With global warming on the horizon, there may be some fossil fuels that are bringing it closer, and its the dirtiest fossil fuels of them all, coal.
Coal is cheap and plentiful and is powering the rising economies of Asia. It accounts for 77 percent of China’s power, and has become the hardest obstacle to battle concerning global warming.
“It is the crack cocaine of the developing world,” experts are saying. It is too good to give up for a lot of the less rich, less concerned about global warming countries.
CO2 emissions from coal have more than doubled since 2000 to more than 2.7 billions tons a year. China has built 603 coal0fired generators, which is around 64 percent of the generators in the world. India has also built about 133.
Michael Wara, a Stanford University researcher who studies the emerging markets for greenhouse gases, said: “In 20 years, if India and China aren’t on board, the game is lost.”
And it doesn’t look like they will be onboard anytime soon because more generators are being built and more coal shipped in.
Leon E. Clarke, an economist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland said that “unlike conventional oil and gas, it can be treated as virtually inexhaustible over the coming century.”
China is expected to move ahead of the U.S. and be first in the world’s total carbon emissions. India is also going to speed past Russia into third.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-coal18nov18,1,6286911.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1&coll=la-news-science
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