China Will Be Net Zero Emissions by 2060, Guaranteed.

But they're not going to achieve it in the way you expect...

With the COP26 summit in Scotland and the G20 meeting as a run-up, CO2 emissions are once again at the forefront of the news. And with it, the usual logic surfaces again from critics: It doesn't really matter what Western nations with relatively few emissions do, as long as China keeps building its coal fired plants and keeps emitting more and more.

I'm not going to rehash the arguments back and forth. Because the Climate Change hysteria serves as nothing more than a convenient scapegoat for our current leadership horribly lacking in vision, a distraction of a supposed calamity in a far flung future they won't be around to see; and as such, we have no way to judge their performance in the present. We all want a cleaner environment - but if the goal is "limiting global warming by 1.5C by 2100"... well that's abstract enough to never be able to tell one way or another.

I prefer to stay in reality, close to the data. And the data is telling me the climate hysteria will go away on it's own, simply because we won't have more carbon to burn. If China is the largest emitter, and China runs out of fuel, well then emissions will drop by themselves won't they?

You might think this fantastical at this point. After all, we've all heard the same thing i've often have, that we have coal reserves for decades if not hundreds of years. But, to combine my last two articles, problems can quickly become too big beneath the surface, and it's really hard to tell if complex interwoven supply chains have alot or only little expansionary capacity left.

But, before we go into the numbers, i'd like to spend a little time explaining Communism, as people easily get the wrong impression of the strength of a Communist economy. This is as true now as it was in the 1990's, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the truth came out about how strong their economy (and military) had been all this time (hint: far below Western estimates). As for my knowledge on Communism, my two best friends are a Russian and a Hong Konger who both have verified my line of thinking many times, so i know i'm on the money here.

Communism is incredibly simple. It runs on 3 principles: Production targets, Lies about production targets, and Hero Worship (AKA, people who meet production targets against all odds). You can forget all about that Proletariat bullshit, what counts is what happens in reality, and after a hundred years of various incarnations of Communism around the globe every country's exhibited that pattern in daily operations, until the economy collapsed.

The logic is simple. Communism is all about central planning. This naturally means a bureaucratic top-down structure, where a central command issues orders to a state government, which orders a local government, which orders a business to set a certain production target. Since China's a large country with 1.4 billion people, there'll be quite a few layers of bureaucrats to get through before you get to the actual workers who need to produce in order to hit the target.

And what's always the case with human bureaucracy, is that the further removed the decision maker is from the actual real-world implementation of that decision, the worse a decision it'll be. Because it's literally divorced from reality. The person making the decision has to make similar decisions for lots of companies or even sectors, and they don't possibly have the time to visit everything in person or talk to everyone. As somebody who's looked into alot of separate companies, i can confirm: Balance sheet analysis is what it'll come down to, because time-wise it's the most efficient - but it's far from foolproof.

Which is why Capitalism works much better in the real world, while Communism is by far a better system on paper. Because in the real world, Capitalism means the person making the decisions on production is the closest possible to the actual production: Floor managers or factory directors, and the company just deals with whatever the outcome of their decisions is, with alot of financial incentives as well as systems such as shareholder meetings to keep the leadership in check.

And while that means they'll sometimes make harsh decisions that hurt people, on the whole, having a few bad companies turns out far less damaging then having everything centrally planned, and then the central planners make a mistake. Which they'll inevitably do, since the central planners are as divorced from reality as they can possibly be.

(As a sidenote - the West doesn't have Capitalism currently either. We have Fascism, a merger of corporate and state power, violently enforced; just ask people who demonstrate for the wrong thing. A hallmark of Capitalism is Competition, which is the main reason Monopolies are broken up, because they stifle competition. If we were still Capitalist, we'd broken up many tech monopolies and multinationals ages ago. Infact we would've never let companies consolidate to this a degree in the first place).

Back to production targets. When a production target is handed down from on high, it's the foremen and directors that have to implement them. And there's basically a binary outcome here: Either they meet their target, or they don't. In the first case, not meeting targets makes the central planners look bad. After all, their target wasn't met, maybe there was something wrong with the target?

Well, those people don't live long in the bureaucratic apparatus, so obviously not. It's the workers who were at fault. They must be replaced. And so the "bad" foremen and directors end up in some gulag somewhere and the next in line is given a go.

Or the targets are met, in which case the central planners get confident in their ability to set targets, and set the next one a little higher. After all they wanna climb the "corporate" ladder too and higher met targets impresses their bosses better. Bigger budgets means success within government. Naturally, this just happens year after year until the previous situation occurs.

Now, imagine you're one of those people who used to be an underling, but now got put in charge of meeting the same insane production target as your former boss while he takes a vacation in the gulag. Question yourself: What are you going to do?

Naturally, you Lie. Which brings us to no.2, lies about production targets. This is completely natural from a self-preservation point of view. All of us would make the same decision in the same situation, even me. Because it works, mate. It works every time. If you have the opportunity to hide the lack of production off-balance sheet in any way possible to save your own skin, you will. See Evergrande that hid all the bad stuff under Inventory. Doesn't mean it's worth what they say it is.

But hang on i hear you say. Doesn't that get found out?

Why yes it does! But as Tesla learns us, it's fine to be fraudulent as long as you can make the fraud big enough. Because then it doesn't just hurt you when it blows up, but your boss as well (in Tesla's case, it's such a large part of the US stock market now that the US government can't afford to let it blow up anymore - hence the never-ending flow of environmental credits to keep it profitable). And under Communism, that boss means the Local government - which the State government has no problem sending to the Gulag either, as otherwise the central government sends them to the Gulag.

