Hi Wharf Rat; Re: "I'm watching what China does. They installed as much solar last year as we have in all the days since the Big Bang. China Installed a Record 12 Gigawatts of Solar in 2013";
Your basic problem is that you're just another touchie-feelie leftie that doesn't understand numbers. Like koan, you're easily convinced by misleading arguments.
As of 2006, China has 1950 Gigawatts of coal burning power plants. At your latest numbers, China will catch up with their 2006 coal plants around 150 years from now, LOL. But that won't happen because they're building more coal plants faster than anywhere else on the planet. China is industrializing with coal and you can find the numbers with the simplest of google searches.
Here's how fast China is digging up coal (most recent figures released):
Year Coal Production
(Billion short tons) | 2000 | 1.00 | | 2001 | 1.11 | | 2002 | 1.42 | | 2003 | 1.61 | | 2004 | 2.00 | | 2005 | 2.19 | | 2006 | 2.38 | | 2007 | 2.62 | | 2008 | 2.72 | | 2009 | 2.96 |
That's right. In 9 years their coal production tripled. But that wasn't enough. Now they're importing huge amounts of coal (mostly from Australia I suppose):
Coal in China (Mt)* [8]
Production Net import Net available | 2005 | 2,226 | -47 | 2,179 | | 2008 | 2,761 | nd | 2,761 | | 2009 | 2,971 | 114 | 3,085 | | 2010 | 3,162 | 157 | 3,319 | | 2011 | 3,576 | 177 | 3,753 |
With investment in the coal industry rising at an annual rate of 50 percent in recent years, China will retain its current position as the leading global consumer of coal, even as it endeavors to diversify.
During the first three quarters of 2009 China's coal consumption increased 9% from 2008 to 2.01 billion metric tons.
Result is that their carbon footprint is zooming:
Fossil Fuel-related CO2 Emissions in China, 1998–2004 (in millions of metric tons of CO2) 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 | CO2 from coal | 2,363 | 2,287 | 2,339 | 2,472 | 2,518 | 2,731 | 3,809 | | CO2 from natural gas | 47 | 51 | 57 | 64 | 69 | 72 | 83 | | CO2 from petroleum | 531 | 566 | 636 | 653 | 686 | 737 | 816 | | Total CO2 from all fossil fuels | 2,940 | 2,905 | 3,033 | 3,190 | 3,273 | 3,541 | 4,707 | | Source: DOE/ EIA [25] |
en.wikipedia.org
-- Carl |
