Monday, June 5, 2017

Roy Morrison: China’s Ascent to World Leadership

China is zooming ahead to a green new future, that's where the money is. The World wants the new  technology, which will save everyone a lot of money too. And I thought the US was full of entrepreneurs, well, it probably is, but they are being stifled by dinosaurs.

President Trump’s decision to leave Paris Climate Treaty on the same day that the EU and Chinese Premier Li reached agreement on steps to move rapidly globally on climate  also marks the day that China ascended to world leadership replacing the United States symbolically and in actuality.
The U.S. is now a rapidly declining figure on the world stage politically and, in the future, economically as the Unite States remains fixated on polluting industries and protectionism while China is stepping into the breach politically and financially under the  leadership of President Xi to exercise global leadership on climate and  sustainable development.


China is  crafting agreements  with willing partners on climate and sustainable development around the globe ranging from the Belt and Road initiative and now with the EU and U.S. states like California. Governor Brown can find  partners for sustainable development in Beijing, not Washington.


China has swiftly become the world’s best hope for sustainable prosperity and building an ecological civilization through green investment and cooperation. China is already the world’s leader in photovoltaics, solar water heating, and wind. China Grid, the world’s largest utility, is planning to help wire the world with high voltage direct current power lines (HVDC) for global renewable electricity. China is global leader in reforestation for carbon dioxide  capture. China is now also  global leader in building gigafactories for electric vehicle batteries.  China is now embraced on a crash program to “Make the skies blue again”, replacing coal plants in major Eastern cities this year with natural  gas. China is  ahead of schedule in meeting its carbon dioxide reduction targets and ledges under Paris Climate agreement.



17 comments:

Peter Pan said...

And perhaps Europe too?

Thank-you Trump.

Dan Lynch said...

China is running a mercantilist economy which MMT claims does not work but actually works well for China just as it used to work well for the U.S.. Exporting value-added products does not harm the exporter, especially if the raw materials were imported, as is the case with most of China's production.

China is not a fossil fuel state so it is in its self interest to move to other energy sources. China is not doing it for altruistic reasons.

Trade agreements benefit export countries like China. Again, it is acting in its self interest.

There is nothing sustainable about China's policies, and there is certainly nothing green about China's policies.

The real story is that China has a planned economy that seems to work better than our unplanned market economy.

Andrew Anderson said...


The real story is that China has a planned economy that seems to work better than our unplanned market economy. Dan Lynch

Well, ours is planned too, e.g. via interest rate manipulation, to benefit owners of capital at the expense of labor and the rest of the citizenry.

So the lesson appears to be that a planned economy for the general welfare outperforms a planned economy for the benefit of the rich.

Of course an ethical system should outperform both.

MRW said...

The U.S. is now a rapidly declining figure on the world stage politically and, in the future, economically as the Unite States remains fixated on polluting industries and protectionism while China is stepping into the breach politically and financially under the leadership of President Xi to exercise global leadership on climate and sustainable development.

This is so fucking naive. China controls the world's rare earths. China doesn't give a shit about the world's "sustainable development." Just look at the number of Ultra Super Critical Coal-Fired Power plants it is building...more emission-efficient than Kyoto Protocol 2020 AD requirements, and more powerful than nuclear plants.

China just wants the rest of the world dependent on the idea, THEN it can deprive the world the resources needed to achieve it. It has actively said so. Why don't people read this shit? it’s in the press.

China is now in the process of denying the rest of the world the resources needed to achieve this supposedly green utopia. It has said so. They are not dumb. They own them.

I am constantly amazed at westerners who don't understand jui jitsu: using your enemy's energy (and goals) to destroy them. Why do you think Chinese civilization has survived six millennia? Smarts.

Kaivey said...

We've got to do something though, we can't let the planet go go in smoked. They say that all the sunlight falling on Qatar can power the whole world. And then we have the cold fusion article I put here last year. We should be investing into finding alternatives to rare earth metal, we can't just go belly up and give up.

Kaivey said...

A little bit on Cold Fusion, but as usual, the technology isn't ready yet. Hopefully one day we will see it. It's always just around the corner, isn't it?

Kaivey said...

Forget the link.

http://edgylabs.com/2017/03/29/lenr-cold-fusion/

Peter Pan said...

