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China Cancels Over 100 Coal-Fired Power Plants (reuters.com)
In an effort to improve air quality, the Chinese government has canceled over 100 coal-fired power plants in 11 provinces -- totaling a combined installed capacity of more than 100 gigawatts. Reuters reports: In a document issued on Jan. 14, financial media group Caixin reported, the National Energy Administration (NEA) suspended the coal projects, some of which were already under construction. The projects worth some 430 billion yuan ($62 billion) were to have been spread across provinces and autonomous regions including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi and other northwestern areas. Putting the power projects on hold is a major step towards the government's effort to produce power from renewable sources such as solar and wind, and wean the country off coal, which accounts for the majority of the nation's power supply. To put it in perspective, some 130 GW of additional solar and wind power will be installed by 2020, equal to France's total renewable power generation capacity, said Frank Yu, principal consultant at Wood Mackenzie. "This shows the government is keeping its promise in curbing supplies of coal power," Yu said. Some of the projects will still go ahead, but not until 2025 and will likely replace outdated technology, he said.
I never believed China would be up to this. Great!
Turns out the climate is quite big and complicated and trapping more energy in the system doesn't lead to perfectly distributed warming all over the planet, at all times.
First world skeptics ready with hard data to prove how miniscule this effort is compared to what developing countries need to do.
Go talk to northern Canadians and Alaskans. The frozen sea. Ice which should show up in October didn't show up until December and January.
In the US our winter is currently 20 degrees above normal.
And always. https://xkcd.com/1732/
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I live in Europe near the arctic circle and the drastic changes in climate are very much visible here too. The winters are warm and summers are very cold. 20 years ago there was consistency in weather and now that consistency is somehow gone. It can be literally -25C one day and +5 the next.
While China is meeting multiple goals with this move, China already has three times as much coal-fired capacity as the US, and that is currently running at about half-capacity. This is mostly to do with curbing speculative investment in the industry that is likely to lead to problems later.
GIven the nuclear and hydroelectric projects under advanced stages of construction, and current and predicted energy use, they simply don't need this coal capacity.
Wind/solar will also add to capacity, but it's not replacing the coal generation capacity these stations would have provided like the article implies.
To put it in perspective, some 130 GW of additional solar and wind power will be installed by 2020, equal to France's total renewable power generation capacity, said Frank Yu, principal consultant at Wood Mackenzie.
France has nowhere near 130 GW of installed renewable power generation.
Currently we're running near peak demand at 92 GW due to the horrible cold, we've got about 55 GW of nukes running flat out (5 reactors are off line for maintenance) and about 15 GW of fossils, 13 GW of hydro, 2.6 GW of solar and 2.6 GW of wind.
How many of the other figures in this article are bullshit?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You seem to take issue with corruption in particular. Authoritarian regimes are rather prone to this and China is no exception.
The frozen sea. Ice which should show up in October didn't show up until December and January.
{...}
And always. https://xkcd.com/1732/
And another ob. xkcd.
To quote the strip:
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Because apparently last year was the 'hottest year on record', even though it was a very mild summer in the U.K.
Aaaaand what percentage of the earths surface is covered by the UK?
And nothing like the drought of 1976.
Was there a worldwide drought in 1976?
And 'since records began' means 'in the past 150 years', and the planet has existed for millions of years.
Aaaand for how many of those millions of years have we been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and disabling carbon sinks?
What's your problem really?
We know how humans affect the climate and we know it's affected.
What's the reason to disbelief?
Sweden have had a few winters now with positive Celsius around Christmas and new-year.
I leave that up to chance rather than immediate climate reaction but I'm in no way a disbeliever in what so many scientists think is a real thing. Why would I be? We know the trend and we know how humans affect it.
I don't complain about the mild winters (however if the gulf-stream was f*cked up and they would be gone then I'd complain ;D)
(Only negative is it may make the "refugees" more comfortable.)
While some my scoff and call this a worthless effort, I disagree! Could they do more? Of course... but so could everyone else! Changing energy generation for a large country is a monumental undertaking and you will always have the greedy who would rather stab their own child in the eye than lose a single dollar but this shows a large counter-investment is going into renewable power sources. It's depressing that there is so much resistance to this change but it's slow, steady and unstoppable. Even the incoming US administration cannot turn the tide of this fight against pollution. Progress is slow at first, then really fast and completely unstoppable.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Interesting that the article makes no mention of China's plans to build more nuclear power plants.
