by Deming Kong et al., November 30, 2017 in Quaternary International
High-resolution surface temperature records over the last two millennia are crucial to understanding the forcing and response mechanism of Earth’s climate. Here we report a bidecadal-resolution sea surface temperature (SST) record based on long-chain alkenones in a gravity sediment core retrieved from the northern South China Sea. SST values varied between 26.7 and 27.5 °C, with a total variability ∼1 °C over the last 2000 years.
We suggest that solar activity may play a key role in driving the climatic fluctuations in North China during the last 22 centuries, with its quasi ∼100, 50, 23, or 22-year periodicity clearly identified in our climatic reconstructions.
We quantitatively illustrate that precipitation (67.4%) may have been more important than temperature (32.5%)…
However, China, the new climate-change champion, is leading the charge in a global building splurge that will see 1,600 of those dirty, villainous coal-fired power plants all across our planet. Even the New York Times, one of the most fervent voices of catastrophic global-warming alarmism — and one of the most vociferous critics of Trump’s decision to dump Obama’s Paris climate deal — has admitted that China’s coal plans make it “virtually impossible” to meet the Paris accord goals.
The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) has recently developed a new global monthly land-surface air temperature data set called CMA GLSAT. Using it researchers from the administration reanalysed the change in global annual mean land-surface air temperature during three time periods (1901–2014, 1979–2014 and 1998–2014) to see if there was any evidence of a hiatus or pause in recent surface global warming.
The researchers find very clear evidence for the recent warming hiatus. Their results show linear trends of 0.104 °C per decade, 0.247 °C per decade and 0.098 °C per decade for the three periods, respectively. The trends were statistically significant except for the period 1998–2014, the period that is also known as the ‘‘warming hiatus”.
The fuel-hungry country has been pursuing the energy source, located at the bottom of oceans and in polar regions, for nearly two decades. China’s minister of land and resources, Jiang Daming, said Thursday that the successful collection of the frozen fuel was “a major breakthrough that may lead to a global energy revolution,” according to state media.
Experts agree that flammable ice could be a game changer for the energy industry, similar to the U.S. shale boom. But they caution that big barriers — both technological and environmental — need to be cleared to build an industry around the frozen fuel, which is also known as gas hydrate.
The United States has a broader array of energy options than China does. However, China is innovating and investing heavily in what it has, and some of the transformations it is achieving already are truly impressive.
China’s leaders have made a strategic choice about the direction of the country: They are aiming to shift from an economy based on heavy, polluting industries to one driven by technology and innovation. The political will for this upgrade has roots in both international geostrategic ambitions and domestic popular grievances about lagging standards of living—and it is beginning to bear fruit. In the process, however, vested interests and technical stumbling blocks have wasted resources and acted as a ballast against Chinese progress. China has the potential to do much more, and the international community should push it to achieve that potential.
Anyone with doubts about China’s demand for energy including for thermal coal needed to sustain its gigantic economy should cast their eyes over the latest statistics for power generation from Beijing’s National Statistics Bureau.
These data are a treasure trove in terms of revealing trends in China’s energy production and appetite for thermal coal sourced from both inside China and from imports shipped from countries including, Australia, Indonesia and Russia.
China’s natural gas production surged to a record last month and coal output rebounded as economic growth accelerated power use in the world’s largest energy user.
Natural gas production in March rose 8.2 percent from the average of the first two months of the year to a record 13.6 billion cubic meters, according to data Monday from the National Bureau of Statistics. Coal output rose almost 13 percent over the same period to average 9.67 million tons a day, the highest daily level since December, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the data.
With soaring car sales in China in mind, U.S. President Donald Trump might want to sway his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to grant American manufacturers easy access to the Chinese market. In 2008, sales in China caught up with those in the United States (at 6.7 million units). In 2016, sales stood at a whopping 24.4 million and counting. Sales of cars in other big manufacturing nations are almost stagnant.
Chinese engineer and inventor Feng Weizhong has an easy answer to how China plans to keep slashing coal use and power-station emissions while relying on coal to provide at least 55 per cent of its massive energy demand for decades to come. The effervescent Professor Feng, who is also general manager of a large Shanghai power plant, explained to The Australian how the country can contrive to do both at the same time. “Simple! It’s clean coal!”
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
