Over at the Air Vent, Jeff Id has a very interesting story by Roddy Campbell, and in particular one graph that struck me as thought provoking. When I first saw it, these two stories immediately came to mind:
Breaking: NASA GISS Dr. James Hansen – arrested yet again
Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS arrested
You see, Dr. Hansen of NASA GISS, has been using his position to protest the use of coal in America. That’s certainly his right. But, since his concern is global CO2 produced by coal, is he really being effective by protesting here? It seems that he should think locally, but act globally. Have a look at this graph and see if you think he’s making any difference in the places coal is being used the most:
Now have a look at this graph and narrative I found from the same source as the one above.
What the chart doesn’t tell you is the composition of each country’s energy consumption. While many are aware the US is a heavy user of oil, there is less attention paid to China’s heavy use of coal. Let’s compare the two, shall we? Oil in the US represents nearly 39% of total energy use from all sources. But in China, oil barely represents 19% of total energy use. Most important of all: China’s coal use is four times its oil use.
Dr. Hansen, I’ll gladly take up a collection here for you to buy you a round trip ticket to any place in China you wish to go and protest, in the same manner you have done here in the USA. Just say the word.
Read the rest at the Air Vent here, and be sure to have a look at the graph showing China’s plan for airport expansion.
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The MTOE graph, has a Y scale starting at 2100 MTOE: this is misleading.
If the scale started at 0, the difference between the BP and IEA would be seen to be trivial.
Don’t waste your money, I don’t suppose the Chinese would even let him in. Imagine the visa application – purpose of visit – to protest against coal fired power stations. Ah yes, Dr Hanson, like you did in England? Visa refused.
I posted this on another thread, but it also seems relevant here:
According to the World Nuclear Association, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has more nuclear reactors on order or proposed (14) than the UK (13).
The USA has 21 on order or proposed while China – no surprise here – beats everyone with 39 on order and 120 reactors proposed (169 total).
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
And they tend to have fewer children.
I have left out China for their 1 child per couple policy.
http://tinyurl.com/5fsgux [EU]
http://tinyurl.com/3ymauvc [Other countries – Google tool]
An excellent article!
The Socialist agenda has infected the education system in the West for many years and has made it easy for kids to become Warmist idealogues as they advanced through the system to adulthood without ever having to think about the issues involved. In the case of New Zealand, the Science syllabus for schools was changed in the 1990s and the importance of the basic process skills in science were relegated to a minor role in the subject and the the wooly thinking of Post-Modern science , which is not science at all but a disastrously mad and imprecise philosophy, was introduced. On top of this, CO2 was assigned it’s supposed starring role among the greenhouse gasses in the dogma of Anthropogenic Global Warming at the same time. Many in science education at that time promoted their new religion in schools with Messianic zeal. To my own later embarrassment, I clearly remember being ‘sucked in’ and accepting the gospel as preached by my opposite numbers in the science department at the high school where I was head of the Arts faculty.
I didn’t think too much about science topics at that time as I had suficient issues to deal with in my own professional area, as the approach to teaching and examining the arts had been altered along with science, as the politicians of the day considered that examination passes in the practical areas of the arts such as painting, print-making sculpting, photography and design were ‘too high’ and therefore lacked academic rigour, when the real problem was one of politicians being unable to understand education and its delivery.
After coming to spend my last years of teaching before retirement from the profession in the UK, I was absolutely astonished to discover that UK politicians don’t understand that half of any population must be, by definition, below average on any indice. That these same politicians, regardless of party affilliation, refuse to easily give up the chance to impose ridiculous and dishonest taxes in some sort of mad attempot to mitigate against the effects of the evils of CO2 despite any evidence that what they are attempting is pointless, mad, and doomed to fail is absolutely unsurprising.
As to the clear and logical evidence that the utter fatuity of ‘leading by example’ of reducing this country’s CO2 emissions this article presents, I doubt that more than a tiny minority of politicians could read the text and the graphs with any real understandings.
I suspect that the awakening will be long and uncomfortable for all of us.
Thanks, Mods. You do a brilliant job!