Found this with a quick Google search:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09...
China intends to bring 58 gigawatts of nuclear generating capacity into operation by 2020, up from the current capacity of roughly 27 gigawatts, according to World Nuclear News. China plans to follow this by getting about 10 percent of its electricity from 150 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2030, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Why mention plans to reduce coal use, increase wind and solar use but not mention the plans to also increase the use of nuclear power?
There is a bias in all news. The bias is in not only what they choose to report but what they choose to leave out. I've begun to seek out news from places that wear their bias on their sleeve, that way at least I know what they likely chose to report and leave out.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Driving a 5mpg gas guzzler is one, for example.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What's your problem really? We know how humans affect the climate and we know it's affected. What's the reason to disbelief?
Some people don't want to have to give up a few luxuries or profit-making concerns on the off-chance that it'd force our descendants to live on an Earth that will resemble what Venus looks like today. The believe that if climate change is a thing, they can deal with it.
If it can be dealt with.
Chinese government officials announced that they are getting really pissed off with the smog.
Then they should arrest it.
In both senses of the word.
Trump will build the 100 plants in the US.
Wow, China are really taking their climate change conspiracy to make America less competitive seriously. It's almost like they don't know that it's all fabricated and that Trump's talking out of his toupeed rectum.
The reference to the 'total renewable energy in France' is a joke. France has 66 Million inhabitants. China more than 1.3 Billion. So even though it sounds impressive at first sight, it's a very, very small portion of their total energy requirement.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I don't know how China managed to melt so much arctic ice, leading to the absurd situation that just a couple days before the winter solstice this year I went on a hike through the snowless mountains in Iceland among chirping songbirds digging for worms. All I have to say to China about this is: Best. Conspiracy. Ever. Well played, China. Well played.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Now that Chinese companies have the lead in Solar panel manufacturing it makes sense for the Chinese to support their home industry rather than building coal plants and importing turbines from GE
**Life is too short to be serious**
Aaaaand what percentage of the earths surface is covered by the UK?
Speaking as an Englishman: 100% of the important parts, plus Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You should open google and write "Hottest month on record".
Spoiler: It was July 2016.
Spoiler 2: It followed 10 consecutive months of record breaking temperatures.
A more pleasant climate? Maybe if you are a cactus.
Size doesn't really matter, because most renewable schemes scale with area. Population density does. France has 116/km^2, China has 145/km^2, so almost a 25% higher overall population density. That translates to a little bit less space for wind, solar, hydro and so on per capita, but not by enough to make it infeasible. Add in nuclear power, and the scaling is quite easy - building a nuclear power plant is hard, but doubling the generating capacity doesn't come close to doubling the land area, as long as you have a supply of uranium (China has uranium mines, France doesn't).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So win-win.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
You're not very persuasive, because your points are stupid. Sorry.
though it was a very mild summer in the U.K
All that is required to dismiss your ignorant, dumbass opinion.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
This is going to be awfully complex so pay close attention.
"I don't like it therefore it is not true"
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Damned Wogs...
The idea of a tax isn't as silly as you make it sound. The problem with most forms of pollution (from a purely economic standpoint) is that one person or company gains the benefits from polluting, but everyone pays the costs. This is known as an externality. Taxing pollution fixes this and means that the polluting technology becomes more expensive to operate and makes the barrier to entry for non-polluting technologies higher. If something is producing a lot of carbon dioxide but costs $5/widget, and you add a tax that amounts to $2.50/widget, then a replacement technology that doesn't emit any CO_2 but costs $7/widget is now cheaper to use. This means that you can bring it to market before you've got the economies of scale to push the price down below $5/widget.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
idiot peak power is used for all facilities. No one has a capacity factor of 1
Did you really forget the whole ridiculous "freedom fries thing" where Saddam was supposed to have been supplied with Uranium by the French out of their former colony of Niger?
Here is more with a specific mention of the Uranium issue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France%E2%80%93Niger_relations
The weird thing about racists is the way they need to inject their views into unrelated topics.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Aaaaand what percentage of the earths surface is covered by the UK?
That's the "Looked out my window and it was cold this morning - Take that golbal warming douchebags!" theory that he's spouting.
Now that can be of some utility. For instanceI can note that it was a fairly cold winter two years ago here in the Northeast of the US. Okay.
But the part of interest is that the other 15+ winters this century have been warmer than normal. That's a lot more interesting than "soundbite" weather.
