Why Canada should ignore Kyoto....
As you know, I've been blogging about the plans the Chinese have for powering their economy over the next 20 years. In case you missed it, here's an excerpt from an editorian in the Financial Post last Thursday:
China announced that last year alone it added 102 gigawatts of electricity-generating capacity to its economy. Give or take a gigawatt, that new capacity is equal to roughly Canada's total current annual electricity capacity.When I watch the news, it seems like the public believes that if we reduce OUR carbon emissions, then Canada won't heat up. But, global warming is just that - global. No matter how much we reduce, total emissions won't be going down....and if you believe that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming (which I don't), then, the problem won't go away.
These new Chinse power plants are 90% coal-powered, which means they spew out large amounts of carbon emissions. With the help of an expert, I've worked out an estimate of the new annual carbom emissions China added to its inventory last year alone. If 90% of the 102 gigawatts is coal, that means coal capacity of about 90 gigawatts. If the power plants operate at 60% capacity, the new plans will add 473 million kilowatt hours to China's annual electricity production. A conventional and reasonable estimate of carbon emissions is about 1.1 kilograms of greenhouse gases for each kilowatt-hour of power, for an annual total of 470 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year.
To recap: China last year added electricity-generating capacity that will produce an estimated 470 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. That number id equal to about 70% of the total annual greenhouse-gas emissions from the entire Canadian economy. Not 70% of the Canadian electricity secotr, but 70% of total annual emissions from all sectors -- energy, automobiles, heating, industry -- of the Canadian economy.
Canada's estimated national economy-wide production of greenhouse-gas emissions is currently about 750 million tonnes. Even if China cleans up the coal with the latest technology -- unlikely -- or even sequesters part, it will still be pumping new carbon into the atmosphere equal to 50% of Canada's total emissions. Even under the best environmental assumption of total sequestriation, in which China would capture and store carbon at these new plants, it will still be producing 140 million tonnes of carbon, or almost 20% of total Canadian carbon emissions.
These numbers demonstrate global issues that have always been obvious, which is that Canada's carbon role is worth only 2.3% of total world carbon emissions. China is adding the equivalent of a new Canada every year.
posted by GayandRight @ 9:01 PM
8 Comments:
A strong storm had washed thousands of starfish onto the beach. In the hot sun, the starfish were drying and dying out.
A man was walking along the beach throwing the starfish back into the sea, one at a time. Someone came up to him and said,
"Why are you wasting your time? You can't possibly expect to save all these starfish!"
The man replied:
"No, but I just made a difference to that one."
So perhaps China will singlehandedly increase global emissions. It doesn't follow logically that we shouldn't make an effort to pollute less.
Carbon dioxide is not pollution. But, the plain fact of the matter is we are just wasting our money by reducing emissions. Much better to spend our money, after the fact, to adapt to a warmer climate.
Can you imagine how much more damage China could do if we send billions of dollars to them in order to buy credits via the Kyoto plan???
Rex Murphy had a great monologue about how Canada might want to be the boy scout of the world, and set a great example for the rest of the world to follow. It was done tongue in cheek of course, because I doubt it very much if other countries would want to commit economic suicide like we would if we enacted all of the provisions of Kyoto.
We should just clean up our own pollution problems with our own money. Climate change is beyond the power of man to control. Let's do what we have some power to do.
We, as loyal Canadians, should demand that the Harper government do more to help cure climate change...Whether that's a full application of the Kyoto Accord is one thing.
We should pressure the Harper government to pressure the People's Republic of China to at least consider its share of greenhouse gasses....That way, China should fully consider whether or not to apply any of the Kyoto Agreement to itself,and we should send the transfer payments to them in order to help them change.
Canadians are willing to go very, very far for climate change. Monsieur Dion's plan is foolproof.
Destroying our economy for nothing - that used to be an NDP dream. Since the Liberals have decided to pick a direction, why did they have to choose this one? Fools.
"Carbon dioxide is not pollution." - It is. Its just not very serious pollution in all ways except climate.
Toronto Twink, don't you mean "we, as loyal Trudeaupians"? Only a Liberal could equate buying in to climate change hysteria with patriotism.
"Carbon dioxide is not pollution." - It is. Its just not very serious pollution in all ways except climate.
Just calling something a pollutant doesn't make it one. If carbon dioxide was a pollutant (like smog, sulfur dioxide, etc), then we would work to get rid of all of it from the atmosphere. But, we aren't. Why? Because without any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we'd be in a permanent ice-age.
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