China has just passed the US as the world’s #1 producer of CO2.
Under Hansen’s definition, a country is valued based on their CO2 rhetoric.
China has just passed the US as the world’s #1 producer of CO2.
Under Hansen’s definition, a country is valued based on their CO2 rhetoric.
If the spending continues at the current rate they’ will get what they want.
“Chinese leadership takes a long view…”
I’m sure they do. I don’t think it’s the same view as Dr Hansen’s though.
Forgetting climate change for a moment he does have a point, the US always seems to be having elections for one thing or another, the Chinese leadership don’t have to worry about that when making plans.
Andy
ya Andy, it’s great over there,
sarcasm aside,
you really are serious??
It is great over there, what’s their growth rate at the moment and amount of trade balance compared to the USA?
Communist China teaching the USA how to do capitalism right. Who would have thought it 50 years ago.
The USA is following the UK down the pan as an ex super power.
Andy
andyw
that is some fantasy if you think the chinese have capitalism. keep in mind your jeans and tennis shoes are made by slave labor in a factory owned by the PLA.
china owes it’s success to the willingness of U.S. banks and corporations to sell out (literally) their own people.
these right wing guys in the next cubicle over from me at Boeing were raving one evening about how great the chinese police state was and i looked over the divider and told them,
I like living in a free country. If you like china so much then move the fuck over there and leave america be. they are shipping our jobs over there anyway
/rant
Very true.
That is why they will only do what is in their own interest.
China is going to do nothing.
no they smelled the rat at COP15 – this book is out in China
Low Carbon Plot
Author, Gou Hongyang
“The Developed Countries’ “Carbon tax” and “carbon emissions reductions”, have become two of the most effective weapons with which to oppress Developing Countries. After donning the “moral overcoat”, they start to attack the Developing Countries…..
read the rest of the translated text here
http://ourmaninsichuan.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/low-carbon-plot-or-why-cancun-has-already-failed/
They already are doing things. I think they are the biggest suppliers of photovoltaic, and their investment in renewable energy is probably approaching the US (not counting the ethanol boondoggle). Certainly this is a major switch for a communist country that since it’s inception has ideologically been opposed to anything not predicated on Marxist principles of industrialization, often considering environmental issue bourgois.
And they bring up a new coal fired power plant almost every week.
Tony D.,
Solar and Wind power are LOW MASS power producers.
They are nothing more than a niche supplier.
You need to wake up before it is too late.
just think of those fools in the 19th century thinking that those crazy steam powered vehicles would ever replace the horse and buggy. They were slow. they cost WAY more than a horse, they broke down, and were an economic drain. The infrastructure necessary to allow more than a handful of rich people to operate then was insane to consider. Idiots with an absolutely insane faith in technology and beleiveing in a miraculous social and economic transformation that could obviously never happen
Passive solar is a much simpler solution.
Here in Colorado they build all the houses north-south to face the mountains. That keeps them cold in the winter and hot in the summer.
No one can see the mountains anyway, because the neighbors across the street plant trees.
I think China has started building, or soon will a major solar thermal plant, that they are saying is just an initial test.
I am not a big fan of china, but at least they don’t have a major political faction that does not believe in evolution. And at least they are actually taking rather large steps toward renewable energy.
We do have a major political faction that believes we caused the floods in Pakistan.
Really? Show me a quote where someone in government or a political faction said “We caused the flood in pakistan”?
What I HAVE read is people saying that while NO SINGLE EVENT can be ascribed to global warming, statistically global warming may have accounted for an element of some events, like the fires in Russia and the Flood in Pakistan. You can certainly contest that, as you do, but there is a big difference between the first and the second. Anyone who does say your quote, I absolutely agree is being alarmist.
You have got to be kidding http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/7937269/Pakistan-floods-Climate-change-experts-say-global-warming-could-be-the-cause.html
Steve,
HOW MANY TIMES do I have to tell you to read the articles before you post them.
“Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, said it was impossible to attribute any one of these particular weather events to global warming alone.”
There is a bit more that pretty much says what I posted.
And honestly, do you think a newspaper is going to print a headline that says. “Scientists say that some of the extreme events could have a component that is caused by global warming, but you can never absolutely attribute them to global warming, just statistically correlate relative frequencies of such events to the historical record and models of projected global warming effects?”
No they say things. like “Gay gene discovered” “terrorist Bill Ayers, was close friends with Obama”. “Muslim group building mosque at ground zero”
Mealy mouthed approach to implausible deniability.
mealy mouthed approach to misrepresenting science.
Nature just refuses to cooperate with what you call “science.”
“I am not a big fan of china, but at least they don’t have a major political faction that does not believe in evolution. ”
Ha! China does not have ANY political factions. Of course that’s the way socialists like it – no opposition and not having to worry about what the people may happen to want.
Get serious Tony. The Chinese govt only ever wants what is in its own interest.Not its own people’s interest and certainly not the Maldives sinking under the sea.
If solar power or anything else is cheaper or is more secure than other energy sources they will go for it. If not they will stay as they are.
“just think of those fools in the 19th century thinking that those crazy steam powered vehicles would ever replace the horse and buggy. ”
Things changed because there were more efficient ways of doing things not because govts decided so.
So you Don’t think Hitler’s government policies of the late 30’s early 40’s had any impact on the development of radar, nuclear weapons, jet engines and a dozen other innovations?