If I wanted to play the UK denier's game I would note that I was outside doing yardwork last week in a just jeans and a T-Shirt as the temperature hit 60+ degrees F. But that was weather.
A little more interesting is that during what is statistically the coldest part of the year, it is not going to dip below feezing here for the next week. A little more more interesting, but still weather.
But with that trend continuing for years and years? Now it has become extremely interesting.
The ability of politics to trump science and the laws of physics is remarkable. It's called the "Neener-Neener effect.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If this is supposed to be sarcasm, allow me to show you my air conditioning bill for this winter as it has progressed so far. And last winter's.
The winter die-backs of local bugs and weeds has stopped.
Even some of Trump's nominees accept Global Warming, even if they're not wholly convinced it's man-made.
But China isn't just being a bunch of la-la feel-good Liberals here. Air quality in some parts of China is so poor that rich people are literally buying air bottled in London and shipped to China. And when you consider what London has boasted for air at times, that's saying something.
If you want to see the Capitalist Dream come true vis-a-vis the environment and its consequences and its impact on humanity, read something like John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up". In China, it's no longer science fiction. They're living the Dream today. And the dam commie government intends to do something about it.
The yearly frost has been killing vermin for ages in North America and Europe. As the frost line moves upwards, as USDA "zones" creep northwards, so do these creatures.
Often these creatures are "invasive" the native plants have no defense against these bugs. For example stink bugs have existed 200 miles south of Mason-Dixon line for centuries without serious issues. When the climate became pleasant enough to inhabit pockets north of PA-MD border, they found many delicious plants and nesting places to winter over, and they are becoming serious pests.
Such changes have taken place repeatedly in the past. We know that. If it happens slow enough, the plants will develop resistance. What is alarming is the rapidity of the change. The life cycle of a tree is in decades. Bugs have life cycles measured in days. Bugs would have several hundred generations to go against an existing tree which has no way of defending itself. It takes centuries or even a millennia for a forest to assimilate, integrate and thrive as new bug species infest them.
Creating doubt is easy. Asking questions is easy. Finding answers is difficult. Accepting uncomfortable answers, is even more difficult.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Which is why you spread your green energy generation across the grid - just like you do with coal or nuclear power!
Obama may have done strange things - but a correctly implemented environmental tax works.
Today, people go with coal because it is cheaper. They therefore won't bother with solar/wind/waves that cost more per kw.
A CO2 tax makes pollution more expensive. The tax won't make anything "greener" on its own. But set the tax sufficiently high, and suddenly windmills (or whatever) saves money on the now expensive energy. So you get a transition to greener energy because the dirty variant is being taxed to a slow death. After a while coal dies, and no more coal tax money comes in; this is not a problem. Coal miners out of work is not a problem with this scheme either - more people will be needed to maintain the much more distributed green energy production. (One of the reasons green is more expensive to begin with.)
Economic stagnation due to high energy cost is a problem; but though luck! Coal isn't viable in the long run, we can't breathe an atmosphere with even 1% CO2.
China owns something like a third of the total foreign held US debt
The amount of US debt China owns is less than 10% of the total amount outstanding. Currently around $1.3 Trillion which is a big number but only a single digit percentage of the total debt. Most of the US debt is actually held by Americans. Of the $12.9 trillion chunk of debt owned by Americans, $5.3 trillion is held by government trust funds such as Social Security, $5.1 trillion is held by individuals, pension funds and state and local governments and the remaining $2.5 trillion is held by the Federal Reserve. Basically most of the debt is IOUs to the American people.
Interestingly Japan owns almost as much US debt as China does at $1.1 Trillion. But Japan isn't so scary so people gloss over that fact.
Although China needs the US as badly as the US needs China, if we try to bluster our way into something stupid, just calling the debt will make for a rather unpleasant time as the world economy topples.
China has no ability whatsoever to "call" the US debt. Treasury bonds don't work like that. China bought those treasuries to keep their currency exchange rate under control. Furthermore even if China wanted to get rid of their US denominated debt, they have absolutely no one else they can sell it to. There simply are no buyers for that much US debt at anywhere close to face value. If they hold a fire sale they absolutely screw their own economy in the process.
Which race do you refer to? Nationality is not race. In fact the entire concept of racism constitutes racism. Can't we just transcend that?
China's renewable energy sector is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity. In 2015 China became the world's largest producer of photovoltaic power, at 43 GW installed capacity. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"I am young and have little power in the world, so I will support theories that take on "the man" to compensate. Later when I am older, my 401k will have value and my stake will go the other way.
