China is currently the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and will soon become Numero Uno. Its emissions are expected to surpass those of the United States within the next few years -- perhaps as early as 2009. But Chinese officials are unwilling to provide leadership on global climate change policy, as the New York Times reports.
Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said China was willing to contribute to an international effort to combat global warming but placed the primary responsibility on richer, developed nations that have been polluting for much longer.China is not opposed to emission reductions, it is just unwilling to let such concerns hamper its rapid industrialization.“It must be pointed out that climate change has been caused by the long-term historic emissions of developed countries and their high per capita emissions,” she said, adding that developed countries have responsibilities for global warming “that cannot be shirked.
China is hardly the only nation to take this view. While E.U. nations talk a good game about the need to control greenhouse gas emissions, they have yet to adopt and enforce meaningful emission controls, and most European nations appear unlikely to emit their emission reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. This is the "dirty secret" of climate policy, as Robert Samuelson explains in today's Washington Post:
The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution. About 80 percent of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), the main sources of man-made greenhouse gases. Energy use sustains economic growth, which -- in all modern societies -- buttresses political and social stability. Until we can replace fossil fuels or find practical ways to capture their emissions, governments will not sanction the deep energy cuts that would truly affect global warming. . . .Samuelson's answer is more aggressive research and development of carbon-control technologies, and possibly an energy tax of some sort as well. I am skeptical of government subsidies -- and believe federal efforts to pick winners and losers in energy markets have already done too much to screw up energy markets -- so I think we should consider offering prizes instead. I have also argued that there is a strong case for developed countries to subsidize the deployment of low-emitting technologies and climate adaptation measures in developing countries (see here and here), assuming that such measures can be undertaken in a more effective manner than traditional foreign aid.Anyone who honestly examines global energy trends must reach these harsh conclusions. In 2004, world emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2, the main greenhouse gas) totaled 26 billion metric tons. Under plausible economic and population assumptions, CO2 emissions will grow to 40 billion tons by 2030, projects the International Energy Agency. About three-quarters of the increase is forecast to come from developing countries, two-fifths from China alone. . . .
Nor will existing technologies, aggressively deployed, rescue us. The IEA studied an "alternative scenario" that simulated the effect of 1,400 policies to reduce fossil fuel use. Fuel economy for new U.S. vehicles was assumed to increase 30 percent by 2030; the global share of energy from "renewables" (solar, wind, hydropower, biomass) would quadruple, to 8 percent. The result: by 2030, annual carbon dioxide emissions would rise 31 percent instead of 55 percent. The concentration levels of emissions in the atmosphere (which presumably cause warming) would rise.
Until then, it's all a big joke.
Proposing the the industrialized West all voluntarily destroy their economies is not a solution to global warming. Can we move on to adult, non-"gotcha!" responses now? Please?
The only one effective way to satisfy our expanding energy needs is to replace fossil fueled power plants with nuclear generators.
Alternative fuels for vehicles, solar, wind, tidal, and thermal power sources are not cost effective. These energy sources make some feel good, but they are equivalent to prescribing aspirin to cure cancer.
Make electricity virtually free, and there is no end to its possible applications. Why is that never mentioned... hmmm....
Even gas taxes only make sense if you are willing to lighten up on some of the more absurd regulations such as CAFE. Gas taxes would be more palatable if the inefficient and unproductive regulations which include forced recycling (Why do we keep shipping waste to China?) and industry level micro-meddling are replaced with simpler taxes. If it's just taxes without reform, then you know the proponents aren't serious. The unintended consequences of bad environmental regulation are so large (both financially and with respect to the environment) that most companies would gladly accept taxation in exchange. But many ideologues want both MORE regulation and new taxes. This tells me they care more about damaging the market economy than helping the environment.
I.e., if you've come to a different conclusion, it's because you're dishonest.
Also, of course China (communist) wants the US to adopt limit its energy use in a severe way. China would stand to benefit economically if that were to happen. As would western Europe (Socialist). They're not being dishonest...
China, being authoritarian, can simply direct its plant operators to install the American-designed CO2 scrubbers once the technology is mature.
(yes, having China go the synfuel route would probably make more sense. but we can't force them to do that any more than we can have an effective Title V regulation of domestic power plants.)
