As industries in green nations like Germany struggle with unaffordable green energy, China is boosting coal use.
China is pumping out carbon emissions as if COVID never happened. That’s bad news for the climate crisis
Published: July 10, 2023 6.05am AEST
David Stern, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Khalid Ahmed, Australian National University
Carbon emissions from China are growing faster now than before COVID-19 struck, data show, dashing hopes the pandemic may have put the world’s most polluting nation on a new emissions trajectory.
We compared emissions in China over the first four months of 2019 – before the pandemic – and 2023. Emissions rose 10% between the two periods, despite the pandemic and China’s faltering economic recovery. Power generation and industry are driving the increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, China has pledged to ensure carbon emissions peak by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2060. Our analysis suggests China may struggle to reach these ambitious goals.
Many believed the economic recovery from COVID would steer global development towards a less carbon-intensive footing. But China’s new path seems to be less sustainable than before. That’s bad news for global efforts to tackle climate change.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/china-is-pumping-out-carbon-emissions-as-if-covid-never-happened-thats-bad-news-for-the-climate-crisis-207933
I admit I didn’t foresee this, I thought China’s economy is in so much trouble emissions would be stagnant.
But in retrospect the reason for this growth in emissions is obvious.
Last Summer China experienced a drought so severe one of their largest waterways, the Yangtze River, completely dried up. They also experienced severe power shortages because they had to shut down much of their hydroelectric capacity.
Given China has experienced multiple severe droughts and floods in recent years, it makes complete sense for China to amp up coal burning, to reduce their reliance on hydroelectricity.
The funniest part of this, a renaissance of coal worldwide is exactly what would happen if all the alarmist predicted climate weather disasters actually occurred.
If a superstorm smashes your solar array, or tears up your wind turbines, or if torrential floods or severe droughts wreck your hydro capacity, weather resistant coal and gas would be your only option.
Renewables are a total waste of effort, even if we accept all the absurd global warming disaster predictions we’ve seen over the years.
If China saw extreme conditions, and extreme conditions are predicted, is China actually seeing climate change? Alarmists would certainly like you to believe this, but there is a problem with this hypothesis. Every time the Yangtze dries up, it reveals countless inscriptions written by people who endured previous severe droughts, like the inscription below which was written in the year 1086.
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Story tip:
I was watching France24 News a couple of days ago and a strapline said “China to stop providing anymore Rare Earth Minerals”. I have not been able to verify this anywhere else. (Do China not own or control 80% of these mines?).
Just think of the consequences, for the UK alone, who have thrown every egg (and the kitchen sink) into the Green Energy scam and the UK government seem to want to prove to the rest of the world ‘they’ are the greenest nation on Earth! From AD2030 they have banned the sale of any ICE vehicles relying on the expected ‘explosion’ (!!) of sales in EVs, although, as of today, sales are rather flat. Who wants to buy an EV when a small collision can result in your relatively new car being written off?! The additional safety provisions required by garages who repair these EVs is immense (and very costly). I believe they must leave a 15m radius from any other vehicle meaning only 1 or 2, in most garages, can be worked on (where they may have, normally, around 8 ICE cars).
NO easily available and affordable rare earth minerals will, in my mind, mean people can only buy from China. A very tight hold of the world’s gools!
as well as lithium
Rare earths are abundant in Canada, US, Australia, Africa, etc. China unfortunately dumped the metals on the market at low prices to be the go-to place for windmills. Actually Canada has very large resources of rare earths.
They occur in large ferro-carbonatite intrusions. There is a chain of these igneous bodies that extends from souther Quebec northwestward to northern Ontario. One of them is a mountain known as Mount Royal (Québecois French = Montréal – the City of). There are multi-billions of tons of this stuff running around 1.0% total REE (see GeoMega Resources as an example). Good values in niobium and phosphate fertilizer as byproducts.
China bought the world’s largest hardrock lithium mine in Australia. They aren’t rich in lithium in China. Once again, Canada has large resources of lithium, several of them under development. Chile has the world’s largest developed resources, and Ecuador and Argentina have huge Li resources, in the three countries all as LiCl in salt brines in the ‘Altoplano’ deserts of these countries.