Racist toward which race exactly? If an American fled political opression to the UK, he'd be a refugee regardless of his skin color.
Er, the planet has existed for 4.5 BILLION years. There have been at least 5 major ice ages in geological history. The last one was from 110,000 to 12,000 years ago. We are currently in the early stages of an inter-glaciation period.
The period of contemporary scientific research and record-keeping, as correctly pointed out, at about 150 years, represents about the last 0.000003% of planetary existence. If the existence of the earth were represented by the 1281 pages of the bible, the period of contemporary scientific research and record-keeping would be represented by less than the single last letter of the last word on the last page of the bible.
More like China-made global warming.
They make the bulk of everything else, so why not this?
Perhaps, perhaps not. Venus is still very poorly understood. In its high temperature environment its conditions are largely self-sustaining (preventing the sequestration of CO2 in rock), although it's also unstable, prone to broad temperature and pressure swings. It also appears to have undergone a global resurfacing event about 300-500mya, if that gives a clue as to how unstable the planet as a whole is. ;) We don't know what caused it, or really anything about it. Part of the planet's properties are now a result of it having lost its water rather than being a cause, such as its hard crust. Obviously its lack of a magnetic field is responsible for its loss of water, but we don't know exactly when or why it disappeared (there are of course theories... I had always just assumed it was the slow rotation rate, but the last research I read suggested that not enough to account for it). Other issues as to how Venus ended up as it did may be related to size - although it's only a bit smaller than Earth, that may be the initial factor that set its fate in motion - for example, its lithosphere in general appears to be thicker and higher viscosity on Earth, which could have hindered or prevented plate tectonics, and thus subduction of carbonates.
Either way, it's a mess now at the surface (though rather comfy ~55km up ;) ). And I'm not so sure I buy into some of the proposed ways to fix it (terraforming). For example, some have suggest mass drivers ejecting the atmosphere. Let's just say you can pull it off, and then you start building oxygen in the atmosphere - what happens next? The crust is something like 7-9% FEO; it's going to rust away whatever oxygen you make in short order.
Interestingly, I'd argue that this is possibly the salvation to Sagan's airborne-microbe concept for terraforming Venus. The main criticism is that if you engineered some sort of carbon-sequestering microbe on Venus (or artificial equivalent), you'd end up with a deep surface layer of graphite surrounded by some hugely hot, dense oxygen layer, and the atmosphere would explode. But that would never happen; at Venus surface temperatures and pressures, the surface rocks would rust away the oxygen as fast as it was created, even in tiny quantities, with the wind blowing the dust around to collect at low/eddy areas. So you're laying down bands of carbon and iron oxide as you burn through the planet's iron buffer. Where have we seen this before? Right, Earth, ~2,3 billion years ago, banded iron formations. Just like on Earth, you'd eventually burn through the iron and start to accumulate oxygen. But by then the graphite is already underground, buried in iron dust.
It's not a fast process. But it has precedent. Microbes already rusted at least one planet, and that planet's surface conditions weren't nearly as favorable for rusting as Venus's.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
From other articles, it is clear the Chinese are cancelling these projects because they would have caused an over capacity of power.
What is not mentioned, is why they scheduled so many plants to begin with.
Either bad planning, excess corruption, or the Chinese economy is slowing faster than predicted.
To gain some political capital, they are "spinning" this that the reason is to reduce CO2 emissions.
I have been hearing about alternate reasons for such a pull back. We have the ghost cities that China built in the belief that "If you build it they will come". They were rolling in money and were spending it in that magnanimous Command style.
The money isn't quite so flush now and they have to make decisions. Blaming it on "changing to 'cleaner' methods" sounds like a way to distract from the real reason ... "We have a shortage of funds and had to change our priorities!"
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
It's winter! Why is China covered with smog in winter and not summer? Warm and fuzzy environmental types would like to blame Big Business and Government, but is there another explanation?
The primary reason is that high sulfur coal is used to heat homes in winter. "Homes and small businesses that burn coal in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei contribute up to half of the air pollution in the region every winter, said Zhao Yingmin, chief engineer at the Ministry of Environmental Protection." http://english.caixin.com/2016... - but note that burning coal is generally outlawed in cities. The bulk of home consumption is in rural areas, and in the North where it is cold.
