Climate Crisis Forces China To Ration Electricity (theguardian.com) 152
Provinces in China are being forced to reduce power consumption as forest fires, droughts, and heatwaves ravage the country. The Guardian reports: here were still some streetlights on the Bund, one of the main roads in central Shanghai. But the decorative lights which light up the city skyline -- blue, pink, and red -- were turned off for two days to cope with the peaking power demand. The power restriction imposed by the city authorities, was the first in Shanghai, the financial hub of China. But across the rest of the country similar restrictions have been put in place, as cities, notably in the south-western region, grapple with ongoing power shortages caused by devastating droughts this summer.
In Sichuan, a top-level energy emergency alert was issued to address the province's power shortages, a first in the province's history: the alert means that residents will be given priority for power supplies. Sichaun is known for its abundant hydro energy, which provides 80% of its power, and is a vital link in China's extensive West-to-East Electricity Transfer Project. But the area has been hit by record-breaking high temperatures, unseen in 60 years. With water in the region's rivers dropping to historical lows, hydropower plants are only producing half the energy they were generating this time last year.
Sichuan had already imposed rolling blackouts across factories, and international companies have had to halt production, while the coal-fired plants are all at full stretch. But even so, cities around Sichuan are struggling to meet surging power demands from residential communities, with people's daily lives being heavily affected. In Dazhou, residents in one community complain that power supplies have been cut for 6-7 hours each day for nearly a week, leaving many flocking to a nearby bridge in the evening to beat the sweltering summer heat, according to Jiupai News. Private business owners are also hit hard as power supplies are rationed among communities and shopping malls. Business activities and supply chains are being hit in various ways. "The price of commodities such as silicon metal has risen due to the power restrictions, and there are growing concerns about a shortage of automobile parts in Shanghai for companies including the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation and Tesla," reports The Guardian.
In Sichuan, a top-level energy emergency alert was issued to address the province's power shortages, a first in the province's history: the alert means that residents will be given priority for power supplies. Sichaun is known for its abundant hydro energy, which provides 80% of its power, and is a vital link in China's extensive West-to-East Electricity Transfer Project. But the area has been hit by record-breaking high temperatures, unseen in 60 years. With water in the region's rivers dropping to historical lows, hydropower plants are only producing half the energy they were generating this time last year.
Sichuan had already imposed rolling blackouts across factories, and international companies have had to halt production, while the coal-fired plants are all at full stretch. But even so, cities around Sichuan are struggling to meet surging power demands from residential communities, with people's daily lives being heavily affected. In Dazhou, residents in one community complain that power supplies have been cut for 6-7 hours each day for nearly a week, leaving many flocking to a nearby bridge in the evening to beat the sweltering summer heat, according to Jiupai News. Private business owners are also hit hard as power supplies are rationed among communities and shopping malls. Business activities and supply chains are being hit in various ways. "The price of commodities such as silicon metal has risen due to the power restrictions, and there are growing concerns about a shortage of automobile parts in Shanghai for companies including the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation and Tesla," reports The Guardian.
will happen more and more often (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:will happen more and more often (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. It's been driving me nuts that people in other states have been pointing and laughing at California, not because they're mean, but because they're stupid. How did they not get that the same shit would start happening in other states? The ones that still have trees, anyway. They wasted their wake-up call mocking the misfortune of others.
Re:will happen more and more often (Score:5, Interesting)
California has plenty of water _if_ they stop wasting so much of it growing water crops in a high plains desert environment. Over 90% of California water goes to farming. In a desert. Insane.
The lakes didn't drain themselves. They were drained by people, mostly for farming cash crops.
I lived in California most of my life. What gets farmed, how much water it uses, etc is not a secret. They just need to stop being stupid wastrels.
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California has plenty of water _if_ they stop wasting so much of it growing water crops in a high plains desert environment. Over 90% of California water goes to farming. In a desert. Insane.
I agree that California's water use is insane, but I'm not sure we'd have plenty of water even if we weren't being so wasteful. We've been working pretty hard to deplete aquifers, too.
Re:will happen more and more often (Score:5, Informative)
Yes the aquifers are getting drained as part of the same stupidly insane water mismanagement policies.
Here are rough numbers for where California water goes. Numbers will vary a bit each year but this is close enough for discussion:
Farming: 92%
All residential use: 2-3%
All industrial use:3-4%
The rest is lossage to leaks, evaporation, etc and other unspecified stuff I couldn't identify through researching the topic.
