China Likely Cut GHG Emissions In 2015 (greenpeace.org)

mdsolar writes: Economic and industrial data released [Thursday] by the Chinese government's statistical agency indicates the country's carbon emissions likely fell by around 3% — with the contraction of key heavy industry sectors and the continued expansion of renewable energies driving a wedge between total energy demand and coal use. According to the data, China's coal output fell by 3.5% in 2015, thermal power generation by 3%, coal imports by 30%, pig iron output by 4%, coking coal output by 7%, and cement by 5%. All this suggests that both power sector coal consumption and total coal consumption probably fell by more than 4%. Total oil consumption grew only 1.1% in the first eleven months, gas consumption by 3.7% while cement production (which releases CO2 directly) fell by 4.9%. This indicates a fall of 3-4% in China's fossil CO2 emissions, roughly equal to Poland's total emissions.

Comments

This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

needs to cut emissions even more. It's sad to see the Republicans preventing this from happening.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The republicans have caused this problem in China.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

This. We need to do more because they can't.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those republicans will use this as an excuse to spew out even more pollution.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

The republicans ARE pollution!

The democrats are the consequence...

Re:This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, seems the "republicans" troll who always replies to themselves got mod points and fired up a VPN so that they can mod up their own posts...

Re:This is why the US...

[WindBourne]

And yet, America's emissions CONTINUE TO FALL. While I have issues with the GOP, they are not stopping this. Interestingly, it is not really O that has caused America's major drop either. Not up till now, anyways. It is the dirt cheap nat gas that we have here that is forcing it. However, O's subsidies on WInd has allowed wind to now be cheaper than coal and in some areas is cheaper than nat gas even without the subsidy (the subsidy takes it much lower). As such, more of the utilities are looking at wind to replace coal, as opposed to new nat gas plants. Within 2 years, many utilities will want a lot more wind power, and will continue to close down their coal plants.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how those Republicans be.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rpeiblicans don't even need an excuse to do that.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those republicans will never agree to that.

Re:This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

http://instituteforenergyresea...

Re:This is why the US...

[khallow]

It is the way of their kind.

Re: This is why the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

I love reading a comments like these, trying to blame Republicans for everything. Even better when the comments are marked as insightful. It's always obvious when someone really does known anyone who is a true conservative too. Go head call me troll and mark me to oblivion.

Facts are still facts. My wife and I will continue to teach our kids to think for themselves, ignore the haters, and to always do the right thing even when no one is around to see them do it.

Re:This is why the US...

[Plumpaquatsch]

And yet, America's emissions CONTINUE TO FALL.

False.

The chinese are in a great economic recession

[NotInHere]

They aren't the workbench of the world anymore -- there are cheaper countries for these tasks. Yes, its still full of industry, but the trend is towards salary raises and therefore higher cost which means less competitiveness on the international market.

Also, china has created an artificial bubble in the aftermath of the 2007 crash, which is now, slowly, collapsing. There had been a big real estate bubble as well, which collapsed too.

The shrinking economy then leads to less emissions. Its good that they can indeed cut their emissions, but it would be greater if they could continue to do it with their economy growing.

Re:The chinese are in a great economic recession

[WindBourne]

and yet, all CHina needs to do, which they are doing, is manipulate their money relative to the west to keep their COG cheaper than ours.

Re:The chinese are in a great economic recession

[arglebargle_xiv]

The shrinking economy then leads to less emissions. Its good that they can indeed cut their emissions, but it would be greater if they could continue to do it with their economy growing.

The phrase "cut their emissions" implies they took some sort of positive action to deal with their environmental problems, when in fact all that happened is that they manufactured less and so spewed less pollution. As soon as things recover, so will the emissions. So a more accurate characterisation would be "The Chinese recession caused emissions to drop. As soon as things recover, [Austrian]they'll be back[/Austrian]".

Re:The chinese are in a great economic recession

[Gadget_Guy]

The phrase "cut their emissions" implies they took some sort of positive action to deal with their environmental problems, when in fact all that happened is that they manufactured less and so spewed less pollution.

You didn't even read the article or even the summary before blathering out that nonsense. From TFA:

"Booming renewable energy generation - China was able to reduce fossil fuel fired power generation by 3% while overall power demand increased 0.5% by adding 30GW of wind power and 17GW of solar capacity, a new world record for any country ever."

In what universe does adding "a new world record for any country" amount of renewable energy sources equates to them not taking any positive action to deal with their environmental problem? Perhaps you should do some research rather than just spouting the party line.

Re:The chinese are in a great economic recession

[jandersen]

...it would be greater if they could continue to do it with their economy growing.

From what I hear and read, China are very active in the development of environmentally friendly technologies, and according to some are amongst the world leaders in this area. This makes sense, of course - when your economy has been growing rapidly, and pollution levels are unsustainable, your mind focuses naturally on solving that problem. It could be that their slowdown allows them to catch up technologically and improve their industry, so that they are able to continue to cut emissions when their economy recovers.

Re:The chinese are in a great economic recession

[MrL0G1C]

WTF? Their economy is still growing by about 6-8% it's just not growing as fast as before, no surprise for a maturing economy.

