is the new Capitalism? Our system, probably better called the 'Bureaucratic State' involves making sure that there will always be poor people around so that the state has a continuing function administering state aid…
We need new naming conventions Dodgy.
The unholy alliances of Wealth accumulation and politics has caused U.S. Capitalism to evolve into Corporatism (aka Crony Capitalism) where the wealth holders buy and control the bureaucrats who bleed the middle class to feed the poverty class to prevent insurrection and rioting. It is a downward spiraling economy.
While contrarily Chinese Communism has evolved into Commutalism where the Bureaucrats incentivize the ambitious to leverage cheap labor to make lots of money for the bureaucrats in a you scratch my back and I will scratch yours manner. It is an emerging system of economic growth and development.
Under the latter system the bureaucrats are top skimmers in our system the bureaucrats are bottom feeders taking kickbacks.
Their poverty class is shrinking while ours is growing. Low energy costs have a lot to do with success.
Coalition of Dodgy Opportunists? I’ve always liked CDO 🙂
Top news story in Australia right now is a massive China hack of the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) computer system
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/china-blamed-for-cyber-attack-on-bureau-of-meteorology/6993278
Release of all the altered data and incriminating emails just in time for COP21? Oh please, pretty please. Climategate all over again would be so good. Popcorn time!
They were looking for the homogenization programme. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there isn’t one.
The Chinese are smart:
Talk the talk…
…but walk however they want.
Same as the Pope, eh?
Obama makes the perfect puppet for the Chinese.
Knowing a little about the Chinese mentality I would think, Bruce , that Obama is a puppet in the Chinese honey pot.
Bruce Cobb: Manchurian Candidate.
Meanwhile another Solar manufacturer has ‘surplus’ equipment up for Auction.
http://www.go-dove.com/en/events?cmd=details&event=501396
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
But Tim Flannery told me China was “taking the lead” on renewable energy?
Don’t worry Tim, I still believe you because you want to “save the planet” and that means more to me than China building a coal fired power plant every week for the next 20 years.
Clima – Her report is not so accurate.
In doing so, China aims to increase its GDP along with its fossil fuel use, and by 2030 or so will depend on fossil fuels for 80% of its energy use, down from today’s 90%. When it reaches 80% 15 years hence, its energy makeup will largely resemble America’s today.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/11/non-fossil-fuel-sources-provide-25-chinas-electricity/
According to the latest round of statistical data issued by CEC, China’s nation-wide electricity generation reached 5550TW hours in 2014, for year-on-year growth of 3.6%.
In 2014, nationwide hydropower generation breached the 1000 TW hour threshold for the first time in history to reach 1070TW hours,
1070 TW / 5550 TW = 19.23 %
Despite China’s ongoing push for expanded wind power capacity, usage hours for wind power installations fell by 120 hours last year to 1905 hours. Nationwide grid-connected wind power generation nonetheless posted a year-on-year gain of 12.2%, to reach 156.3 TW hours.
156.3 TW / 5550 TW = 02.82 %
China’s grid-connected solar power capacity also posted an impressive increase in 2014, rising by 67.0% year-on-year to reach 26.52GW by the end of December 2014. Nationwide grid-connected solar power generation reached 23.11 TW hours in 2014, for a year-on-year increase of 170.8%.
23.11 TW / 5550 TW = 00.42%
Nationwide nuclear power generation in 2014 was 126.2 TW hours, for a year-on-year increase of 13.2% Usage times fell 385 hours year-on-year to 7489 hours on average.
126.2 TW/ 5550 TW = 02.28 %
1375.61 TW / 5550 TW = 24.78 % in 2014
China still is a Water Republic.
And – The new plants will emit 6.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year
Scary BIG Number, until you remember The total mass of Earth’s atmosphere is about 5.5 quadrillion tons or 0.00065 %
“The Maldives:Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy” :J.J. Robinson
Reviewed in the Economist
Readers here have been Maldives to insensitivity but the Islands make for a neat example of politicians taking their eye off the ball. Climate fantasy vs what’s happening outside the conference hall.
Even if the Maldives fall into fundamentalism the climate gang should be okay. Those folks agree that the West is destroying the planet.
Roughly 60% of the EU drop in CO2 emission is due to importing (of course with loss of jobs) finished products and high energy components/materials from the rest of the world, including and especially China.
There is a whack a mole issue with the calculation of CO2 emissions/reduction, that is ignored in the Paris climate negotiations.
China is successful (rapidly growing economy and jobs, let’s say compared to EU or to Africa) due to their access to reliable, low cost energy.
Side Issue/comment:
Current Chinese air pollution is due to their inefficient/old technology coal fired plants, their old technology motor vehicles, and particularly their coal heating of individual homes with zero pollution controls.
A modern coal fire plant reduces the pollutants by roughly 90%. China can burn coal in pulverized coal plants (subcritical with scrubbers and particle participators) and have US like air quality, if they heat their homes with natural gas.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/media/pdf/the-facts-about-air-quality-and-coal-fired-power-plants-final.pdf
Central Issue:
In addition to above to the whack a mole logic fallacies, there is the surreal issue that green scams do not work, for basic engineering reasons. If the energy input to construct the wind turbines and solar cells is included and the reduce grid efficiency is taken into account (combined cycle power plants cannot be used as they require 20 hours to start and must be left on, green scams force the change to single cycle natural gas power plants which are 20% less efficient, in addition green scams force there to be ridiculous transportation of power from region to region with has roughly 30% loss in addition to forcing the construction of goofy long, goofy expensive super high voltage DC power lines) the maximum CO2 reduction possible with green scams is around 20%, assuming money is no issue, without energy storage.
