Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
The choices we make about energy, the environment and climate will be limited by The Three Chinas.
The Real China
1. One of the Chinas is very real and familiar. It has a population of 1.4 billion.
2. China is developing quickly, trying to do in 50 years what America did in 100. As a result, they have doubled their energy use since 2000, becoming the largest energy user in the world.
3. China’s energy use may well double again by 2020. (The figures in the report did not match reality, but their estimate of 7.5% annual growth looks fairly okay).
4. Coal currently provides 70% of China’s energy. That may drop to 65% by 2020. It may not.
5. If China doubles its energy use (to 200 quads) and 65% of it comes from coal, that will be 130 quadrillion BTUs generated from burning coal, in China, in 2020.
6. China’s coal plants are much dirtier than those used in the developed world.
The Second China
This very real China will be replicated by the natural growth of the human population to 8.5 billion by 2035, and 9.1 billion at its peak later this century. That’s more than the entire population of China. As many of them will actually be born in China, and many more will form part of our third ‘imaginary’ China, it is appropriate to limit the Second China to the size of the real one.
7. Most of these new humans will be born into developing countries.
8. But these developing countries are, in fact, developing now. Their energy use is increasing dramatically–if not as dramatically as China’s. The Second China will spring forth from countries whose energy use is growing by 3.3% per year.
9. And although their use of coal is not as intense as China’s, their reliance on fossil fuels is fairly close (Fig. 2)
The Third China
While China is developing quickly, so is the rest of the developing world. As countries develop, the people living in them get richer. They buy cars, appliances, computers, and begin to use more energy. Again, to avoid double counting (China will be one of the countries talked about, and many of the new middle class will consist of people not yet born), it is correct to think of this as about the size of the current China.
10. Two billion people may join the middle class by 2030.
11. By 2050, countries which are now developing quickly will be called ‘middle-income’ and may account for 60% of GDP.
12. Goldman Sachs believes that China’s per capita income will be $50,000 in 2050 (p.5), and that their per capita GDP will be $70,000. But they also project that Turkey and Mexico will have higher incomes per capita, and that Brazil will almost match China.
13. Mexico currently consumes 69 million BTUs per person per year (Table 1.8). Their average income is $14,000. If their incomes triple, so will their energy usage. The same is true for Indonesia, Turkey, the Philippines, China, India and more.
Discussion
I have written here frequently that I believe current estimates of future energy consumption are flawed. I hope the information provided above shows why. As I have written before, extending current consumption and development trends over a short period of time shows a doubling and perhaps a tripling of energy use over the medium term. That could see global demand for energy reaching 2,000 quads per year by 2035.
I do not know what the sensitivity of the atmosphere is to a doubling of concentrations of CO2 is, and despite pronouncements from partisans on either side of that argument, I don’t think anybody else knows, either.
I do not know what cycles of earth, moon, sun and stars will combine to push or pull global temperatures one way or another, and despite pronouncements from partisans on either side, I don’t think anybody else knows, either.
Recent human history makes it fairly easy to contemplate economic growth and energy usage for the very near future. It is an order of magnitude easier than trying to analyse the factors that influence the climate.
We do not have to guess about the effects of massive coal consumption by developing countries–we have our own history to guide us, from London in 1952 to Manchester a century before, from burning rivers in Ohio to dead lakes nearby.
Commenters to my recent pieces asked why I characterise our situation as an energy crisis. I have tried to provide an answer here. I’m happy to discuss this with any and all. Because I think this is a conversation we can have without referring to magical numbers and thinking, pixie dust or moonbeams.
I personally think that this level of intense development will indeed have an effect on our climate, due not only to CO2, but also deforestation, aquifer depletion and other factors described ably by Roger Pielke Sr. But I don’t know how much and I don’t know what percentages to assign to each.
So let’s talk about energy and why what is described above signals a crisis–or not.
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I do not know if what Thomas describes in his oped is a crisis, and I don’t think anybody else knows either.
“So let’s talk about energy and why what is described above signals a crisis–or not.”
Tom,iIt was pointed out some time ago and by an economist in the early days of that ‘science’ that the need for people to reproduce would wane as the middle class expanded. This was based on the observation that the poor needed to have children to support them in their old age and the rich needed to have children to hand on their inherited titles and wealth but the middle class had no such stimulus and could therefore make a choice. That observation has proved to be correct as can be seen when looking at national population statistics where an inverse correlation exists between wealth and childbirth. To deny the chance of increasing prosperity to the poor is to exclude them from that choice and maintain the driver of increasing population which is need, or to an economist, demand.