Re:The chinese are in a great economic recession

[DNS-and-BIND]

Recession? Are you kidding? They're growing at a rate of 6.5% per year! That is red-hot in any other country! Jeez. Where do you get your news, the BBC?

And not the workbench of the world! WTF! Have you even been to a trade show recently? There are whole sectors of products where the only real suppliers are Chinese. Wake up, jeez how do people get so ignorant?

Recessions will do that

[Anonymous Coward]

China has been in a major economic recession

Call us when China's economy recovers.

It'll probably be faster than the US economy hasn't. I wonder why....

Re:Recessions will do that

[Gadget_Guy]

Any time that someone links to a Google search as evidence of anything you know that what they are saying is most likely going to be wrong. I don't know what results were coming up in other regions for that search, but for me I get a first result that says that says that only the industrial goods-producing sector of the Chinese economy is in recession, and that "the domestic-oriented service sector is likely to keep growing at low, double-digit rates -- and that should result in real GDP growth of 4 percent to 5 percent". A growth of GDP means that they are not currently in recession.

The next result speculates on a future recession in China, and that "Fears of a sharp slowdown in China's economy ... has rattled global markets in recent months". It later says "while a global recession is not yet reflected in Citi's benchmark forecasts for global or Chinese growth in 2016, it is a view that has gained ground within Citi's global economics team". Once again, speculation and fears of what will happen in the future is not evidence that they are in recession now, and it is not even an immediate prediction that there will be one.

For a more up-to-date quote from the same person at Citigroup, the "in the news" part of the search results had this new article that said "Citi held its growth outlook for China in 2016, but cut it by 0.2 percentage points to 6.0 percent in 2017". That is a forecast of two years of positive growth, a far cry from the technical indicator of a recession of two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

China's rate of growth is definitely declining, that is not the same as saying that their growth is actually negative. They may be heading for it at some stage, but not yet. If their economy is moving from a goods producing industry to service providing one then that will have a positive impact on their greenhouse gas emissions. That does not mean that this reduction of emissions is unsustainable, nor that there is any need to "call you later".

I think that you are still looking for excuses to ignore this report so that you can still rely on the old "China pollutes so we shouldn't have to cut our GHG emissions" line.

Doubling the number of nuclear reactors works.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have currently 21 reactors being built, I believe they are mostly gen 3s. After this year only Gen 3's (or higher) will be considered for building in China.
They have a long term plan which involves building a LOT more reactors. Essentially building them as fast as they can with relative safely.

No doubt, If a good fusion design come out in the next 10 years, they will build a bunch of those as well.

--- Blair

Re:Doubling the number of nuclear reactors works.

[Anonymous Coward]

And they are paying for those reactors with the money we send them for solar panels. In a decade, their nuclear capacity additions will have generated much more power than if they'd have invested in their own solar instead. They get it.

And they will be selling nuclear plants to the rest of the world as well, while we sit back and watch.

Re:Doubling the number of nuclear reactors works.

[Anonymous Coward]

They ARE selling reactors to the rest of the world. The ACPR1000 is a pretty reasonable gen 3 reactor. They are selling them all over the place. (except to the US)

They are ALSO doing massive solar installations where it makes sense to - but yeah, most of the time nuclear is making sense, so they are ramping it up in a big way. They have massive research going into Molten Salt Reactors. Its one of the reasons I think they are "not ready yet" is that China is not shy in putting something like them in place, but haven't done so yet.

You can be sure when they are ready, they will be putting them in bulk,
and considering the problems they are having with the coal plants, this shouldn't surprise anyone.

--- Blair

Re:Doubling the number of nuclear reactors works.

[MrL0G1C]

And while they spend the next decade building those, last year they installed 17 to 22GW of solar power, and they will likely be building another 100GW+ in the next 5 years dwarfing nuclear builds. 5 Years from now when solar has halved in cost again, nuclear will look like a pointless mistake.

Re:Doubling the number of nuclear reactors works.

[nojayuk]

Question -- when you say the Chinese have installed "installed 17 to 22GW of solar power" in 2015 does that mean the installations will produce an average of 17 to 22GW of power or do you mean the solar plants have that maximum capacity but will only deliver a fraction of that amount of electricity over the period of a year, day and night?

The nuclear reactors China is building and planning to build will operate with an uptime of about 90% or so, so the six (by my count) 1GW reactors they brought into operation in 2015 will produce an average of 5.5GW day and night, rain and shine. The twenty or so reactors under construction will add another 15GW or so of similarly reliable power over the next few years.

The bad news is that the Chinese are going to keep building new coal power plants, more efficient and less polluting than the older plants being decommissioned or retrofitted because they need hundreds of gigawatts of new electricity capacity to meet demand and coal is cheap and readily available (China mines about half the world's total output of coal annually) and no-one cares enough about the ongoing pollution disaster and its health effects for them to stop burning coal.

Re:Doubling the number of nuclear reactors works.