DRC Congo has the world’s largest known hardrock Li deposits (Manono and Kitolo), each deposit ~5km long and about 300m wide containing several billions of tons of ore running 1.5%+ Li20. These await development. Minas Gerais, Brazil has had small artisanal production production but they have large resource potential that is beginning serious development. Even Europe (Sweden, Finland, Portugal Spain, Slovakia) have resources.
Yes Gary, canada has an immense variety of resources.
But we have a mentally retarded Prime Minister, and well basically the whole govt.
I have an industry friend who is associated with a company proposing a copper mine in BC.
The very governments that say the world is ending and we must accelerated renewables and the transition, BC and Canada, denied the permit and sent them back to the drawing board.
It was initially proposed in 2009.
So yes Gary, no help coming from here.
Because retards.
Trudeau is a clinical Narcissist. Anyone who has had the profound misfortune to tangle with such will know that they have no conscience no shame and will not take responsibility for anything they do.
WTF were you doing, Canada, electing someone with a clear severe personality disorder (NZ too – my wife is a Kiwi and has sworn she will never go back {we’re in the UK})
Report on NetZero from our UK NetZero Watch
https://www.netzerowatch.com/britains-electric-car-strategy-is-doomed-to-failure/
“Turning to the raw materials needed to produce batteries, Kelly claims: “If we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, and assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials:
FUBAR doesn’t even describe this act of self harm.
PDF to full report included in link above. Same for these related articles
https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/net-zero-every-urban-street-and-front-drive-will-be-dug-up/
https://www.netzerowatch.com/new-paper-decarbonisation-plans-fail-engineering-reality-check/
https://www.netzerowatch.com/gwpf-welcomes-recognition-public-has-been-misled-over-net-zero-costs/
“The report, from the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, says that bills may run to an average of £18,000 per property, with the cost of heat pumps to be added, but without even considering the costs of installation larger radiators that will be required in most homes.”
Those numbers for the volumes required were first published by Prof Richard Herrington, Head of Earth Sciences at the UK Natural History Museum in a paper in Nature Reviews entitled ‘Mining our green future’
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021-00325-9
China Restricts Exports of Two Minerals Used in High-Performance Chips
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-restricts-exports-of-two-metals-used-in-high-performance-chips-a649402b
Export controls on germanium and gallium. The US has a strategic reserve of germanium, but not gallium.
about 2 years worth
I looked this up. China produces about 60% of the worlds refined germanium, and over 90% of the worlds refined gallium. Same reason it monopolized REOs. No environmental consequences.
Lithium pegmaties (hardrock Li) generally assay 30-40 grams per metric ton of gallium but there hasn’t been much work done on extracting it. Russia extracts germanium from coal ash. Rare earths are abundant comment above:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/10/bye-bye-paris-chinese-co2-emissions-skyrocketing/#comment-3747364
somewhere in the following interview, Biden responded to the same question- he mumbled the typical politician response which wasn’t a real response but I forget what it was
Fareed Zakaria sits down with President Joe Biden
Zakaria called Biden a “great president”.
No, Biden is the Worst President Evah!
“NO easily available and affordable rare earth minerals will, in my mind, mean people can only buy from China.”
I was in the northern end of the Boulder Batholith in MT this past weekend and for the second
year in a row there was a mineral exploration helicopter flying patterns. I had to wonder
who is behind this and what do they know. I googled the tail # and couldn’t find much other
than where they are operating out of. Some LLC front. With BRICS going gold based
our financial system is creaky..
The green groups killed all mineral production years ago in this country and
have a firm grip on all resource production. With the federal judges rubber stamping
all the lawfare suits it would have to start there first. The greens via the Dems are
pushing this CO2/climate change BS and have a grip on our education system. My
personal view is that nothing will change till they totally fail..which may happen sooner
than we realize.
<blockquote>Under the Paris Agreement, China has pledged to ensure carbon emissions peak by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2060. Our analysis suggests China may struggle to reach these ambitious goals. </blockquote>
Yes that is true and till date has China deviated from this ?