The idea that there will be an energy crisis because of an exponentialy increasing population ignores the obvious which is that those increases will be generated among the worlds poor: give them wealth and the trend will reverse. There is indeed an energy crisis among us and it is a shortage of power generation capacity among the poor which the current frenzy for CO2 restriction can only make worse.
And the developing countries are exempt from Kyoto style CO2 emission targets. All the reductions are to come from the ‘developed’ countries. This article just drives how futile and out of date all this is. The majority of fossil fuels are now burnt in the ‘developing’ world and that fraction is rising fast.
But beware of predicting the future by extrapolation. A few years ago I got the stated coal reserves, consumption and growth projections for China from the Energy Information Agency’s web site. The conclusion was that China runs out of coal in 2038. The smaller developed countries may be feeling besieged now by the larger populations of the developing countries but their large populations are going to count against them in the future. Expect trouble ahead.
HR says:
October 17, 2010 at 3:42 pm
I agree with HR; see above. Fuller’s view makes an interesting article on one level — as a numerical investigation, otherwise known as playing with numbers, or arithmetic — but the essence of the thing is still doom and gloom. Sigh. Any psychologists out there? I wonder if people who think like Fuller and those who favour this kind of site for the ‘alternative’ views could be divided very simply into pessimists and optimists. Just wondering. The more I read the more it seems so.
lowercasefred says:
October 17, 2010 at 3:38 pm
A population-reducing pandemic is far more likely IMO. Of course a pandemic could be the result of a biological weapon used in an act of war.
Other unpredictable things could do the work too like a massive CME, supervolcano, or asteroid strike among other things. The bottom line seems to be that modern civilization is a fragile thing vulnerable to all sorts of catastrophes both manmade and natural and its fragility grows with the size of it. It’s only a matter of time.
Mr Fuller is it possible that I have just read 3 pages of rambling about economy and energy consumption and I have not read A SINGLE TIME the words “price” and “market” ?
This absence is not only suggesting that what you say has no informative value for us , it is also suggesting that you live on another planet.
A planet where GDP growths are constant for decades , energy consumptions are increasing by constant factors forever , populations grow by unreasonable rates in places where there is no available soil and water to grow food , to mention just a few features that are absurd for us humans .
I pity you because your planet is not really suitable for intelligent life and I imagine that most people on your planet either sink in everlasting depressions or believe in all kind of irrational fairy tales .
You know , on Earth we have negative feedbacks that regulate both the economy and consumption .
These negative feedbacks are called prices .
If the rate of increase of consumption of something is high for a long enough time , then the price of this something increases .
So the consumption decreases .
Our mathematicians have even proved that when the price goes to infinity , the demand goes to 0 .
You see ? On our planet it is actually impossible to have constant growths or constant increases of energy consumption for a very long time .
It is actually also impossible to have population growths in places where there is not enough to eat , you know on our planet all those people would die – it is called famine .
The markets and the prices very efficiently break the demand if it dares to outpace the supply for even a rather short time and famines kill people if they exceed local food production potential .
Oh and we have also something that is called technological progress , something that you definitely should look at Mr Fuller , even if it will seem unbelievable for a being from your planet .
You are not lucky to live on a planet where markets and prices don’t exist and I predict a fast demise of your civilisation , very probably by a cataclysmically violent event .
I predict that among many absurdities , you will have surely invented global warming on your planet too .
We surely wouldn’t like to live on your planet Mr Fuller .
“I do not know what the sensitivity of the atmosphere is to a doubling of concentrations of CO2 is, and despite pronouncements from partisans on either side of that argument, I don’t think anybody else knows, either.”
CO2 concentration won’t double even if coal consumption is doubled, tripled or quadrupled. The human caused CO2 _turnover_ will rise according to coal and oil consumption, but that doesn’t mean the aggregate value will.
BOTE calculation, what happens if we burn ALL available coal AT ONCE:
1. Earth has 1 * 10^12 tonnes of known coal reserves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves
(oil neglected as its reserves are negligible compared to coal)
2. That should give about 3 * 10^12 tonnes of CO2 (rough guesstimate)
3. The mass of the earth atmosphere is about 5 * 10^15 tonnes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_atmosphere#Density_and_mass
4. 3 * 10^12 divided by 5 * 10^15 gives roughly 0.06 percent CO2, or less than double the current value.
And that is assuming all available coal is burnt in one instant, which is unfeasible and won’t happen even if coal consumption rises significantly. It still takes centuries to use it all up, so that value will never materialise.
Otherwhise I think the article is good news. If China and other devoloping countries rise to Western standards of living, good for them, and good for us.
