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China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

bbc.com

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Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#21

Post by jvm »

alphydan wrote: post #15
djrogers wrote: post #4

The real concern here is that the country that's furthest along in extracting the methane is also pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns. As the article points out, the biggest danger with this as a NG source is that a lot of methane can escape before you've extracted it, and the methane that escapes is a huge concern as a greenhouse gas.

> pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns The truth is not as simple as the western media makes it out to be. Between the US and China there are more than 40 countries in CO2 emissions per capita. In other words, one of the least responsible countries is the US (If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compa…

China is 175th in GDP per ton of emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...

US is 80th, not great but there's really no comparison to Chian. For rich country comparison, UK is 22nd and France is 9th.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#22

Post by unchocked »

This PR is about obscuring the military basis of Chinese maritime territorial claims.

Incidentally, it's not the first time methane clathrates have been used as cover for military purposes. The CIA-funded Glomar Explorer was nominally built for clathrate mining; in fact it was a recovery vessel for a sunken Soviet submarine.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#23

Post by dmuch »

aianus wrote: post #20
alphydan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns The truth is not as simple as the western media makes it out to be. Between the US and China there are more than 40 countries in CO2 emissions per capita. In other words, one of the least responsible countries is the US (If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compa…

> If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compared to a country of similar size. Having such an enormous population and population density relative to Western countries is irresponsible. I don't agree that you can just divide by population and say they're fine.

huh? The question is whether a group's behavior is irresponsible. Are you saying that merely existing is irresponsible? And if so what exactly follows from that, China already has relatively low birth rate...

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#24

Post by macmacaka »

aianus wrote: post #20
alphydan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns The truth is not as simple as the western media makes it out to be. Between the US and China there are more than 40 countries in CO2 emissions per capita. In other words, one of the least responsible countries is the US (If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compa…

> If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compared to a country of similar size. Having such an enormous population and population density relative to Western countries is irresponsible. I don't agree that you can just divide by population and say they're fine.

I don't get your point. Who are referring to are not being responsible here? The Chinese government or the Chinese people? If the former, they installed one-child policy with the sole purpose of population restriction, sounds pretty "responsible" to me. If the latter, are you suggesting as a people, maybe the Chinese shouldn't breed as many, to, say, leave space for other people?

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#25

Post by elefanten »

unchocked wrote: post #22

This PR is about obscuring the military basis of Chinese maritime territorial claims. Incidentally, it's not the first time methane clathrates have been used as cover for military purposes. The CIA-funded Glomar Explorer was nominally built for clathrate mining; in fact it was a recovery vessel for a sunken Soviet submarine.

How does this serve to obscure the military basis? By implying they have an economic basis instead, or as well?

I doubt that's much of a net PR win, because either way they would be facing the same charge of trying to claim territory that doesn't belong to them.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#26

Post by ams6110 »

dharma1 wrote: post #13
Robotbeat wrote: post #7

Tapping clathrates is a whole new vast source of carbon. If this becomes economical and drastic measures aren't taken to capture and store the emissions, the climate is basically toast. In the last few years, it has become quite obvious to me we're not going to ever run out of carbon before we, say, octuple (or more) the CO2 in the atmosphere. And the technology to get these fossil fuel sources improves just about as…

Not just CO2 - methane is about 25x as potent in terms of global warming as CO2

Methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere for nearly as long however. It will break down upon exposure to oxygen, ozone, and UV sunlight.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#27

Post by badosu »

jvm wrote: post #21
alphydan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns The truth is not as simple as the western media makes it out to be. Between the US and China there are more than 40 countries in CO2 emissions per capita. In other words, one of the least responsible countries is the US (If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compa…

China is 175th in GDP per ton of emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_... US is 80th, not great but there's really no comparison to Chian. For rich country comparison, UK is 22nd and France is 9th.

> US is 80th, not great but there's really no comparison to Chian.

This is true, but one should take into account that US's and most of the developed world economy has shifted into services and intellectual or branding schemes, exporting the dirty job of manufacturing to China.

It would be really surprising if that was not the case.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#28

Post by bildung »

aianus wrote: post #20
alphydan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns The truth is not as simple as the western media makes it out to be. Between the US and China there are more than 40 countries in CO2 emissions per capita. In other words, one of the least responsible countries is the US (If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compa…

> If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compared to a country of similar size. Having such an enormous population and population density relative to Western countries is irresponsible. I don't agree that you can just divide by population and say they're fine.

> I don't agree that you can just divide by population and say they're fine.

CO2 output per country is not a reasonable metric. If we just split China into its provinces, does that make the problem go away? After all, each of the new countries now has a pretty small CO2 output.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#29

Post by elefanten »

macmacaka wrote: post #24
aianus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compared to a country of similar size. Having such an enormous population and population density relative to Western countries is irresponsible. I don't agree that you can just divide by population and say they're fine.

I don't get your point. Who are referring to are not being responsible here? The Chinese government or the Chinese people? If the former, they installed one-child policy with the sole purpose of population restriction, sounds pretty "responsible" to me. If the latter, are you suggesting as a people, maybe the Chinese shouldn't breed as many, to, say, leave space for other people?

Yes, it's not particularly productive to factor China's large population into comparisons of current responsibility.

But GP has a valid point in pointing out that it's not reasonable to compare the entirety of a rich developed country to a low-density slice of China, which is very likely using fewer resources because of scarcity and underdevelopment rather than greater than average responsibility.

Re: China claims breakthrough in mining 'flammable ice'

#30

Post by groby_b »

aianus wrote: post #20
alphydan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty low on the list of countries that take great care with environmental concerns The truth is not as simple as the western media makes it out to be. Between the US and China there are more than 40 countries in CO2 emissions per capita. In other words, one of the least responsible countries is the US (If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compa…

> If you took a province of China with 200 million inhabitants, it would be an extremely responsible country compared to a country of similar size. Having such an enormous population and population density relative to Western countries is irresponsible. I don't agree that you can just divide by population and say they're fine.

* China: 142 people/sq mile.

* Italy: 197 people/sq mile

* Spain: 210 people/sq mile

* Germany: 235 people/sq mile

* Belgium: 343 people/sq mile

* United Kingdom: 650 people/sq mile

Yeah, their density compared to Western countries is truly irresponsible.

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