[nojayuk]

As far as I know there have not yet been any completed sales of the ACPR1000 reactor (now known as the Hualong One) outside mainland China. There has been a push by the Chinese nuclear industry for export orders and several "expressions of interest" but at the moment no-one is breaking ground on a Chinese-model reactor construction project outside China itself. I don't know of any possible buyers that have even completed the licencing process needed before starting actual construction.

Re:Doubling the number of nuclear reactors works.

[MrL0G1C]

"The bad news is that the Chinese are going to keep building new coal power plants,"

The actual news suggests otherwise, they are closing coal plants and installing wind, solar, nuclear, hydro etc. see summary - coal burning is down, not up.

As they are building more solar panel factories hand over fist and with the prices of panels becoming ever cheaper, I expect the installation of solar panels to continue growing exponentially. Nuclear OTOH is poor value for money and accident prone.

Not really a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Slashdot linking to terrorist organizations now? Look, it's in nobody's interest to harm the planet that's essential for our survival. But that make it okay to use any means necessary. Greenpeace's methods are atrocious and are often eco-terrorism.

Any reduction in GHGs from China seems to be due to their economic slowdown and not a real effort to curb emissions. If their economy rebounds, GHGs will go back up. If the goal is to reduce GHGs, this isn't a victory. China hasn't changed, but their economy has temporarily slowed.

Besides, the evidence for GHGs as pollutants is tenuous at best. There is already enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to essentially make its spectra opaque to outgoing radiation. Adding more carbon dioxide won't make something that's already opaque even more opaque. The predictions of rapidly increasing temperatures haven't verified and global average temperatures have only risen slightly. This is probably due to the sun being particularly bright in the past several decades and the time delay in heating the deep oceans. GHGs probably aren't causing much warming at all, with the sun being the real culprit. The slowing of global warming since 1998 can be explained quite well by the fact that the sun has dimmed very slightly over the past couple of decades. Even though China has decreased their GHG output, there isn't any good reason to consider GHGs as pollutants.

Re:Not really a solution

[MightyMartian]

I love these Heartland AC's using words like "opaque" in a very word salad kind of way, and deliberately using words like "pollutant" in such a way as to confuse the conversation.

CO2 traps energy in the lower atmosphere because it absorbs radiation at one rate, but releases it at another. It's a classic heat trap problem, known to physics for a couple of centuries now. If CO2 concentrations go up, more heat (energy) is trapped, and since it is emitted at a slower rate, it gets "stuck". We've known this for over a century. There is absolutely nothing new about this, or controversial.

As to "pollutant", please define your term plainly and clearly. A molecule that can in higher concentrations due to emissions, have monumental effects on climate, sounds pretty serious, whether you use the word "pollutant" or not.

Finally, what is happening is ocean temperature rises. For now the oceans are saving the lower atmosphere and surface temperatures, but only at significant cost to the oceans themselves, as they absorb carbon as well as heat, altering ocean temperatures and pH levels.

Re:Not really a solution

[fustakrakich]

I love these Heartland AC's using words like "opaque" in a very word salad kind of way

I don't get it. What's the problem? It's perfectly cromulent, in every fashion imaginable..

What is "pollution" other than a temporary imbalance? The survivors will grow more nose hair to filter out the particles in the air, and their eyes' frequency spectrum will shift slightly towards red/infrared to "see" through the smog. What the polluters need to do is add some nicotine to the mix, and people might complain a little less, but, you know, the tobacco companies rule, that's why weed is still illegal. Prosperity awaits!

Re:Not really a solution

[sumdumass]

Finally, what is happening is ocean temperature rises. For now the oceans are saving the lower atmosphere and surface temperatures, but only at significant cost to the oceans themselves, as they absorb carbon as well as heat, altering ocean temperatures and pH levels.

What finally caused that to start happening? It seems to me if the process was always there, it wouldn't show any anomaly in the temp records. But for some reasons it supposedly just started or changed to become more intense so temperature readings showing little to no warming (recently) cannot be directly compared to temperature readings that shows warming (just a few decades ago).

I have no doubt that the oceans act as a sink for heat. I just do not understand what if anything has magically changed in the last half century or so.

Re:Not really a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Same AC here. You have been trolled. I don't much like Greenpeace and I don't think China is actively trying to reduce GHG emissions. But I sure don't believe that last paragraph that I wrote.

Of course increasing GHGs causes warming. I'm not that dumb. No doubt the CO2 is being absorbed into the oceans while the oceans also warm through their depth. This has happened before, during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, in which there were likely a couple of rapid periods of CO2 increases in the atmosphere. It's alarming that recovery from these events took roughly 150,000 years because of the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere. There were also lots of extinctions in the oceans as well as a poleward expansion of the habitats of tropical and subtropical life. That said, the extinctions were primarily in the oceans and not on land. In fact, a lot of the modern mammals that exist to the present day appeared during the PETM. Certainly the rapid warming caused shifts in habitats on land and led to migrations, but the dramatic climate change didn't cause mass extinctions like in the oceans. We definitely should curb our GHG emissions, and the impacts to the oceans are clear. But it's not clear that global warming will lead to the demise of the human species as some have suggested. It's also worth nothing that the 2 degree target for mitigating global warming is about 40% of the warming during the PETM. There are no doubt differences between the PETM and the modern world, but it's probably the best analog during Earth's history to the modern warming.