Well said David Hoffer.
Russian Abiotic Oil Theory needs an airing on WUWT.
Nuclear fusion must be the short term answer ( E=MC2 implications ) but as with conventional resources most of the challenges are political in a climate dominated by eco-fascism.
Several people have mentioned China’s population and ‘one child policy’.
China’s true population is not known with any accuracy. It could well be as much as 1.7billion. The OCP only worked on the poor. If you could afford more children, you had them. If you were well connected in the Communist hierachy, you had more than one child. Back there next week for a while. I’ll do a quick head count and report back.
Bye.
regards
Open societies foster innovation and there’s always nuclear energy to give us clean technology. Just so long as we don’t let Luddite political parties realise their visions of a green dystopia!
The UK has just established 10 sites for new nuclear power plants. Even the worst of the green politicians eventually realise that they have to provide the right quality of energy that the people need today and would require tomorrow.
There are two types of energy providers:
1. The reliable ones; Coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro
2. The unreliable ones: Wind turbines. (PV’s are still unreliable, but in my opinion may be able to reliably provide a measurable fraction of the total energy budget some fine day.
I can send this comment because we have reliable sources of energy. The future cannot be otherwise. The other option is to go back to the caves and hunt rabbit.
What the global climate of the 21st Century is, is in the hands of the two largest population countries — China and India; and by global climate, I’m not just talking about the weather.
One proof that the eco-fascists don’t believe their scare stories is that almost none of them promote nuclear power. Nuclear can certainly produce enough power to satisfy all 9 billion people in a CO2 free manner. If somebody honestly believed CO2 was about to cause a catastrophe they would inevitably support the only practical way of avoiding it.
An interesting article, especially with Xie Zhenhua’s words.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11502019
“There must be much better verification of developed countries’ finance proposals,” Xie Zhenhua, China’s chief climate negotiator, told BBC News.
Is it possible that the chinese and russians that they do not believe in AGW at all…They have very good scientists, and have had no green or environment movement for the last 30 years.
The chinese and others would appear to be going along with AGW for poltical and economic advantage, did Xie let something slip in the two earlier articles below, at a non western conference, he may have had his guard down. He was later, asked to clarify his remarks and he said something suitably diplomatic… Perhaps thinking, only the guilty green west believe the CAGW delusion after all, and the Russian and Chinese are preparing for Global Cooling as their solar physicists advice them, and that AGW and the IPCC is just junk;
Guardian: Climate change: Chinese adviser calls for open mind on causes
China’s most senior negotiator on climate change says more research needed to establish whether warming is man-made
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/24/china-climate-change-adviser
“China’s most senior negotiator on climate change said today he was keeping an open mind on whether global warming was man-made or the result of natural cycles. Xie Zhenhua said there was no doubt that warming was taking place, but more and better scientific research was needed to establish the causes.
Xie’s comments caused consternation at the end of the post-meeting press conference, with his host, the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, attempting to play down any suggestions of dissent over the science of climate change.”
Telegraph: China has ‘open mind’ about cause of climate change
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7067505/China-has-open-mind-about-cause-of-climate-change.html
China’s most senior climate change official surprised a summit in India when he questioned whether global warming is caused by carbon gas emissions and said Beijing is keeping an “open mind
“Xie Zhenhua was speaking at a summit between the developing world’s most powerful countries, India, Brazil, South Africa and China, which is now the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for climate change.
But Mr Xie, China’s vice-chairman of national development and reforms commission, later said although mainstream scientific opinion blames emissions from industrial development for climate change, China is not convinced.”
“There are disputes in the scientific community. We have to have an open attitude to the scientific research. There’s an alternative view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself. We have to keep an open attitude,” he said.
Jo Nova has a similar article… (today)
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/is-the-western-climate-establishment-corrupt-part-7-other-climate-establishments-disagree/
Some interesting links to Chinese, Russian and Indian scientific thoughts on man made global warming… or NOT
The original China long ago provided us with a saying along the lines of ‘no tree grows to the sky.’
While I don’t disagree with most of this article, the idea that energy use increases linearly with economic growth is a common fallacy. In the UK, for instance, between 1970 and 2007 economic output more than doubled (US$700,000,000,000 to US$1,800,000,000,000) but energy use is the same to within a few percent. Even the variability over that time in energy use is only about 25% peak to peak (we are currently at around to average over this period).
Admittedly, I’m not sure how this data set handles imports, so when manufactured goods are taken into account we may just be exporting most of our energy use offshore.
The strange end date is because that is when the world bank energy use data set ends.
