While the U.S. was the leader in CO2 emissions for
a single nation for the better part of a century, China recently surpassed the world in emissions. In fact, between now and
2030, Chinese emissions are expected to double as the country continues its
path of rampant industrialization.
China chiefly uses coal as its fuel source as it has rich coal resources.
It burns the coal in power plants, in a process that typically emits massive
amounts of carbon dioxide. U.S. plants have various scrubbers and filters
to take out other carbon based compounds, such as phenols, many of which are
carcinogenic. Many of China's plants lack these technologies, leading to
a two-fold problem -- rising emissions and rising airborne toxins.
Britain, who has had a long and tumultuous relationship with China over the
years, now is turning to this familiar land to try to aid a helping
hand. Engineers with British Geological Survey (BGS) attended the
launch of the Near Zero Emissions Coal (NZEC) Phase 1 study in Beijing, China
last week, a study which aims to implement explore new technologies to capture
virtually all the carbon pollution from coal burning plants in China.
The process used is called carbon capture and storage (CCS), and with it China
looks to make good on the pledge it made at an EU-China Summit in September
2005. China has pledged to develop and implement a large scale Near Zero
Emissions Coal demonstration. In order to achieve this goal, China is
teaming up with the British scientists of the BGS.
Dr. Nick Riley MBE, Head of Science for Energy at BGS, was enthusiastic about
the work commenting, "CCS offers the opportunity to reduce emissions per
unit of electricity by 85 - 90%. Large-scale deployment of CCS in China has
potential to significantly reduce future greenhouse gas emissions".
The Chinese will utilize the BGS's specialties to help find and map
strategically sedimentary basins that could possibly be used as CO2 storage
grounds. These regions will undergo geocapacity testing (assessments of
how much can be stored). The next step is to pick the best locations and
put them through an even more thorough analysis and then utilize these sites in
the demonstration system.
China's NZEC program is funded by Britain, through Defra, Britain's agriculture
and food department, and DBERR, Britain's business regulatory department. It is
coordinated by AEA Energy & Environment (UK) and ACCA21 (China).
Perhaps the BGS and China should look at storing the CO2 not on
land, but in the sea. New American research from Harvard University,
detailed at DailyTech looks to use sand in a CCS process which stores CO2
highly effectively in the sea.
The problem of industrial pollution and carbon emissions certainly remains a
thorny issue, but many will be pleased to see China make serious efforts to
work towards meeting or even beating international pollution standards.
quote: ...Vikings had large farmsteads with dairy cattle...pigs, and sheep and goats...Farmsteads also had ample pastures and fields of barley used for the making of beer...By the year 1300...cool weather caused poor harvests in an already fragile climate. Because of the poor harvests there was less food for the livestock...
quote: From around 800 A.D. to 1200 or 1300, the globe warmed again considerably...the British Isles, Scandinavia, Greenland, and Iceland were considerably warmer than at present...
quote: Ice-core data from Crête, central Greenland, suggests a considerable and rapid warming late in the 9th century...The name of Greenland, when this country was in turn settled by Eiríkr rauði ("the red") around 985, may have described reality...
quote: Animal bones and other materials collected from archaeological sites reveal Icelandic Vikings had large farmsteads with dairy cattle (a source of meat), pigs, and sheep and goats (for wool, hair, milk, and meat.) Farmsteads also had ample pastures and fields of barley used for the making of beer and these farms were located near bird cliffs (providing meat, eggs, and eiderdown) and inshore fishing grounds
quote: By the year 1300...cool weather caused poor harvests in an already fragile climate. Because of the poor harvests there was less food for the livestock...
quote: The Earth is certainly warming, as are other planets in the Solar System, sugesting a Solar event. Another fact, is that the Earth has been much warmer than it is today in the recent past. Greenland was aptly named because it was far more temperate than it is now. A single erupting volcano can spew out more "pollutants" than over 100 years of human activity. And certainly everyone has heard of the "ice ages" where periods of the earth were at different temperatures. So you can believe that the Earth goes through regular temperature cycles, or you can believe that the Dinosaurs died out because they couldn't control the pollution in their dino-factories. Maybe it was the aliens who caused previous global warming in the past, but one thing is certain, it wasn't man.