Tell me that reducing farm usage by only 5-10% wouldn't have a dramatic impact on water availability.
Tell me that there isn't an easily identified 5-10% wasted water easily recovered by ceasing stupid nonsense crops.
California has plenty of water -if- they stop being dumb.
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You say "stupid nonsense crops", and you've got a point. But some of those are the ones that bring in a lot of money. What do you plan to replace them with, that will also bring in a lot of money? Nopales is a really niche market.
FWIW, I'd recommend figs, but it takes a fig tree a long time to become really productive, and the fig wasps are prohibited imports. So you can't breed them. And, really, the market for figs would be really easy to saturate. So what else?
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You say "stupid nonsense crops", and you've got a point. But some of those are the ones that bring in a lot of money.
The ones that use the most water per unit of food produced (almonds and rice) also produce very little in tax revenues total, and also very little profit per unit of water used. It does however produce 100,000 jobs (alleged anyway) so that does raise some additional questions.
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There are some real easy ones to move like rice and alfalfa as well though. Neither grow on trees so no time lost growing new ones and both of those use more water then our much maligned almonds and bring in far less money so they should be easy moves out of the state.
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Numbers will vary a bit each year but this is close enough for discussion:
Not a bit. In some places, farmer allocation is reduced to 10% of normal during droughts.
Re:will happen more and more often (Score:5, Informative)
Look up the water use of growing almonds. It's more than one gallon of fresh for one almond, but California continues to produce them as a primary cash crop. Apparently the almond crop uses as much water as the entire city of Los Angeles. Switching the farms to olives, grapes, or oranges could cause some very real problems for a time, and change the availability of popular foods, but reduce the state's fresh water consumption profoundly.
Re: will happen more and more often (Score:5, Insightful)
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We switched to oat milk and soya milk, also halving our cow milk consumption. Although I like making kefir and yoghurt, and probably cheese in the future.
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My real concern with almond milk, and most other milk substitutes, is that they don't have much protein. I suspect that the worry about estrogen is misplaced, but if you are going to worry about it, I'd worry more about the estrogen-mimics that leak of of plastics. All humans naturally generate estrogen, males included, but they can degrade natural estrogen. The synthetic estrogen mimics, well some of them at least, are more resistant to biological degradation. (I think some bacteria can do that job, bu
Re: will happen more and more often (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless, it's clearly not the right crop for CA, and should probably be looked at as a treat rather than a staple for those who enjoy it.
Beyond almonds, though, the bigger problem is ridiculous historical water rights for wealthy agribusiness families written into various state constitutions, which any change to will be fought with big money PR campaigns about 'gubmint tryinta wreck goodguy farmin lifelihoods' or some similar bullshit the public will easily be fooled by. There will be quite a few more catastrophes before they figure out how to fix this, if they ever do.
[We will soon have the option to harvest our farts, so we can post & comment on stats about them.]
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https://onthepublicrecord.org/2022/05/20/what-it-would-have-meant-to-take-action-in-2015/
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That 1 gallon per almond stat is based on global average, and is less in California, especially with more modern farming techniques using drip irrigation. Water usage for almonds has been dropping and will continue to drop. Certainly it could use less, and certainly we don't should stop eating all the almonds we do since consumption has skyrocketed in the last 50 years or so. The reason there are so many almonds is because of the massive demand for them and the high price. We could go the government route
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Almonds are a benefit, but all the monetary benefits of almonds accrue to a few rich farmers; personally, I would prioritize the millions of people in southern California.
When you factor in the price of water, it seems unfair to sell enormous amounts of water to almond farmers at a huge discount. If the almond farmers had to pay the market price for their water
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Anyway, most of them are hard core "starve-the-beast, taxation is theft" believers. So Government oblige them by getting out of their way. No more tax payer subsidized water.
Re:will happen more and more often (Score:5, Interesting)
"The new research also confirms that using stream gauge records alone may overestimate the average amount of water in the river because the last 100-year period was wetter than the average for the last five centuries..... The long-term perspective provided by tree-ring reconstructions points to a looming conflict between water demand and supply in the upper Colorado River basin," the researchers wrote in their report." https://news.arizona.edu/story... [arizona.edu]
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That conflict has been happening for decades. Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah, Nevada, and, Mexico are all clamoring for a larger share of the water. https://crsreports.congress.go... [congress.gov]
But, yeah, when the water levels are lower, the arguments get worse.