Oh dear, how will we live without rare earths? The horror! The horror!

MRW said...

They say that all the sunlight falling on Qatar can power the whole world. That's insane, Kaivey. Look at a map. Think the sun only shines over Qatar? Same sun shines over the rest of the world at that latitude. BUT. For 12 hours a day. There's such a thing as night-time. And it befalls every location on earth. Every day.

Peter Pan said...

From 2009:
https://www.fastcompany.com/1343840/how-much-surface-area-would-it-take-power-world-completely-solar-or-wind

MRW said...

News you didn’t get, Bob. That stupid article you link to was written in 2009. Wishful thinking written by journalistic know-nothings with no scientific background or training.

Try this: Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers
Windmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
That’s only page 1 of 2.

You didn’t see this because no one on the North American continent would publish it, or bother to broadcast it.

Google, in 2007, threw all its money and resources behind solving this problem in one of its most ambitious projects to date. Four years later, in 2011, the top scientists (Stanford) dedicated by Google to solving the problem—absolutely dedicated environmentalists as well as top scientific brains—threw in the towel. But we didn’t hear about it until November 2014 via an obscure article published in the electrical engineer's leading journal, IEEE Spectrum.

Read this:

Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.

MRW said...

I can guarantee you, Bob, no one who contributes to this board (MNE) spends as much time as I do every day reading source scientific papers related to this subject. I am talking hours a day. My maths are no longer what they used to be, but when I don't understand the equations, I write the authors.

MRW said...

I liken most climate change hand-wavers to the neoliberal Milton Friedman school of economics, and just as educated.

MRW said...

And the Chinese know this about the resources. That's why they spent years locking up the resources while Americans idiots scoured Walmart for straw hats, tea bags, and lawn chairs in February 2009. It's in their scientific papers, if anyone would bother to read them.

Why do you think they are helping African countries with 2-3% loans, not fucking them over like the World Bank would do?

Why do you think the Chinese did a 180 on their climate position in the last three/four years, while maintaining they are not going to reduce emissions UNTIL 2030? [The Chinese announced in 2013 that from here on in, it would be protecting the resources it owned for the future of its own people, not for world consumption.]

The Chinese wrote the book on The Art of War. In 500 B.C.

Peter Pan said...

The first map shows the estimated surface area needed to power the world with solar energy. Are you disagreeing with that estimate?

Can infrastructure on that scale be built?
Not in time to mitigate global warming. That is the question the Google engineers answered. Ergo, CO2 emissions are here to stay.

Can infrastructure on that scale be built over 50/100 years?
Probably. Certainly. There wouldn't be a resource/energy bottleneck to building it over longer timescales. In 50-100 years, a significant portion of our current structures would have to be refurbished or rebuilt as a result of wear and tear, aging, obsolescence, etc.

The future of energy production will depend on the availability of current sources, namely fossil fuels. As those become more expensive, alternatives including renewable energy will be phased in. This is our current 'market-based' approach.

If our total energy production declines, civilization will have to adapt to that reality. It may result in a declining standard of living, or worse. The impact of climate change may also contribute negatively.

This is crystal ball stuff, not engineering.

Peter Pan said...

Why do you think they are helping African countries with 2-3% loans, not fucking them over like the World Bank would do?

It may have to do with a continent whose people are reliant on subsistence agriculture. It may have to do with not being seen as colonialists. I'm not a mind-reader, but it looks like China wants access to Africa's resources and is willing to invest. Other countries could do the same, and probably are to a lesser extent.

China is acting in its best interests, which is the norm in the current setup of nation states. In the case of Washington, their incompetence and short-sightedness should never be underestimated.

There are three principal methods to coping with a resource shortage: find alternatives, trade for it, or go to war for it.

Matt Franko said...

http://www.hydro.com/en/products/energy/Hydropower-and-aluminium/

"When aluminium is produced using environmentally friendly hydropower, like in Norway, the CO2 emissions per tonne of aluminium are only one-fifth of those from a smelter operated with electricity from coal power plants, as is common for example in China."

Then China USD zombies have huge surplus aluminum stores:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-aluminium-ahome-idUSKBN18J2CO

"Hey! we finally hacked aluminum after everyone else has been making it for 100 years!! Aren't we smart! "