{"id":12308,"date":"2013-11-22T13:40:19","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T18:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/collideascape\/?p=12308"},"modified":"2013-11-22T13:40:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T18:40:19","slug":"chinas-green-future-hazy-skies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/?p=12308","title":{"rendered":"China's Green Future Is As Hazy As Its Skies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Tiananmen<\/a>

Tiananmen tower enveloped by the heavy fog and haze in Jan 29, 2013. https://ramedicare.com/ramedica-pain-relief/ Image by axz700 \/ Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When China makes international news these days, it’s often because of its densely polluted air.<\/a>\u00a0The public health aspect of this story is usually front and center, while the global warming angle is somewhat muted<\/a>. Still, there’s no getting around the climate implications<\/a> of China’s reliance on coal.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Buy Alprazolam No Prescription There are signs that China is trying to rein in<\/a> its smog problem by reducing its coal dependence. That’s a win for the planet, right? Not exactly, as Christina Larsen reported<\/a> several months ago in this Bloomberg<\/em> story:<\/p>\n

https://dinoeliadis.com/schedule-time/ Unfortunately, one scheme to limit coal burning by converting China\u2019s plentiful coal supplies into synthetic natural gas (SNG) presents a host of other ecological worries. To date, China\u2019s government has approved construction of nine large SNG plants in northern and western China, which are projected to generate 37 billion cubic meters of gas each year when completed. At least 30 more proposed plants are awaiting approval.<\/p>\n

Order Tramadol Overnight None of these planned plants are located near large Chinese cities, so the emissions generated in producing the gas will not hang directly over metropolises. But that doesn\u2019t mean the coal-to-gas conversion process is clean. According to a new study (PDF<\/a>) in\u00a0Nature Climate Change<\/em>, the entire life cycle of harvesting coal and turning it into gas produces from 36 percent to 82 percent more total greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal directly\u2014depending on whether the gas is used to generate electricity or power vehicles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But hey, let’s not complicate<\/a> a nice silver lining story, shall we? If China is tackling its coal problem, we should be encouraged that “efforts to improve its air quality will also bring reductions in CO2 emissions,” writes<\/a>\u00a0Jennifer Duggan,\u00a0a Shanghai-based journalist<\/a> and Guardian<\/em> environment blogger.<\/p>\n

Buy Online Soma Why is this a misleading narrative that we should be wary of? As\u00a0Slate’s<\/em> Joshua Keating wrote <\/a>earlier this week:<\/p>\n

Focusing on smog\u2014a relatively easy-to-solve problem\u2014lets China a bit off the hook for the much larger issue at stake: the country\u2019s CO2<\/sub>\u00a0emissions. China\u00a0overtook the United States<\/a>\u00a0as the world\u2019s largest total contributor to climate change in 2007, and it\u2019s quite possible that the country could take steps to reduce the visible smog in its cities while that gap continues to widen. In fact, according to one recent analysis by the World Resources Institute, China\u2019s smog reduction plan could actually\u00a0increase its emissions<\/a>\u00a0by moving to synthetic natural gas converted from coal, which burns cleaner than coal but produces more CO2<\/sub>\u00a0overall. Tackling CO2<\/sub>\u00a0is going to be a much more difficult problem, and a much harder one to reconcile with the country\u2019s desire to maintain its breakneck pace of economic development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

https://blackhillsballoons.com/bookyourflight/ This coal-to-gas issue is “under-discussed,” says<\/a> Robert Wilson. Indeed, people interested in climate change and the environment seem much more taken with stories about the “greening” of China<\/a>. The larger picture, as David Biello reports<\/a> this week in Scientific American<\/em>, is much hazier, like China’s skies and the country’s near-term prospects for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https://dentalprovidence.com/about/ When China makes international news these days, it’s often because of its densely polluted air.\u00a0The public health aspect of this story is usually front and center, while the global warming angle is somewhat muted. Still, there’s no getting around the climate implications of China’s reliance on coal. There are signs that China is trying to… Ambien Without Prescription Continue Reading…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2536,2553,2568,2721,2967],"tags":[810,835,866,1120,1490],"class_list":["post-12308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-climate-change","category-coal","category-global-warming","category-select","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-coal","tag-global-warming","tag-pollution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}