Or Prince Henry’s policy’s were unimportant in the development of trade and technological advances that led to the dominance of Europe? I could go on at length but I have to cut and nail in some baseboard.
Happy thanksgiving all!
I was at college in the 70’s. I remember one of our communist lecturers ( there were many!) in economics explaining that one of the advantages of communism was that it could take care of the environment unlike capitalism.
He did not seem to realise that a govt could make laws forcing firms to cut pollution etc ( just as has happened for a century or more). Under communism, the govt owns the firms, so it is highly unlikely to pass laws which cost itself money or reduce its productivity.
If idiot Hansen has not worked this out, maybe he should pay a visit to the Aral Sea and see for himself how communists look after the environment.
The environment was filthy in the Soviet Union.
The contrast was very apparent when the Berlin wall fell.The difference between west and East Germany was staggering.
The west part was much cleaner and nicer than the former communist East Germany.
When you queue for food three hours a day, you probably don’t worry much about the environment.
“I was at college in the 70?s. I remember one of our communist lecturers”
I had a professor in 1981 who was a communist. He sat in a chair, away from his desk, in front of the blackboard on the second day and talked about how great Russia was. He said the communists would eventually win in America. A girl across the room laughed. She must have thought he was joking. He had pale white skin and looked vitamin deficient. His head was shaved smooth and shiny. He had a couple scabs on the pasty skin of his forearms. He picked at the them while he talked. The atmosphere in the room felt cold. He was dead serious.
I transferred out of the class that afternoon.
I had a number of hight school teachers that believed insane stuff because of ideology. My honors biology teacher didn’t believe in evolution and most of the smartest students didn’t either because their religion told them it was wrong My history teacher didn’t believe the US had ever intervened in another country except to restore democracy. He had a fit when I did a book report outlining US support for Latin American dictators.
Ideologues are everywhere and on both sides of most issue.
China will indeed do nothing.
See http://ourmaninsichuan.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/cancun-and-the-chinese-perspective-on-it/
Pointman
As can be seen China has the deepest respect for America.
St. Petersburg, Russia – China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/24/content_11599087.htm
Hansen has loose screws.
This in spite of the incredible economic surge in the US over the last few years?
Yet another admirer of authoritarian governments who “get things done” without having to worry about what the little people think.
despite China’s government style, it does have, in theory, a strength to regulate and direct better than a politically directed economy like the USA’s. Wait a minute what I said looks like a mirror.
Whatever strengths one would like to attribute to China, it does have a mountain of problems it is working around, much like the US has a debt problem it more or less works around. Corruption is in many ways much more devastating to an economy/society than debt problems. Think Mexico vrs Ireland or even England. China has a corruption problem feed by the vast amount of money flowing. Not too hard to take a bucket from a river and have it not be noticed. The gross effect of many buckets though…mixed with the offspring of corruption…
Suggesting that China sees Alternative energy as anything more than a work program and money maker is simply silly. China makes money selling worthless nicknacks cheaply to the outside world. Selling windmills and current solar energy systems is exactly that.
The sad bit in our current energy policy is that it will take more energy to clean up the worthless windfarms and photov. systems than they ever generated. I submit that this is our corruption. And corruption is devastating to a society.
I agre with part of your assessment. I do not doubt that corruption is a huge factor in China. It has been all along, and the incredible economic growth I am sure has led to many more kinds and a great increase in scale.
But then you say rather sill things like “China makes money selling worthless nicknacks cheaply to the outside world” Like the computers that all of us are writing on? maybe 2o years ago that was true, but China makes money producing much of the electronic infrastructure of the world. Among a variety of other important economic activities.
At the moment windmills and solar are not major parts of the economy, and it is spewing out more GHG than anyone else, but they are jsut ramping up in all sorts of areas around alternative energy, and tho think that it is just another nicknack, is based on ideology not facts.
I do NOT support spending huge amounts of money now to bring current renewable energy production on line. But there should be a scaling up as technologies improve and as new technologies are developed that provide much better economic and environmental solutions to providing energy,.
If ACC is a serious problem this should be done much faster, but either way it is going to happen.
One key area I agree with Feynman (and MANY climate change experts) is that novel approaches to both mitigation of ACC and energy use in general are going to be WAY more effective than current approaches. But you NEED to start with what you have and go from there. Innovation will come from reasearch AND insights from application.
Not one mention of the apparent 800 lb Gorilla in the room=China’s pursuit of the
Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
Split Atoms, not Birds…
Tony, good to hear.
I tend to write in poetic scale. Cutting out paragraphs of refinement to what look like wild eyed proposal sentences. I believe I should have implied China makes a lot of things, but makes money on producing everyday items for the masses. A great deal of what it produces doesn’t have to be money making now if it defines a market. It is creating a dependency. And to be fair China has come a long ways, it soon will be exporting nuclear reactors for energy production. Which begs another discussion.
As you know there is a lot of interesting research in algae and other “plant” to energy
creation. There is a lot to look forward to. But as I think you say, what is here now isn’t the end product. Here is where we part company, every penny we spend on failure energy policy is two pennies not spent heading in the right direction. Energy development is an evolutionary process. Trying to maintain an evolutionary dead end is worthless.
That is a logically defendable position. thanks for clearing up your characterization of China. I realize that it is not possible to say exactly what you mean in this sort of format about something as big as China. I tend to wax poetical myself sometimes.
USA super power of the 20th Century, China superpower of the 21st Century.
End of story.
Andy