The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

[Ghent12]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

How about we just leave people/humanity alone? I think they/it can do just fine without some grand scheme from central planners.
Let's attend to our own lives, families, neighbors, and communities, and be the best persons we can be. I hope we can be humble enough to let others do the same, but fear this will not be the case.

Your post is like a breath of fresh air in this stifling Doomer's Day Parade.
The "Doomer" scenarios always strike me as quite odd.
On the one hand, they predict that resources will become unavailable; we'll run out or magically be able to control our appetite for them.
On the other hand, "new technologies and innovations" will occur, but seemingly always insufficient to stave off disaster.

You can't predict the future because you can't predict the future. This "end of the world" stuff is, I suspect, largely overblown. The world has ended numerous times before, and we're living better lives than ever. The Victorian world ended, the Medieval world ended, and etc. etc.

The key word is transition, not getting stuck in the same world for all perpetuity.

[touchring]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

You can't predict the future because you can't predict the future. This "end of the world" stuff is, I suspect, largely overblown. The world has ended numerous times before, and we're living better lives than ever. The Victorian world ended, the Medieval world ended, and etc. etc.

Actually, i disagree. The Chinese lived much better lives during the Medieval times then much of the last 200 years, save for the last 30 years.

There had been plenty of historical records on the period AD 900 to AD 1700, showing how prosperous the Chinese were almost an entire millennium. But by 1800, decline started and famine after famine, and war after war wiped out millions, culminating in the disastrous Mao Great Leap when 36 million people died of starvation.

Progress is not a god given entitlement. It remains to be seen what will happen when China raises its living standards to even half of Western countries today over the next 15 years. Even with Japan like energy efficiency, that will mean China will consume 25 million barrels of oil a day out of the existing 85 million barrels world production. Oil consumption by developed countries will need to drop by more than half in order to squeeze out an extra 20 million barrels of oil a day for China.

[Rajiv]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

Think also of what the Pakistan flooding, low rainfall in North Central India, and the wheat crop failure in Russia mean for the coming year(s).

Indian Rainfall deficit



Note that even much of the green areas show rainfall deficits.

This has particularly grave implications for the recharging of ground water levels.

[Starving Steve]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

I don't want to sound like Arthur Laffer, but we can grow the oil pie bigger by drilling everywhere and by up-grading heavy oil in tar sands and in shales. Bigger is always better. There is no shortage of expensive oil on this planet. We might even make synthetic oil from coal. So the future looks promising.

[Starving Steve]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

There are not too many monkeys on the rock, but maybe we need to make the rock bigger?

A bigger rock might mean a higher standard of living for all monkeys, and that in turn, might help induce a lower rate of fertility in the monkey pack. That would help to make monkey life sustainable on the rock. Then the monkeys might develop science and technology, and monkey living would really improve.

There would be the odd monkey that had mental problems and would reject modern life on the rock. Those insane monkeys would be banished to an outlying rock offshore called, Middle-East Rock where they could dwell in ignorance, superstition, poverty, locusts, revenge-killings, holy wars, droughts, floods, plagues, and disease forever.

On Middle-East Rock, nothing would ever change because all that there was ever to know was already known and written in scripture. Monkeys on ME Rock would live out their days in prayer and superstition.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

A few weeks ago current tv had a program on the worlds need for toilets and disposal of fecal matter. They went to poverty stricken places to show the need for toilets. They showed pictures of people crapping right where they bathe(rivers,lakes), live (houses, streets, public places). They were arguing for toilets, I sat there thinking how the heck can you take a crap in the same place where you bathe, eat, sleep, live, and just leave it there on the ground. They practically lived in their own crap, stepping on it and such. It astounds me how in the year 2010 there are still people in the world that can do these things, common sense and some human decency would lead you to at least build an outhouse, or travel a few meters away from your living quarters.

I distinctly remember a particular village visit in a VERY remote area while deployed a few years ago......

I saw a pig pen(a wood pole cage really) located up and over the local water supply(big stream), with a ramp for the pigs to get up/down.

