19 January 2012 | Alan Bouquet
Carbon, Climate Change, Energy, Asia

 

Coal Power plants are numerous in China.

China is being increasingly threatened due to global warming, according to the government’s "Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change.” The Chinese are taking climate change more seriously recently, with projected impacts on food sources, rivers and precipitation.

"China faces extremely grim ecological and environmental conditions under the impact of continued global warming and changes to China's regional environment," the report states. Despite these warnings, China has not yet shifted its economy away from carbon intensive energy generation or industry.

The report also suggests that carbon dioxide emissions will only peak in around 20 years, with a considerable drop off in 40 years. This effectively means a huge increase in atmospheric levels, missing the two degree level set by the EU by a large margin. The resulting changes to the climate will reduce crop yields by 5 to 20%, with the uncertainty largely due to a possible fertilisation effect of the atmospheric carbon.

Water is seen to be at the heart of the future of agriculture, "Climate change will lead to severe imbalances in China's water resources within each year and across the years. In most areas, precipitation will be increasingly concentrated in the summer and autumn rainy seasons, and floods and droughts will become increasingly frequent," says the report. This will create water shortages in some of China’s provinces.

China is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of coal, further fuelling world emissions. As well as having a poor safety record, coal mines in China make coal power plants cheaper to run than renewable energy sources.

The report also warns of glaciers in retreat, sea level rise and intensified hurricanes and flood tides. All in all it paints a stark warning to the Chinese government; do something now about carbon dioxide emissions or face the consequences. China already contributes about a quarter of current emissions, with this amount set to increase rapidly. And it started out from a very low base several decades ago, which makes the future even more worrying.
 

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