Re:U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord
by bluGill on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @02:30PM
(#24992243)
You didn't understand my coal comment. No surprise, it is hard to explain. Efficiency gains mean you burn less coal. The old boilers in 1900 were very inefficient. It is not very hard to build a modern boiler that is much more efficient, and thus uses less fuel. The coal might worse, but China is using far less to get the same energy out of it which means less pollution.
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I can see that on a per Kw basis. You would also have to factor in what the electricity production is today vs in 1900 to make an accurate comparison. Total pollution output today may still be higher. For example, you might have quadrupled the efficiency but the demand may have increased ten times or more. So sure, they adopted a newer technology than 120 years ago and is cleaner, but it's also not the latest technology nor is it even close to the cleanest. Many of their plants are currently very dirty. They do have plans to upgrade in the future. Not to mention, it's not the cleanest option out there, even at the higher efficiency. For example, natural gas is cleaner and that tech has been around for a while. Even a lot of nuclear tech is about 60 years old.
"China never had the cities full of coal smoke stacks spewing black smoke into the air like the US and Europe had 120 years ago."
Please do a search for air quality alerts and deaths in china as well as for pictures of the smog. It is every bit as bad or even worse. The tech may ne more efficient but the scale and overall output has similar effects. Yes the smoke is a yellow color and not black, that is mostly due to the soft brown coal they use in some parts of the country rather than the anthracite or even bituminous coal we used.