Bloomberg posts: “China to prioritize energy security over transition to renewables, Xi Says”. President Xi Jinping never has intended to stay with his promise to stop emitting CO2 by 2030. Time and again, the warmers have said how wonderful China is and how bad the US is regarding CO2 emissions. This despite the fact that in the past ten years the US emissions have declined (more than any other nation) while China’s emissions have increased massively. The warmers just recently learned that China had decided in their 5-year plan to up the number of coal plants they planned to install. The warmers just knew that was not going to happen, but sure as the Sun Rises in the east, they were wrong.
Now, Xi says:”
“He will use prudence about governing China’s efforts to peak and eventually zero out carbon emissions.”
So, 2030 is not a firm date anymore.
It happens that I agree with his reasoning (that I underlined). Bloomberg posting related this:
”Xi speech made China’s path to decarbonization clear saying It won’t stop burning fossil fuels until it’s confident that clean energy can reliably replace them. The speech shows more emphasis on energy security and the significant role of coal in China’s energy supply given the resources endowment.
The Bloomberg posting gives the reader background on China and promises:
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and Xi electrified climate activists two years ago when he vowed to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 after peaking emissions before 2030. The announcement sparked a massive surge in investment in clean energy by local governments and state-owned firms.
But last year focus began to return to China’s mainstay fuel of coal after a shortage triggered widespread power curtailments to factories, slowing economic growth. The country vowed to increase mining capacity, and production has risen to record levels this year, keeping storage sites well stocked and reducing imports.
China will also expand exploration and development of oil and gas resources, and increase reserves and production as part of the measures to ensure energy security, according to a congress work report released after Xi’s speech.
Does this sound like someone planning to cut back.?
Sorry warmers!
No nation should cut back on fossil fuels until wind and solar can prove they are be reliable suppliers. And that may be never.
cbdakota
Hat tip to Net zero posting. “China to prioritize energy security over transition to renewables, Xi Says”
This is part two of Robert Bryce’s testimony to the House Select Committee on The Climate Crisis.
Our electric grid is fragile. Robert Bryce writes that the Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergence Response illustrates the declining reliability of our grid. Bryce says:
“In 2002, there were 23 “major disturbances and unusual occurrences” on the domestic electric grid. Those outages were caused by things like ice storms, fires, vandalism, and severe weather. By 2016, the number of disturbances and unusual occurrences had increased six-fold to 141. In 2020, the number of events jumped to 383 – an increase of 270% in just four years. Even more alarming: through the first two months of 2021, there have been 122 of these outages.”
Bryce says:
“Electrifying everything is the opposite of anti-fragile. Attempting to halt the use of liquid motor fuels and replace them with electricity will make our transportation system more vulnerable to disruptions caused by extreme weather, saboteurs, equipment failure, accidents, or human error. Electrifying our transportation system will reduce societal resilience because it will put all our energy eggs in one basket. Electrifying transportation will reduce fuel diversity and concentrate our energy risks on a single grid, the electric grid, which will make it an even-more-appealing target for terrorists or bad actors.
Furthermore, and perhaps most important, attempting to electrify transportation makes little sense given the ongoing fragilization of our electric grid. The closures of our nuclear plants is reducing the reliability and resilience of the electric grid and making it more reliant on gasfired power plants and weather-dependent renewables.”
While skeptics have known for years that the alarmist’s forecasts of doom are not likely to be realized, the alarmists oddly want to shut down all nuke plants. Nuke plants that do not emit their enemy carbon dioxide (CO2). Bryce notes Congress inaction regarding this issue when he says:
“Instead, Congress is standing idly by as our nuclear plants – our most reliable, safest, and most power-dense form of electricity production – are being shuttered. Nuclear plants are, as writer Emmet Penney recently put it, our “industrial cathedrals.” If policymakers want to decarbonize our transportation system while enhancing the resilience of our society, the best option would be to have a grid that is heavily reliant on nuclear energy.”
Bryce discusses recent issues that demonstrate the gird’s declining reliability in his report. They can be reviewed by clicking here.
See part two about supply chains and mineral needs.
This is the sixth posting of a series listing things that the alarmists and the mainstream media do not want made public. At the top of this posting is a link to the preceding postings.
The Paris Agreement (PA) has been a flop, so far. The PA’s target is lowering CO2 emissions. Since the PA was signed in 2015 by some 180+ nations, the CO2 emissions have risen.