Re:Not really a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Mighty Martian is a long time Slashdot troll. Though he came late to the party, he thinks having his own name makes him superior to those who've been commenting on Slashdot before him yet never registered a name.

Re:Not really a solution

[dave420]

You might want to spend your time reading about this as opposed to posting your ignorance on slashdot... If you really cared to know the answers to your questions, you would have answered them yourself.

Go Greenpeace

[mdsolar]

The source for this is Greenpeace, one of the more fair and balanced sources of information.

Re:Go Greenpeace

[Anonymous Coward]

Great news. I'll make a whale steak to celebrate the progress.

Re:Go Greenpeace

[phantomfive]

The source for this is Greenpeace, one of the more fair and balanced sources of information.

That sentence is a perfect illustration of Poe's law.

Re:Go Greenpeace

[penguinoid]

BTW mdsolar, how are you getting along with your new friend mdnuclear? Or will you tell him to stick it where the sun don't shine?

Re:Go Greenpeace

[mdsolar]

Friended him already. Hope he'll agree it's time to close Indian Point.

Re:Go Greenpeace

[Anonymous Coward]

The star wars guy?

I still don't get why reducing guman horth growmones is a good idea.

Re:Go Greenpeace

[cfalcon]

No, it's not.

Greenpeace has assuredly done some sketchy shit to get shocking scenes. They are also undeniably highly biased. Therefore it's sarcasm because Greenpeace is very one sided. Plus, it's using the Fox news "Fair and Balanced", which means that the poster is mocking Fox as well as Greenpeace.

Not an example of Poe's law.

Re:Go Greenpeace

[KGIII]

I'm reasonably sure that they're one and the same. Bare minimum, the writing style is fairly similar.

GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[mdsolar]

Yeah, China is in recession if words don't mean what they mean. http://www.wsj.com/articles/as...

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI even the Chinese government doesn't believe the official numbers.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[NotInHere]

Its enough if the steel industry has problems, melting steel needs a lot of energy. And it really has massive problems: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[mdsolar]

Right, because China's economy has to stay a 1950s replica.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[WindBourne]

mod parent up, please. Official numbers from china are worthless. Their coal numbers, their emissions, their GDP, etc are all predicated on lies.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you'll never convince the slashtard anti-America crowd. I expect you'll be down modded for pointing out a truth that is inconvenient for them.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[Gavagai80]

Certainly the official numbers can't be trusted... however, from your search results: "He estimates the true GDP number is likely 1% to 2% growth." So probably still not a recession.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[AmiMoJo]

Fortunately emissions figures are easily confirmed by satellite monitoring. If these numbers were fake there would be reports of it, because they wouldn't match measurements by western satellites.

In fact, how do you think they measure emissions? They can't account for every random source of emissions in the country. They use their own satellites, combined with data from western ones, and measurements of secondary effects on vegetation etc. It's pretty much impossible to fake on this scale and get away with it.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[WindBourne]

At this time, all of the major CO2 numbers are NOT done by sat. For western data, they are done by ground monitoring combined with data from govs. OTOH, 3rd world nation numbers, and sadly, China lumps themselves as 3rd world on this, are done by estimates based on data that gov. give up. China specifically forbids ANY physical monitoring.

Now, there are 2 sats above the globe measuring CO2. One is from Japan but has very poor resolution. The second is OCO-2. That is the one that showed that China was so far off, that China was forced to recently increase their coal numbers by 17% for the last decade. And it STILL does not match up with what OCO-2 sat is showing.

The problem is that ppl are IGNORING this because they want to give a pass to China and claim that America is the one that has done all of the pollution. Yet, CO2 is CUMULATIVE. And America did not really start up until 1850. Prior to that, it was Europe AND CHINA that did all of the pollution. ANd both areas did such heavy coal mining that there is ZERO chance that AMerica could touch them. In fact, from 1850 until 1980, Europe was ahead of America in CO2 emissions. It was only after 1980 that they started to cut back and America moved off nukes towards heavy coal. So, America has really less than 25 years of heavy CO2 growth (1980 - 2007). OTOH, CHina has 35 years of heavy CO2 growth and esp for the last 15 years. They have opened 1 new GW coal plant EVERY 3-5 days. Now, they are opening them at the rate of 1 new GW every 7-10 days, and will do so for the next 15 years.

This means that even with decent sat monitoring that we will lose since CHina's emissions growth is faster than what the west can shut down at. Even if America cut to zero TODAY, China will exceed it in 5-7 years.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[amorsen]

Do you seriously believe this stuff?

You are complaining about CO2 emissions before 1850! They were so close to nil that cumulatively, we can just ignore them. The world emitted more fossil CO2 last year than it did in the entirety of human history before 1850.

In fact, from 1850 until 1980, Europe was ahead of America in CO2 emissions.