"In rural areas coal is still permitted to be used by Chinese households, commonly burned raw in unvented stoves. This fills houses with high levels of toxic metals leading to bad Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). In addition, people eat food cooked over coal fires which contains toxic substances." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Linfen, a city in northern China's Shanxi province has suffered greatly from unbreathable air. Citizens were told by the local environmental minister that "70 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions comes from citizens' coal use." There is skepticism, yet it is clear that industrial pollution is not entirely responsible. http://www.sixthtone.com/news/...
The seasonal differences in air pollution cannot be explained by the rather constant industrial use of coal. Large scale power plants are able to mitigate the offensive emissions somewhat. The difference that we see right now is due to millions of individual homes producing the worst kind of pollution.
...omphaloskepsis often...
How about don't use air conditioning in the first place (and in winter??), before you complain about China trying to supply power to its populace at all? Sounds ridiculously wasteful.
Tell me again why should developing countries in the Global south complicate their industrialization so that lifestyles and ecosystems can stay the same in the rich Global North?
If you want to fight Global Warming because currently your country is on top climatically speaking but not sure what would happen in a changed world you should pay developing countries in hard cash to adopt measures which complicate their industrialization.
Just asking them to do it from the goodness of their heart is being disingeneous
**Life is too short to be serious**
Shouldn't you Birts be using solar, anyway, as I was taught in school that the sun never set on the British Empire?
Coal will still be there as expected, much to the chagrin of environmental activists.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Eh, it I think we could stand to see Bognor slide into the sea and no-one would miss it. Especially not the people living there.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What does climate from 4 billion years ago have to do with anything? In fact, what does climate from even 100,000 years ago have to do with anything? Human civilization has evolved within fairly narrow climactic constraints. It did not arise in the Carboniferous epoch, nor did it evolve in Paleolithic. So what exactly is your point?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A CO2 tax makes pollution more expensive. The tax won't make anything "greener" on its own. But set the tax sufficiently high, and suddenly windmills (or whatever) saves money on the now expensive energy.
I have a few questions for you. What do you think windmills are made of? This isn't a trick question either. The answer is that a large portion of the costs in windmills is in the steel, aluminum, and concrete. What do you think happens to the price of these materials if CO2 output is taxed? The way concrete is produced now includes the reduction of limestone to lime by heating it. This heat is often from natural gas or coal. The reduction of the limestone releases CO2.
Aluminum also produces a lot of CO2. The aluminum ore is dissolved in a hot vat where a carbon rod is inserted, current passed through it, and the carbon rod is "burned" away, releasing CO2. The heat for this is also derived from natural gas or coal. Steel is produced by various means, depending on the properties desired, also involving a lot of coal burned and CO2 produced.
While it may be possible to produce this steel, aluminum, and concrete in ways that do not produce CO2 such processes would require more energy which means more cost. Taxing carbon output like you describe is likely to hurt the transition to wind more than it helps. Solar power has similar issues since it involves a lot of aluminum, steel, and quite likely a lot of concrete too. Hydroelectric sources needs these same resources too. Basically anything you want to replace coal with is going to take resources that must be mined, refined, transported, molded, shaped, etc., etc., all of which require energy that now largely comes from carbon sources. Raising the price of carbon raises the price of energy, which raises the price of materials, which raises the price of labor, which can easily price out the competition to carbon energy.
People don't burn carbon to be dicks to the environment. People burn carbon because it is the cheapest means to get the energy we need to live. So long as people have a vote the taxes on carbon will not last long, just look at Australia and Canada for proof of that.
Economic stagnation due to high energy cost is a problem; but though luck!
This is tough for the legislators that impose policies that arbitrarily raise the price of energy too. People will not put up with such taxes for long. If imposed on a society that do not have a vote then expect a real environmental disaster. With expensive fuel for cooking and heating those trees in the nearby forest look real tempting for firewood. You can look to any of a number of tyrannical hell holes on Earth for examples of deforestation out of desperation. This also goes way back in history too, the "cedars of Lebanon" are an example of that.
I saw a talk from a Dr. Stephen Boyd where he described this exact problem. He ran a lab doing research on battery technologies and electricity costs were a big problem for him. The equipment he needed to do his research inherently required a lot of energy. Raising his costs more will only make his job more difficult. (I tried to look him up quick to give a reference but it appears that there are a lot of people called Dr. Stephen Boyd on the internet.) Raising the cost of energy to the point it impacts the economy also makes this research more difficult, since there is just less money flowing about for the luxury of technology research.