[Saying “brilliant” may bring the energy police in. They will want to know what “Watt’age” we are operating at. 🙂 … bl57~mod]
Anthony,
China has 1.006 trillion tonnes of coal, about four times that of the US, and they are not afraid to use it. They have built, and in the process of installing, 600,000 barrels per day of coal to liquids capacity. Some of this is covered by a post of mine on the Oil Drum:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7002
entitled “The Case for the Australian Coal-to-Liquids Industry”.
On that post, one commenter said,”If there were a devil, this would be his work.”
My view is that the oil price will rise so that all carbon-based fuels, including natural gas, will end up having a higher value use as
transport fuels. Power generation will go nuclear. If we were a smart species, the sooner that nuclear is thorium in molten salt reactors, the better.
Stefan said “It is all explained in the book, What About China?”
I noticed they didn’t answer the question, like in so many other cases, and only pretended to answer. It is one of the fascinating aspects of the CAGW crowd that they are happy to outsource their CO2 emissions to China and pretend it doesn’t matter. That includes the Holy Hansen who by raising electricity prices here will guarantee that more industry that depends on electricity will move to China.
“David Archibald says:
November 15, 2010 at 4:29 am
If we were a smart species,…..”
A great post David, unfortunately, we prove, almost each day, that we are far from smart. Now swap “we” with insects, viruses and phages, you’d be on to something.
I’ve said for years now the world would be far better off if we stopped worying about CO2 and worried about getting China/India to adopt even the most basic of pollution standards. Easy, proven technology with results you can actually measure…
Hanson is a hypocrite. He is out to bring down industrialized America to secure the future of his grand children.
He and his ilk (Gore of course) even question the Union stating it would have been better if Lincoln hadn’t saved it.
These people are no Americans.
They are the worst kind of ideologue profiteers last seen in the USSR.
Firing squad anyone?
I have my private suggestion for Dr Hansen as well
[/snip]
[Link removed. Linking to a visual of an extreme vulgarity is no different then openly stating / showing it directly in the blog comment. Hence, unacceptable…. bl57~mod]
This is what makes me mad far more than the debate about whether AGW is real or not. The fact is that manufacturing jobs have been exported from the US and UK on a massive scale.
Those jobs have been exported from nations where much of the energy is from nuclear or natural gas, to nations that simply burn more coal.
Then the manufactured goods are shipped back on container ships that burn collosal volumes of “bunker oil”. Stangely enough this activity was not covered by Kyoto.
I believe we should break ground on a nuclear power plant each month – until we can do it more quickly. I believe we should displace a small mountain of coal out of electricity – and use it to make pristine clean diesel and jet fuel. So, nuclear displaces coal; coal displaces imported oil.
Next, since we use as much oil to heat homes in the North East as is needed to keep nearly 10 million cars on the road, we need to displace that imported oil with natural gas.
Finally, we need to build out the nationwide infrastructure to use natural gas in a serious way on the highway. As of this writing, natural gas is 1/3 the cost of petroleum per equivalent energy content.
Those sound to me like major “shovel ready” jobs programs that (by keeping our coal usage essentially where it is) would displace dirty, expensive, imported oil with cheaper, cleaner, domestic natural gas and nuclear power. We just have to recover the can do spirit that built the Alaska Highway in seven months and put a man on the moon within a decade.
Hanson is simply a mercenary in a global scam to destroy our sources of affordable energy. Here’s a word from the top:
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdi4onAQBWQ&feature=related ]
Once upon a time a group of cells in a ceratain body, get together after having arrived at the conclusion that there was a way to get the Global Governace of the whole body where they lived in. So they began preaching that the world was going to end if all the cells do not begin by diminishing the nasty production of CO2 gas.
Then, it came the “happy” day of their success!, they have managed to “Rule the World”!!, but, sadly, shortly after, the big body of nature DIED!……
Those “intelligent, superior and highly intellectual and most selected cells” which conspired and experienced such an unexpected outcome” were called “Cancer Cells”: Everytime they succeed…..unfortunately destroy its world.
R. de Haan says:
November 15, 2010 at 4:48 am
“Hanson is a hypocrite. He is out to bring down industrialized America to secure the future of his grand children.”