There are more than twice as many people in Europe as in the US. You would certainly expect Europe to be far ahead of the US in CO2 emissions.

It was terribly tempting to just mod you troll. Perhaps someone else can come along and do it.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[OEasygoDiodoB]

It is incredible that people actually try to claim that China's emissions are worse than the US's. Cumulative emissions for the countries are about the same. China has what, four times more people? Their per capita emissions are about one third of those in the US; and let's be serious, half of that goes to making crap to export to America. You're criticizing the greedy Chinese for wanting to heat their tiny homes and drive a motor bike to work, but you think Americans are somehow entitled to drive their SUVs to work (alone) from their McMansions in the suburbs, and fly some place nice on vacation twice per year. GET REAL.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey loser, sorry I mean WindBourne.
Last time I checked CO2 is a gas that has a tendency not to dwell in particular vicinity to pose for the OCO-2 flyby.
It's also particularly challenging to prove source after "the last decade".
Not to mention OCO-2 was launched in 2010, the time time machine technology was developed just after OCO-2.
OCO-2 is also merely an experimental platform, testing the accuracy of immature data correlations algorithms.

Next time Elon tell you to swallow, just don't look like you actually enjoy it.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[Plumpaquatsch]

Right, because China's economy has to stay a 1950s replica.

Well, the US exported its production capacity there for that reason.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[WindBourne]

No. The vast majority of any nation's CO2 is NOT from ppl. It is from businesses, and are decisions made by businesses. Hell, you even claim that more than 1/2 of this is for exports to America (which is another lie, but hey, you seem to want to buy that crap).

The fact is, that China is not only the top emitter (double what America currently emits), BUT, they are one of the worst 3 for emissions / $GDP, which is the real issue.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[WindBourne]

population size has NOTHING to do with emissions. Secondly, emissions prior to 1850 certainly were NOT 0. They are much higher due to Europe and China burning loads of coal for millenniums. Both places used up more than 1/2 of their coal.

OTOH, emissions are MOSTLY tied to $GDP. IOW, it is the business world, along with choices by the businesses and govs, that decide how and where CO2 comes from. As such, Europe and America are actually pretty close in emissions / $ GDP. OTOH, China is one of the worst 3 nations in the world, and that is based even on their false data. With real data, it is certainly the worst.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[amorsen]

So, because Europe and the US are richer, we have the right to pollute more. We are not as bad as China, because although we pollute more, we also enjoy life more.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[WindBourne]

Quite the opposite. We pollute far far less than China. China accounts for more than 2/3 of all mercury emissions. they also account for more than 30% of emissions using estimates. With . In addition, their CO2 / $GDP is in the bottom 3.
America accounts for less than 14% of total co2 emissions, with our co2 / $GDP in the middle range. In addition, our co2 continues to drop.
Europe has around 13% of total CO2, with their CO2 / $ GDP just a bit better than America's.

So, no.

Re:GDP Grew 6.9% in 2015

[amorsen]

Again, you are basing this on a per country basis, not a per capita basis. If you split the US up into individual states, the pollution will the be far smaller. Split up into districts and you can practically make American pollution disappear.

Your way of calculating is fraudulent.

Hello moron.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

have you looked at the stock market recently?
Any idea of what is driving that?
If so this would not be a surprise, and this would not be proclaimed to be an achievement.

Re:Hello moron.

[phantomfive]

have you looked at the stock market recently? Any idea of what is driving that?

Mostly fear. A severe recession in China should affect the US GDP by less than .2% (and China doesn't seem to be in recession, merely their growth has slowed). Investors are keeping their holdings in cash. Watch for a stock market rebound in a month or so when companies start releasing profit reports (assuming the reports are good, of course).

Oil prices being low are good for the economy.....when you can buy things at a cheaper price, that's good. With the exception of North Dakota and a bit of Texas, the rest of the economy will benefit from that.

Re:Hello moron.

[WindBourne]

actually, others with better numbers, say that CHina IS doing around 3-5% GDP AT BEST. Jim Chanos for 1. Barrons is another.
More importantly, they expect it to be in a full recession by end of 2016.

Re:Hello moron.

[phantomfive]

actually, others with better numbers, say that CHina IS doing around 3-5% GDP AT BEST.

Which is actually growth, not a recession.

More importantly, they expect it to be in a full recession by end of 2016.

That's possible, but again, even if they go into a severe recession, we're looking at it affecting the US GDP around .1-.2%. One of the advantage of not exporting much is that the US doesn't depend on foreign economies to buy their stuff.

Re:Hello moron.

[WindBourne]

.1-.2% for American growth? Not even close. Try 2-5% with an average around high 3's.

And as to CHina's numbers, keep in mind that those that are coming up with the CHinese numbers say that it is, AT BEST, 3-5% growth. Many of those that are following CHina, say that they are already in recession.

Re:Hello moron.

[phantomfive]

You misunderstood what I was trying to say. I'll try saying it again.

If China goes into a deep recession, the effect on America will be between .1-.2% of GDP

Re:Hello moron.

[WindBourne]

ah, Fair enough.

Re:Hello moron.