China is "communist" in much the same way that North Korea is "Democratic." It's a meaningless label.
Pretty much every country in the world wants everybody else to do something.
Forget synthfuels: takes more money and energy to produce Ethanol than it contains, and it's a move backwards towards higher-carbon sources to higher hydrogen fuel sources.
How so? China's strategic outlook is bolstered more than anything else by a strong US economy. To think that China would want to risk any possibility of adverse effects of the US economy from such energy limitations would be more than a little naive.
As it happens, China has an ambitious nuclear power program relatively unfettered by the political concerns that commonly adhere to nuclear power in the West. Their vigorous pursuit of energy independence will benefit all in the long run.
Why, oh why? Just so they can spend some money? What is the benefit to China?
Prof. Adler is right that global warming is quintessentially a commons problem: everyone emits, no one has incentive to reduce emissions.
However, solving commons problem in a classic way (privatization) is not easy. You could forse developing countries with growing economies into the system, say, through punitive tariffs. But will it be fair? Some countries are so far behind, their emissions will inevitably go up as they catch up with more developed world, no matter how much new technology is put in place.
On the matter of compensation-for-damages model, who do you want to compensate? I understand Prof. Adler's analysis to be that temperate-climate developed world would have to compensate tropical-climate countries. I imagine their bureacrats will be much obliged to take billions or even trillions of compensation. I'm certain they will not let this windfall reach poor masses who actually suffer in amount sufficient to make any difference. Wanna tax Americans to the tune of possibly trillions so corrupt foreign thugs prosper? Tough sell.
China will do it if we force it by declaring an ever-escalating embargo of Chinese manufactured goods. We can then restore the manufacturing base of the US, which is far more efficient and will emit less carbon. If the global warming problem is as severe as its proponent’s claim then “equitable” is irrelevant. Besides China is an adversary, we have no obligation to worry about their welfare over ours.
Hendrik Tennekes was Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also a Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Of these silly models he writes, "Sophisticated climate models have been running for twenty years now. It has become evident that these models cannot be made to agree on anything except a possible relation between greenhouse gases and a slight increase in globally averaged temperatures."
And that's only over the past twenty years. Historically, there appears to be no correlation between C02 and temperature, though by cherry picking one's time period one can find positive, negative, or zero correlation.
Bruce McCullough
If the Republicans were smart (which they’re not) they would embrace global warming and tell the US public the sacrifices they will have make. They would also shut off immigration because more people means more energy consumption. Then let’s see what happens when the consequences from carbon control become real instead of an abstraction.
This is perhaps one of the strangest details of climate science. Very few people study how non-biological CO2 emissions alter the C02 concentration. Instead people are concerned with proxies for historic climate data and comparing C02 ppm with temperature.
The interesting detail is that the industrial age has seen us emit an additional 2% of CO2/yr but this creates a 1%/yr increase in CO2 concentration.
Also, there should be heavy graduated taxes on inefficient fuel engines, that is, as the mpg drops the tax gets increasingly heavy. Pay to pollute!
Thirdly, there could be a lot more telecommuting. I know one lawyer who was denied her request to sometimes work from home even though there is no earthly reason why she shouldn't, as all day long she's researching and writing on her computer and constantly emails and ims everyone anyway from her desk at work.
It's the same deal Hastert had (post-9/11). The difference is, Hastert's plane couldn't fly across country without refueling (and didn't need to for him to get home). Pelosi needs that, so the plane has to be bigger. Link.
The climate change advocates have an answer for that, but one that hides a potential complication.
There is a distinction between weather and climate. Weather is local in time, while climate pertains to long-term averages and cycles. I can certainly predict that next year’s average temperature in San Francisco is going to greater than New York City. I just can’t predict next Sunday’s temperature in New York very accurately from today’s data. I can’t do that in principle because the equations that govern weather have chaotic solutions. This means a very small change in the data (initial conditions) produces a large change in the prediction. Now the climate modelers believe you can somehow “average out” the fluctuations to get a long-term prediction of the average. But if the solutions are a really nasty form of chaos than you can never “average out” because there is no average. Now the climate modelers say they don’t have a chaos problem and they could be right. I haven’t had a chance to see what they say about they handle choas.