quote: So you can believe that the Earth goes through regular temperature cycles, or you can believe that the Dinosaurs died out because they couldn't control the pollution in their dino-factories.
quote: A single erupting volcano can spew out more "pollutants" than over 100 years of human activity.
quote: Hrm, species went extinct before man was around... and species are going extinct now, therefore man has no impact on the extinction of species in the present. Brilliant! Let's abolish the endangered species list!
quote: our government is corrupt, ignorant and stupid.
quote: Am I the only one that often finds your anti environment rhetoric insulting?
quote: Don't mess with mother nature. Nature has survived for 4.5 billion years, evolving from nothing to a vast network of life on all parts of the planet without "the most intellegent lifeform" helping it along by adding CO2 and many many many other pollutants to the mix.
quote: To say anti pollution is not a good thing, or not supported is a giant cop-out.
quote: wow... out of left field with this one... Nowhere did I say anything about doomsday, end of the world, or that anything major or drastic will happen, just that reducing pollutants is a good thing. can you at least agree with that small fact?
quote: another out of left field. Nowhere did I say anything about any of that, nor do I believe anything out of Hollywood or Washington for that matter. Humans will survive just about anything, we are crafty, intelligent and have strong will to live. Now quality of life for future generations may or may not be so rosy, but humanity will survive.
quote: Yes, my beloved scientists, what could they possibly know about science /rolls eyes.
quote: So what is your rush to damage our economy and change our way of life for a "may or may not" future.
quote: The Earth is not a living being capable of getting cancer. I realize how much environmental types wish to deify "Mother Gaia", but the fact remains its a planet, not a lifeform.
quote: More concerned with being right at all costs than having an actual debate.
quote: actually if you re-read the posts between him and I you will see that the only thing I am saying is that reducing emissions and pollutants is a good thing
quote: Nature has survived for 4.5 billion years, evolving from nothing to a vast network of life on all parts of the planet
quote: You, or any other scientist for that matter, cannot prove for a fact that nature has existed for 4.5 billion years, and there are certain "laws" of science stating things like "matter can't be created nor destroyed" that would disagree with the part about nature evolving from nothing (which also cannot be proven for a fact).
quote: Just because something is called a "theory"
quote: why don't you start up your car and pipe the exhuast from your muffler to the inside of your house and see how well you and your houseplants make out.
quote: Its like you are afraid the economy is as frail
quote: Currently massive amounts of rain forest in Indonesia are burnt down to make land for palm oil plants.
quote: There's no need to unleash it all into the atmosphere. It's dangerous and it should be stopped.
quote: This is a factoid oft-repeated but never supported. Actually, a body of evidence exists that increasing CO2 emissions may in fact be a wise move for humanity. CO2 is nothing but airborne plant food, essential for all life on earth. Higher levels means increased growth of trees, food crops, and plant of all sort, and increased biodiversity for animal kingdom which depends on plant growth for food.
quote: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick (upturn in reported temperatures worldwide in the past 100 years). In his original publications of the "stick", Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.But it wasn’t so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called “Monte Carlo” analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
quote: It certainly does not negate the threat of a long-term global temperature increase. In fact, McIntyre and McKitrick are careful to point out that it is hard to draw conclusions from these data, even with their corrections.
quote: Last time I checked, global warming is a global problem.
quote: If China would not reduce emissions themselves, it's better to pay them to reduce it than to let it go unchecked.
quote: Global warming is - in theory - a global problem. Its not a 100% proven scientific fact -
quote: I believe that global warming is a verifiable phenomenum.
quote: However we'd run out of oil reserves in 50 years anyway.
quote: where they did not have sophisticated surveying technology.
quote: The oil reserve discovery rate is dropping steadily
quote: Where would the world be if China hadn't shared its technologies?
quote: In addition to the salaries of the British scientists involved, Britain is donating £3.5m of funding for the project
quote: Are you suggesting that, because China originally developed gunpowder, the nations of the world should transfer all their patented intellectual property to the Chinese?
quote: Said another way around too: Where would the world be, if China stopped producing current technoligy?
quote: While the U.S. was the leader in CO2 emissions for a single nation for the better part of a century, China recently surpassed the world in emissions