[phantomfive]

PS. Getting an email with that as the subject line is a bit annoying.

Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

POTUS promised lower gasoline prices in 2012 election and he delivered. Congress sat on their hands when he mentioned gas under $2/gal at the STOU. Why? Their campaign donors market cap was shrinking. How sad that something so good for the economy is so hated by wealthy.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[NotInHere]

How sad that something so good for the economy is so hated by wealthy.

Its a property of the capitalist system to move money from those who have it to those who can use it to make more (In fact, that's the cool thing about it). Those who are wealthy who hate low gasoline prices either have to adapt and sell their companies, or suffer the consequences. The congress members should use those who profit from the low gasoline prices as campaign contributors, after all those get wealthy, don't they.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

I need a cite for this. All I can find on it is references to his mocking of the drill baby drill slogans and an old interview that Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that his plans would result in âskyrocketingâ(TM) energy prices.

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/0...

But please enlighten me with a reference I can verify.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[phantomfive]

I remember in the last debate both he and Romney were arguing about who was going to drill more oil than the other one. That's where I'd look to find such a promise.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

So otherwise no, you cannot cite anything but your mind?

Come on, if he said it, it shouldn't be too hard to find. We do not need to make crap up just to support some politician

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

In the debate, POTUS pointed out that CAFE standards were a double savings, lowering demand brings prices down and buying less fuel also saves money.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[phantomfive]

Mainly I'm just too lazy to do a search for something that you care a lot about, but I care a little about. *shrug*

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

So he didn't say he would get $2 a gallon gasoline, he just said demand would drop and prices would be lower?

I don't seem to be able to find anything on it. In fact, I seem to be only able to find a politifact article claiming some Florida politician was not telling the truth when he claimed Obama made a statement of $2.50 a gallon gas (which would have been an increase at the time) and attributed that to Newt Gingrich's statements. And this is from around 2008

http://www.politifact.com/flor...

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

No, in 2012. Debate with Romney. CAFE standards were already heading up.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

As I already said. I can find absolutely no reference to it other than you saying so and someone else thinking he remembered something. Post a link to cite or it never happened.

I did however find a little spat where Obama claimed Romney's lows gas price claim was conceivable because we would be in economic turmoil just like when Bush left office with Romney's economic plans. That seems to counter what you are saying though.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[dywolf]

hardly surprising.
you'd need a cite for the sky being blue.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

Three replied from three different people and no cite in sight. Could this be because there isn't one and this entire line of conversation is nothing more than a conversion of the truth designed to falsely give credit where none is due? I mean seriously, there are many things to give Obama credit for, we do not need to make crap up in the hopes that no one will notice. You have stooped so low that you are not even backing the original statement now, just attempting to attack the opposing side of the argument. If it really happened, a cite should be simple. If it only exists in your mind, it would explain the complete lack of references.

That says a lot more about you than it does about me. Your comment is in the same light. Lack of evidence or empirical evidence of it happening points strongly to it not happening. Your mind seems troubled or something.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[khallow]

How sad that something so good for the economy is so hated by wealthy.

You can't consider gas prices in a vacuum. They're low in large part due to economic downturns in the developing world and weak economic growth in the developed world dropping overall demand for oil while OPEC, due apparently to the usual OPEC shenanigans as well as an economic conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

While weak economic growth in the US can be partly blamed on Obama, he had nothing to do with the global effects.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

There are good reasons for low gas prices and bad ones. Seems he was being plausible there. Google turns up many debate transcripts. You should look there.

Re: Congress sat on its hands

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm absolutely sure that handing Iran a win in Iraq had no impact at all in the Middle East.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

Ok, I'm coming right out and calling you a liar on this. If it happened i could easily find reference to it and you could easily cite one. That just isn't happening so I have to ask why you insist on perpetuating this lie? Is Obama doing something so important to you that you have to lie and make shit up? Why? Can't you see that it makes your support delusional?

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

You didn't read the transcripts....

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

All lies.. Give it up man. Put up or shut up..lol

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

Gave you a citation.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

"But we've also got to continue to figure out how we have efficient energy, because ultimately that's how we're going to reduce demand, and that's what's going to keep gas prices lower." -President Obama in 2012 debate

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

So no on the 2$ gas claim then.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

What do you mean?

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

I mean your original claim was false. I cannot find it, you cannot find it, and it appears you were reading into something that you posted.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

You didn't the the SOTU?

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

Real easy to view the SOTU and see Congress sit on its hand as the good news is reported.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

It's really easy to base your claims on reality too. Perhaps until you can do that, you should walk away.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

Facts as I described them. Your relationship with reality seems strained.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[sumdumass]

No, you failed to cite your facts and quoted something that doesn't say what you pretend that it says. Give up.

Re:Congress sat on its hands

[mdsolar]

I suggest that reading comprehension is a difficulty for you.

They aren't.

[mdsolar]

SCOTUS required the EPA to consider the safety of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. They did and discovered danger. Now the emissions are regulated. Vehicles are getting better fuel efficiency and no new coal fired plants will be built. States will be reducing emissions with plans they develop. Republican Senator John McCain failed to pass Cap and Trade, but many states may opt for that to comply with the Clean Air Act.