The chart below, from Rhodium, shows the percentage of the total global emissions of the so-called greenhouse gases made by the top 8 emitters in 2019. China is far and away the leading emitter and will be increasing the difference in the future. CO2 from fossil fuels is nominally 80+ % of the total emissions. The rest of the total is from cement manufacturing, methane, and fluorocarbons, etc. In 2020, the emissions dropped due to COVID but are forecast to be back up in 2021.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that 2021 will exceed the emissions in 2019. Their forecast is 33GtCO2 for the year 2021.
China and India as well as many nations in Africa and Asia are installing coal-based power plants at a breakneck speed. Because coal combustion produces more CO2 per Megawatt hour, than any other commonly used fossil fuel, it is the primary target of the alarmists. Bloomberg Green data reports on the primary users of coal int 2019:
COAL USER
% OF TOTAL COAL USED
CHINA
51.7
INDIA
11.8
US
7.2
REST OF THE WORLD
29.3
The US has been reducing the use of coal by using natural gas as a replacement.
The premise of the PA is to essentially eliminate all global manmade CO2 emissions to prevent the global temperature to have risen to 2C since 1900. Or else, awful things are going to happen the alarmists tell us.
If the US were able to totally reduce their emissions, would that prevent the global temperature to rise to 2C?
“Not when almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s global emissions come from outside of US borders. We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved,” Kerry conceded.
All the signers of the PA must submit their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), a plan to reduce CO2 emission. Then every 5 years they are to make a new set of NDCs more robust than the preceding submittal. There are no penalties for not meeting your NDC nor are there any for not making a sufficient effort. The burden for accomplishing this objective is laid on these 42 nations that signed the PA. This group consists of the 27nations within the EU, Australia, Canada, Chile, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, the US, and the UK. These nation are accused of creating the problem because they have used fossil fuels to discontinue the use of horses, whale oil, backbreaking labor, inadequate living conditions, child labor, while at the same time providing affordable and available electricity— just to mention a few reasons.
The first submission of NDCs were underwhelming. And since then, the story is:
President Xi and the then President Obama met. Obama was going to bring China into the PA. The deal was that China could continue increasing their emission until 2030 without disapproval of the PA organization. From China’s perspective it was a perfect opportunity to build up their manufacturing/economy while the other nations were destroying theirs.
China has disappointed in every way, especially those who thought China was really into environmental stuff. China recently announced that wind and solar are too unreliable to depend upon. An added that they were reducing support to renewables. That was followed by the fact that they were going to build more coal plants. They offered to buy the UKs steel business. Does that sound like someone who worries about the global warming theory? Their new five-year plan that was expected to be based upon using less coal, turned out to be based on more coal.
“At a time when China is so obviously saying one thing and doing another, and clearly not fulfilling its share of the world’s commitments to reducing CO2 emissions — as the world’s second-largest economy– sends all the wrong signals. What China and others see is that no matter what it does — even if it deceives the world and continues its predatory behavior — the US is willing to reduce its own competitiveness, leaving China a thick red carpet to become the world’s dominant superpower, the very role to which it aspires. “
This same Gatestone posting also reminds that the Chinese government are not people of their word:
“It is extremely unlikely that China will deliver on its climate commitments and there are enough precedents to show that the CCP’s pledges cannot be trusted. In 1984, China pledged that Hong Kong’s autonomy, including its rights and freedoms, would remain unchanged for 50 years under the principle of “one country, two systems” after the 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty. By June 2020, however, when China introduced its iron-fisted national security law in Hong Kong, China had reneged on its pledge, and the CCP continues to crush Hong Kong.
China also broke its 2015 commitment not to militarize artificial islands that Beijing has been building in the Spratly Islands chain in the South China Sea and it has never honored at least nine of the commitments it made when it joined the World Trade Organization, to name just a few instances.
The list of broken pledges does not even include the lies that China told the world about the supposed non-transmissibility of the Coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan and has so far taken more than three million lives and ravaged countless economies.”
And another pact, the Montreal Protocol on Ozone is another example of a broken pledge. Jonathan Turley’s post titled China found in massive violation of the Montreal Protocol:
“A study in Nature shows a massive violation by China in the release of ozone-depleting gases like chlorofluorocarbons. China agreed to the Montreal Protocol to stop such CFC pollution. However, it now appears that the Chinese regime is violating the Protocol. A concentration of increased CFC pollution was traced to the northeastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei.”
