China's Coal Power Plants Mask Climate Change 464
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports on new research revealing that the huge increase in coal-fired power stations in China, up from just over 10 gigawatts (GW) in 2002 to over 80GW in 2006, has masked the impact of global warming in the last decade because of the cooling effect of their sulphur emissions. But scientists warn that rapid warming is likely to resume when the short-lived sulphur pollution – which also causes acid rain – is cleaned up and the full heating effect of long-lived carbon dioxide is felt. 'Reductions in carbon emissions will be more important as China installs scrubbers [on its coal-fired power stations], which reduce sulphur emissions,' says Dr. Robert Kaufman. 'This, and solar insolation increasing as part of the normal solar cycle, [will mean] temperature is likely to increase faster.' The effect also explains the lack of global temperature rise seen between 1940 and 1970 as the effect of the sulphur emissions from increased coal burning outpaced that of carbon emissions, until acid rain controls were introduced, after which temperature rose quickly. 'Warming due to the CO2 released by Chinese industrialization has been partially masked by cooling due to reflection of solar radiation by sulphur emissions,' says Prof Joanna Haigh. 'On longer timescales, with cleaner emissions, the warming effect will be more marked.'"
Complex Model (Score:3, Insightful)
This is going to be taken by both supporters and detractors of Climate Change: Warming Trend as evidence for their cause. Let me go get the popcorn.
Nothing productive will come of this so I might as well sit back and enjoy the fireworks. Nevermind we are trying to figure out a complex model as it changes under conditions that about as far from scientifically controlled as possible. My only hope is we don't accidentally cause an Ice Age trying to fix this.
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
These 'scientists' really make me laugh...
Because they are all the time revising their models and theories in order to make them more acurate? What a stupid thing for a scientist to do!
Anyway, I have some snake oil to sell you for your headaches... you know, your grand-grandfather used it, so it is sure it works!
The line from Corporate America (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why many American companies outsource manufacturing to china. lax regulations, and those regulations are ignored. It's far cheaper to make your phone in a location where waste can be dumped into the stream behind the building or just thrown into the trash stream and bury those heavy metals in the landfill.
But as long as we ignore that and enjoy low priced products it will all be ok.
Environmental regulations hurt jobs and business! And because of them, business has to outsource overseas because they won't be able to compete! And then there are the taxes .... American business has to go overseas for the cheap labor and the lower taxes in order to compete with the rest of the World.
Translation:
We want to lower our costs to the bare minimum so the CEO and other executives can get filthy rich off of the backs of the workers and shareholders all the while poisoning the people and land of foreign nations because their leaders want to enrich themselves - (fascist) capitalism working with despots.
In the meantime, the super rich propaganda machine has brain washed us peons into thinking that if we work hard and get educated, we too can one day join their ranks - it's a given! As long as we can keep those pesky environmental regulations and taxes low for the very wealthy ($10 million+ assets) out of the way.
In the meantime, the entire World spirals down economically and ecologically and the super rich hang out on their yachts and private jets.
Want to know who to go after? Get the Gulfstream, Bombardier, Cessna (Citation Jets), and the other "corporate jet" makers client lists and then get the individuals behind those corporations.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST (Score:0, Insightful)
So you are still trying to make the facts fit your theory?
WTF!?!
Take a look at the facts, and develop a theory from the facts.
Earth's climate swings hotter-colder-hotter-colder. Humans put out less CO2 than one volcano.
Re:Scrubbers: A 1970s Tech Still Absent in China (Score:2, Insightful)
I found it impossibly hard to believe that it's cheaper to move your entire operation than install scrubbers
The point is, you can ignore a whole heck of a lot more regulations than just the scrubber requirements.
Fly ash can be dumped onto the lawn until it blows away or is washed away. No need to capture and recycle mercury, or anything else, unless you'll make a profit off it. No need for those pesky worker safety regulations. Boiler inspections, what are they? Have a barrel of used lubricating oil, and coincidentally a barrel sized hole in the ground?
Re:The line from Corporate America (Score:5, Insightful)
Environmental regulations hurt jobs and business
Local environmental regulations do. I'd love to see the US and EU impose large import duties on anything that was produced in a factory that had not been inspected for conformance to the environmental laws at the point of sale.
What about the West? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the supposed rise in temperature in recent decades isn't due to CO2 emission; perhaps our nasty coal plants in the west prior to that were holding off an increase by putting aerosols in the air, and cleaning them up unmasked that effect.
If coal plants really have this sort of major effect, and they aren't accounted for in the much-vaunted climate models, the models are pretty much junk. If they are accounted for, why is this news?
Re:Complex Model (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trust Us. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scrubbers: A 1970s Tech Still Absent in China (Score:4, Insightful)
Scrubbers have been required in America since the 1977 revisions to the Clean Air Act. And they're still not
...up to spec. I personally know someone who used to be employed to climb stacks and drop probes in them. We can find plants of all kinds emitting excessive pollutants (as in, over the legal limits) as fast as we can pay people to climb them.
Complete rubbish (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure how Mann and Co. can keep a straight face whilst publishing rubbish like this. They've basically tweaked an existing computer model - one that did not in any way conform to actual reality - and added further fudge factors to make things balance out and *shock* it does! That is to say, rather than admitting the CO2 hypothesis is wrong and that changes in solar activity and the oceans are more convincing explanations, they prefer to fiddle around with what is an over-parametrised model.