Re:They aren't.

[WindBourne]

We need to skip the cap/trade. Instead, America really needs to put on a time-increasing tax all consumed goods based on where the worst sub-part comes from (both nations and states). If we do that, then all nations and American states will want to drop their emissions to avoid that tax.

Re:They aren't.

[cfalcon]

Nice idea, but might want to make sure it doesn't fall afoul of some WTO stuff.

Total Bullshit

[WindBourne]

If this was true, then why are the number of coal plants still going up and the amount of coal that they burn, still going up?
In addition, look at the data from OCO2. That shows that CO2 is INCREASING, NOT decreasing.

Re:Total Bullshit

[mdsolar]

Souldn't CO2 increase until emissions stop?

Re:Total Bullshit

[WindBourne]

OCO2 is measuring the levels above the cities and then past them. That is why when you look at OCO2 data, you see high emissions of CO2 directly over the entire eastern seaboard. Then you see high emissions past Japan and northerly (that is in the fall).

The OCO-2 data in Oct and Nov, clearly show an INCREASE in CO2 emissions from the CHinese eastern seaboard. That would make sense since they are still building out new 1GW coal plants at a rate of 1 every 7-10 days. It also means that loads of coal is still being burned.

Re:Total Bullshit

[mdsolar]

October and November is when leaves fall and start to decompose in the Northern Hemisphere which should be the strongest signal still.

Re:Total Bullshit

[WindBourne]

That is irrelevant. What is relevant is that China's CO2 emissions, as shown by OCO-2, from Oct/Nov of 2014 is less than Oct/Nov of 2015. IOW, CO2 emissions grew. So GHG are NOT going down. In fact, with their working on converting coal into methane, I doubt that the CHinese will bury the CO2. That is not their nature. Instead, they will simply dump it to the atmosphere.

Re:Total Bullshit

[mdsolar]

OCO-2 may help with that kind of thing, but first you need to understand rainfall and growing season temperature to figure out the much larger seasonal signal.

Re:Total Bullshit

[wvmarle]

Interestingly, here it's Greenpeace's bias that gives it more credibility to me.

Greenpeace isn't stupid, on the contrary. They're pretty smart in progressing their cause and when it comes to publicity. They have to, the organisation lives and dies with publicity and the resulting donations. They're not a mouthpiece of the Chinese government, and in general I don't think they're very supportive of the Chinese government considering its less than stellar environmental record. Yet they choose to publish this data (in favour of the Chinese government) rather than this OCO2 data (which is not in favour of the Chinese government - and which, by the way, is a name I've never heard of before).

Re:Total Bullshit

[WindBourne]

oco-2 is a nasa satellite that measures CO2 below it. It is ACCURATE in contrast to getting data from gov or estimates from a group.
What is nice about this, is that it is REAL data, and not prone to manipulation. OTOH, ALL of the govs are playing games WRT CO2. Everybody wants to hold every other nation responsible, not themselves. That is why I continue to say that we need to tax all goods based on where the worst sub-part comes from.

Re:Total Bullshit

[WindBourne]

why? the amount of CO2 that mankind puts off is SOOO much bigger than that. IOW, that will make no difference, esp. when comparing on a year to year basis.

Re:Total Bullshit

[mdsolar]

The natural seasonal swing is large. Look at the Keeling curve. Much larger that annual anthropogenic additions.

Pig iron

[manu0601]

What is "pig iron" ethymology? Wikipedia has no record about that.

Re:Pig iron

[NotInHere]

Have you read the second paragraph of the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Pig iron

[110010001000]

Pig Iron got its name because the moulds looked like suckling piglets.

Re:Pig iron

[WindBourne]

The traditional shape of the molds used for pig iron ingots was a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles[2] to a central channel or runner, resembling a litter of piglets being suckled by a sow.

Re:Pig iron

[angel'o'sphere]

Pig iron is a low quality steel with very high carbon concentration and impurities. It was once a way to mass produce iron in high quantities in relatively simple furnaces. It is meant to be later refined either into better quality steal or purer iron.

I doubt anyone on the globe is producing it in our times, the summary is likely misleading. Since the 1910s we know hoe to refine iron ore to a good quality without the need to go via "pig iron"

Polands?

[DesertNomad]

New unit of measurement.

WRONG

[WindBourne]

The source for this is the Chinese gov. They are releasing data that they see fit to release, and manipulate it like there is no tomorrow. Greenpeace was simply an organization that forwarded the Chinese data. Yet, this is the same Chinese gov that just had to come forward recently and claim that they burned 17% more coal than they had originally omitted to for the last 10 years.

Re:WRONG

[mdsolar]

They are reporting in a fair and balanced manner. If it were me, I might bring up organ harvesting or some other issues there. But I 'm biased.

