Month: March 2017

Uncategorized 13 Mar 2017

Has China Faked Its Coal Data?

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

China has cut coal production for the third year in a row, according to government figures, despite a host of reasons to doubt that it did.

A truck unloads coal at a coalyard in Huaibei, eastern China’s Anhui province, Nov. 11, 2016.

Based on official data, China’s mines produced 3.36 billion metric tons of coal last year, down sharply by 9.4 percent from 2015. The decrease marked the biggest annual drop so far since production peaked in 2013.

The steep decline reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) would be good news for environmental advocates seeking reductions in smog and greenhouse gas emissions, if it turns out to be true.

China produces and burns about half the world’s coal, accounting for 64 percent of the country’s energy supply last year, based on official data.

Largely coal-fired power, winter heating and the recent resurgence of steel production have been blamed for China’s unrelenting bouts of urban smog.

While the reported drop in coal production suggests that conditions are getting better, China’s frequent smog alerts make the opposite case that coal-caused pollution has been getting worse.

Over 57 percent of China’s 338 cities monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) suffered varying degrees of air pollution late last month. Nearly 20 percent reported “serious” or “heavily polluted” air, state media said.

The cumulative 13.2-percent cut in officially-reported coal output since 2014 suggests citizens could see some relief, but doubts about the figures may outweigh NBS claims.

Reason for concern

One reason for concern is a widely reported disruption of the coal market in the second half of 2016, caused by the government’s poorly executed plan to shed surplus production capacity at China’s mines.

Last February, the cabinet-level State Council responded to a three-year slump in coal prices and profits by ordering mines to reduce overcapacity by 500 million tons a year and to consolidate another 500 million tons under more efficient operators by 2020.

After months without progress in meeting targets set for 2016, the government’s top planning agency pressured the mines to make rapid cuts, resulting in sudden shortages at power plants and a price spike of over 50 percent.

At the end of 2016, the price of coal used for power production stood at 639 yuan (U.S. $93) per ton, up 72.7 percent from the start of the year, the official English-language China Daily said.

Production surged in the third and fourth quarters as idled mines reopened to reap the profits and meet the demand.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) authorized an increase in operations and urged 900 mines to boost output by a collective 1 million tons a day.

Coal output rose each month from September through December as the mines responded, although the output never reached year-earlier levels, according to NBS data.

But the NBS calculations are impossible to verify, in part because the agency apparently neglects to update adjustments to its year-earlier figures.

Full story

World Leaders Conspire To Keep Trump In The Paris Climate Agreement

via Climate Change Dispatchhttp://climatechangedispatch.com

European leaders are quietly building a coalition of countries to pressure the Trump administration to not withdraw from the Paris agreement and meeting with White House officials, looking for the right argument to sway the U.S. president. A coalition led by Germany, France and Italy has reached out to “Canada and China, as well as African, […]

via Climate Change Dispatch http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN

March 13, 2017 at 06:16AM

Uncategorized 13 Mar 2017

West Australia – Unskeptical conservatives wiped out in election – No Trump, No Brexit vote

via JoNovahttp://joannenova.com.au

Don’t mention the climate — unskeptical conservatives give away some of their best weapons

The local Liberals (conservatives) got smashed on the weekend in the Western Australian election. Polls predicted it, but instead of a Trump-surprise, Colin Barnett’s team got a nasty shock instead — wiped out. There was no “hidden vote” waiting there because the local Liberals are just another brand of The Establishment. There is nothing politically brave about them.

In WA climate was a non-issue, yet pandering to the religion still cost conservatives. One of the main election messages was about the privatisation of “Western Power” (Electricity supplier). This strange spectacle unfolded where McGowan, the leader who’d suggested the ridiculous 50% renewables target was thumping Barnett’s campaign with messages of fear about rising electricity prices after the privatization. Barnett didn’t hit back — No one seemed to notice the incongruity of Mr Renewables accusing someone else of making electricity expensive.

There are many reasons the WA Libs crashed (read some here). But the “climate” policy hole gets forgotten. Colin Barnett was unarmed, unskeptically accepting the unaudited foreign committee reports. In 2014, when semi-skeptical-Abbott was PM, the premier of a state that lives off mining and energy wasn’t […]

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via JoNova http://ift.tt/1hXVl6V

March 13, 2017 at 06:08AM

Uncategorized 13 Mar 2017

World Leaders Conspire To Keep Trump In The Paris Climate Agreement

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

European leaders are quietly building a coalition of countries to pressure the Trump administration to not withdraw from the Paris agreement and meeting with White House officials, looking for the right argument to sway the U.S. president.

A coalition led by Germany, France and Italy has reached out to “Canada and China, as well as African, Latin American and small island states,” according to Politico, to form a group of “like-minded” countries to take advantage of a divided White House.

Diplomats have even spoken to White House officials, framing participation in the United Nations climate deal as a boon for jobs. White House energy adviser George David Banks has already met with European officials on the issue.

Reports suggest Banks sides with staying in the Paris agreement, echoing the stances of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. Banks recently held a closed-door meeting on plans for the Paris agreement with energy industry executives.

This group is pushing a plan to weaken Obama’s climate pledge that could include subsidies to energy companies that use carbon capture and storage technology to capture emissions from coal and natural gas power plants.

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon favors ditching the Paris agreement. President Donald Trump promised to “cancel” the Paris agreement on the campaign trail and is working on executive orders to undo President Barack Obama’s climate agenda.

The Paris agreement on greenhouse gas reductions went into effect in November 2016. Obama unilaterally pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025, but the Senate never approved the plan.

Conservatives and skeptical climate scientists have urged Trump to not only ditch the Paris agreement, but to also withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

They argue there’s little point in staying in either if Trump plans to roll back all the Obama-era regulations to meet the Paris pledge and stop funding UN global warming programs.

Ivanka and Kushner already intervened to strip language critical of the Paris agreement from a pending executive order targeting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) global warming rules.

The move came after UK officials lobbied the Trump administration to stay in the Paris deal, arguing global warming regulations would create jobs. Prime Minister Theresa May, however, did not mention Paris during her visit with Trump earlier this year.