I thought it was genius!.......it was a self-cleaning pig pen!...the pigs would poop, and the poop would largely fall in the water to be carried away!

Then I saw the locals cleaning their clothes downstream of the pig pen, bathing in the water downstream of the pig pen, and collecting their drinking water downstream of the pig pen.......

We made a couple of public health suggestions with the "big men"/village elders in that wantok......we had some other jobs to do and didn't stay long enough to see if they implemented it.

Their home, their rules, their choices...all we could do is offer helpful suggestions......Just because they were ignorant of public health best practices, certainly didn't mean they were stupid.

I wonder how we will look at ourselves from an individual and community perspective on such things as being "overclean" and how that may correlate with high incidence of allergies in the 1st world, autism, etc.

We look back in horror at the stupid sh!t we collectively did 100 years ago, and will probably do the same in another 100 to where we are today.

I've seen some horrific public health issues in the 3rd world......I tend to view many(but not all) of those problems as mostly a failure of local leadership and education.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the public domain book "Where's There is No Doctor"......it's probably saved a good number of lives since first published.

Just my 0.02c

[touchring]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

Then I saw the locals cleaning their clothes downstream of the pig pen, bathing in the water downstream of the pig pen, and collecting their drinking water downstream of the pig pen.......

Poop is organic and natural stuff.

What kind of water do you think the processed food you eat everyday with ingredients imported from developing countries are made using and washed in?

You're luck if they are only using poop water and not industrial discharge or pesticide and fertilizer laced water piped in straight from the river.

[chr5648]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

I distinctly remember a particular village visit in a VERY remote area while deployed a few years ago......

I saw a pig pen(a wood pole cage really) located up and over the local water supply(big stream), with a ramp for the pigs to get up/down.

I thought it was genius!.......it was a self-cleaning pig pen!...the pigs would poop, and the poop would largely fall in the water to be carried away!

Then I saw the locals cleaning their clothes downstream of the pig pen, bathing in the water downstream of the pig pen, and collecting their drinking water downstream of the pig pen.......

We made a couple of public health suggestions with the "big men"/village elders in that wantok......we had some other jobs to do and didn't stay long enough to see if they implemented it.

Their home, their rules, their choices...all we could do is offer helpful suggestions......Just because they were ignorant of public health best practices, certainly didn't mean they were stupid.

I wonder how we will look at ourselves from an individual and community perspective on such things as being "overclean" and how that may correlate with high incidence of allergies in the 1st world, autism, etc.

We look back in horror at the stupid sh!t we collectively did 100 years ago, and will probably do the same in another 100 to where we are today.

I've seen some horrific public health issues in the 3rd world......I tend to view many(but not all) of those problems as mostly a failure of local leadership and education.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the public domain book "Where's There is No Doctor"......it's probably saved a good number of lives since first published.

Just my 0.02c

Its one thing to have animals crap where you live, its another to crap yourself where you live.

[Ghent12]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

Actually, i disagree. The Chinese lived much better lives during the Medieval times then much of the last 200 years, save for the last 30 years.

There had been plenty of historical records on the period AD 900 to AD 1700, showing how prosperous the Chinese were almost an entire millennium. But by 1800, decline started and famine after famine, and war after war wiped out millions, culminating in the disastrous Mao Great Leap when 36 million people died of starvation.

Progress is not a god given entitlement. It remains to be seen what will happen when China raises its living standards to even half of Western countries today over the next 15 years. Even with Japan like energy efficiency, that will mean China will consume 25 million barrels of oil a day out of the existing 85 million barrels world production. Oil consumption by developed countries will need to drop by more than half in order to squeeze out an extra 20 million barrels of oil a day for China.

Right, and Western living standards are currently experiencing a decline and will continue to experience a decline in living standards. But it's a result of politics and fiscal irresponsibility, not resource depletion, unless you consider "good governance" to be a resource--if that's the case, then we are definitely long past Peak Good Governance.

You point out that the Chinese suffered declines, including precipitous declines, in their standards of living because of political implications or natural disasters. What else is new? That doesn't mean there is any forthcoming disaster.