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There is some high plains desert farming, but not nearly so much as in Arizona. Most California farming is not in a desert, but in San Joaquin valley, Sacramento valley, Salinas valley, etc. They have water problems too, but not for bigh high plains or desert.
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This is literally the same problem that felled dynasties that ruled area around those rivers millenia ago. It's the exact same problem that felled dynasties that ruled area around those rivers hundreds of years ago.
This is because of extreme instability of seasonal flows of those rivers. It's where the Chinese concept of "Heaven's Mandate" comes from". And while you found Chinese Communist propaganda trying to avoid the obvious connotations this time when it's failed to do the same by absolutely spamming ev
Re:will happen more and more often (Score:5, Informative)
"The extreme heat and drought that has been roasting a vast swath of southern China for at least 70 straight days has no parallel in modern record-keeping in China, or elsewhere around the world for that matter."
"I can't think of anything comparable to China's heat wave of summer 2022 in its blend of intensity, duration, geographic extent and number of people affected," meteorologist Bob Henson, a contributor to Yale Climate Connections, told Axios.
source [axios.com]
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California's issues with wildfires is because:
(a bunch of stuff also going on in other states)
And also this?
California's government has so strictly regulated electricity pricing that PG&E can't afford to do proper maintenance on the electric grid
You poor dumb idiot. Not only can PG&E afford to do the maintenance, but pays dividends instead, but we ALSO gave them a whole bunch of additional money to do the maintenance even though the customers already paid them to do it, and they STILL didn't do it. It's exactly the same as the telcos getting hundreds of billions to build out broadband to the last mile, and then not doing it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with not being able to affo
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I personally tend to assume corruption and collusion. What's the point of having a CPUC if it doesn't keep PG&E from murdering people by the score so that it can pay larger dividends?
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I personally tend to assume corruption and collusion. What's the point of having a CPUC if it doesn't keep PG&E from murdering people by the score so that it can pay larger dividends?
I thought the CPUC's job was to ensure the companies they regulate are paying out an attractive dividend?
And if there are side effects to that policy does the CPUC even care? After all, they are State busybodies...employees with no fear for their jobs, right?
And the talking heads of the CPUC simply do as the long-term busybodies tell them, right? Or is that only in the UK according "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister" TV shows from the BBC?
After all, the only government employee that I heard of that was
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I thought the CPUC's job was to ensure the companies they regulate are paying out an attractive dividend?
CPUC's job is to balance generation and load. They don't have anything to do with PG&E's budgets. That is the domain of the state utility regulators. And the CPUC doesn't really have talking heads, they are mostly engineers and they make recommendations to the state regulators who make the final long-term decisions. But hey, rage sells and you swallowed click-bait.
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You poor dumb idiot. Not only can PG&E afford to do the maintenance,
I can assure you that the PG&E tree trimming budget is determined by state regulators. Almost everything a utility does is determined by regulators including the type and amount of new generation, amount budgeted for grid maintenance, the price of power, executive compensation and dividends. Just because you don't like a fact doesn't mean it isn't true. Yes PG&E paid dividends which was approved by the state regulators. Who owns PG&E stock? Turns out it is mostly pension funds (including CA
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See, this is China. They already had genocide of hundreds of millions, and they're having an ongoing one of millions.
But even they balk at pro-genocide advocates like you, who think that the main problem with those is that they just didn't kill off enough people to save Mother Gaia. Amen.
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Smoked a bit too much crack this morning?
Wow, just wow. You just advocated for the removal of billions of humans from the planet and when called out on that your response is that the other side is crazy. Perhaps try to think through the end result of what you are advocating for. You are not very far from literal Nazis and their policies. It isn't a Godwin when you are actually arguing for a genocide.
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This has happened in China countless times during it's history. Controlling erratic river flows is what dynasties got built around and when nature overwhelmed the efforts was when dynasties fell.
It was integral to the modern concept of "Heaven's Mandate" that every Chinese ruler, including current one has to contend with. "This is totally a new thing, and climate change is solely to blame" is simply the latest propaganda narrative on the problem that persisted for millenia, and is likely to persist long in
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It's not just China. All over the world civilizations have collapsed when a climate change caused extended crop failures.
Somehow I don't find saying "it's happened before" very reassuring. This time we've got a different answer to "fixing the problem" than just praying harder, but a lot of people don't seem to like that. So we may end up with a civilization collapse. Like the Mayans, the Chinese, the Anasazi, the...
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... I can only hope for more international decisiveness to tackle global warming, being probably the biggest challenge of the century.
We don't need 'international decisiveness', we need personal action at the local level. This isn't someone else, this is us; and this is on us.
Everyone of us needs to change and the change we need is conservation. We individually need to conserve our resources and not squander them in self-indulgence.
The hardest things are self-honesty and self-restraint. If we as individuals continue to remain in denial, nothing can change. If we as individuals do not chnge, nothing can or will ever change.
The powerful do
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Densest Populations (Score:2)
Places with the densest populations will suffer most and earliest. It sounds cold, but if the countries with the highest populations and densest concentrations were mostly wiped out, that would solve most of the climate issues.
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It's too bad we can't blame the 38 year drought in 1276 on climate change.
Isn't it funny how people are dying from natural causes literally every day, and still we have no problem assigning blame to Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, or even Timothy McVeigh?
Re: will happen more and more often (Score:5, Insightful)
These lights are efficient, they will save you money
This vehicle gets much better milage.
These local train services are quick and convenient.
Retrofitting these new windows in will keep your house a comfortable temperature and let you spend less on heating and cooling.
People hate being beat over the head with the cudgel of ‘you are ruining the planet’. However, people love a great deal, so sell the goods needed to make a difference, and never once mention the ‘save the planet’ bit. As long as people believe they are getting the better end of the deal, the *why* is largely irrelevant.
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The problem is that people don't always follow rational incentives. I mean just think for a moment about "This vehicle gets much better milage." Have you driven on any American roads in the last several decades? Giant, mostly unecessary, gas guzzling vehicles are everywhere.
Or how about "Retrofitting these new windows in will keep your house a comfortable temperature and let you spend less on heating and cooling."? Pay up front for savings later? Given the amount of credit card debt the average American car
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While that's true, it's NOT going to change. Not even if people start dying by the thousands/day. And changing elites won't fix the problem. Forcing the powerful to obey the same laws as everyone else?
Anatole France wrote of how âthe law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread â" the rich as well as the poor.â(TM)
Hmm... is it really the reason? (Score:4, Informative)
China has about 17% hydro power in total. If droughts are the main culprit, we'd have already seen way, way worse reports from Norway (91% hydro power), Brazil (65% hydro), Canada (60%) and Sweden (43%).
Droughts are a pretty much global problem right now, some places already have no working water supply anymore, in other places the polluted river seep into the groundwater supplies (instead of the other way around, as it normally flows if there are high enough groundwater levels).
Re:Hmm... is it really the reason? (Score:5, Informative)
If droughts are the main culprit, we'd have already seen way, way worse reports from Norway (91% hydro power), Brazil (65% hydro), Canada (60%) and Sweden (43%).
I strongly suspect that may have something to do with actual utilization of resources. For example Norway has such huge hydroelectric potential relative to its limited population that even if something shrank it, it seems far from obvious that this would lead to a decrease in production. Furthermore, in case of Norway, climate change seems to be *increasing* rainfall in Norway. [hydropower.org]
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Ya, because a drought in China is just the same as a drought in Norway. More importantly, it depend upon WHERE in a country the drought is occurring.
Re:Hmm... is it really the reason? (Score:5, Insightful)
China has about 17% hydro power in total. If droughts are the main culprit, we'd have already seen way, way worse reports from Norway
Let me stop you right there. Hydropower varies greatly as do nation's electricity grids. Some hydro power is build with slow filling reservoirs, others with relatively large flow rates. The former is able to absorb a long period without the expected rainfall (e.g. most of Norway), the latter is not.
The other difference is electricity grid and location. Norway has an interconnected grid, along with connections to neighboring countries. China has lots of smaller grids. A hydro powerplant going down in Norway won't result in any lights going off. A hydro powerplant going down in China has a huge affect within the local province. 19% of China's power may be Hydroelectric, but Sichuan (one of the primary provinces the article is about) it's 80%, and that province has a single pathetically small interconnect to only one neighbouring province.
So next time you think you're smarter than the world around you, consider that you may not have the full picture of what is going on, or at least RTFS.
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Wow, did I poop in your breakfast cereals? All I wanted to have is an explanation why this would be a problem for China and not for other nations that depend on hydroelectricity to a far greater extent.
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Global warming is global, it's not a Chinese-only problem.
If it was I could understand why people simply ignore it... so it's more along the lines of "apparently you don't give a fuck about your kids... so why again should I?"
How was he a "denialist"? (Score:2)
Don't come off as a global warming denialist
Don't come off as an asshole in everything you say if you want people to take the things you say seriously.
The original poster you responded to wasn't even saying anything about droughts not being real, just asking why it would apply to one area and other another....
Basically, my advice to you is simple; Never go full retard.
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China is a huge country. It's entirely possible for them to have plenty of water in one part and not enough in another. You will also note that those countries you mention are mostly fairly far north, except Brazil which is just south of the equator. China is between the two groups, and doesn't share the same wind patterns or climate, so it's easily possible for them to have some droughts while the others are still doing fine for power generation.
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When you're distributing water via a canal, the water will generally already be in a low potential energy state. Shipping the water from mountain top to mountain top is quite a bit more difficult.
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Norway's problems are mainly about having nation state is that geographically very difficult to traverse in north-south direction. So they have their main grid split into two parts, north and south, that have very little interconnects. Instead they're plugged into Sweden, which is used as a medium of balancing.
There's now dryer than usual summer in Southern Norway and wetter than usual in Northern Norway, and due to the way geography works, much of Sweden's hydro is in the similar situation to one in Norweg
Will happen in Europe too (Score:5, Interesting)
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Putin will be lauded as a climate change hero in years to come
I'd love to hear that European nations have decided to build new offshore wind capacity or solar or nuclear power plants, to move off gas, but all I'm hearing is about building new capacity to import gas from other places (liquid gas terminals in the North and pipelines through the Mediterranean in the South).
If Russia loses the war, Ukraine will start drilling into the sea of Azov to explore the large gas reserves (which are the real reason for the war), Europe will be happy to be back to normal and Ukrain
Re:Will happen in Europe too (Score:4, Informative)
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Thanks for the information, 19.6 GW is an impressive goal and possible game changer.
Re: Will happen in Europe too (Score:2)
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I think it may be a question of quantities. Last I checked wind power was a small enough contributor to the total energy use that even a large percentage increase wouldn't make it significant. Only if that large percentage increase continued over a number of years, or perhaps decades.
If you want large percentage increases, look at undersea turbines. (Don't know about recently.) Awhile back there was in increase of over 1000%. It's just that it was starting off of a REALLY low base.
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I think it may be a question of quantities. Last I checked wind power was a small enough contributor to the total energy use that even a large percentage increase wouldn't make it significant.
Some countries in Europe are on nearly 100% renewables (it's not just wind). Prior to Hornsea 2 the UK was averaging around 20% wind power, but with Hornsea it will average greater, but don't ask me what - I'd need to work it out. Hornsea 2 is not the end - even bigger projects are ongoing for the UK and Europe as a whole.
It's just that it was starting off of a REALLY low base.
Wind started at a really low base, but that was three decades ago.
Re:Will happen in Europe too (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe had no reason to come off gas
Gas is hardly an issue. Switching a large portion of power production from oil/coal/lignite *to* gas is precisely what has driven much of the CO2 reduction in the power industry, bonus points for gas plants generally being able to react faster to load changes and supporting a transition to intermittent green energy.
There is nothing good about removing gas for carbon quickly. Putin's efforts is doing orders of magnitude more damage as coal plants are being fired up wherever possible to compensate for the loss of gas, all the while derailing meaningful efforts to decarbonise with the current crisis focused solely on building new gas storage facilities and import terminals.
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Gas is better than coal, but it's still too carbon intensive unless you're satisfied with a 4-5C warming. (We've already committed ourselves to more than 2C warming. There's no plausible scenario bar nuclear war that will prevent that.)
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Europe has other problems as well as gas. A lot of nuclear is suffering from the prolonged heat, for example.
The only technologies that are climate-proof and low carbon/pollution are wind, solar, hydro and tidal. Those are the only ones that can secure Europe's future.
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And NONE of those are climate proof. What they are is resistant to the expected climate changes. (Except for hydro, which is pretty iffy in the long term.) And you left out geo-thermal, which actually *is* quite resistant to pretty much all plausible climate changes.
Typical Guardian Hysteria about climate (Score:2, Troll)
Every weather event now is attributed to something called climate change, but there is never any analysis of what exactly the causal chain is.
