I don’t quite see how you could determine intensity other than in the local currency terms, as sudden material currency movements particularly like we’re getting used to these days, would be misleading.

Would you think it would present a clear picture if the Yuan appreciated say 30% tomorrow?

A climate-change-legislation-denier is basically someone with a brain. I assume you don’t mean to analogise 9-11 denial to people having a modicum of common sense?

Perhaps you mean to analogise to climate-change-denial? This seems wierd though since no-one else here is talking about either 9-11 OR climate change denial???

the world is someway of viewing the Chinese Yuan as the relevant numeraire on judging efficiency.

The key thing to know about the efficiency angle is that they can increase their efficiency overnight by revaluing their currency: that increases their nominal GDP immediately without any change in their production set-up. Given the huge degree to which the Yuan is undervalued, they can keep any promise they want on efficiency by allowing a revaluation the eve before they have to deliver on the promise. Even without a devaluation, they are just a property boom away of any GDP efficiency gain they want without any real adjustment.

Huh, that’s not right. It doesn’t increases their GDP in nominal Yuan terms.

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/11/climate-change/masque-of-the-green-death/

I think methane would qualify (certainly within 50 years), or at least Shell thinks it would.

For instance, suppose you cut down your forests today and replant them tomorrow. We Australians pay you some money tomorrow because those re-growing trees are taking CO2 out of the air. We count that re-growth tomorrow as our achievement: a means of doing our bit for the planet.

Presuming you don’t burn the original forest after you cut it down, you end up with a variety of carbon storage mechanisms (e.g. furniture, paper, houses) and you end up with a new forest as well. Wood is the ultimate renewable resource.

Even if you do burn some of that forest, it still represents an energy source which is effectively solar energy, and displaces some other energy usage. Growing and harvesting biomass is probably the fastest way we have of pulling carbon out of the air, and by making the trees valuable to someone (rather than just constantly bashing anyone who tries to achieve anything) you guarantee there will always be trees.

Their main trick in the international debates is to talk about energy-GDP efficiency rather than total levels of emissions.

If you believe that humans have the right to strive to improve their GDP per capita position (i.e. achieve a higher quality of life) then you have no choice but to talk about efficiency. Even ignoring the whole Global Warming schtick, we haven’t seen any new abundant energy sources come online for 50 years, and the clock is ticking on what we do have, and there’s nothing particularly plausible on the horizon, so we are moving to a position where efficiency becomes the most significant thing.

If you don’t believe that humans have a right to strive for improvement (i.e. if you believe that the way forward is monk-like austerity) then I think there’s a lot of people who are going to have a very hard time swallowing this.

The only people who may find it depressing is the odd reality challenged individual who actually (haha) believes in the alarmist scenarios.

sure, there is some mileage in switching emission sources, though you are of course still investing in real estate that will last for decades.

Also, coal is particularly easy to dig up and bring to an electricity station. Gas is harder to get and transport, so it matters whether you are comparing the efficiency in the electricity station or the whole process.

It certainly buys you a limited decrease though. In the medium term that is, i.e. until the gas runs out and all that cheap coal is still left to burn.

In my understanding gas is much more than “slightly less” emissions intensive than coal. I believe gas emits about 50% of black coal and 30% of brown coal. Thus if we converted all our coal power stations to gas we would be more than halving emissions from those sources.

Has anyone looked at the effect and feasibility of gov building the long-mooted gas pipeline from the NW Shelf to SE Australia (also connecting to the existing Darwin-Mereenie pipeline to link the large Timor Sea and Browse Basin reserves to a truly national gas grid? Govt could much more easily require power generators to convert from coal to gas, and provide some subsidies to do so. Might this be a better way to achieve major real reductions than a carbon tax etc?