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14 Apr 08 - 11:06 PM (#2315819) Subject: BS: China #1 Polluter From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor They have recently overtaken the US BBC story |
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15 Apr 08 - 03:27 AM (#2315899) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: GUEST,PMB Of course, they are polluting because they are making the stuff we don't make anymore that they export to the USA and Europe, whose pollution figures go down as a result. We truly lav in the litter times. |
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15 Apr 08 - 03:40 AM (#2315909) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Jack the Sailor There is that. The article says they are opening a lot of new power plants to satisfy demand for appliances and other modern conveniences. |
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15 Apr 08 - 04:35 AM (#2315929) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Teribus From the linked BBC Article: "The University of California team will report their work in the Journal of Environment Economics and Management. They warn that unchecked future growth will dwarf any emissions cuts made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol." "University of California report warns that unless China radically changes its energy policies, its increases in greenhouse gases will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol." "The only solution is for a massive transfer of technology and wealth from the West" - Dr Max Auffhammer, Lead researcher. "Dr Auffhammer told BBC News that his projections had made an assumption that the Chinese government's recent aggressive energy efficiency programme would fail, as the previous one had failed badly. "Our figures for (Chinese) emissions growth are truly shocking," he said." I hate to point it out to such an august "Lead Researcher" as Dr Auffhammer, but I fail to see why this news should come as such a surprise. About eight years ago someone else pointed all this out by way of explanation as to how Kyoto would simply not work. He also explained how any international agreement on the environment had to include the burgeoning industrial economies of China, India and Brazil and that effective progress in reducing greenhouse gasses would have to be "technology lead". Anybody care to tell the others who it is that I am talking about? |
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15 Apr 08 - 04:46 AM (#2315936) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Jack the Sailor No it is not a surprise that it happened. It is news that it happened now. Bush's solution on Kyoto was the same as for Iraq. Act unilaterally and leave the courageous, necessary, action for the next President. |
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15 Apr 08 - 04:49 AM (#2315938) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Peace Teribus: I copied your post to the Food Inflation thread. The energy/food relationship seems to be driving a world food crisis. |
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15 Apr 08 - 05:17 AM (#2315959) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Teribus "Act unilaterally and leave the courageous, necessary, action for the next President." - JTS What complete and utter rubbish!!! Please tell us what the point is of subscribing to an agreement the terms of which you know will not achieve the goals set out by that agreement. It is "courageous" to ratify an agreement that you know will not work? - Bloody idiotic more like but courageous not in a thousand years. "Necessary"? Necessary in order to accomplish what exactly? Failure accompanied by the nice warm cuddly feeling you get knowing that on paper we tried? |
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15 Apr 08 - 06:25 AM (#2315990) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Barry Finn "Act unilaterally and leave the courageous, necessary, action for the next President." - JTS" Not rubbish, Bush didn't even try! It's no shock, China's position is/was no better than ours here in the US. Their 3 Gourges Dam project was/is an enviormental nightmare but as with many nations it's the cost of progress that we all will pay for, eventually. The depleation of our rain forests worlwide, espically in Brazil is another cost that we'll all being paying for soon enough, if we haven't started paying already. Barry |
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15 Apr 08 - 06:38 AM (#2316001) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Teribus I'm all for a 3 Gorgeous Dames Project, Barry. Let's see what Bush didn't try: If it was genuinely believed by any at Kyoto that something needed doing, i.e. that something, some course of action was "necessary", then it should not have been beyond the wit of those there to decide upon a course of action that would have been all inclusive and effective. They didn't, they did as they always do they fudged it, all "smoke 'n' mirrors", with not the slightest chance of success. While the World was applauding the Emperor's new clothes, the President of The United States of America said "No, this ain't goin' to work." - Seems now at least Dr.Auffhammer agrees with him. Does it take courage to stand alone? I think so. Does it take courage to stand by your convictions in the face of public censure? I think it does. GWB did both with regard to Kyoto which Dr Auffhammer all but proclaims a broken reed. |
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15 Apr 08 - 06:50 AM (#2316009) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: bobad 70% of China's power comes from burning coal coal. "China uses more coal than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined. And it has increased coal consumption 14 percent in each of the past two years in the broadest industrialization ever. Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego. "To make matters worse, India is right behind China in stepping up its construction of coal-fired power plants — and has a population expected to outstrip China's by 2030." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/worldbusiness/11chinacoal.html |
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15 Apr 08 - 07:11 AM (#2316021) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Teribus Ah well, so Maggie has been vindicated, proved right after all, this "global warming", it's all down to those coal-fired power stations. |
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15 Apr 08 - 07:37 AM (#2316038) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Zen Perhaps even more down to 1.3 billion people subscribing to the "I want that and I want it now" Maggie philosophy (plus another 1.1 billion in India)... Zen |
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15 Apr 08 - 07:57 AM (#2316060) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Teribus Would they be allowed to state that in the "Workers Paradise" Zen? |
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15 Apr 08 - 08:05 AM (#2316069) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Zen Not an authoritative source I know Teribus but typical indications here of a rapidly increasing consumer class in China. Zen |
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15 Apr 08 - 12:01 PM (#2316284) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Barry Finn Ya, Bush is our enviormentally friendly President. What a howl!!!! Barry |
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15 Apr 08 - 12:21 PM (#2316306) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: CarolC Had we decided that we were going to adhere to the Kyoto treaty, we would have been putting our resources these last years into developing and perfecting technologies that would provide us with renewable, non-polluting sources of power (nuclear is not one of those) instead of devoting all of our resources to fighting wars over oil. Had we done that, we would then have been in a position to sell those technologies to China so that they would be able to sign on to Kyoto themselves. But we didn't. That is the fault of the Bush administration. |