“We find no evidence for a significant increase in CFC-11 emissions from any other eastern Asian countries or other regions of the world where there are available data for the detection of regional emissions. “
“Several considerations suggest that the increase in CFC-11 emissions from Eastern mainland China is likely to be the result of new production and use, which is inconsistent with the Montreal Protocol agreement to phase out global chlorofluorocarbon production by 2010.”
“If China cannot comply with the Montreal Protocol to control these most dangerous pollutants (particularly with the availability of alternatives for industry) the nation undermines its already low credibility on environmental compliance.”
Look at what is already under way. This chart by IEA shows the Energy Related CO2 Emissions. The table that follows illustrates that the Advanced Economies have a diminishing role in controlling CO2 emissions.
Yellow is “Rest of the World” and rust is “Advanced Economies”.
IEA Chart
2010 2019
GtCO2
% of Total
GtCO2
% of Total
Advanced Economies
12.6
54.5
11.3
34
Rest of the World
10.5
45.5
22.0
66.0
Total
23.1
100
33.3
100
Energy Related C02 Emissions
IEA Data
In ten years, the advanced Economies reduced their energy related emissions by 1.3 GtCO2. The Rest of the World increased their emissions by 11.5 GtCO2. Neither China, nor India nor Brazil nor Russia nor the other Asian and African nations are going to stop installation of fossil fuel-based energy. Their reasons for this are many but they want their people to have electricity and other products of fossil fuels, too.
So, John Kerry nailed it, ““Not when almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s global emissions come from outside of US borders. We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved,”
If the West attempts to decarbonize, it will not succeed. I think that the further they get in this futile and misdirected attempt will be disastrous —not to the climate but to the viability of the West. The public will eventually wake up to the facts. Price rises for everything and sharp rises for electricity and gasoline, the new name for renewable will be unreliables, jobs will disappear as manufacturing leaves our shores for lower cost energy, and an unease about the US loss of stature and ability to protect its citizens. These things are likely to create public awareness that the government programs have had disappointing results.
If the West attempts to decarbonize, it will not succeed. I think that the further they get in this futile and misdirected attempt will be disastrous —not to the climate but to the viability of the West.
There is another party that wants to see the West fail. That is a movement titled the Great Reset. This blog will discuss the Great Reset in the next posting.
From a recent Dr. Roy Spencer blog: Seldom is the public ever informed of these glaring discrepancies between basic science and what politicians and pop-scientists tell us. Why does it matter? It matters because there is no Climate Crisis. There is no Climate Emergency. Yes, irregular warming is occurring. Yes, it is at least partly due to human greenhouse gas emissions. But seldom are the benefits of a somewhat warmer climate system mentioned, or the benefits of more CO2 in the atmosphere (which is required for life on Earth to exist). But if we waste trillions of dollars (that’s just here in the U.S. — meanwhile, China will always do what is in the best interests of China) then that is trillions of dollars not available for the real necessities of life. Prosperity will suffer, and for no good reason.“
“China’s challenge to America is comprehensive, on every front. So far, Biden has taken steps that certainly encourage Beijing. His rejoining the Paris Agreement, his cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and his repeal of the ban on Chinese equipment in the American electrical grid, among others, favor, directly or indirectly, Beijing. Also of great concern is the failure of Commerce Secretary nominee Gina Raimondo to confirm that Huawei Technologies will remain on the department’s Entity List.
Analysts say Beijing is testing Biden. Yes, but so far the Chinese do not need to lift a finger. The new president is giving them what they want, and they are not even having to ask.”
Maybe the Chinese did not ask but rather told President Biden what they want. Considering the verified connection of the President’s son with the Chinese and the information obtained from his computer hard drive, the possibility of collusion with the Chinese is credible.
Rejoining the Paris Agreement and the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline will weaken the US and that is in the interest of the Chinese. I will have something to say about those issues later but allowing Chinese equipment in the electrical grid potentially gives them a means of shutting down the grids whenever they would like.
Not using the Huawei technologies in our communication systems is also to prevent them from shutting down our systems and to prevent them spying by eavesdropping.
We convinced the UK not to use Huawei for these reasons. And now we have a Commerce Secretary nominee that may change our view of the danger.
We are turning up Chinese spies, and Chinese’s bought and paid for academics and Universities. We have found out that the Chinese have been stealing our technology. Most damaging has been our military secrets. So, you will not convince me that they are friendly. They want to bury the US.
Climate Change Sanity 