China can exponentially increase its emissions and no one can fault them till 2030.
And, as they showed over democracy in Hong Kong, China always reserves the right to change its mind when the agreement actually needs to be fulfilled.
It’s a ‘wind-up‘
They taking the piss.
Congratulations on your shortest post evah
China will do what ever is best for China.
China is now using more coal than was used by the whole world just 12 years ago.
They will not be pushed around by the UN and in seven years time they will have most of the worlds heavy industry under their control .
Most of the rest of the worlds heavy industries will have relocated to Asia because of lack of affordable energy in the mad stampede to de-carbonize in western countries.
The rest of the world will rely on Chinese and Asian exports of iron and steel ,cement and thousands of exported goods that require massive energy inputs.
Hopefully, but I have serious doubts ,some sanity might have penetrated western politicians heads by then .
We all have governments that have been taken over by green leaning politicians that state that they believe that the world faces an existential threat of climate change because of rising levels of green house gasses .
I am quite sure the majority are just using climate change as a lever to control us.
In 20 years time or less when all western countries are poorer than now most people will wake up and realize that WE have been conned.
You can also bet that ” et zero” fantasy date will be “reconsidered” aka ignored/rescinded/disregarded when the 2060 target date grows near.
Such supposed “ambitions” are just there to keep the suckers in “western” nations running towards the cliff.
Although we may disagree with them on many issues, the leaders of China, India, and other third world country aren’t crazy. If they really believed that global warming was real and that global warming was the end of the world, they would be reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. In all likelihood these leaders have been advised by some really top scientists and engineers that global warming is junk science and not to take it seriously.
India’s per Capita Carbon emissions is less than 2 T. per annum compared to U.S. 15.5 T. and World average of about 5 T per Capita. Nobody should expect India to energy starve its Population.
True, but with a population 4-5 times that of the USA, the total emissions (which is what matters) are approaching similarity and probably will do in a relatively short period of time.
Why does it matter?
The Supercomputer said so – and nobody’s gonna argue with one of them are they….
If you do- a robot with AI will visit you and kick your butt.
That’s what the EMP bazooka is for…
It doesn’t.
They are already around 11 billion tons a year out of about 37 billion globally. US is around 5 billion. UK, busy saving the planet by moving to net zero, does about 450 million.
That’s what the net-zero climate scare crowed want.
The traditional move. First start out saying that its the tonnage that matters, and that tonnage has to be reduced or catastrophe. That, you will argue doubtless, is just physics (though it isn’t).
Then when it comes to looking at the largest single emitter, China, switch to saying that the important thing is per capita emissions.
(Or sometimes switch to talking about historical total emissions…)
This amounts to the argument that its only fair China and India should be able to destroy human civilization.
And it also shows that the activists using this argument cannot really believe in their catastrophism, or they would be saying that difficult and unfortunate as it may be, China has to drop its emissions and India at least freeze theirs. For the sake of life on earth.
China burns and mines more coal than the rest of the world put together. It does a third and rising of total global emissions. Anyone who seriously wants to get emissions down from the current level of about 37 billion tons a year to the supposedly safe level of single numbers of billions and who doesn’t advocate China reducing from 11 billion to around 2 billion, and India likewise, cannot be taken seriously.
I agree with a previous commenter – they don’t believe it. But they are too polite to say so. If they believed it, they would be reducing, because if it happens they will be the big losers. Food production, flooding etc. They show no signs at all of believing in it.
China’s per capita emissions have been shooting up. They overtook the UK back in 2014 and are now way above the EU and global average.
Yes, that too! They are also catching up on historical emissions, which was the other great excuse why it was only fair they should carry on destroying the planet.
The other two excuses I’ve heard were, but they are investing so much in wind and solar. So what? Again, its future gross emissions that count. And also, but they are only doing it to make goods for export. Again, so what? Do the climatists advocate banning imports from China? Of course not.
Its really weird. People claiming to believe that human emissions threaten civilization going through all kinds of elaborate contortions to make excuses for the world’s biggest emitter and why it should carry on increasing them.