The entire paper is predicated on the assumption that the climate model (and climate models in general) code for sufficient amounts of internal variability. Given that models rarely, if ever, show this, one can safely say that they do not and that they are therefore invalid.
Re:Complex Model (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The line from Corporate America (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the inspectors hired by the US and EU need to get in on that bribery action too!
In all seriousness, the 2 main reasons the US and EU don't do this are (A) most of their politicians are probably on the take from the same businesses, and (B) the WTO and other international trade organizations would ensure retaliation by imposing massive duties on exports.
Re:So why not inject sulpher into the stratosphere (Score:4, Insightful)
Falsifiability (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's overlook the fact that we have a big fat admission that temperatures haven't been going up for about a decade and how no one wanted to readily admit that to the public...
Global warming theory, as presently constructed, can't be falsified. "The theory's valid! It's the sulfur, the ocean cycles, the -fill in reasons for lack of warming-."
How can we even disprove this current assertion? They have no idea.
At the very least, this gives credence to the Freakanomics folks. Instead of wrecking the world's economy, how about we just shoot sulfur in the upper part of our atmosphere if you are worried about global warming?
Re:Wow, what a convenient excuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Even I can spot bullshit from my armchair. Completely dismissing 30 years of evidence just because it doesn't conform to your pet idea--that's bullshit. And it's not how science is supposed to work.
Re:The line from Corporate America (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, your post ignores not only cause and effect, but correlation as well. Total ignorance of reality. The fact is that the more regulations imposed by the government, the rich CEOs get, because the corporations own the government, and use those regulations to squelch competition. This drives new industry abroad.
But it's not the corporations who are to blame. Hate the game, not the player. More specifically, hate the system, and those who created it, and made the rules. This means Republicans and Democrats.
You want to fix this? Get rid of these two parties, and bring in a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. Don't settle for the choice between a turd burger and a shit sandwich.
Re:Scrubbers: A 1970s Tech Still Absent in China (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that this is exactly what AGW people criticize in the climate deniers, right?
Re:Complex Model (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Complex Model (Score:5, Insightful)
People can differ over whether they think climate change will be a bad thing, or whether they should have to pay to prevent bad things from happening to other people or the natural environment, but there is no question we are causing climate change. People who argue otherwise are blinding themselves for their own convenience.
Re:The line from Corporate America (Score:5, Insightful)
There are times I think the old America which was more focused on classical liberalism would actually have more 'social justice' than the current one.
Just think about 'free-trade' in a classical liberal sense.
Minimum wage laws - how can the government apply different laws to different people. Why should the government restrict the right of an American to compete against his Asian competitor. Why should the American have to obey a $10/hour minimum wage, but his Asian counterpart does not?
Solution - either stop free trade or mandate that every country exporting goods to the US must obey the American minimum wage.
This kind of thinking is actually what America used internally when different states wanted different minimum wages. I mean how could New York impose a minimum wage, but Alabama doesn't. Obviously, jobs would flow to Alabama. So the US federal government created the federal minimum wage for goods destined for inter-state commerce. If you were just a local pizza shop in Alabama, not involved in interstate commerce, you didn't have to obey the federal minimum wage.
It made a lot of sense. So why wasn't this same great logic used when we started international trade deals? My own view... this occurred when the government stopped trying to be just the law. When the government began looking at outcomes and goals. So it made sense to expand trade deals... I mean Americans are too good to work in textiles... those are not jobs Americans should be doing right?
The same kind of logic and and should be done for environmental laws.
I say all this from a libertarian mind set.
Having different laws for different people is a far greater violation of individual rights than restricting free trade.
Re:Complete rubbish (Score:2, Insightful)
You're seriously postulating that no part of a given climate model conforms in any way shape or form to actual reality
That's a straw person. The real question is: it is possible to create a climate model that conforms to reality with sufficient accuracy that it could reasonably be used as the basis for major changes to public policy?
The answer to that question, in my view as a computational physicist who has looked at a few climate models, is: not yet.
Seriously: the economic crisis of 2008/2009 was engineered by policies based on economic models at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere that were FAR more accurate representations of the part of reality they were concerned with than the very best climate models we have today. If you believe we should be setting policy based on climate models you must also believe we should be setting policy based on such financial models, which would be a little weird, given how that worked out last time.
This is not to say that I think dumping gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere is a good idea: it isn't, and we should be nudging the world toward carbon-free status via cap-and-trade (mysteriously called a "carbon tax", as if having to pay for land was a "land tax"...) But don't think for a moment that climate models provide anything like an accurate representation of reality.
Re:The line from Corporate America (Score:4, Insightful)
And C) consumers would throw a fit when the price of computers jumps significantly and that laptop is no longer $400.
Re:Falsifiability (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think asking some questions about sulfur is worse than actually advocating for trillions of dollars of expense on the economy?
"People who have absolutely no expertise whatsoever think they can just handwave the results and scientific consensus of thousands of researchers who have spent millions of man-hours analyzing datasets from dozens of different and unrelated sources, all of which have the same levels of correlation pointing to the same issues."
This cuts both ways. You want people outside the field to accept their expertise. So just tell me how to falsify the theory. Temperatures not matching predictions won't work because apparently another source will be blamed.