Coal-Obsessed China Fuels Global Warming
A news report both on BBC TV news and their online site, broadcasts a report from the UKs chief scientist, Sir David King, who warns that “Mankind’s only hope of staving off catastrophic climate change is burying CO2 emissions underground”.
His comments come as China and India’s thirst for fuel (specifically coal) grows at a dramatic rate, to keep pace with industrial progress (sic) taking place. China, for example, is opening the equivalent of 1 coal-fired power station every 5 days according to the BBC news broadcast.
Mankind’s only hope of staving off catastrophic climate change is burying CO2 emissions underground.
Sir David King, UK’s Chief Scientist
Sir David King feels that the only way to check the amount of CO2 that is and will continue to be released by burning fossil fuels is by ‘burying’ the CO2 in massive underground carbon sinks. The idea is that the CO2 is pumped into soft, porous rock (where the rock has a non-porous layer above, such as clay). The technology to do this has been developed and is indeed already being used in some places, but the down-side is that it adds up to 15% onto the cost - is this something that nations such as China and India will readily accept?
I also wonder what the long term implications are of this underground storage. I am not a scientist, so perhaps there is little to fear, but who knows?
On an already gloomy day for the environment, I happened to read one of George Monbiot’s latest articles about Biodiesel. Far from being the saviour that many people thought (ie isn’t it great to think we could ‘grow’ diesel fuel), he warns that the production of biodiesel makes it more damaging to the environment than fossil fuels.
The reason for this, says George, is that the cheapest way of producing it is through palm oil, and that countries such as Malaysia are already devoting huge tracts of land to palm oil production. In addition to concerns that land for food production will be turned over to more lucrative biodiesel, many of the counties looking at or already in production are using ’slash and burn’ techniques on extremely sensitive land - the effects could be devastating.
Sources:
George Monbiot
BBC News
Joe-in-Texas says:
George Monbiot is a myopic Neo-Luddite - typical ‘greenie’ - nonthing but left over brown rice hulls will ever do for fuel.
The Monbiot type ‘greenie’ policy is to be against, against, against and when in doubt be against . . .
December 6th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Martin says:
Thanks for your comments, perhaps you could argue more specifically against George Monbiots comments - seriously, I am interested to get a balanced viewpoint on this (Martin)
December 6th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Martin’s Rants » Blog Archive » Ethanol & Biodiesel - problem or solution? says:
[...] In a previous post, I mentioned that bio-diesel may not be the great saviour of our oil-dependant habits, in fact it will gave many the excuse to continue with their current way of life without having to change too much. [...]
July 28th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Martin’s Rants » Coach firm pulls out of biofuel trials due to environmental concerns says:
[...] earlier posts #1 here and #2 here on biofuels. The October 2007 issue of National Geographic also has a pretty hard report on [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 2:17 pm