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Posted on 12/02/2016 5:57:22 AM PST by IBD editorial writer
Climate Change: Even as China is busy blasting Donald Trump for not taking global warming seriously it's ramping up coal production and throwing its promised CO2 reductions out the window. Hopefully, Trump won't be as easily fooled by China's duplicity as President Obama.
At a meeting of environmental officials earlier this month in Marrakech, Morocco, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin lectured Trump about the importance of climate change.
Just a few days later, the New York Times reported that "China is scrambling to mine and burn more coal," and Fortune reported that the country is currently building $500 billion worth of new coal plants.
According to other accounts, China has authorized coal mines to boost production by 1 million tons per day, as it tries to stimulate economic growth. Bloomberg reported earlier in the month that China's five-year plan calls for a 19% increase in coal-fired generating capacity. The International Energy Agency, which had been praising China's alleged decarbonization efforts, now says this "transient spike" in coal use could go on for years.
This will, the Times notes, "make it harder for China and the world to meet emissions targets." That's because China is already the world's largest producer of CO2 emissions, and any increase it makes can easily swamp reductions made by other countries
Shanghai banker Brock Silvers said it best, when he told the Times that "I get a kick out of people in the West who think China is decarbonizing, because I see no sign of it whatsoever."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Anyone who believes CO2 is a pollutant should permanently tie a plastic bag over their head.
No hopefully about it. You can bank on it. The same goes for the entire global warming scam.
That’s a great idea. I think I’ll mention that the next time I encounter a liberal. LOL
He's not at all fooled by anyone; his hatred for America flows from within.
China has ongoing coal seam fires that produce as much CO2 as the US fleet of cars and light duty trucks.
That will just prove it’s deadly.
Mention trees.
Anyone who believes CO2 is a pollutant should permanently tie a plastic bag over their head.
Ban Breathing!
One important detail. And it is very important.
If the US increased its CO2 production, even radically, it would still have strict controls over other gases, that most definitely are poisonous.
China does not do this.
Already for months at a time, the air in Beijing is unbreathable, far worse than American smog in the 1960s, and more like the toxic fogs produced in December in London in 1952, killing 4,000 immediately, with a delayed death rate of 12,000 that lasted until the next summer.
So yeah, China is about to kill a lot more of its people.
China is the USA’s toilet.
WSJ had a story yesterday that China was cutting coal production by some massive amount.
I was curious about this claim, so I did a bit of Googling.
This is difficult to substantiate, because the estimates vary so widely:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/fire-in-the-hole-77895126/
Estimates vary, but some scientists believe that anywhere from 20 million to 200 million tons burn there each year, producing as much carbon dioxide as about 1 percent of the total carbon dioxide from fossil fuels burned on earth.
With an order of magnitude between the high and low estimates, it's hard to pin it down. But, let's go with the high estimate, which says it produces about 1% of the total CO2.
Per the EPA, cars and light trucks in the US account for 56% of US transportation emissions of CO2 equivalent: https://climate.dot.gov/about/transportations-role/overview.html
US transportation accounts for 26% of CO2 equivalent US emissions: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
The US accounts for 14.95% of CO2 emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
One caution: the EPA data is CO2 equivalent -- meaning that other greenhouse gases were converted to the relative effect of CO2. But, the data from the EDGAR database (cited in the Wikipedia article) is CO2 only.
But, if we do the math with what we have: 56% of 26% is 14.56%. 14.56% of 14.95% is 2.177%.
So, the estimate of Chinese coal fire emissions could double above the largest estimate, and still be less than US cars and light trucks.
Sorry, but your claim (or whoever made it) doesn't hold up under scrutiny, unless it uses different data. The estimate I cited above is from 2005, but I wasn't able to find a more recent estimate.
That doesn't mean that it's not a problem -- just that you should be using a different metric for comparison. For instance, if you were to use only cars or light trucks (they generate a comparable amount of CO2 in the US), either alone would be comparable to the high estimate for China's coal seam fires.
Wouldn't it be great if the new EPA head declared noxious discharges from the MSM to be hazardous to mental health and started regulating them? Heh heh.
I found this even more interesting that the calculation of the CO2 statistic:
"Much of the landscape of the American West— its mesas and escarpments—is the result of vast, ancient coal fires. Those conflagrations formed “clinker”—a hard mass of fused stony matter. Surfaces formed in this way resist erosion far better than adjacent unfired ones, leaving clinker outcrops."
Yes, I found some interesting surprises, like the oldest known coal fire in Australia:
It's estimated to have been burning for 6000 years, and was thought to be volcanic in origin until the early 1800's.
It was mentioned in the Smithsonian article, so I'm sure you saw it. I had never heard of it until now.
They’re still communists and will let their people drop dead.
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Thanks for the ping!
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