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Guest essay by David Archibald
While in Beijing early this year US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that China and the US, the world’s largest emitters of such gases, had agreed to intensify information-sharing and policy discussions on their plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions after 2020. A few days later in Indonesia, he warned Indonesians that man-made climate change could threaten their entire way of life, deriding those who doubted the existence of “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction””. Last week President Obama didn’t wait for policy discussions with the Chinese to be completed and announced new EPA regulations that will gut the US economy.
But what are the Chinese doing about carbon dioxide? As per a recent US naval officer’s observation on the Chinese that “Ninety per cent of their time is spent on thinking about new and interesting ways to sink our ships and shoot down our planes”, China is adopting new and interesting ways to burn more coal. China is currently burning four billion tonnes of coal per annum while the US burns one billion tonnes for power generation. The new thing they are doing is a massive investment in plants that produce synthetic natural gas from coal according to this article from Scientific American.
Being a post-modern publication, Scientific American doesn’t tell you how much coal those plants will consume. You have to calculate that from the carbon dioxide production figure which is considered to be much more important. And the result is 400 million tonnes per annum – about 40% of the coal that the US burns in power generation. All the pain and suffering the US might endure to reach the new EPA target reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 30% will be offset by this new Chinese way of burning coal.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014).
Leo Geiger says:
June 11, 2014 at 5:42 am
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Ok, lets do cumulative math with no circulation, absorption, cycling.
The Yangtze has an annual flow of around 1 trillion cubic metres per year. The Mississippi, if I have converted the US units correctly, has an annual flow of about 500 billion cubic metres per year. So, over the last 20 years, the Yangtze had contributed 10 trillion more cubic metres to sea level rise than the Mississippi. Maybe China should fund levees around New Orleans.
Just kidding, but cumulative totals are meaningless in many circumstances. We have been around that dance for quite some time. Yeah, I know, plants only use carbon from other plants or exhaled gases from plants but not from burned fuels. Odd, that, before humans industrialized, I thought there was a lot of burned fuels about along with out gassing from oceans, volcanoes and ground sources. But then, I am old and foolish.
Off to weld a repair on the bucket of my tractor. Have a great day.
arthur4563 says:
June 11, 2014 at 5:14 am
Getting an Obama apologist to froth at the mouth means that this article is on the money. Very heartening.
When AR5 was launched, I made the point about China.
China said long ago that it would take no steps before 2020. I suggested that AR5 will be scrutinesed not when it is released in 2013, but really only in 2020 when China decides whether it wants to address CO2 emissions.
If global temps have not warmed since now and 2020, one can expect to see many more papers on low climate sensitivity. As each year passes without a temp increase, climate sensitivity will be seen to be corresponding less. It is possible that AR5 will seen as a joke by 2020.
Steve P says:
June 11, 2014 at 9:55 am
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And are western governments much better. In the UK we are probably the most surveilled citizens on the planet. Far more so than was East German citizens with the Stassi.
Democracy in the west is a hollow illusion. very few people actually support the majority of the policies being foistered upon them by their elected governments Often the citizen has no choice on important issues, because all parties (or at any rate those with even the slightest prospect of victory at the poles) have nearly identical policies. .
All governments of every hue are warmongers, and that is why there was only one year last century when there was not a significant war being fought somewhere within the globe. .
To continue the above thoughts …
China will address CO2 limits ON China as soon as it is financially advantageous TO China (in the long term) to address CO2 emission limits IN China.
China will WILLINGLY address CO2 limits ON the US and Europe whenever, where ever, and every time it is financially advantageous TO China to address CO2 emission limits ON their US and European competitors in the short term, in the long term, and before the mid-term …
kramer says:
June 11, 2014 at 5:06 am
Mod added
June 11, 2014 at 5:06 am