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September 6, 2009

China's Dongtan: the eco-city that never was

From Greenie Watch:

China’s big, impractical eco-city was all greenwash but it fooled lots of people for a long time

It was nice while it lasted, but now, it seems, the dream is over. The long-awaited, much-feted eco-city of Dongtan – described by environmental campaigner, Herbert Girardet as ‘the world’s first eco-city’ – has bitten the dust. After four years of presentations, proposals and puff, the universal praise has proven to be a little premature.

.....

Admittedly, a multi-million dollar bridge from the island to Shanghai is nearing completion, which ought to open up the Dongtan region for development, but fingers are being pointed at a range of suspects for the collapse of the overall project: the corruption of local politicians, the use of challenging technologies, lapsed planning permissions, or the greed of major international consultancies that were riding in on the Chinese urban goldrush with little regard for practical niceties.

There are undoubtedly elements of truth in all of these claims, but why did no one spot that nothing was happening? The simple fact is that nobody ever questioned the hype.

.....

Now, it seems that the process is all over, environmental commentators are having to save face without sounding too contrite. After all, they were simply taken in, weren’t they? Journalist Fred Pearce sums up the situation: ‘We all wasted our time; burned carbon flying to Shanghai to relay a false prospectus to the world. If I sound bitter, I am. This time, I was a personal victim of greenwash.’

It wasn’t his fault, of course. After all, given that this project was promoted for its environmental credentials, why on earth would a journalist of Pearce’s standing ever have questioned anything? His role was simply to visit and throw garlands.

.....

Dongtan, the city that was intended to be the ‘model for how to build sustainable cities worldwide’ should still provide a lesson for us all. Blindly praising its environmental credentials without recognising its squat, low-rise, parochial, carbon-fetishising, architecturally unappealing, unworkable urban eco-clichés, is a recipe for future disasters.

SOURCE

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Filed under  //   China   Dongtan eco-city   environmentalism   sustainability  

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June 30, 2009

I am charged with treason against the planet. Sweet!

Honest though Guv', I didn't know I's was working for them dirty Martians! Honest!
 
The Bolter takes up my defence:
 
Again, I ask: if the evidence for catastrophic man-made global warming is so clear, why the exaggerations, lies and absurd abuse?
 
That abuse grows even wilder as the alarmists’ case crumbles. Take Nobel [economics] laureate Paul Krugman:
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.
We now owe allegiance to the planet?  And can commit treason against Mother Earth? Wow.
 
So what’s Krugman’s evidence for catastrophic temperature rises?
The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate.
But as Thomas Fuller points out:
If these are the reasons he cries treason, he should perhaps reconsider. One ice cap shrunk, as it has before, but is recovering, as it has before. The other ice cap is growing at the rate of 10,000 square kilometers per year. As for deserts, both in China and Africa deserts are actually shrinking.
 
[And tropical rain forests are increasing, as this article from The New York Times reports.]
Then there’s the alarming reports from a conference in Copenhagen of alarmist scientists (who want us to use less of the gases they just blew out the back of their jets to get to yet another warming jamboree):
The world faces a growing risk of “abrupt and irreversible climatic shifts” as fallout from global warming hits faster than expected, according to research by international scientists released Thursday. Global surface and ocean temperatures, sea levels, extreme climate events, and the retreat of Arctic sea ice have all significantly picked up more pace than experts predicted only a couple of years ago, they said.
In fact, says distinguished climatologist Professor Roger Pielke Sr, none of that seems true.
 
image
 
Niche modeller David Stockwell and Lucia both note tricks with graphs that fed the Copenhagen claim that the world was heating as fast as ever.
 
UPDATE
David Evans describes the meeting in which Climate Change Minister Penny Wong tried to answer Steve Fielding’s three questions. It’s scary to think the Rudd Government believes so much in a theory it’s had so much trouble defending, or even understanding.
 
UPDATE 2
One of the world’s biggest emitters won’t be following Kevin Rudd’s lead and killing jobs to “save” the planet:
“India cannot and will not take emission reduction targets because poverty eradication and social and economic development are first and overriding priorities,” a statement on behalf of Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said.
The world’s biggest emitter, China, will not cut its own gases, either. So exactly who will our useless sacrifice inspire? And to what puny effect?
 

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Filed under  //   China   climate change   climate hysteria   deserts   environmentalism   India   Paul Krugman   rain forests  

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June 11, 2009

China doesn't give a stuff about global warming: thank God!

