[KingM]

The numbers are startling. China is burning nearly three billion metric tons of coal every year, a quantity greater than the United States, Canada, and Europe put together. And worse, with few gas and oil resources and nuclear and hydroelectric not coming online quickly enough to slake China’s thirst for electricity, consumption of coal is projected to double by 2025. Such a result would single-handedly undo any reduction in carbon dioxide emissions anywhere else in the world.

Also largely as a result of its coal-fired power plants, China emits well more than twice the sulfur of American companies, causing an acid rain problem over thirty percent of the country. China is the world’s greatest emitter of mercury; mercury from coal burning has made large predator fish in the world’s oceans dangerous to consume. Chinese pollution still has enough potency to raise particulate levels in West Coast states even after drifting over the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. It is no stretch to say that the reach of Chinese coal consumption is world-wide.

Read the rest.

[eric_b]

Lovely isn't it?

Perhaps you'd like some seafood with your mercury? Hey, look on
the bright side. At least there's still some benthic life left in the seas.
It's not all extinct... yet.

Perhaps you missed Waegari's news tidbit, in a similar vein?
http://www.climateark.org/articles/read ... nkid=57264

Yeah, the pollution blowing off China has been beyond belief.

Check out this unenhanced viz. satellite shot from this last April.
The entire northern hemisphere is under a pall.



Of course you realize it's absolutely necessary for China to
burn all that coal. What would walmart do without it?

[SoothSayer]

China's miners aren't allowed days off because the country needs so much coal.

The Chinese rail system is creaking under the strain of carrying the stuff.

Howevr if they every STOP then we are stuffed ... Global Dimming will end and we will all get toasty warm!

[Zardoz]

...China is burning nearly three billion metric tons of coal every year, a quantity greater than the United States, Canada, and Europe put together....

Good Lord.

All our worst fears about China are rapidly becoming reality. This can only get worse, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.

At this rate, you'd think they would run out of miners:

Coal mine accidents kill 6,027 in China

I guess they'll always have a steady supply of replacements. They'll need a lot of them, according to this story:

Actually 20,000 a year?

In the past, China's mines were worked by lifelong professional miners on a permanent "iron rice-bowl" contract with state-owned enterprises. Nowadays, the state will lease mines to private or semi-private mining enterprises who employ unskilled and desperate peasant contract laborers, most of whom are not even members of the official trade union. Unofficial labor unions are forbidden in China, and labor activists are often sentenced to jail on subversion charges...

Many of those who die in China's mines are peasant workers who have had their land taken away, often by the mining company itself, and face destitution.

[roel]

...China is burning nearly three billion metric tons of coal every year, a quantity greater than the United States, Canada, and Europe put together....
No idea where the opinionator gets these data from, they give no source, same for the NYT article this weekend.

The DOE/EIA data, available at nationmaster.com, certainly don't support this.
In fact, the US uses 3.5 times more coal per capita than China (and 12 times as much oil).

China is not the main problem, the US is. Just ask the people in Ontario, Canada, who live downwind from US coal plants.
Americans pointing fingers at Chinese is truly bizarre..

[XOVERX]

The leader must lead.

If the USA is the leader of the world, then the USA must take the lead in cracking down on pollution.

Doing things like ratifying Kyoto.

But we're not leading. Except to lead the world closer to oblivion.

Until the USA leads, China has no incentive to do otherwise than what the USA does.

Which is to say, "Carbon dioxide is life." Yea, ExxonMobil, leader of the free world!

[Zardoz]

...China is burning nearly three billion metric tons of coal every year, a quantity greater than the United States, Canada, and Europe put together....
No idea where the opinionator gets these data from, they give no source, same for the NYT article this weekend.

The DOE/EIA data, available at nationmaster.com, certainly don't support this.
In fact, the US uses 3.5 times more coal per capita than China (and 12 times as much oil).

China is not the main problem, the US is. Just ask the people in Ontario, Canada, who live downwind from US coal plants.
Americans pointing fingers at Chinese is truly bizarre..