There's a fundamental flaw in this argument which I've noted before. As China's reaction shows, global warming is not a problem that can be solved in one country alone. Essentially, every country has to reduce its emissions. It won't do any good for us to reduce oil usage if Third World countries just burn it all.
This means that any solution has to be workable not just in the US but in every country. A little reflection will give us all some pause before we go recommending a crash nuclear power program in, say, Iran or North Korea.
If countries abide by the non-proliferation treaty then we can use nuclear energy worldwide. But let’s say we can never trust rogue state likes NK and Iran. As long as the big energy users like the US, EU, China and India convert to nuclear reactors, we can reduce carbon emissions. Note that with the exception of the EU those countries already have nuclear weapons anyway.
That is because there is not enough feed stock to grow photo plankton. If anyone is serious about reducing global warming, he could start dumping the essential minerals into the ocean to feed photo plankton. Then the increased CO2 would be consumed by that. To me, this seems to be more efficient than shaming the middle class out of consuming.
Anyone else want to do air emissions of ordinary pollutants? Environmental costs of CONSTRUCTING the plants? (What are solar panels made of, anyhow?) Effects of giant eggbeaters on the bird population?
I don't know that nuclear will win on every environmental issue -- it certainly has its environmental effects like anything else does -- but I don't think we need to take all the other environmental issues off the table when we start talking about carbon emissions. If we're smart, we may even figure out that some of the same things we can do to reduce carbon emissions will take care of other problems like urban smog. I'm sure the Chinese are smart enough to work that out too.
Actually... they precipitate out. The issue has more to do with the diffusion constant. But there are a few tricky points: the diffusion constant is poorly understood. Moreover, there are several time scales at work. In the long-long run the carbon dioxide precipitates out. In the long-run atmospheric CO2 is fixed by the temperature of the ocean. In the short-run it determined by the diffusion constant... (amount of ocean churn, algae, etc).
Because China has some of the worst pollution in the world and is destroying her environment. Maybe she should look at western countries and realize that environmental regulation in this country and others was not optional, it was a necessity. As much as you bitch about it, would you really want this country to go back to environmental regulations as they were in the late sixties?
Is this meant to be humorous? I can't really tell to be honest . . . .
Well gee, I guess burning coal and oil with no emission controls has absolutely nothing to do with CO2 emissions either. Give me a freaking break!
Also, there should be heavy graduated taxes on inefficient fuel engines, that is, as the mpg drops the tax gets increasingly heavy. Pay to pollute!
Too complicated, just tax fuel at a high rate--it amounts to the same thing. Just compare how much more fuel efficient the European or Japanese fleet is to the U.S. Why is that? Because gas is so expensive in Europe and Japan because governments tax it so heavily. And their roads and public transportation are also much better because of the high fuel taxes which leads to even more conservation because more people use public transportation to get to work. It ain't rocket science.
However, solving commons problem in a classic way (privatization) is not easy.
Umm, solving the commons problem in the "classic way" (privatization) is almost universally seen as a social disaster (if you are referring to the enclosure acts in England of the 16th--18th century). When the "tragedy of the commons" is raised today it is usually presented as an argument for government regulation, not privatization, as it is usually used for things that cannot be privatized (like large groundwater, rivers, or the air).
The problem is that then we have no easy way to prevent them from using oil and spewing CO2 into the atmosphere. Also, it's not just those two countries, it's Nigeria and Venezuela and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and Libya and the future Iraq (whatever form it takes). In addition, all the Third World oil importing countries need energy too. Maybe the IAEC can handle inspections in all of them, but right now I'm not sure I'd bet that way.
Agreed. I'm not (now) worried about them.
For the record, I'm not opposed to nuclear. I do think there are issues to resolve with nuclear, especially waste disposal. I'm prepared to let the market decide whether it's efficient net externalities. But it's not a panacea and the cheap shot about those who oppose it is losing sight of some important considerations.
I think you need to de-caffienate! Nobody was giving you all that hard of a time.
The bottom line is this: there is absolutely zero/zip/nada way that China will do anything about greenhouse gases unless forced to to so. Or if it proves (somehow) to be economically advantageous. Look at the environmental record of every totalitarian regime of the past 100 years. Complete and utter environmental disregard! The Soviet Union has done massive damage to the environment of their own homeland. There is absolutely no reason to believe that China will behave any differently.