Not only is a carbon tax a bad idea I would argue it would be counter productive.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
How could anybody think there was a racial component to random mention of "refugees" who like warmer weather? Really these could be refugees from Norway or Finland! I was shocked!
Read less science fiction.
After China took the suggestions of myself and others to investigate converting their most modern coal power plant designs to cogeneration and start using air scrubbers (which use water for the most part), resulting in the same quantity of coal producing twice as much end power and heating, they were able to shelve the bad designs. With the added solar and wind power they have now found is cheaper is coal, they sidelined an additional quantity of coal plants as well.
The game is over. We won.
Adapt.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Is that US gallons or imperial British gallons ? US gallons are smaller so in the UK the gas guzzler might get 6mpg !!
It is why vehicles in the UK have better mpg than the US ;)
Hint,
"refugees"
wasn't referring to UK asylum seekers
They had to build the empire in order for them to see any sun. British belief in this thing called a "sun" vanished with their empire.
I see everyone talking about this as a Chinese bid to slow global warming but I just see that as a highly unlikely motive for them. Far more likely is that it is an attempt to reign in their truely massive domestic polution problem and thus avoid the social unrest that could come from it. Currently, due to their polution problem in general, many Chinese citizens are exposed to air quality in their own homes equivalent to smoking several packs a day unless they can afford air filters (which cost far more than quite a few can afford) http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... . Let that run long enough and people will start getting pretty upset when they start getting lung cancer in their 40s.
To put it another way, China only does things that might slow economic growth a bit (like cancel 100 very cheap to run coal plants) when the problem is very immediate. They've let the air quality drift to such a massively degraded level in some regions that I find it hard to believe that a problem like global warming, whose symptoms are really only now starting to be felt, is anywhere on their radar.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I have a few questions for you. What do you think windmills are made of?
I have one question for you- what do you think coal power plants are made of, and what is it exactly that you think they burn every day to keep producing that power?
Overall- I just can't wrap my head around the economics of taxation's total effect on the system, but i'm quite sure any coal power plant worth its salt dumps many "windmills" per day of CO2 into the atmosphere, efficiently sucked from the depths of the earth's deepest and most stable carbon sink.
If I'm wrong, forgive me, but I have trouble believing I am (and couldn't find a quick and easy way to find out)
The weird thing about racists is the way they need to inject their views into unrelated topics.
I didn't see any reference to races in that post. Even the implication that refugees may be of a "different race" than the poster is very far-fetched. Most of the refugees in Sweden are caucasian. Also, the poster him/herself may be black.
The weird thing about you is the ease with which you think you can throw around accusations of racism.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
One of the things that make nuclear ideal for China is it has a relatively small footprint per GW. The problem with renewables is they do not. China has a lot of competing vectors for physical space. Never mind the population. The land required for food and agriculture has always been primary. As it becomes industrialized, so has the demand for that land. China has tried to plan intensive cities to combat sprawl and land sterilization but as any planner can tell you it is difficult as best even with all the policy behind you. Before someone uses the argument, I will squash it. Yes China is a big country. Yes they do have parts of it that are indeed undeveloped with few people in it. However you also do not need power there either. Trying to produce from very far away and distribute it is not efficient to say the least. You need to generate as close to market as possible. Therein lies the issue with moving away from nuclear and towards renewable within the Chinese perspective (never mind peak power, and other other normal considerations).
For how many of those billions of years have we been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and disabling carbon sinks?
Wait: The other guy just told me that there was no warming trend.
And another guy told me it was due to natural variation, without actually mentioning what had varied, which I thought was weird.
Now *you* tell me that it's warming, but warming will be good for us.
Which of you is telling the truth?
So, do tell us why the climate would be the same.
You speak as if countries industrialise *independently* of one another. Are you on the right planet?
While a switch to wind would reduce carbon output, by a large margin, but the taxing of carbon will only slow it's adoption.
I may be proven wrong in my assessment in the long run but in the short run a tax on carbon is such an economy killer that it hasn't lasted long enough to matter when and where it's been tried. Reducing the ability for people to invest in new business ventures by increasing taxes arbitrarily is always a bad idea. People need money to spare to invest in any business this includes wind power. If taxes remove this economic freedom then wind investment will take a hit.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Venus is hotter than Mercurius.
The weird thing about racists is the way they need to inject their views into unrelated topics.
It's THE largest problem and issue and thing in Sweden and the only thing Swedish politics really is about and will be about and the problem will lasts for long so it's not weird at all.