Re:WRONG

[wvmarle]

Economic data is generally considered suspect - the lower level the government, the more suspect. Generally no province will report lower growth numbers than the national average. No city lower than the province. No county lower than the city. However many economists will look at power production data, rail transport data, and sea port data. Those numbers are considered sufficiently reliable, and indeed do seem to give a very accurate picture of the overall economy. They do at least correlate quite well with other information, including anecdotal evidence and the PMI (purchase manager's index).

General economic growth figures, especially that coming from the lower government, falls into the "the chocolate ratio has been increased to 25 grammes a person a week" category.

Re:WRONG

[WindBourne]

what is fair and balanced have to do with honest numbers from the Chinese gov? They have already proven that they are liars WRT climate change and raw data that effects it.
And why are you biased?

Re:WRONG

[WindBourne]

wrong. It has already been shown that even those numbers on power, rail and sea are now being manipulated by both provinces AND federal gov.

Re:WRONG

[mdsolar]

I was in Taipei during Tiananmen. Very sad. Ran into some Falun Gong protesters recently as well in DC.

Gross polluters

[Anonymous Coward]

What about their burning trash in the streets levels? Is there a measurement for that? All the toxic shit spewing out of their waste reclamation areas is insane. I'm sure they are buying African locales not just for the resources, but as a place to ship trash to and burn on-site down the road so th ey can continue to pretend like they aren't horrible gross polluters.

New Headline

[mdsolar]

World's largest polluter slows down a little. The country that caused the great California drought and the current blizzard has eased off a little on its attack on the rest of the world.

Recessions are good for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

We saw the same thing in the US--driving fell off as fewer people worked and took vacations. Bears have been putting out stories for a while about how electricity production and other things were showing recession in China. You can fudge GDP numbers, but you really can't dump excess power from a power plant without causing problems. It wouldn't surprise me to see huge infrared blooms for no good reason in China though; we're talking about a country that builds entire cities just because of a plan...

Don't hold your breath

[approachingZero]

Or do hold your breath, guess no matter what choice you make it's the wrong choice.

China can't even

[Anonymous Coward]

cut their emissions without people hating on them. It's a strange country over in the west, full of small-minded and petty people.

What was that again?

[Anonymous Coward]

If fossil fuels become cheaper, China will just ramp up use of them and power ahead of "us" and steal our lunch, therefore we cannot unilaterally cut back or legislate against fossil fuels, because it won't make any difference?

Wasn't that the claim?

Seems like all the other Chicken Little claims of the denialist brigade (now down to an understrength company of elites) this one is proven wrong by events in the real world, rather thn the "feelies" "models" the deniers like to use.

Perfect Weapon

[JimSadler]

Traditional fuel suppliers have devised a perfect weapon against solar power in China. They simply generate so much soot that sunlight can never reach a solar cell or collector.

Really?

[RobinH]

From what I'd heard (from people who were there last year), China was installing new coal fired power plants at the rate of about 1 per day through 2015. While I agree that's anecdotal, it's not like the Chinese government numbers are reliable. This article boils down to: "I can draw unreliable conclusions from unreliable data."

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your friends were there, so they could see every power plant getting built from their hotel room window? How much coal did they say each existing power plant was burning by the time they left? According to the statistics, while the number of power plants is up, capacity utilization is down by more, about 8% ( http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/11/11/chinas-coal-bubble-155-new-overcapacity/ ). Of course, your friends would know better because they were there and Chinese statisticians are a bunch of liars (xenophobes too, not like us enlightened Westerners).

WTOP help

[mdsolar]

WTO let's you impose tariffs on countries with less strick environmental laws. TTP and NAFTA may be a different matter.

Stop trying to credit non-existent initiatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop trying to credit non-existent "initiatives" on the part of the Chinese government. The reduction of GHG (globally, mind you, as every single country "cut" HGH emissions in 2015) is due solely to the reduction in economic activity globally. Nothing more.

In fact, GHG emissions per dollar of gross national product were actually up in 2015 in nearly every nation that reports data on the matter.

So, the anthropogenic global climate change problem is actually worsening on a global scale as we are emitting more GHGs with everything we do.

Peak Coal in 2013

[mdsolar]

Apparently, China's peak coal consumption occurred in 2013 http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

Re:Peak Coal in 2013

[WindBourne]

again, based on false numbers from a gov that is trying hard to cover up the facts and not being held responsible.
In the mean time, CO2 continues to climb, the number of coal plants in China climb grow faster than the entire rest of the world.

Re:Peak Coal in 2013

[mdsolar]

Number of back yard iron forges grew for a while without them getting much use. There is a recent NYT article about over building of coal plants....

Re:Peak Coal in 2013

[WindBourne]

The small forges do not contribute that much to co2.
The overbuilding of the power plants is predicated on the idea that China's coal production has gone down. The problem is, that it has not. China is opening new coal mines EVERY YEAR and has not closed any others, or slowed down at them.

Re:Peak Coal in 2013

[mdsolar]

The forges was a reference to the failed Great Leap Forward. China has been shutting coal mines. http://www.mining.com/china-to... and recently announced a moratorium on new mine approvals.

is this better?

[WindBourne]

LOL.
Hey, I did not start it. That was some idiot. But, i do have to say that it would be annoying to see that.