The Oil Drum

159 comments on DrumBeat: February 4, 2008

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DaveMart on February 4, 2008 - 9:09am

Dunno if this is the right place to post this, and it may be old news anyway, but this article on coal use in China caught my eye:
http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=450

There is a suggestion there that part of the melt of arctic ice is caused by soot from China's coal burn, which as I understand is rather greater than most models of GW suggest.

Let's hope mdsolars ideas of greatly increased PV in China come to pass!

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Gail the Actuary on February 4, 2008 - 2:21pm

Quote from the above article:

Meanwhile coal production in China increases at an astonishing pace, and most of the operating coal plants in China lack modern scrubbers to remove gross air pollution. In this regard, concerns over CO2 may be misplaced. It could be that black soot that settles on arctic ice is warming the northern polar regions more than the CO2 that accompanies that soot. And the ill-health attendant to that soot is beyond debate. The costs to remove genuine pollution, nitrogen dioxide, sulpher dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and toxic metals - is far, far less costly than attempting to sequester the CO2 emissions. And the technology to do this is well established.

No scrubbers! No wonder they have trouble with pollution. I can see how far off carbon sequestration is!