If we saw a slow moving large comet or meteorite coming straight for earth then that would be the topic but now it's this one.
There's an obvious advantage in cool as fuck winters and complete darkness if that's what they arrived too in that maybe then they wouldn't want to stay.
"I am young and have little power in the world, so I will support theories that take on "the man" to compensate. Later when I am older, my 401k will have value and my stake will go the other way.
They way I see it losing a lot of land area, drowning cities and making other adjustments will also cost a lot so I'm not convinced just letting it happen is the more cost-effective solution.
Why are you wasting your time here - don't you have anything better to do, like blowing up a government building or shooting up a youth camp?
Nah it has consequences.
Why are you wasting your time here - don't you have anything better to do, like blowing up a government building or shooting up a youth camp?
It's also one of those things not living in a democracy where you can affect the political decisions, affect the outcome and share your concerns forces you into such solutions.
In a more civilized society where freedom of speech and democracy and influence is a thing you may not have to use such methods.
Sadly the power of ones life and situation are moved away from the individuals and people all the time in our part of the world. "It's good" according to the socialists and globalists.
Speaking of, every time you post to slashdot you are using air conditioning in hundreds if not thousands of facilities across the globe. All those servers, switches, routers, require vast amounts of cooling.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Because it's patent BS.
Continental drift is BS? Sounds plausible, particularly given the citations you provided.
Increased CO2 levels usually lead to a growth in vegetation... the opposite of desertification
Usually?
Is there a cite you can provide that demonstrates that global warming will not lead to increased desertification in arid and semi-arid regions, becuase arid/semi-arid vegetation is limited by CO2 availability (rather than H2O)?
But sure, please continue to believe the idiocy of the global warmist scare mongering
You've made the assumption that I believe the scare mongering that says the current warming trend is due to natural variation. Please provide a citation.
Like I said about the taxes... I don't think I'm smart to really see all angles of the vast amount of things that would affect... I'm just certain that a tax on... let's call it planetary carbon redistribution... would have a much larger effect against the externalized costs of a coal plant vs. that of a windmill.
I'm definitely not on the side of any of the proposed economic solutions, but the argument that the true cost of fossil power when externalized costs are factored in makes it the least appealing form of energy available at this point in time seems to hold a lot of water for me, hence I'm inclined to agree that a taxation against such things would definitely raise their cost a lot more than their competition's.
The problems with taxes are: First, governments become addicted to them as a revenue source. Second, businesses (particularly utilities) just pass the tax on to their customers. Plus, they make a profit on this pass-through as well. Third, the tax exempt businesses just end up being less efficient. And when they finally drive their non-tax exempt out of business and their tax advantage disappears, often they go out of business as well.
By far, the worst thing about taxes is the government addiction to them. You don't want to drive an electric or hybrid car in the 'progressive' states that first encouraged them. Because now, they are falling over themselves trying to squeeze a 'fair share' of revenue out of cars not paying at the pump. Taxes: GibsMeDat on a government level.
Have gnu, will travel.
Do you have any critical thinking skills whatsoever? Plants consume CO2 and H2O so of course you'll have more plants. Fuck this "citation needed" Wonkypedia shit. I still remember when people used to be able to have critical thinking skills without being spoon fed all the time.
https://phys.org/news/2013-07-...
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g...
The fact is increased CO2 levels lead to increased vegetation cover and a reversal of desertification.
I'm still to hear one big negative factor of increased CO2 levels and global warming... It would green the planet, make more areas available for manned settlement. Even if the sea levels increase a bit it would be largely offset by the extra available land area in arid and tundra regions. Plus the sea levels have been increasing even back when the human population was a lot smaller than it was today. Also other than with massive geoengineering efforts, which are pointless to begin with taking into consideration what I said before, the CO2 levels won't go back. Nor should they. In fact the present CO2 levels are way too low.
Newsflash July is winter in Antarctica
**Life is too short to be serious**
Pfft. Anything outside the M25 is just dead weight.
Mind you, after Brexit everything inside the M25 will be dead weight as well...
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
A hundred million years ago the Sun was dimmer. Sun output increases with time.
Will Earth be a lush paradise 2000 or 10 000 years from now? Perhaps. Although the world map will look different. No idea what the global effects of nuclear disasters could be (not just fallout of nuclear bombs ; what if dozens of nuclear spent fuel pools are left uncared for because of war)
Will new species be able to evolve to replace those lost in the current extinction, while humans still live in other parts of the same planet?