The Coal Institute shows a far-lower figure for China's coal consumption, although it's shown as Number One (in other words, "the main problem") by a wide margin:

World Coal Institute

The problem, and the Chinese readily admit this, is how dirty most of their plants are. Apparently a lot of them have no pollution control devices at all, and a big percentage have only perfunctory controls.

Here's that NYT story. Free registration is required:

Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow

Why do you think this story is not true?

Here's a blurb from Yale about their mercury exports:

Invisible Export – A Hidden Cost of China's Growth: Mercury Migration

Do you think this is all bullshit? Maybe you'll believe the Chinese themselves:

China Warns Too Many Power Plants Are Being Built

"China is battling a proliferation of new power plants that are being built without permission and threaten to upset plans for a more environmentally friendly energy mix."

It's out of control. It's like a plague. Entrepreneurs are throwing up plants wherever they like. China has the worst air pollution in the world:

Filthy Air Choking China's Growth, Olympic Goals

"Globally, China is home to 16 of the 20 cities with the most polluted air. Roughly one-third of the nation’s land area is exposed to acid rain, just one of the many environmental side effects of the 2.1 billion tons of coal produced and burned there last year."

It's cool to despise everything about the U.S. Go right ahead. However, it's hard to understand why you're trying to whitewash what the Chinese are doing.

[eric_b]

...China is burning nearly three billion metric tons of coal every year, a quantity greater than the United States, Canada, and Europe put together....
No idea where the opinionator gets these data from, they give no source, same for the NYT article this weekend.

The DOE/EIA data, available at nationmaster.com, certainly don't support this.
In fact, the US uses 3.5 times more coal per capita than China (and 12 times as much oil).

China is not the main problem, the US is. Just ask the people in Ontario, Canada, who live downwind from US coal plants.
Americans pointing fingers at Chinese is truly bizarre..

You've got a good point. For years now americans have been
the undisputed energy gluttons, and we still consume a quarter
of the global oil pie. And we've a long history of burning coal,
which only recently has been somewhat 'cleaned'. Now that
others a trying to get their piece of the energy pie we point our
dirty fingers at them.

I live in the mid-west, and in my neighborhood one of the old
coal fired plants recently had some 'additions' and 'expansions'
done to it which tripled its size - it's huge. This plant is within a quarter
of a mile from a lake. Everytime I go by it all I can do is shake
my head. It's how we all are living. Quite a bit of the recent in
increase in electrical demand is due to the increased use of
computers. Modern processors are clocked so high they really
are little entropy demons, and the combined thirst from all
this demand adds up to a lot of electricity.

It's bad news. Even with 'cleaner' emissions coal fired plants
still emit gobs of CO2 and mercury. There's also the increasing
environmental devastation caused from mining the coal. Entire
mountains have been destroyed trying to get the stuff, and some
of the strip mining operations are horrific.

[MonteQuest]

On the environmental side, the polluting properties of coal—starting with mining and lasting long after burning—and the large amounts of energy required to liquefy it mean that liquid coal produces more than twice the global warming emissions as regular gasoline and almost double those of ordinary diesel. As pundits have pointed out, driving a Prius on liquid coal makes it as dirty as a Hummer on regular gasoline.

Scientific American

[frankthetank]

Thats a good way to sum it up.

driving a Prius on liquid coal makes it as dirty as a Hummer on regular gasoline.

Are there ANY plants currently under construction or in the works? I guess i haven't followed this CtoL thing a whole lot.

[MonteQuest]

Peabody considers 30,000-barrels/day CTL plant in western Ky.

http://www.platts.com/Coal/News/6398894.xml

[dinopello]

Dr. Bartlett is fond of quoting this:

The chief cause of problems is solutions. (Sevareid, 1970)

[Zardoz]

Let's hope this doesn't get any farther than being introduced:

Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Energy Act of 2007 (Introduced in Senate)

GovTrack

Apparently it's been referred to committee and isn't even scheduled for debate yet. Perhaps Obama and the other sponsors have learned more about CTL's problems and have lost their enthusiasm for it.

[joewp]

Perhaps Obama and the other sponsors have learned more about CTL's problems and have lost their enthusiasm for it.

