In two previous posts, “Green” China and CO2 Cap-and-Trade Meets the (China) Dragon, I described China’s rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a “one-country negation” to the Waxman-Markey climate bill (HR 2454). “The expected growth of coal-fired generation in China over the next 20 years will result in a net increase in CO2 emissions from their power sector of more than ten times that of reduced U.S. emissions due to coal constraints,” I concluded.
This is good, not bad, insofar as dung and wood are terrible things to burn. Moreover, China has now committed to using better combustion technology in its power sector, including more coal gasification and high pressure (supercritical) coal-fired thermal power plants. To top things off, China has apparently committed itself to substantial growth in its renewable energy output by 2020.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: Ken Green was a Working Group 1 expert reviewer for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001]
For weeks now, we’ve been hearing an odd refrain from the Democrats who are pushing hardest for the Waxman-Markey climate bill. They are determined, it seems, not only to have such a bill drawn up before Copenhagen, but to have it signed into law. At the same time, the EPA is widely expected to issue its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, triggering what will undoubtedly be a hotly disputed regulatory process.
President Obama, it is reported, wants to sign climate legislation before the critically important Copenhagen climate conference in December. And Senate Majority leader Harry Reid wants the President to sign a climate bill this fall as well.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: Mr. Lynch’s op-ed in the New York Times last week stirred a good deal of comment and disagreement from “peak oil” proponents. His response is here]
The publication of my op-ed on peak oil in the New York Times brought forth the usual tidal wave of criticism. The Oil Drum went so far as to put up a separate page for comments, and Joseph Romm issued a ‘challenge’ to me to wager on oil prices. (For an executed bet coming due next year, see the appendix below.)
Responding to each and every comment, or even the main ones, would be a Herculean (and Sisyphean) task, so I will (here) make some hopefully useful observations.
First, I apologize to Fatih Birol for lumping him in with the peak oil advocates.…
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