[touchring]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

Right, and Western living standards are currently experiencing a decline and will continue to experience a decline in living standards. But it's a result of politics and fiscal irresponsibility, not resource depletion, unless you consider "good governance" to be a resource--if that's the case, then we are definitely long past Peak Good Governance.

You point out that the Chinese suffered declines, including precipitous declines, in their standards of living because of political implications or natural disasters. What else is new? That doesn't mean there is any forthcoming disaster.

That's why they call it a black swan event. Economic or even political disasters are nothing to fret about, climatic disasters can be 10,000 times more devastating.

Saw the movie "The Day After Tomorrow"?

Science fiction today, but at the rate in which toxic is dumped into the air and the sea, it will become real only decades from now. And if you think pollution is localized, think about Eyjafjallajokull volcano, it only took 6 weeks for the dust to travel round the globe.

No oil? Never mind, we can burn 3x more coal.

" data-vcode="c9tJNcktVWc" data-vprovider="youtube" >

Biofuel?



http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/200...0/18627188.php

[Ghent12]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

Saw the movie "The Day After Tomorrow"?

Science fiction today, but at the rate in which toxic is dumped into the air and the sea, it will become real only decades from now. And if you think pollution is localized, think about Eyjafjallajokull volcano, it only took 6 weeks for the dust to travel round the globe.

No oil? Never mind, we can burn 3x more coal.

I don't see the connection between pollution and the Icelandic volcano. The only similar human-driven event would be a large-sized nuclear exchange, which is essentially unrelated to pollution.

Also, is there any link between pollution and global climate change, and how strong is it? That's the great "environmental" discussion of our time, is it not? The ironic thing is that it does not matter. Humans cannot reduce their CO2 emissions. The only possible way to reduce CO2 emissions is to use up all the fossil fuels. All other ways have tried and failed on a global scale. Additionally, efforts to control the use of energy is an exercise in trying to enforce poverty which is intrinsically linked to environmental devastation.

[c1ue]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

No oil? Never mind, we can burn 3x more coal.

And how will you build/site/grid 3x more coal power plants? Plus the roads to supply them?

China is already buying coal from Australia - perhaps the internal massive coal reserves aren't all they're cracked up to be.

And curiously you disbelieve all the other China economic numbers, but believe their coal reserve figures?

[Rajiv]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

And how will you build/site/grid 3x more coal power plants? Plus the roads to supply them?

China is already buying coal from Australia - perhaps the internal massive coal reserves aren't all they're cracked up to be.

And curiously you disbelieve all the other China economic numbers, but believe their coal reserve figures?

C1ue I thought Touchring was being ironic/sarcastic -- but I could be wrong.

[touchring]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

I don't see the connection between pollution and the Icelandic volcano. The only similar human-driven event would be a large-sized nuclear exchange, which is essentially unrelated to pollution.

Also, is there any link between pollution and global climate change, and how strong is it? That's the great "environmental" discussion of our time, is it not? The ironic thing is that it does not matter. Humans cannot reduce their CO2 emissions. The only possible way to reduce CO2 emissions is to use up all the fossil fuels. All other ways have tried and failed on a global scale. Additionally, efforts to control the use of energy is an exercise in trying to enforce poverty which is intrinsically linked to environmental devastation.

I am just using the fact that the fallout from the Icelandic volcano can travel round the globe as an example of how fast pollution can travel. A couple weeks after the volcano erupted, I remembered seeing a whitish smog overhanging the city for a week or so, and unlike smog from Indonesian jungle burning, there is no smell which is reasonably so as volcanic ash is not organic. I am in Singapore, which is 7047.79 miles from Iceland.

Small things add up. I think the actual increase in CO2 is bigger than we actually thought.

1. China burning more coal than they admit.
2. Indonesia oil palm owners secretly burning jungle land.
3. Pollution in the sea killing CO2 reducing algae.
4. Crazy weather killing CO2 reducing algae and trees alike (e.g. in Russia).

[touchring]

Re: The Three Chinas and World Energy Demand

C1ue I thought Touchring was being ironic/sarcastic -- but I could be wrong.

You're also being sarcastic. lol