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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 Some of the projects will still go ahead, but not until 2025 and will likely replace outdated technology, he said.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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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
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
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
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.
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...