When I read this article, I think back to Bruner’s “Stand on Zanszibar (sp?)”. Part of the premise was the zero population growth vs. rights to have as many children as desired. I don’t think it can be done due to too many human, religious and economic issues, but it would be a starting point for real conservation instead of using carbon as a bench mark. There is a movement to reduce but it’s allied with the Gaia group that wants to reduce the population. I would want a voluntary plan to stabilize the population, not reduce it.
Has anyone ever determined what the optimal population of the Earth for our known resources?
“So let’s talk about energy and why what is described above signals a crisis–or not.”
Hence peak oil. Does anyone here really think that oil production can double or triple? No, it will soon be in terminal decline because of those increases in energy demand.
“Peak oil is a bottle neck on production and distribution bought about by regulation and carpet-baggary rather than actual reserves.”
No! Peak oil is about flow rates and ERoEI. Both of which are falling.
Tom Fuller,
Appreciate your post. Thanks.
There are no more 3 Chinas than there are 3 Americas or 3 Indias or 3 Japans. The number is not 3; it is ‘n’ where ‘n’ is the number of journalists trying to make a living off of manufacturing problems (with or without the explicit/implicit help of supporting professional agenda makers).
China is not a problem nor India (etc); just like US of A is not a problem. You are stuck in the ‘problem’ mindset. Was it the school of journalism you attended that indoctrinated you to the ‘problem’ mentality? Or was it your undergraduate institution?
It is not too late to be a productive member of a realistically based benevolent society. : )
John
The analysis smacks of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” ie because China has expanded so will Turkey and India etc. There are deeper national psychological principles in operation here. China is very much aware that it “lost face” in the 15th century when the treasure ships of Admiral Zhe (?) were recalled and China turned in on itself. At that time it was technologically miles ahead of Europe. For centuries it suffered exploitation and humiliation at the hands of European capitalism and these memories really rankle. China should always have been a world power and now is determined to play catch up. Its people are remarkably talented and hard working and the centralised system of government means that things can be achieved quickly. Attitude is all especially to education. Laws are strictly upheld and applied.
The BP data shows that China trebled its consumption of fossil fuels since 2010 while India’s went up by 50%. India will never compete with China for so many reasons. It has very poor infrastructure which it seems incapable of improving, it has a peculiar climate which depends on the unpredictable monsoon which often causes considerable damage, and it has a caste system which holds millions in povery. An Einstein who is an untouchable has no chance. At the Commonwealth Games earth was being shifted by women with baskets on their head!
Brazil has enormous social problems and too many live in povery. The rule of law is not universally applied and the country seems on the brink of anarchy all the time. Lack of good education will hold the country back although GDP will rise because of sheer.
As for Turkey, oh dear. This is a backward country which shows no signs of advancement. Its only hope is to join the EU and that will not happen now for so many reasons. Turkey suffers from a collective depression. It was once a powerful force as the Ottoman Empire and held most of the world’s oil supplies in its hands. World War 1 and Versailles stopped all that and the Turks have never got over it. They just do not have their act together. They have no resources to launch a development programme. The UK is slowly turning into Turkey.
The only China you will see is China, along with Taiwan, which shows what China could be like. The 19th century was Britain’s, the 20th the USA’s and the 21st will be China’s. The modern world was not designed for a rich China but it will have to learn to live with it.
“5. If China doubles its energy use (to 200 quads) and 65% of it comes from coal, that will be 130 quadrillion BTUs generated from burning coal, in China, in 2020.”
China currently consumes 3X the amount of coal the US consumes and pretty close to half of global coal consumption. It’s almost inconceivable that they could push that to 6X.
“6. China’s coal plants are much dirtier than those used in the developed world.”
China’s ‘Old’ coal fired plants are much dirtier with efficiency rates around 25%, their new plants have efficiency rates of 40+%, well above the efficiency rates of the average coal fired plant in the US.
John Whitman,
I generally agree with your comments, but I thought that the use of “three China’s” was a reasonable literary device. While Mr. Fuller may have his own agenda, I don’t have an issue with him postulating on possible futures. Possible futures aren’t reality but a prompt for discussion.
Neil Craig says:
October 18, 2010 at 7:07 am
“One proof that the eco-fascists don’t believe their scare stories is that almost none of them promote nuclear power. Nuclear can certainly produce enough power to satisfy all 9 billion people in a CO2 free manner. If somebody honestly believed CO2 was about to cause a catastrophe they would inevitably support the only practical way of avoiding it.”
Lovelock does; and he is also one of those who call for a temporary suspension of democracy.
Please don’t cross post this on any financial forums, things are a little touchy right now.