There appears to have been a fairly small rise in global average temperatures over the last 50 years. Around 1C since about 1960.
So how exactly has this led to the current drought in China? And also led to the current floods in Pakistan? And supposedly led to the recent heat waves in Europe (which occurred simultaneously with lower than usual temps in Eastern Europ
Re: Typical Guardian Hysteria about climate (Score:5, Informative)
Oh there is science. Plus, it's the kind of science you can explain to primary school students with basic understanding of geography and rain shadows.
Since, I don't want to deal with you much I will give you the gist.
The hotter air gets, the more moisture it can carry. However, most of that moisture won't be loss until a significant force causes the temperature drop.
There are mountains in Chongqing but not that big and it's a huge heat island as a mega city. So the moisture will pass by it, losing very little. Same for Chengdu and Sichuan. Then it will make it up onto the Tibetan plateau or it's edge where it will see this huge altitude change and this a temperature drop. Guess where their are floods in China right now? Bingo, Qinghai... wear some villages are being buried by mud slides.
Same thing in Pakistan, moisture passes over all of India which is having a drought but when it gets to northern Pakistan, again on the edge of Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, bam, out drops all rain.
This isn't even as hard as geometry or algebra, you can do experiments that teach this stuff with a bike pump and a coke bottle...
Also, just to through it in, temperature swings with the night and day cycle as well as the winds. Stronger winds are generally around dusk when inland during the seasons of fall and spring. There are afternoon showers and night time storms... Why do we often refer to these, because afternoon the temperature starts dropping and night is when we have the lowest temperature. So the afternoon showers Sichuan should get, instead are pushed by gusts and become night time storms in Qinghai... Why because as you seem to clearly understand, it's averaging 1C higher but if we consider the regions in question they are actually seeing 3C to 5C hotter temperatures...
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> However, most of that moisture won't be loss until a significant force causes the temperature drop.
At a given concentration. If Antarctica melts again that concentration is expected to increase, along with cloudy days (much to my sun-loving dismay).
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Right, it is at a given concentration but that's only achieved in relationship to the temperature. When we talk about icecaps melting the next conclusion is a rise in temperature which just means the water likely will go more inland.
I think this is one of the reasons why "global warming" has been replaced in general language. Is referring to an average like this misses the real details. "Climate change" even fails which is why my favorite is "global weirding". Wet places will get deadly dry, dry places will
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What observations would disprove significant anthropogenic climate change? And how would the lack of those observations exclude all other alternatives?
Everything you cite could occur with natural climate change. Show me the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis before you claim you're doing science :)
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Understand all this. But you are not showing that the present drought in China is caused by the same phenomena which underlie the recent 1C rise in global average temperatures. Nor for that matter is anyone showing a causal connexion between the recent 1C rise and this summer's extreme rainfall in Pakistan.
What it would take?
You would have to show that the rise in mean global temps is due to some circumstance which, in local manifestation, can be evidentially linked to the drought or the heavy monsoon.
As
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"never any analysis of what exactly the causal chain is."
The world is a complicated place. Mostly it operates as a collection of stochastic processes. What you want is "A causes B" when in actually the world give you "A causes B to within a probability given the hypotheses (which are themselves are probabilistic). Take some science classes.
Re:Typical Guardian Hysteria about climate (Score:5, Insightful)
Every weather event now is attributed to something called climate change, but there is never any analysis of what exactly the causal chain is.
If extreme weather events are occurring with greater and greater frequency it isn't random. The scientific consensus is that the events are very likely driven by rising global temperatures which affects weather patterns. Absent any other likely explanation, you don't need to establish the casual chain to a 100% certainty, it's inferred by the data and transpiring events.
There is great variability in the Chinese climate - its a country prone to extremes of rainfall, which lead to flooding, and also to drought.
But how exactly is a one degree rise in average global temperatures is supposed to be driving this particular drought? Its an article of faith in the Guardian that it must be, but there is no justification of this.
When it comes to what is driving weather events we can (currently) only infer with a fairly high degree of certainty of the factors base on historical record of temperature, weather, previous events and their severity. As I mentioned above, absent any other likely explanation you use the most likely explanation.
And the Guardian also thinks the solution is for the world to reduce its CO2 emissions, at which point (by an also unspecified mechanism) China will no longer have these droughts. Why will this reduce droughts in China? And floods in Pakistan?