I don't know why. It's just the way totalitarian elites think.
Because China has some of the worst pollution in the world and is destroying her environment. Maybe she should look at western countries and realize that environmental regulation in this country and others was not optional, it was a necessity. As much as you bitch about it, would you really want this country to go back to environmental regulations as they were in the late sixties?
Scrubbing and sequestering CO2 is an active research area but I don't think anything is commercial at this point. A big question is how and where do you store all of the CO2 you scrub from the flue gases
How do we know?
Records were left of what crops were grown where and we know that the Romans and the Vikings both grew crops in the past where it is currently too cold to grow them now.
Of course the obvious conclusion that the earth has natural warming and cooling cycles as shown by these records and the extensive ice core records of both poles can't be the answer...It has to be our fault so someone can campaign on the issue.
Just as the global cooling era of 30 years ago and the human overpopulation era both came and went, this one will go away too...the only question is will any advanced nations shoot themselves in the foot over the eco-religious hysteria before it does?
My initial comment about "Western-led emissions restrictions" was about the imposition of Kyoto-style restrictions on China's CO2 emissions, NOT about regulations governing atmospheric pollution. (These are two separate regulatory regimes.)
J.F. Thomas confuses one for the other, and takes me to be saying that China ought not to be regulating atmospheric pollution. This couldn't be further from what I said, and stems from the aforementioned confusion.
He further compounds this error by saying that China ought to learn from Western countries when it comes to environmental regulation enacted since the 60s, forgetting that the Clean Air Act which he alludes to applies to atmospheric pollution and NOT CO2 emissions. Indeed, CO2 emissions increased while atmospheric pollution decreased due to CCA regulation.
All his example does is show that you can increase CO2 emissions while reducing atmospheric pollution of the kind targetted by CCA legislation, and of the kind China is suffering from now. Why he continues to confuse the two is a mystery to me.
While there is much detail here, the problem with iron fertilization is that its effect is limited. You can get about a factor of 2 in the southern ocean which is especially iron poor, less elsewhere. Now if you add some of the vitamin Bs (I am not kidding, the phytoplankton need B but don't produce it) you get about a factor of 3.5 in production, but not all of that falls as detrius into the deep ocean (which is how the CO2 gets sequestered as carbonates).
As to sequesterization it would roughly double the cost of electricity. There is a recent IPCC report on this.
Finally, while nuclear is a start, even with reprocessing (which, among otherthings is a source of plutonium and thus a proliferation risk), there is a limited amount of economically recoverable uranium, which limits its utility.
Reading your 10:42PM post is seems that you are pretty much agreeing with the Wash Post article on the lack of options to reduce CO2 production. I'm pretty sure that is not what you mean to say but that is the impression it leaves.
Your points are, ocean sequestration won't work, sequestration will double the cost of electricity, and nuclear has limited utility due to supply problems.
Of course. The less complete the combustion is, the more hydrocarbons are produced and the less water vapor and carbon dioxide. The more complete the combustion is, the fewer hydrocarbons are produced and the more water vapor and carbon dioxide. Look at your auto emissions tailpipe test requirements and results.
In any event, by their atmospheric pollution, the Chicoms are helping reduce "global warming."
Of course, this is a completely dishonest argument. Pollution comes from two sources, incomplete combustion and impurities in the fuel source. If you improve your efficiency and clean up your fuel sources you will burn less fuel, meaning less overall carbon emissions (of course post-combustion pollution control sources must still be added to remove pollutants from combustion products because your fuel will never be 100% pure).
For all of those who have been sneering at me because I don't know the difference between CO2 and traditional pollution, you are idiots. This country achieved its amazing reduction in air pollution over the last 35 years through not just improving smokestack and tailpipe emissions but also by improving efficiency. The best way to reduce pollution is to burn less fuel, which reduces CO2 emissions along with all the other nasties.
Haha.
QED.
The interesting thing about electricity generation is that nuclear is suited to peak load, and solar to surge. They make a good pair. There will not be a single magic solution.
The problem with nuclear is it never lived up to its promise to be "too cheap to meter". It is one of the most expensive ways to boil water ever invented. From cradle to grave it is the most heavily government subsidized power source, yet is still not competitive with more traditional methods of generation. Yet again, libertarians just love it.