When, if they really believed what they keep saying, they should think that Chinese emissions alone will doom us all and be demonstrating outside Chinese embassies all over the world.
Per capita = meaningless. The west shouldn’t be trying to starve its population either, which is exactly what “net zero” idiocy will do.
Or, they may have concluded that it’s possibly a long term problem but not nearly as important as their short term problems. I bet the Chinese scientists are in line with Stephen Koonin, that climate change is something to be aware of but nothing to panic over, as demanded by Doctor of Theology Thunberg.
Remember when it was Marxist science that was clouded with ideology? Nazism rejected “Jewish” science and Soviet ideals gave us Lysenkoism, for example Now it’s Western science that is tainted by Marxism.
China is doing and will continue to do what it believes is best for China (that is, what is best for the CCP, the Peoples Liberation Army and other elites). The Chinese leadership wants to continue to be in power and they also want China to take what they believe is China’s rightful place as the world’s dominant superpower.
“If they really believed that global warming was real and that global warming was the end of the world”
And our elites wouldn’t buy $12 million beachfront houses like Obama or spend their days bopping around on private planes like Kerry. And they would be clamoring for nuclear power.
As Blogfather says: “I will believe that it is a crisis when they act like it is a crisis”.
The only means to cope with the predicted climate change is adaptation.
There is no way that mitigation can be agreed between all the world’s nations. After 27 COPs where it was agreed that China and India do not need to take mitigation actions yet, that is clearly the consensus positon.
So how do we adapt?
Flood defences and reservoirs (concrete and steel).
Transport infrastructure to move resources as required (cheap diesel and steel).
Air conditoning and water pumps (cheap electricity e.g. coal).
So Green Activists need to start taking Climate Change seriously and get out there campaigning for more investment in concrete, oil, steel and coal.
“The only means to cope with the predicted climate change is adaptation.”
We always need to be prepared for harmful weather events- but I think most people active here don’t believe the predictions so no adaptation is necessary beyond what’s common sense for the typical bad weather events that have always been with us.
“Bye Bye Paris”
Hello UK.
NB. That is not paraphrasing an occupant of a small boat bound from France to England
Well if Labour get in, I’m sure somebody will suggest a bridge so it’s easier for them to get across.
There already is a tunnel.
And somebody tried walking along it from France once. Just the once though.
China’s emissions will continue to increase as it builds capacity to be the world’s only producer of nearly all power production including wind and solar. This will strangle all other countries during any crisis and put China as the world’s leader in manufacturing. This is no sign that they care on iota about the climate. They will also only export devices containing rare earth elements as this is now the maximize the value of a scarce resource. Nothing unusual here, just normal maximization of the value of a resource.
no surprise here – Chinese are not stupid and have not been infected with the green energy religion – just amazing how easily western people and their leaders are so easily fooled by the latest hoax –
Not so much “amazing” as it is “disappointing.”
I am horrified by how the reputation of science is being destroyed. At least some of the physicists are starting to speak up, but “scientist” is rapidly becoming a pejorative.
Not amazing at all = they’re in demented/drunken stupor
So far, ZERO change in average global temperature over the last 8 years 10 months, despite substantial increases in human-originated CO2 emissions over that time period (see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/05/the-new-pause-remains-at-8-years-10-months/ ).
Meanwhile, Earth continues “greening” as a direct result of atmospheric CO2 concentration increasing from about 280 ppm around 220 years ago to the current level of about 420 ppm (see https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth and this more-recent update https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/earth-getting-greener-nasa-s-new-maps-confirm-69361 ).
Bring on more CO2 . . . humans need plentiful, healthy plants!
“Bring on more CO2 . . . humans need plentiful, healthy plants!”
My lawn, garden and trees have never done so well as this warm, wet summer here in Woke-achusetts. It sometimes seems they’re gonna take over the planet with their fast growth. 🙂
Nice pic . . . although some might claim that’s a distorted view of Earth’s climate 😉
got a million of them- this one proves the Earth is greening!
