China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter

[GliderGuider]

China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

But according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes.

"Faster that expected, Dr. Watson? Well, who could have expected that?"

Maybe they should build some nukes instead of 1 new coal-fired power plant every week for the next 10 freakin' years...

[kestrel91316]

1. Well, that lets us off the hook. Now we don't need to do a thing to reduce

our CO2 emissions. It's not OUR fault that global warming is a problem.

[HereSince1628]

2. !!!! See, SSSEEE! It makes no difference what the US does

The rest of the world IS THE PROBLEM. :eyes:

Oh dear, someone is feeding the monkeys caffiene again...expect monkey shit to be scattered far and wide.

[NickB79]

3. The latest issue of Popular Science says it's up to 3 coal-fired plants per week now

Faster than expected indeed.

[GliderGuider]

4. Sweet Jesus.

3 a week. 1500 in ten years.

Excuse me, I have to go rewrite a couple of my Population Decline articles.

[phantom power]

5. Did PopSci discuss what the power-ratings were?

Is this 3 gigawatt plants per weak, or 3 250MW plants, or what?

[GliderGuider]

6. Here's the article on-line

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/9de4dae055883110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/2.html

China's economic boom, a 10 percent increase in GDP every year, is twice that of America's at the height of the dot-com era and shows no signs of relenting. Half of the world's new buildings go up in China. The country has constructed the equivalent of the U.S. highway system in a decade. It adds the electricity use of Norway, 102 gigawatts, to its power grid every year and builds the equivalent of three coal-fired electricity plants every week (not one, as is usually reported). Last year, it produced 2.3 billion metric tons of coal, 40 percent of the world's total and more than the U.S., Russia and India combined.

2 GW per week. We're so fucked.

[NickB79]

7. Yeah, I had to read that at least 3 times before it really sunk in

And then I wished it hadn't, because it was absolutely fucking depressing.

[GliderGuider]

8. And it gets even worse

Few of the country's plants have sulfur scrubbers, making China the world's largest emitter of sulfur dioxide, which causes the acid rain that falls on a third of Chinese territory. Last year, the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) recalculated the country's GDP to account for environmental costs—and reported a 3 percent reduction (others estimate 8 to 15 percent). That same year, 4,700 people were killed in coal-mining accidents.

In February, South Korea suffered two weeks of toxic dust storms that meteorologists blamed on China. In April 2006, a similar cloud of pollution was spotted floating over the Pacific toward North America . U.S. soil is filled with Chinese particulates; roughly 50 percent of our mercury comes from foreign, mostly Chinese, coal plants

Chinese firms are blamed for deforesting tropical Southeast Asia, but 70 percent of the wood imported goes into furniture bound for Europe and North America

A 2005 study by Bin Shui and Robert Harris of Colorado's National Center for Atmospheric Research determined that from 1997 to 2003, China-U.S. trade increased global CO2 emissions by 720 million metric tons.

Some 7 to 14 percent of China's emissions resulted from exports to American customers; had the goods been produced here, our national CO2 emissions would be up to 6 percent higher, and the U.S. would still be the top greenhouse emitter in the world. Simply put, this is our pollution too—we've just outsourced it to China.

To paraphrase Oppenheimer's misquote: "I am become Globalization, destroyer of worlds."

[GliderGuider]

9. And that 2.3 billion tonnes of coal they mined last year last year became

6.2 gigatonnes of CO2...

[ramapo]

10. That was fast

Incredible growth taking place there. The new coal plant statistic is pretty scary.