Here is what Li Gao, China's chief climate change negotiator has to say on the subject:
"Developed countries have neither enough active responses to proposals from developing countries about emission-cut target by 2020, nor interests in providing funds and technologies to help developing countries adapt to climate change."

This is diplomatic hardball speak for: "If you in the West wish us to play your silly carbon emissions cutting game, you must not only bribe us with large sums of money but you must also place your industries at an even greater competitive disadvantage by crippling them with CO2 legislation from which we, in developing countries like China, Brazil and India, shall remain happily exempt."
 
To anyone who understands China, this is all so obvious as scarcely to be worth stating. As one of my contacts, a Shanghai-based US industrialist put it at the time of Nancy Pelosi's cap-in-hand begging mission to Beijing:
 
"The idea of looking to China for any sort of environmental leadership or effective environmental cooperation is simply preposterous.
 
Full article here
 
James Delingpole concludes:
 
All this is, of course, absolutely disastrous news for the environmentalist extremists who play such a large and terrifying role in the Obama administration. But for anyone in the West, in the US especially, who cares about liberty, the state of the economy, or the free citizen's inalienable right not to have his every hard-earned cent sucked into the gaping maw of eco tax and eco regulation in order to solve a problem that doesn't even exist, China's hard-headed realism may well be our only hope of salvation.
 
So this what it has come to? Hoping the Chinese will save us from our own stupidity.

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Filed under  //   China   climate change   emissions reduction   India  

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June 5, 2009

The horses have ulcers, the ducks have gone and the dogs...

What could be more peaceful than a solar panel plant? All those happy planet-rescuing workers gently assembling little Gaia plates to harvest the sun’s love. Living near one of these rainbow factories must be a daily delight. Or maybe not:
A Devens solar panel plant near several Harvard farms is so noisy the horses have ulcers, the ducks have disappeared and a dog has started gnawing off doorknobs, angry neighbors say.
 
The nonstop noise from Evergreen Solar Inc.’s highly touted plant, which Gov. Deval Patrick has praised as “the leading edge of our clean energy economy,” is driving neighbors crazy and making their animals sick.
 
Don’t forget all the silicon tetrachloride.
 
 
 
Ah yes, silicon tetrachloride. One of the dirty little secrets of clean and green energy.
 
Okay, to be fair, it isn't that much of a problem here in Oz and elsewhere in the West.
 
Environmental regulations require it to be recycled into the manufacturing process for polysilicon.
 
But there is a cost.
 
It takes a lot of energy to do this.
 
It's one of the reasons why solar panels made here are so damn expensive. Even with the government foolishly giving an $8,000 subsidy towards their cost, they are still expensive.
 
And guess where that energy comes from?
 
No, not wind power or solar power.
 
You can't manufacture anything using these useless forms of green vanity window dressing because, simply put, you can't rely on them.
 
You can't be caught in the middle of a manufacturing process and have it shut down because it has become cloudy or the sun has gone down or because the wind has stopped blowing.
 
(That's why the Water Corporation here in Western Australia was forced to withdraw ads that falsely claimed that its desalination plant was run by power produced by wind farms.)
 
So what do the makers of solar panels use? Electricity generated by burning coal or gas.
 
That's right, the very same "dirty" fossil fuels they falsely claim in their ads they are an alternative to.
 
And it takes quite a lot of electricity to make a solar panel, even without having to recycle silicon tetrachloride.
 
Indeed, so much so that some panels will never generate as much electricity as was used to make them in the first place.
 
But that's green economics for you. In this lah-lah land it makes sense to use more energy to produce less!
 
But hey, if you use those "cheaper" Chinese solar panels, that at least helps make it a more sensible proposition doesn't it?
 
Alright, the last I heard, those "cheap" Chinese panels were still costing $14,000. And yes, for the end consumer, given the government subsidy, it probably does make sense because you are being artificially shielded from the real cost of these things.
 
Here's something to think about though. If you follow the link above about silicon tetrachloride, you'll discover one of the reasons why Chinese panels are cheaper than those made in the West.
 
Their solution to the problem of what to do with the toxic silicon tetrachloride is to just take it into surrounding villages and dump it on the ground.
 
How green is that?
 

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Filed under  //   China   climate change   environmentalism   fossil fuels   green economics   polysilicon   renewable energy   silicon tetrachloride   solar panels   solar power   subsidies  

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