But anyway, thanks for caring about the greening of the Earth. We enviro-nuts have a short term myopia and care what happens on the scale of a century or two, I hope you'll pardon the shortsightness of those green nuts and conspiracy scientists.
It's possible to impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax, by reducing other taxes. (I'd recommend reducing the taxes that affect the poor, since they'll be hardest hit by a carbon tax.) A revenue-neutral carbon tax would leave just as much money available for investment, and would make investment in renewable energy more profitable.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I could turn your first sentence back on you... do you have any critical thinking skills whatsoever? Assuming you do, lets use our critical thinking skills to work through this. What does desertification mean? Exactly, it means turning into a desert. So what makes something a desert? No, its not lack of plants; is the lack of something else that plants need. Let me give you a hint, you pointed it out in your own post. Thats right - a desert is where there is very little H2O available.
So the process of desertification doesn't take place because the plants go away, rather its the plants going away because the water is going away. In a warming world, rain bands will shift locations, leading to a huge reduction in rainfall in some areas, which leads to desertification.
So you are going to have the rich countries give up all patents for the fight against global warming and helping the developing countries industrialize? Didn't think so.
Sounds like you dion't even know what 'industrialise' means. Hint: nobody needs to reinvent the car just to build cars.
They would love to be able to do it independently.
No, they wouldn't. If they are thinking about industrialising at all, they intend to do it the same way that everybody else did.
Plants consume CO2 and H2O so of course you'll have more plants. Fuck this "citation needed" Wonkypedia shit. I
I asked for citations because I'm skeptical of your ideas. If you don't want people to accept your ideas, why post them?
https://phys.org/news/2013-07-...
You obviously didn't read your citation, which contradicts your assertion.
I'm still to hear one big negative factor of increased CO2 levels and global warming.
Explain how your ignorance is our problem.
If you think available generating capacity to be used at peak load is theoretical I do not understand why you are participating in this discussion.
It's kind of sad that you used the words "real generation " to try to justify a guess based on nothing but appalling ignorance.
There must be something that you are good at. Perhaps apply yourself to that instead.
No, it is not. But you believe it is. That is interesting more in what it says about you, and your obsession, than what it says about the issue.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
It is the largest problem and it is all problems with Swedish society.
It create more and more of all problems.
The only "problem" I can think of which isn't due to immigration is that people live longer, have had fewer children and as such that the share of the population which are older and hence wouldn't work if it was the normal Swedish society would had grown larger making them more of a burden of society. .. Yeah.. Great! .. Tino has posted before that immigrants income from salaries and companies are 41% less than the native Swedes, Sweden have progressive taxation but that of course mean that the taxes they pay in is also at-least 41% less and since fewer of them work more of them will collect welfare. .. Their cars ends up in crashes four times as often, all the smashed schools, burned cars, buildings, people who feel less safe, are murdered, are raped, people who cheat the system, feel less trust in the system, so on, all of that have a cost too.
My solution there would had been to let each generation or individual save money for their own pension instead of relying on future tax payers.
But yeah. That isn't directly connected to immigration and is a "problem" of it's own. However Swedish refugee immigration isn't a solution to that problem regardless because of how poorly qualified they are and how long it take to get them into jobs and how many of those jobs are subsidized jobs. For the refugees to contribute positively to that AT THIS TIME they would have to job and pay in taxes and not collect welfare. However refugees will get old too and will need to be supported at that age they as-well and as such over their life-time they will just weight the Swedish system down even more.
Some news tabloid just recently bragged about how many more of the immigrants got a job here than in Denmark and Norway and so on it was just that 4/5 of those jobs was subsidized so
There's also things like they being over-represented in heavy criminality with 3-4 times, some of them in rape cases 20+ times but by now I assume it's even higher but the political establishment doesn't want new up to date numbers of that for some reason
If there was more CO2 there would be more vegetation. In addition,. like the links I posted here before claim, the more CO2 is available the less H2O is required for a plant to grow. To a point.
The report basically says that increased CO2 increases vegetation and, in addition, the more CO2 is in the air the less H2O plants will need to grow. So having more CO2 reduces desertification. So I don't get your BS.
Please enlighten me how more CO2 available makes it possible to have less H2O to grow. Photosynthesis is 6CO2 + 6H2O -> C6H12O6 + 6O2, so how does more CO2 make that equation work with a smaller amount of available H2O?