The scientific consensus is that a major part of the solution is reducing CO2 emissions and it so happens that The Guardian agrees with that.
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Scientific "consensus". A political term not a science term.
Science is beautiful, but it has to result in changes in the real world to be meaningful, and that means politics. Pretending otherwise for the sake of making yourself look clever actually lets everyone know you're a dumbshit.
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So, astrophysics and theoretical particle physics, that don't actually result in changes in the real world, aren't meaningful?
The goal of science is understanding - no further meaning is required, and piggybacking political impulses to steal credibility from science is a corruption.
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So, astrophysics and theoretical particle physics, that don't actually result in changes in the real world
Except they do
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Please, explain what practical impact we've had from studying the crab nebula. What change has that made in the real world?
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Holy fucking shit will you please learn to internet [nationalacademies.org]? (top result for "practical benefits of astrophysics research" you totally incompetent dildo)
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Yes. A prime example being the current death of "the atmosphere is so massive that human activity cannot possibly affect its properties" consensus in favor or fact-based recognition that the warming potential of the atmosphere is . [reuters.com]
Accusing others of engaging in non sequiturs, then literally doing s
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This is one area where "one degree on average" is extremely massive. I think many people misunderstand this, or ignore the "on average" part, or otherwise don't understand the math or science. Being an average means there can also be huge variances without even changing the average; hotter summers and colder winters even without a one degree change; and some people do see a record snowfall and proudly proclaim that global warming is a lie. But 1 degree on average, globally, means the atmosphere now has m
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Yes. A prime example being the current death of "the atmosphere is so massive that human activity cannot possibly affect its properties" consensus in favor or fact-based recognition that the warming potential of the atmosphere is quite sensitive to CO2 concentration [reuters.com].
Accusing others of engaging in n
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but there is never any analysis of what exactly the causal chain is.
Sorry, but that is a classical argument from ignorance. Of course weather is a chaotic system, operating within the confines of the changing climate systems, so all analysis is statistical. But there is a whole field of attribution science that has developed over ca. the last 20 years, and that does do exactly those kind of analyses. You can find a summary and sources in chapter 11 [www.ipcc.ch] of the IPCC AR6 WG1 report.
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The term "climate" is definitely being overused, as a generic / umbrella term for most anything involving the forces of nature. Forest fire? Let's refer to that as a result of climate, because the forest may have had less rainfall due to climate change. But then again, forest fires are a natural part of the earth's biology which have been suppressed by humans, thus resulting in much larger and more catastrophic fires when they do occur.
It's unfortunate because words have meanings, and "climate" is one of th
Re: Typical Guardian Hysteria about climate (Score:2)
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Talk about taking a page from the Joe Rogan playbook.
I'm not saying Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, I'm just asking questions
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Well, the funny thing, is that they could have enough power, if they weren't relying so much on hydro :). A few more coal fired plants would clear their problems right up :)
Two years ago it was too much rain (Score:3)
There were fears of a monumental man-made disaster from a collapse of the Three Gorges Dam as it exceeded its maximum capacity, requiring unprecedented water releases.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/20/china-three-gorges-dam-highest-level-hydro-electric-floods [theguardian.com]
The current situation is a weather event, just like the floods of 2020 were a weather event.
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consider.
china is no stranger to electricity rationing.
china does make a lot of wind turbines and solar cells.
for others.
maybe china can place an order
to one or more of those chinese factories
just throwing it out there
But 640 GW ought to be enough for anyone (Score:2)
How much extra energy do they need if they turned off their ubiquitous aircos ?
Late Stage Socialism (Score:2)
It must be ... (Score:2)
Aportioning blame (Score:2)
How does one disambiguate the following?
1. Chance
2. Localized land management such as consequences of massive land cover, land use, water consumption and diversionary changes in China over recent decades.
3. Global changes such as increased temperatures.
How are the media accounts able to say climate change has forced China to ration electricity?
Weather is not climate (Score:2)
Re: Why (Score:3)
Re: No hurricanes (Score:2)
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SSSSssssshhhh!!!
Don't jinx us!!
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Ignoring your snark, 26% of vehicles sold in China last quarter were electric (up from 3,5% in Q1 2020), and the rate is skyrocketting further. 3M EVs were sold in China in 2021 and 2022 is expected to come in at 6M - nearly double the size of the European market and 5x that of the US market. China is rapidly en route to ditching combustion-engine vehicles.