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15 Apr 08 - 12:31 PM (#2316316) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: pdq You seem to be wrong in every point. " sell those technologies to China" Hate to tell you this, but China has industrial spies in every major industry and steal our new technological breakthroughs before we can even use them ourselves. They are especially brazen when stealing new computer and defence technologies. They most certainly would not be buying our p[olution control systems because they don't give a rat's ass about it. |
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15 Apr 08 - 12:36 PM (#2316324) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Teribus And all those countries who "got it right" and did not devote "all of (their) resources to fighting wars over oil, did what exactly CarolC? Did they instead put their resources into "developing and perfecting technologies that would provide us with renewable, non-polluting sources of power"? - Hell as like they did France opted a long time ago to go for the nuclear solution, Britain had the opportunity to do that a few years ahead of the French and should have done so. The US during the last eight years has managed to do quite a lot, in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emmissions they've a better track record than most who signed up to pay lip service to Kyoto - and that was, according to CarolC, despite devoting all their resources to fighting wars which of course is absolute tosh - nothing but biased, emotive, baseless, rubbish. |
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15 Apr 08 - 12:44 PM (#2316331) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: CarolC You're the one who is wrong, pdq. They do give a rat's ass about it, and they are willing to pay. They know better than anyone that they can't continue the way they're going. They are currently paying teams of people from the US and countries in western Europe who are helping them design and test environmentally sustainable communites. These are designs that would be very beneficial here in this country if our government gave a rat's ass about the environment. You show your ignorance with posts like that one, pdq. |
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15 Apr 08 - 12:48 PM (#2316338) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: CarolC Did they instead put their resources into "developing and perfecting technologies that would provide us with renewable, non-polluting sources of power"? - Hell as like they did Yes. A lot of them have been doing that. The US is way behind many European countries when it comes to developing and using sustainable technologies. You think bluster is an acceptable substitute for knowledge, Teribus. It isn't. |
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15 Apr 08 - 01:10 PM (#2316362) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Wolfgang A first small step would be to change China's status as a developing country. China might object to such a move I dare to predict. Wolfgang |
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15 Apr 08 - 01:34 PM (#2316394) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Jack the Sailor We took the wrong steps in kyoto. The US is five per cent of the world's population, China is almost a quarter, yet the pollution is about the same. What is wrong with this picture? |
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15 Apr 08 - 03:28 PM (#2316521) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Barry Finn We have just lost our first place position as the #1 polluter to china, so we're now #2. Does that sound like we've been making progress for the past 8 years? You say that Bush has been doing something right? I don't think so! Take the wrong steps, we went backwards & let matters get worse in favor of big business. Barry |
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15 Apr 08 - 06:04 PM (#2316705) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: Shanghaiceltic One of China's biggest problems with pollution has been the fact that the ministry responsible for the control had no power. Just recently a super ministry was put together to centralise the control of environmental issues. It might work, but there are a lot of vested interests in the provinces who will still be able to circumvent the new laws. China is very good at making new laws but has a very poor record of enforcing them. Plus there are many factions within the political system in China who will block moves for cleaning up, not because they are bad but because it is a way of showing their power and keeping their provincial power base. Vehicle pollution in the cities is very bad. Though the Chinese govt introduced emission testing for petrol fueled cars about 4 years ago it did nothing to control the emissions from deisal engines. There is no clean deisal in China. There are winter and summer grades and both are dirty. Huge amounts of goods are transported by large trucks belching black fumes. Car ownership has risen massively in China, but the no. or cars per head of population is still very very low, which means the problem can only get worse. Shanghai has a population of 16m (official) and probably more like 24m unofficial. When I first arrived in Shanghai few homes had air conditioning, it was unaffordable. Today it is a different story. Nearly every house or apartment has at least one unit. Work on an average of 5-7Kw per unit, multiply that by lets say 10m houses and apartments and you can see the power problem. And that is only Shanghai. There are regular brown outs summer and winter due to power shortages in Shanghai. The 3 Gorges is meant to be the answer, but that is at an even bigger environmental cost. Water is in short supply, I think the last figures I saw where that only 5 rivers in China produce potable water. The rest are polluted. They built a new sewage works in Shanghai. It opened to much fanfare, it now runs only intermittent because it cannot afford the power bills. Water bills are well below the actual cost of producing water, the tarrifs are set by the Govt. So though it can collect money, the money collected does not cover the running costs. Shanghai is probably less polluted than Beijing and that is not saying much... |
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15 Apr 08 - 07:02 PM (#2316770) Subject: RE: BS: China #1 Polluter From: GUEST,Chief Chaos Although not an expert on Chinese pollution figures I would have a hard time believing that they didn't exceed the U.S. a long time ago. Our current administration might be secretive but it's nothing compared to China. The Bush solution to Kyoto was not one of "It won't work so we're not going to buy into it". It was "There's no such thing as Global Warming!" Which was quickly followed by "We need to spend millions of dollars studying the problem" (without actually taking any measures whatsoever to reduce pollution which is bad for all of us anyway) to "Global warming is real (according to his own scientists) but we don't know if it's man made so we'll dump more money into studying it" again without taking any measures. Meanwhile he and his administration have overturned whole sections of law by meddling with enforcement, financially starving regulatory agencies, and planting administration sycophants in the organizations to stifle dissent from their eco-terrorist workers. Besides the whole "won't work anyway" statement is obviously deranged. Their pollution might indeed increase to the point where our reductions are meaningless, but that doesn't mean we should just continue what we're doing. |