The how much it is going to cost (to meet the absurd CO2 emission limits) and what are the effects on everyday life scam (something that is not discussed by the cult of CAGW as there is no solution and the public will not accept the consequences). The only way to reduce CO2 emissions by let say 40% is a complete change to nuclear power and the implementation of draconian war time like policies such as the complete banning of tourism air travel, forced population reduction, and the threat of war to enforce the mutually assured economic collapse CO2 ‘control’ madness.
Trump Issue
It appear the trump issue will end the climate wars rather than the above absurdities. The planet is going to significantly cool (sun is now changing astonishingly quickly. I wonder when there will be an official comment, before or after the start of cooling. The public and politicians are going to have their epiphany when there is scary cooling. There never was a CAGW problem to solve. There never was a AGW problem to solve. There never was an anthropogenic CO2 problem to solve and regardless, green scams do not work. The majority of the warming in the last 150 years was due to solar cycle changes and the majority of the CO2 increase was due to natural emission from the deep earth (CH4 from the core) and the ocean.
Time to invest in coal stocks; KOL.
Ah Ha
@ur momisugly climanrecon As I understand it you are exactly correct by saying “Chinese coal smog comes from burning it for heat, and from industrial processes, not from power stations, but you won’t hear that from the CO2-obsessed.” I would add transportation to the list. I’m told their many of their new coal fired power plants are pretty much state-of-the-art and are probably doing a pretty good job of taking care of actual pollutants. It is sad to say, but the average person today has no idea the evil CO2, is the same stuff they exhale with every breath, feeds their plants, and makes their beer and soda bubbly. They certainly have no idea that it doesn’t show in PM samples. Here is an article that makes my point. http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/AAfTZSP?ocid=se
[Snip. Policy violation. -mod]
Great information, thanks
So basically COP21 is a bigger waste of time and money than we all assumed. No doubt we in the West will have to show China what we are made of by signing our own economic death warrant to save the planet by mitigating AGW by less than one tenth of a degree.
Now we need to see coal price data to see how builders of coal plants will see rock bottom fuel cost inputs and increased competitive positions versus trading partners.
The thrust of the report seems sound.
China prioritises it’s real pollution issues over CO2 emissions because there would be riots if they didn’t
That sounds like a realistic policy too.
Let’s highlight the names in the Acknowledgments.
I confess, I don’t know Li Bo or Sun Shan.
Once again, this just demonstrates that P.J O’Rourke’s prognostication on climate change was correct:
“There’s not a godd*mn thing you can do about it. Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn’t matter. There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick. Actually, if you go more than a mile or two outside China’s big cities, the wants are more basic. People want a hot plate and a piece of methane-emitting cow to cook on it. They want a carbon-belching moped, and some CO2-disgorging heat in their houses in the winter. And air-conditioning wouldn’t be considered an imposition, if you’ve ever been to China in the summer.
Now I want you to dress yourself in sturdy clothing and arm yourself however you like – a stiff shot of gin would be my recommendation – and I want you to go tell 1.3 billion Chinese they can never have a Buick.
Then, assuming the Sierra Club helicopter has rescued you in time, I want you to go tell a billion people in India the same thing.”
And watch out for all the coal power plant smokestacks with the rescue helicopter, in both countries.
“People want a hot plate and a piece of methane-emitting cow to cook on it.”
To test this assertion, it only takes a visit to China over a couple of weeks …
China’s position on global warming hasn’t shifted an inch in the last decade.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/cancun-and-the-chinese-perspective-on-it/
Pointman
Thanks, Anthony. The GWPF report is very good.
One way of reducing emissions of CO2 and lower the price of energy is natural gas, of which the USA has very abundant reserves and can be exported to replace petroleum.
I have always maintained that we are wasting our resources. Coal is the cheapest and a very reliable electricity generator from our power plants and is a very abundant fossil fuel that will be available for many, many decades. If we don’t want to go nuclear, then coal is our foreseeable energy source.
Natural gas on the other hand, is a fossil fuel that should not be wasted on electricity generation but instead should be used exclusively to heat out homes and for industrial usages ie manufacturing.
As to CO2, who cares about how much goes into the atmosphere. CO2 never was and never will be a problem, so why are we trying to cut down on this gas?
We should bear in mind that some sizable proportion of China’s new coal plants are likely replacements for old tech plants.
Somehow I doubt that means smaller.
I do not agree with the headline of the article. It seems to imply that China is building 2400 coal fired power plants but the the article breaks it down into China, Japan and India (mostly). I am a sceptic and have been for years but this to me seems a bit misleading.
Yes, a bit confusing on the title.
The graphic shows clearly that China is planning and constructing 1171 NEW coal plants.
But the increases in coal plants around the world show the CO2 problem is way down the list of priorities.
Energy, growth, economics, and political viability are the top priorities for India, China, and the rest of the growing world.