Chinese sceptics see global warming as US conspiracy

Sydney Morning Herald
John Garnaut

BEIJING: It's not only Western leaders like Julia Gillard and Barack Obama who face fierce resistance from climate sceptics as they try to lay out policies to tackle global warming.

In China, where carbon emissions have surged despite tough government constraints and targets, President Hu Jintao is having to stare down claims that human-induced climate change is an elaborate American conspiracy.

''Global warming is a bogus proposition,'' says Zhang Musheng, one of China's most influential intellectuals and a close adviser to a powerful and hawkish general in the People's Liberation Army, Liu Yuan.

 

Mr Zhang told the Herald that global warming was an American ruse to sell green energy technology and thereby claw its way out of its deep structural economic problems.

A year ago Mr Hu committed to lower the ''carbon intensity'' of economic output by 40-45 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels. China appears on track to meet the target but that may still not be enough to save the world from destructive climate change, thanks to faster-than-expected Chinese economic growth.

A new study by the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency shows China now emits far more greenhouse emissions than any other country, with emissions doubling between 2003 and 2010.
China's carbon emissions rose 10 per cent last year alone, to 9 billion tonnes, compared with 5.2 billion tonnes for the United States.

The report showed India's emissions also rose rapidly, by 9 per cent, although its total emissions are still only one-fifth of China's.

The most startling finding, however, is that China's per capita emissions are now higher than several rich nations including France and Italy. China's per capita emissions could even overtake the US within six years, the study said.

Solyndra and the Solar Shakeout: Bankruptcies in Context

TriplePundit
Mike Koshmi and Seth Masia

During August, three homegrown photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturers failed and two European manufacturers decommissioned their U.S. production lines. All told, the United States lost 20 percent of its panel manufacturing capacity.

By far, Solyndra’s fall was the loudest. In September 2009, the Fremont, CA-based thin-film manufacturer received a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to ramp up to a 450-megawatt (MW) factory. Solyndra’s was the first section 1705 loan guarantee awarded, and the first to backfire. The bankruptcy triggered a congressional investigation into whether the timetable on Solyndra’s loan guarantee application was accelerated. Search warrants were issued, and the FBI raided the spanking-new and shuttered Fab 2 factory and Solyndra executives’ homes.

For a time in September, solar received unprecedented front-page ink. The media storm around Solyndra brought light to dramatic, unforeseen declines in the cost of PV, China’s influence on the market and doubt over the United State’s ability to compete.


Back Story

Solyndra offered a novel product, a cylindrical cadmium-indium-galium-(di)selenide (CIGS)  thin-film panel. The product’s economic viability depended on the price of pure polysilicon —the raw material for competing crystalline-silicon (c-Si) PV technologies. Four years ago, when the cost of polysilicon approached $1,000 a pound, Solyndra’s silicon-free product was a hot commodity, attracting venture capital connected to Richard Branson, oil baron George Kaiser, the Walton family, and investment bank Goldman Sachs. By late 2007, the Bush Administration DOE had moved to develop a conditional loan guarantee commitment.

By the time Solyndra’s application was approved in March 2009, under the Obama Administration, polysilicon prices had dropped by nearly 90 percent. They never bounced back and global c-Si PV prices fell off, throwing a wrench in the thin-film business model. There is no evidence Solyndra ever sold its panels at cost. According to filings for a cancelled initial public offering, Solyndra was producing its panels for $4.00 a watt and selling them for $3.24 a watt as recently as June 2010. With competing factories moving toward $1.00 a watt PV, a best-case-scenario for the Fremont factory was $2.00 a watt.

Those market conditions set in much faster than expected. Some indices have spot prices for modules down 40 percent since January. “What happened earlier this year is that this massive [module] oversupply situation led to prices plummeting,” said Shayle Kann, managing director of solar for GTM Research. “And we haven’t seen any recovery in prices yet. It’s [a] continued difficulty for every manufacturer globally, but it’s hitting those that can’t compete on price first.”

Kann expected more factory closures, both in the United States and abroad, over the next six months to two years. By and large, the so-called “shakeout” has been attributed to China’s influence on the global market.

Bigger Picture

It’s not that Western manufacturers can’t make competitive, well-made products. The problem is that they can’t get competitive financing. Western investors and banks are simply unwilling, and probably unable, to compete with the Chinese government’s vigorous investment in solar manufacturing. It means that Chinese factories ramp up faster, achieve economies of scale more quickly, and flood the market with cheap, commoditized c-Si. A Sept. 25 Mercom Market Intelligence Report laid out the raw numbers.

Since January 2010, Chinese banks have offered Chinese solar companies a staggering $40.7 billion. For perspective, U.S. solar manufacturers have received $1.4 billion in DOE loan guarantees since 1705’s inception (Solyndra’s allotment was the largest). The Chinese manufacturer Suntech disputed the figures cited by Bloomberg and Mercom, but declined to give an interview for this story.

9/11 Commemorative Flag Used in 6-Month Memorial of Giffords Shooting

After reading the article in today's Arizona Daily Star entitled, "Flag from 9/11 marks six months since 1/8", I realize the Orwell's Book, "1984" must be an instruction manual.

What on earth does 9/11 have to do with some whack job opening fire on a political event?   Given all that we know about 9/11, this story is only ironic because Giffords and her staff went out of their way to avoid any serious inquiry into the events of  9/11.

Once could guess that such propaganda shares similar goals with New York Says Thank You Foundation,  the organization providing the flag.

Some motivation for linking 9/11 to Giffords shooting seems to arrive out of the fact that a 9-year old girl, Christina-Taylor, born on 9/11/2001, was murdered in the shooting.

Here is a fairly benign rationale provided in the statement by founder, Jeff Parness:

"What we do is not about 9/11. It’s really about 9/12. It’s about never forgetting what it was like, what it felt like to be a New Yorker when so many strangers from small towns and big cities went out of their way to be here for us."

We all lament that horrific crime on January 8th of this year, especially the untimely death of a child on that day, regardless of her birthday.

The aftermath of 9/11 has lead to horrendous consequences, hundreds of thousands dead, the Patriot Act, Torture and Rendition, continued erosion of our infrastructure and the gutting of the U.S. Treasury to subsidize the wars.

This is obscene and a true insult to the relatives of those who died on 9/11, especially those who refused "hush" money.

Giffords and her staff continued funding illegal wars, approved the scandalous bailouts, and continued with their complicity in torture and rendition.  They supported and funded everything that the crimes of 9/11 were intended to justify.



It's time to get a grip on what the voters in Arizona's 8th Congressional district want. How many in this district want to continue with the wars that violate international law in exchange for cuts in Social Security and Medicare? How many in this district want their representative to continue to support Israel financially and look the other way when it commits war crimes or murders U.S. citizens?  Do the people in Arizona's 8th congressional district support complicity in torture and rendition?

One thing that Giffords was strongly supporting that few can take issue with is solar energy.  Sharper minds observe, however, that Attila the Hun would probably have supported solar energy and that support for solar energy shouldn't negate continued violations of the Geneva Convention.

J.T. Waldron

The original article in the local corporate rag is available here:

Flag from 9/11 marks six months since 1/8