Here in the evil empire to your south, the ‘state’ seems to have abrogated its role to manage vegetation along its roads to the point where it looks like a remake of ‘Life After People’.
CT?
Yup.
I believe CT is following, servant like, all of MA climate policies. MA is pretty good with roadside mt.- not sure why. There’s a lot of road and bridge work going on now- some of it looks unnecessary.
Careful what you wish for, in prabability it was caused by a late spring and the smoke/nutrients/ash coming from a wildfire somewhere that caused that
Or fallout from a dust storm – been getting a few of them in Texas eh not?
Check your links – you linked to a ‘prediction’
Where are pictures of trees on the ground – apart from maybe Mesquite growing on desertified, destroyed and abandoned farms on the Sahel?
Check your reading comprehension.
None of the links I provide in my OP above are “predictions”. They each reference observations over stated time periods.
And, pray tell, how would some “pictures of trees on the ground” be meaningful in any way to the larger context of this conversational thread?
But China PROMISES that some time, in the future, they will start limiting their emissions. That’s all we need to know.
Of course they do, (most) everyone knows that at present rate of consumption they will completely run out of their domestic coal by year= 2060
Apart, of course, from that which future exploration will uncover…
And not to mention imports of coal.
Australia has some of the largest coal resources in the world, lots of room and a small population. China has long been investing heavily in the country and might possibly claim it as a new Chinese province someday.
I don’t think China has agreed to anything other than to review their position in 2030. I don’t think they have agreed to limit anything yet. Unless they have changed the deal since Paris.
When we get to 2030, China’s leaders will simply deliver the Darth Vader speech – “I have changed the deal. Pray I do not change it further.”
As the UNFCCC itself reminds us on its “NDC Registry” webpage :
Direct URL : https://unfccc.int/NDCREG
At the bottom of that page you can select “Party = China” from the appropriate menu, hen clicking on the “Apply” button will (eventually, their server isn’t very powerful …) give you access to the latest NDC from China, in both Mandarin and English (as an imperialist running-dog I chose the latter, obviously).
This document details exactly what China has … and has not … “agreed to”.
Their “Latest / Active” NDC is dated 28/10/2021, and includes the following recap of the evolution of their NDC “since Paris” (on page 2 / “Page 8 of 62” in my PDF file reader application, bold text as in the original) :
Our “Leaders” are so gullible.
Trump had it half right calling it “a Chinese conspiracy”. The Chinese aren’t smart enough to put together a conspiracy this big, but the Chinese aren’t stupid enough to pass up an obvious opportunity, no matter where it came from.
They have the longest continuous culture on the planet. They always play the long game. Same for Japan. I once read in a book about the Japanese economy, that one of their car companies has a 250 year company plan!
A 250 year company plan? Their faith in politicians not messing it up between now and than is naive in the extreme.
Let’s not underestimate China.
I’m not saying they created this conspiracy, it’s an entirely self-inflicted problem with many fathers (Oops, non-childbearing persons). In fact, it’s not a conspiracy, but multiple conspiracies with many different players, if conspiracy is the right word.
No conspiracy required. Just various groups and factions pursuing their own self-interest.
I would doubt that the Yangtze river “completely” dried up but I suppose that this language perhaps was not meant to be quantitative.
CHINA Economy Crashes in June as Downturn Accelerates, 0% Inflation & Business Confidence Falls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzvWkfMyEJU
A drinking buddy describes the real Xi Jinping and why Taiwan war is imminent
Define “imminent.” This year, next year, within 5 years?
Xi’s drinking buddy is convinced Xi will attack in 2-3 years.
From article:”…4 chi below the fish…”
A chi is slightly over a foot in length. I found 13.X and 14.X.
Perhaps the Mandarins understand something that the West does not. Nobody can predict the future in real terms. Imposing policies that supposedly will alleviate fantastical problems far into the future will be an expense that those in decades to come may not wish to meet. The present generation won’t be around to enforce their solutions. In fact, that might be the crux of the situation. The octogenarians attempting to rule the world know that they won’t be alive to answer for their hubris. Attempting to solve non-existent problems when real issues are present could be considered a form of insanity. Addressing climate change, a genuine fallacy, is a stalking horse for other things.
