September 17, 2008
Nye points out that global warming knows no territorial boundaries – clean energy initiatives in the US could be overshadowed by green house gases from China.
In 2007, China overtook the United States as the world's leading carbon dioxide emitter. According to the Washington Post, the country uses coal, a high CO2 emitter, for 70% of its commercial energy supply. While China argues that, considering its huge population, per capital emissions are not all that high, Friedman believes that such an attitude is a recipe for global disaster. As Thomas Friedman says: “Mother Nature isn't into fair. All she knows is hard science and raw math.”
Nye maintains: “at the rate China is growing, a Chinese switch to renewables will come too late.” He calls this a “security threat” for the United States. “To promote our own security, the United States and other rich countries may have to forge a partnership with China, India and others to develop a full range of creative ideas, technologies and policies to prevent dangerous climate change. This requires a reframing of what we think of as national security and a more inclusive strategy than we have had in the past.”
Comments | 6 Total
September 18, 2008 at 4:04pm by Francis Anderson
I am all in favor of "creative ideas" and "inclusive strategies". I am nervous that the lunatic right wing see this and make it a licence to burn more oil over here. By the way, the Chinese are right to criticize the US - we burn 25% of the world's energy with only 2% of the world's population.
September 18, 2008 at 4:24pm by Paul Disu-Lord
Great ideas to be supported but is it crazy? “To promote our own security, the United States and other rich countries may have to forge a partnership with China, India and others to develop a full range of creative ideas, technologies and policies to prevent dangerous climate change." How do you do that in the face of a financial melt down? How about giving it all away, free, with no strings attached?
September 18, 2008 at 9:18pm by david wayne osedach
The Chinese will do their economic takeover of the world their way. Thinking green is not in their vocabulary.
September 20, 2008 at 2:18pm by Kelly Jad'on
A point to ponder--it seems we help the entire world in many ways, but now we are indeed helping China with its environmental problems. A green author/blogger on my site-- www.BasilAndSpice.com has recently written about what the US EPA is doing to help China harness its methane from coalbed mining--known as the Methane To Markets Partnership. Read the blog here: http://www.basilandspice.com/living-green/united-states-helps-china-harn...
Together China and the United States are making an effort to curb global greenhouse emissions.
Let's hope that it's not another, "No good deed goes unpunished."
Kelly Jad'on
September 28, 2008 at 11:41pm by Richard Lipscombe
Clearly the US has to get its own house in order before preaching to the rest of the world... It has to tame its addiction to oil and cheap credit... The sinking $US might help it tame its addiction to oil imports and move to alternative energy sources which will be a great benefit for the global environment... The current financial crisis might help the US to tame its addiction to imported credit/borrowings/savings... For the past 20 years and particularly the past 8 years of the Bush administration the US has become more and more addicted to cheap credit... The unlimited supply of cheap oil is about to end and so Americans will have to find new ways to produce, distribute, and to consume... As this current financial crisis plays out we can expect to see an end too to cheap credit for American consumers.... Cheap oil has become the mainstay of America's Main Street economy since the late 1970s... Cheap finance from abroad has become the mainstay of America's Main Street consumption since the 1980s - since 2001 US household budgets have been balanced by overseas debt as has Capital Hill deficits, trade account deficits, etc.... The global fight against climate change is the responsibility of each and every one of us on this planet - Americans however can do more than most others around the globe if they can find innovative ways to become less dependent on oil and credit....
October 2, 2008 at 7:34am by Oliver Sparrow
The idea that "cheap oil is about to run out" is simply wrong. The syngas route allows you to take any hydrocarbon - biomass and dead dogs, heavy crude - smash it to CO + H2 and put it back together into whatever hydrocarbon you want. Best guess estimates are that this will cost $50/bbl at 8% real rate of return. There are untold hydrocarbon reserves: the Venezuelan faja has cubic kilometres of heavy crude, the sea bed is plated with kilometre thick layers of methane hydrates; we are not exactly short of agricultural waste and rubbish. The issue is not one of supply, but of (a) managing CO2 and (b) capital investment.
WRT CO2, there are soem fine ideas about: for example, the Indian and Siberian traps have vast, truly vast amounts of Ca and Mg rich rock, which milled goes to MgC03 and CaCO3. The reason the Tertiary (now) is cold is that the Himalayas started building 60 mybp, and that much of the then atmospheric CO2 is now carbonates under the bay of Bengal. Humans have moved about a Himalayas worth of rock so grinding Deccan basalt is not a particularly challenging technical issue, ideally suited to e.g. offshore wind power.
WRT CO2 itself, one of the basic question sis still uncertain: how saturated is the CO2 window? That is, the logic to greenhouse warming is that CO2 trapped outgoing infra red. However, if you have a glass full of water and put a drop of ink in it, it absorbs more light: it goes darker. If it is already dark, a drop of ink makes little additional difference: the absorbtion curve is an asymptote. The atmosphere is already very 'dark' in this sense: a CO2 laser is quickly attenuated by the air through which it passes. (The Wikipedia article on global warming offers the absorbtion spectra: you will see that the CO2 windows are already saturated.)
GCMs (models of the climate) do not appear take this into account and, working from a 'pristine' atmosphere, of course show greater warming with more CO2. A satelite goes up next year to examine outgoing infrared spectra, but astoundingly - given the vast sums involved - the data are still uncertain in this respect.
One last point to froth the Gore mouth: the famous charts that show CO2 and sea surface temperatures tracking each other are extremely impressive. However, what is usually missing from the discussion is the fact that most of the variance can be attributed to the Earth's orbital mechanics - again, see the Wiki article on this. Given this forcing, one truly has to ask if CO2 leads or follows warming.
Personally, I do believe that CO2 will increase global atmospheric energy: more storms, wetter weather, higher winds. Howewever, I am not at all sure that the scale is quite as dramatic as models may suggest, for the reasosn outlined above. Given that development will mean that CO2 levels increase substantially whatever the industrial world does, I think that we need to think hard about abatement in soem of the manners outlined above.