My observation of Mr. Hansen is that he is out to destroy American jobs of industries that he doesn’t like (for example, calling for oil executives to be tried for “crimes against humanity and nature”), while at the same time enriching himself with Climate Ca$h from the U.S. taxpayer. Did you know that GISS employees received pay raises in 2009 while the U.S. economy was tanking (and friends of mine in private industry were being laid off)?
As Mr. Hansen has demonstrated time and again, it pays to be politically well-connected in the climate ruling class hierarchy…
Great post, worth the read. We need more nuclear power.
They would probably welcome him with open arms. By attacking coal, he wants to throw the struggling U.S. economy an anchor, of which they heartily approve. He could try to attack coal there all he wants. He’d be alone at any “protests”, and they’d just snicker at him. China does have a real pollution problem, but they are addressing it, installing scrubbers and monitoring systems. They are probably about where the U.S. was in the 70’s, with regards to pollution control.
The Chinese will play the C02 game, paying lip service to the “threat” of CAGW, but only in a way that they gain an advantage.
There’s plenty of room in empty containers returning to the “Colossus of the East”. Understand most are empty. And the carbon footprint is about as low as one can get if the refrigeration unit is cut off.
There was a quantum leap in human society: From the time before cheap energy to the time of cheap energy. Prior to the time that we had cheap energy (donkey power was the available thing):
The averge life span was 45 years
People died of the cold
Poverty was rampant
Medicine was non existent
Children died from a simple infection
Most pregnant woman died during pregancy, childbirth or post partum sicknesses
Most people were illiterate
Farming was a battle against the elements, disease and lack of soil nutrients
Food was scarce
Work was heavy, laborious and dangerous.
Wars were the order of the day
Transportation was the most dangerous thing
BUT with the advent of coal, then oil and gas this all changed. Things started to get better, farmers got mechanised, their was more food, more money therefore more investment in science and technology and therefore better medicines, hospitals, schools, transportation of people and merchandise, warm homes, mechanised work alievated the human worker and promoted him from a beast of burden to a machine operator at least.
Now, Dr. Hansen and his cohorts want to reverse all this, wanting instead to start using the windmill again, a thing that our forefathers abandoned 200 years ago. All this, Dr. hansen et cohorts are basing on a failed (psuedo-) scientific theory that was proved wrong by the earth itself, this refusing to obey Dr. Hansen’s predictions of doom. They want us to start suffering what our ancestors suffered so much of and worked so hard to get out of. Our ancestors gave up their lives to build a democratic future for us based on knowledge, science and CHEAP ENERGY. Hansen et cohorts want to reverse all this and send us back to the level of hungry beasts fighting over a morsel of bread, while they would be eating cake in their gilded palace.
These people(?) should be tried for crimes against humanity. If not, they will cause more deaths than the black death.
I’m with Verity’s suggestion . . . a one way ticket .
Give me a Hat-Tip or acknowledgement in your story! I wrote the guest post at The Air Vent that you link to …..
REPLY: Sure, sorry, done. I missed that, once I saw the graph I was focused. – Anthony
Between China and India, 75% of the people heat, cook and burn on coal, wood, charcoal and other trash. This won’t change much even when they use less coal for electric.
A couple years ago New Hampshire had a “NH Governor’s Climate Change Task Force” with a lofty goal of stopping dangerous climate change by changes in how New Hampshire produced and used energy. While there were similar efforts in other states, if New Hampshire reduced its CO2 emission to zero, the savings would be wiped out in 13 days by China’s growth.
I pointed out that had the task force been serious about reducing CO2 emissions, they would focus on providing assistance to China to make more efficient power plants, and use the opportunity to reduce soot and SO2 emissions too.
The task force’s attention was on conservation and I recommended that they should make conservation their focus instead of riding on AGW’s coattails.
As expected, my input (and Joe D’Aleo’s) changed not a word in the final report. Whether my comments resonated with anyone is unclear. The task force has morphed into a public/private group that occasionally meets to talk about their conservation activities and the savings and expenses therein. Stonyfield Yogurt saves something like $8,000,000 per year thanks to intelligent use of solar and a mainly through a digester that takes waste product and make methane for process heat.