China’s goal of peak CO2 by 2030 (or a bit later) may be possible because the population appears to have peaked and is now on a slight downward trend with an aging flavor. Also, the country is aggressively building nuclear facilities — report by Bloomberg (2021) claims China is planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35.
There will be less intensive CO2 producing industries as sourcing of goods by the ROW moves to other countries.
In Japan, I heard that they sell more adult diapers than baby diapers.
In China, I think we’ll see more youth in Asia.
I see what you did there. 😉
China’s supposed “agreement” or “commitment” to “peak” its emissions by 2030 is nothing more than an empty promise, cynically rooted in their zeal to encourage “western” nations to continue running towards the cliff.
As the “deadline” grows near, some official statement about the “priorities” of their economy vs. “climate goals” will be spouted, accompanied by a move of the goal posts. Rinse and repeat.
Ditto for the “net zero” target.
Well of course. China needs the coal based energy to manufacture the solar cells and refine the REOs for wind turbines that they sell to Germany and the UK to reduce CO2 emissions. Sort of a win/win. /S
Out of sight out of mind for most people.
Chemically, it’s amazing that a lot of chemical energy is required to reduce silica to silicon but silicon is stable afterward even though it contains this internal potential energy. I suppose this makes it a good semiconductor.
It’s similar to aluminum in the respect that a thin layer of oxide prevents additional attack.
Did anyone honestly believe Whinnie The Xi was going to do any of this stupidity being pushed by a bunch round-eye Luddites? Seriously?
There would be some advantages to China leading the world, affordable, reliable energy security being one of them
Hence the massive build-out of coal-fired power plants.
Unfortunately, my extension cord doesn’t quite reach Beijing.
I don’t think you really want to link China and security. China as world leader would provoke a general feeling of insecurity.
1086 is appropriately the year when they compiled the Domesday Book.
Luckily, the beneficial effect of CO2 vastly outweighs its harmful effects, making plants grow bigger faster and resist drought. https://journals.ashs.org/jashs/view/journals/jashs/133/5/article-p631.xml
More effect on C3 plants than on C4, though.
USN submarines do not take measures until CO2 reaches 8,000 ppm. And since its GHG effect declines exponentially and we are in the fifth half-life of that decline, the next doubling to 800 ppm will increase its GHG effect by around 3%, greatly outweighed by the other 8 major forcings which exert their vector effect.
From the bold top line: “bad news for the climate crisis” The remainder of the story rests on that vacuous assertion. Obviously, China and India do not ascribe to bed-wetting western climate fears.
Everything China is doing is perfectly consistent with Paris.
If you knew you could only build reliable energy generation until 2030, wouldn’t you try to build as much of it as quickly as you could before 2030?
Then they have 20 years to watch others fail to reach their laughable “Net Zero 2050” targets, and in 2050 say “We were going to do it over the next 10 years, but you didn’t do it, so how could / why should we?”
Western nations need to stop being so stupid. There is no climate crisis, CO2 is not the control knob for earth’s climate, we are not going to reach a tipping point and suffer irreversible global warming. All of the trillions of dollars pissed away in the name of lowering CO2 levels have achieved exactly nothing. CO2 levels have continued to climb in spite of the fortunes wasted on this nonsense.
And to take a step back, a warmer climate is BETTER. So why all the gnashing of teeth about it?!
A retreat to Little Ice Age climate that they seem to revere as some kind of utopia any departure from which will be “bad” WOULD be a catastrophe. Today’s climate is far better for life on this planet, including humanity.
One of the reasons coal is so cheap and such an attractive fuel for nations like China is that the Western nations have stopped using it. The law of supply and demand is just about the only economic rule that you can count on. If we use less, the price goes down, and so others use more and the market rebalances.
We are literally paying more for our energy so China and India can have cheaper energy. The net effect on global CO2 emissions? Unclear, but probably not far from zero. The effect on our security and prosperity? A disaster.