If they get enough campaign contributions from the coal miners, they won't forget about it, they'll fast track it. So far, nobody on either side has mentioned anything about stopping mountain-top removal coal mining, even though it's devastating Appalachia and a growing grass-roots movement has written ten of thousands of letters to their congress critters.

This is a third-world type environmental catastrophe happening right in our own backyard, and nobody hears squat about it. What makes anybody think some piddling environmental problems with CTL are going to stop them when there's money to be made?

[video width=400 height=350]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/RPixjCneseE[/video]

[cube]

...
This is a third-world type environmental catastrophe happening right in our own backyard, and nobody hears squat about it. What makes anybody think some piddling environmental problems with CTL are going to stop them when there's money to be made?

[video width=400 height=350]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/RPixjCneseE[/video]

Watching this video makes me want to get one of those new hybrids with the "plug in" option.

[gg3]

The terrible irony is that most of the capital resources presently tied up in mining coal, could be redirected into mining uranium and thereby putting us on a climate-clean fast track.

[joe1347]

Interesting that the SA article pretty much ignores peakoil and actually implies (in the article) that there is a chance that the US will not need the transportation fuel produced by $70 Billion worth of the synfuel CTL plants. As Montequest has stated elsewhere, it appears in the coming decades that America will be desparately looking for "something to burn" and if the USA is experiencing periodic gasoline supply disruptions (i.e., gas lines), the last thing that the American public will be worrying about is Global Warming when they can't get gas.

What I'd like to see (in print) by a somewhat impartial and peer-reviewed scientifc source is a comprehensive estimate of just how much transporation fuel can be provided (to US consumers) from all currently known sources (oil, coal, NG, Ethanol, and biodiesel - others?). Granted the estimate will be difficult to do since some of the resources will likely have to be fought over either in a price or shooting war. But I would think that a coarse estimate could be made in different demand scenarios - such as at $100 a Barrel or $200 a Barrel and at a few different rates of growth (in US consumption).

I keep reading that the USA has enough coal for more than 100 years and there's no need to worry - but the 100 year assertion is not backed up by facts. What's the ground truth - How many more years do we have at our (US) current growth rates?

[coyote]

What's the ground truth - How many more years do we have at our (US) current growth rates?

And how much will the industry's growth rate change if we start trying to use coal to fill up our gas tanks as well?

[Novus]

I keep reading that the USA has enough coal for more than 100 years and there's no need to worry - but the 100 year assertion is not backed up by facts. What's the ground truth - How many more years do we have at our (US) current growth rates?

Well in 1900 it used to be said that America would have a 1000 years of coal. The quote of a 100 years just seems to be a convenient round number to put people in complaceny.

I always like to use the example of the passenger pigeon of how fast a seemingly inexhaustible a resource can be exploited, completely depleted, and then forgotten about. It is hard to beleive today but there were upwards of 100 billion (that is not a typo I mean billion) of these birds in North America in 1800. When industrialized hunting began pigeon meat became so cheap if was fed to slaves and hogs because it was cheaper than corn meal. Pigeon hunting peaked around 1870 with pigeon meat being brought in by the train load to eastern cities and then catastrophically collapsed. The passenger pigeon became extinct in the wild in 1900 with the very last pigeon dying in captivity in 1914.

This pattern was repeated over and over and over again with the likes of: whales, old growth timber forests, buffalo, wild turkeys, collapsed commerical fisheries from Maine to Florida and from California to Alaska. The American landscape is dotted with depleted silver and copper mines, dead oil and gas fields, and yes even coal too. If the pattern holds true then even king coal is getting long in the tooth and will soon peak and collapse like every other resource we have exploited on a massive scale.

[mekrob]

How many more years do we have at our (US) current growth rates?

It's like oil. It follows a bell-curve, or at least we can assume that. Reports, search for them on here, indicate that peak coal will occur in 30 years or so. At least, some time before 2050. This is based on assumptions of the price and reserves, which are very uncertain. With PO taken into account, much less is actually available, so it's possible PC is within 2 or even 1 decade after PO (which I take to be ~2013)