Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow

[depakid]

...Researchers in California, Oregon and Washington noticed specks of sulfur compounds, carbon and other byproducts of coal combustion coating the silvery surfaces of their mountaintop detectors. These microscopic particles can work their way deep into the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer.

Filters near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Davis.

Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks....

<snip>

Already, China uses more coal than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined. And it has increased coal consumption 14 percent in each of the past two years in the broadest industrialization ever. Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/worldbusiness/11chinacoal.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[oneighty]

1. Up side

More Oil and Natural Gas for Usens.

Sigh

180

[Warpy]

2. It's not their power plants or factories that generate the smudge

it's all those households that burn blocks of compressed coal dust for heating and cooking all winter. It's the cheapest fuel they can get, and most can't afford an alternative even if one is available. Just cleaning up the power plants and factories will make a measurable dent, but won't solve the whole problem.

Ironic, isn't it? We clean up our own factories then ship them to China, which exports air pollution that we dealt with deacdes ago back to us.

[depakid]

5. Ironic, isn't it?

It certainly is....

[sam sarrha]

3. here is some frightening info on the levels of Uranium in Coal..LINK>>

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlrevew/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-97/FS-163-97.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Make no bones about it.... the anti-health effects of China's

addiction to coal.... are severe beyond comprehension.


Hidden hazards. Coal contaminants, some of which cause effects on bones and cancer, may be difficult for villagers to detect.
image credit: Chinese Acad. Prev. Med.




Rural risks. Evidence suggests that adverse health effects from rural exposures such as indoor cooking with biomass may exceed those is urban areas.
image credit: Chinese Acad. Prev. Med.




China Seeks a Balance

Nearly 50 years ago, Chairman Mao Zedong introduced a Five-Year Plan (FYP) for the Chinese economy based on the Soviet model of heavy industry. At the time, China was almost 100% agrarian, with the exception of a few factories in the northeast built by the Japanese during their World War II occupation. But in the following decades, massive state-owned factories operating largely without pollution controls sprouted across the country. The fuel that powered this industrial makeover--that still powers nearly 70% of Chinese industry--is coal, one of the country's most abundant resources and the world's dirtiest source of energy. By the 1960s, China was among the most polluted nations on earth, its rivers and groundwater fouled by industrial chemicals and the air in its cities blackened with soot.

[NNadir]

6. This is a case of the hands calling the lung black.

I assume that the posters here are Americans, no?

Here are the world consumption figures for coal: The United States: 1,094 million short tons of coal. China: 1,531 million short tons.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table14.xls

Now let's play "per capita..."

Anyone?

China is doing something, maybe not enough, but something, about it's coal consumption.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

In the United States, our plan to deal with coal consumption is to produce internet links to really cool websites about solar cell bills in California. We figure if we "gazillion solar roofs bill..." lots and lots and lots of time, we will have done our share.

What unmitigated gall...

With apologies to Joseph Welch, I ask, "Have we no decency, at long last people? Have we left no sense of decency?"

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Well...

At the risk of appearing to defend the US's use of coal (and I know you know me better than that!) Warpy raised the point of using coal in home fires rather than large stations - It's quite possible that China does produce more particulate pollution than the US, even on a per capita basis. The same could be said for NZ as well, since we have shitloads of the stuff - especially in the south - which often ends up in fireplaces as cheap source of heat.

I don't have any figures for any of this - just chucking out an idea. :)

[NNadir]

8. Particulates are not the most serious pollutant from coal in my view.

Carbon oxides are.

On a per capita basis, it's not even close between China and the United States with respect to that class of very serious pollutants.

The next most serious pollutants would seem to be the nitrogen oxides. The sulfur oxides and particulates have to be viewed with some ambiguity, since without them the solar flux would be much higher as the earth's albedo would be lower. This matter of reflection from particulates and sulfates has probably been saving our asses for some time, except we don't know it.

As for any moral purity in this matter, in addition to what Warpy notes, and he has a point, I might add that the United States buys and consumes that Chinese stuff, putting it all on diesel powered tankers than drip oil and garbage on their way across the Pacific, further exacerbating the environmental impact.

I am merely noting that Americans lecturing anyone from any country on earth on air pollution is about as ridiculous as one can possible get.

As you know me well, I probably need not repeat that I favor an immediate emergency fully subisdized plan to eliminate all coal use (except maybe for metal processing) on earth, China and elsewhere.

Coal needs to be phased out. In fact, all fossil fuels need to be phased out.

[depakid]

9. I don't know- personally I don't care for organic mercury

and it's in fish right here in the otherwise pritine waters of the Pacific Northwest because of China's burgeoning coal economy that WE helped to create- and continue to encourage through insane trade and irresponsible fiscal policies.

http://www.ewg.org/reports/brainfood/advisory/FishAdvOR.html

[Dead_Parrot]

11. May be true...

...but the advisory for NY doesn't look too hot either, and I suspect you managed that on your own. :)

[NNadir]

12. Mercury is nowhere near the risk of carbon dioxide.

Mercury will not change the climate of the earth. It will merely make people dumber, which at this point is nearly irrelevant.

The level of mercury contamination is on the order of a few hundred metric tons. Granted the stuff is highly toxic, but theoretically at least it is possible to contain that pollutant.

It is physically impossible, in spite of science fiction articles you read in some places, to contain 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, roughly the amount put out each year by the United States.

There is no solution for the problem of fossil fuel waste. It is impossible to contain 7 billion tons of gas produced annually indefinitely.

[Dead_Parrot]

14. ...

"It will merely make people dumber, which at this point is nearly irrelevant."

Thanks NNadir. Now I've got coffee in my nose.

[deFaultLine]

15. Maybe

We might be able to contain it if we had intact tropical rain-forests, the broad-leaf evergreen forests will suck that stuff right out of the 24/7 if they are left alone.

Another cost of the Chinese industrial coal mining:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4959254.stm

[Dead_Parrot]

10. Nor mine...

I've not seen any glaciers covered in soot. It fact it's getting damn hard to see any glaciers at all, for just that reason.

Particulates are merely a "bonus death" - for the real environmental clusterfuck, America is still No.1 :patriot:

[Dead_Parrot]

13. On a side note...

...I'm getting an ad for "quality assured fly-ash" on this thread, plus an option for trading coal futures.

:evilfrown: