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How to know? China and climate change
Wed Jul 01 09:52PM
There are still a few months to go, but the sparring has already started. In December, the world's governments will get in the ring in Copenhagen to battle it out over a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that regulates global greenhouse gas emissions.China's role in the negotiations, as the holder of the little-coveted "world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide title", is uncertain.
The early diplomatic jabs have already been thrown. Beijing has insisted that the United States make deeper emission cuts than it is planning. It wants more access to advanced technology, sparking fury among US politicians. It has criticised Japan's emissions proposals as inadequate and suggested importers may have to pay for the pollution in China's factories.
Beijing is reluctant to make its own compulsory cuts, saying the west got rich on the back of coal and oil, why should the rest of the world's development be stunted by climate concerns?
Much of this is pre-Copenhagen posturing. But it also raises the tricky question of how serious China is about dealing with global warming?
There is little doubt that on the wider environmental story, China has a woeful track record. Pollution, both in the air and in the water, is awful in many Chinese cities. Deforestation, although recently halted, has been an environmental disaster over the past 50 years.
As for reducing carbon, the writers about the middle kingdom love to trot out the line "China builds two new coal-fired power stations a week," to show how far the country has to travel. But the reality is much more complex (for example, many of the new power stations are much more efficient than in the United States).
China has mooted a 440 billion dollar additional stimulus package, simply to green-up its energy supplies. It is one of the world's largest maker of wind-turbines and visitors to obscure parts of western China are always surprised to see traditional yurts equipped with small-scale solar generators.
Companies like BYD are pioneering new electric cars and the government has announced plans to make the Pearl River Delta, one of the most polluted parts of the country, into an example of green development.
Journalists often struggle to assess the competing claims. Official statistics are often mistrusted, and the technical details are hard to grasp and explain clearly. Perhaps as a result, specialist blogs on China's environment are becoming more common and arguing over this very issue.
The Internet has become a crucial tool for highlighting the worst polluters.
Many influential environmental bloggers claim the MSM (mainstream media) have fallen down on their job when it comes to the environment. The criticism is that reporters tend to give equal weight to opposing sides of the argument -- they are simply stenographers -- which does not necessarily reflect the consensus among the vast majority of climate scientists that global warming is happening and it is man-made.
While China's move to reduce its carbon emissions is a gargantuan task, the media faces its own challenge to test what is green and what is greenwashing.
In this blog, reporters and editors for global news wire AFP blog about the news they report and the challenges they face covering events from Baghdad to Beijing, the White House to Darfur. Guy Newey reports for AFP from Hong Kong.Comment on this article
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What a load of bull@#$% we are being fed about global warming, we were talking about the planet and how resources would run out if we didn't do something about it. So we had people inventing cars that could run without fuel, but, hey, were still filling our cars with fuel. Were told plastic causes cancer, and hey, all glass bottles were replace with, guess what? Plastic and it's taking over. We're force feeding cattle and poultry to keep up with demand, and producing grain at massive levels just to fatten up the cattle, and wonder why there is a grain shortage, people starving around the world. In a nutshell, we are too greedy, we live to eat not eat to live, use cars not just for work but to go Sunday shopping, when we could do it in the week, when leaving work, some of us manage it. Im not getting on the soap box, but we are all being swept along with progress, and because of this we are at a point of no return. We need more trees and woodlands for the wildlife as we need it for the food chain. I am sick of the Governments picking on countries that are trying to live like we do and have done for a long time, i.e. China we have been happy to buy cheap goods and keep them repressed, and now we have some competition it's panic time. While we focus on other countries future progress, it disguises the mess we are causing. Stop taxing us to death and listen to the people who know better scientists, friends of the earth etc. and work together to find a solution, there are alternatives, stop being greedy. The alternative is everything will run out, then what will we do???
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god is soverign! We don't need to worry!
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The things that I find most strange about all of this is that if climate change is such a big deal, how come we didn't realise it sooner? Is it just the latest global charade so that industry makes money by selling consultancy and develops new products to replace the ones that you already have and that are doing just fine?
In the 1980s we all went hammer and tongs against the hole in the ozone layer, CFCs and such like, causing us all to stop using things like refrigerant-12 in our fridges and freezers and now leading to a mountain of white goods that people are too scared to do anything about. Now we use butane in fridges instead and use water-blown foams in place of the CFC-blown ones. Difference? Hardly noticeable for most consumers though, if I remember rightly, the water-blown foams have worse insulation properties.
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I don't believe fully in climate change. My main reasons for doubting are because the state and the educational system tell me it is so, that it is definately happening, and shout down any dissenters. To me, that's always a warning bell that something's not probably as true as they would like you to think it to be.
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So we are going to save the planet are we.....?
Everybody must recycle their rubbish to allow slow moving lorries to chuff around,dispensing diesel fumes whilst they collect it all and dump it somewhere else until the price of shipping it to China becomes worthwhile again.
We must s@#$% our older cars to allow us all to buy new ones which are "cleaner"...apart from the building of them,of course.
We must be notified of the risks associated with "heatwaves"...as so few UK citizens have ever spent 2 weeks abroad in similar or higher temperatures.
We must all drive slower in towns/cities to make them safer and "cleaner".. as the internal combustion engine works at it's most efficient when crawling along in 2nd gear doesn't it.
We must not use plastic bags to carry our shopping in....but you MUST put your household rubbish (non recyclable) in plastic bags if you want it collected.The Council will provide you with plastic boxes to put recycled waste in.
We encourage all goods to be carried by road, as the containers they where shipped in could not possibly be put on a train and ferried to key distibution points could they.
We cannot possibly build plasma furnaces to ensure all waste is burned (with gas capture facilities)and electricity generated in one go, could we.
LA...la....la................
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chrischerrington....are you not from the same gene pool?
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rossm-23... thank you for your wee bit of patronising physics...which I already knew,which is why I asked the question.....but as the average air temperature of the world hasn't risen even 0.1 of a degree in the last nine years what will heat the oceans?....and do you think there's an outside chance that Greenland is so called because when it was first settled..........it was "Green?"..and presumably Erik the Red didn't drive!
Explain why,when half of Antartica melts in their summer,the oceans don't rise and flood us all?or even don't rise at all? ... lastly...did you know that once upon a car free time,the waters of the world were 400 metres higher than now.Keep paying your "Green Taxes!!"
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xpose02.."Ignoramus?" you might be,but include me out
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Climate Change is a Solid Fact, it is so solid that God said that humans would bring it about and what he would do to stop it Revelation 11:18 says in part "to bring to ruin those ruining the earth.”
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