By now it should be clear to see what the pattern is that develops in Communist economies. A fish may rot from the head, Communist economies rot from the bottom up until they implode under a hollowed out core, when the lies start out-pacing what can be delivered in reality at all. This leads to the empty shelves pictures you see from the Soviet Union's collapse, or jokes such as "only taking 3 years to repair a car". That happens until it simply can't be sustained at all anymore.

But this is a very slow process that can be hidden for a very long time, as it's the head of the economy which has a monopoly on force, and also the ability to allocate more resources to force - meaning people must be absolutely destitute before the collapse happens, including much of the ruling class. If then something happens such as the US opening its doors to Chinese labor in the 80's because of its own financial problems, and then starts feeding capital in.... Well, it'll take much longer still. There's a good chance had the US not embraced China, Communism in China would've collapsed in the 80's under the weight of previously incurred calamities (which was also their impetus to change to Communism-light at the time).

So, why the long intro? Well, i wanted to make sure everybody understood the full depth and breath of how much China is willing to lie about its numbers or problems, regardless of how much they're actually aware of them. They will "produce" themselves to death, at some point, because that's what Communism does. Naturally, with so many lies throughout the system, corruption is also endemic.

Favors to look the other way are the dominant currency that everybody needs to use. Fraud happens all the time because, far away from the central planners, everybody knows everybody is screwing eachother over to make the insane targets handed down from on high. Trust is non-existent too because of social control from above and the possibility of somebody using something against you to climb the party ranks - the only real chance for advancement in life for most people.

Which brings me to Coal. I came across a video from a channel i get recommended from time to time, namely the channel ADVChina, which is just 2 guys on motorcycles living in and touring through China, showing what the country side is like as opposed to the usual pictures you see on the news. In this particular video, they visited the (previously) largest open pit coal mine in the world:

I'd recommend watching it after reading, but basically the most important bit of information in there is that the mine's nearly depleted. All the coal's been consumed and after years of mismanagement, it's just.... gone. They also have a few recent videos on the Chinese housing market worth watching, as it shows you how things really are on the ground. Projects get built, then immediately abandoned as a way of life.

Anyway, the video got me thinking. We "know" there's still decades of coal reserves... But do we really know that? I mean, for the United States that's true... but i also know the US uses alot less coal than China does. You hear percentages all the time, like "Coal generated 57% of electricity in 2020. Over half the world's coal-fired power is generated in China." (from Wikipedia). But just as i hate log charts for hiding reality, i started wondering... What are the nominal numbers here?

How... how big is this problem, really?

Again, the internet provides:

....Fuck me.

FUCK ME.

F... oh right, you guys don't do instant math in your head.

See it now?

35 years is nothing. That's January 2057. Which explains the title, though it's incomplete.

China will be zero emissions by 2060, guaranteed - because they'll have run out of Coal entirely 3 years prior!

But that's based on "proven reserves", and those are just numbers on paper. Alot of Inferred resources that don't actually have to be there (since i've looked into gold/silver miners i understand now stuff looks alot better on paper then in reality in alot of cases). That number's only as good as long as it can sustain reality, and that doesn't have to be 35 years.

If it was just this and this alone, maybe the problem would be manageable. Unfortunately it's not, and my ability for oversight on supply chains tells me there's many more factors to consider here then "the end is 35 years away".

First off, Expansion. We can always find more reserves, right? That's always been the case so far. (NORMALCY BIAS %!@*&$%$!) so why shouldn't it continue?

Well, to answer that question, we have to compare two charts: Australia and China.

This picture looks more like we in the west "remember" coal reserves with hundreds of years of reserves for power, and those reserves periodically climbing. Australia actually passed China in biggest reserves in the world, now occupying the 3rd spot. And in this case, there doesn't appear to be a problem.

Here though we have to keep geography, demographics as well as recent history in mind. As Australia is a very large country with a small population mostly confined to the coast, alot of it remains underexplored. Australia's also not a huge coal user comparatively - again because of a small population - and has over the past decade joined in in the whole "ESG push" and has reduced coal-fired power capacity. Other Western nations are in a similar boat.

But China's completely different. China gets 57% of its power from coal, and that power has to fuel an economy consisting of 1,4 Billion people - so necessarily its use is on another scale altogether. So naturally, with 35 years of reserves left, you'd expect them to frantically be searching for more and larger deposits, and the reserves would be increasing with large amounts on a regular basis. I can't imagine the leadership hasn't noticed this.

Which makes this picture highly distressing. The number was flat for 4 years since 2008 - a complete impossibility considering the following line:

So the reserves were stuck on 126,4 billion tons for 4 years while China produced 14.25 billion tons in aggregate during that time? Yes, that's the scale here. That's how that number of total reserves comes down to 35 years of reserves. They're using that much.

Aside from lying or incomplete data, even if everything was legit - Reserves only increased from 126,4B tons in 2008 to 149,8B tons in 2016. This is an absolute number of 23.4B tons. Within that same timespan, China produced 29,26B tons. Are you telling me their reserves increased by double the amount on that chart?

And even if they did - holy SMOKES Batman they're already using it up faster then they can find it. Even assuming it's all legit, how long could that situation possibly be sustained?

I went looking for some more recent data, since this is all still 5 years ago. At this rate things should change rapidly. I found this oversight courtesy of BP:

Well, that's not more then 150B tons, that's for sure. And while the "time it'll last" here is 37 years, that's keeping in mind we're looking at 2020 data, and the Chinese economy shut down as much as everybody else. Production power usage over 2020 was one of the lowest in a long while because of this, which jacks up the "years left at current consumption" number. Next year's report should have corrected this with dire effects.

And it's that "Current Consumption" level that worries me, in combination with that production chart. Because, if we look up China's Electricity consumption:

That shows no signs of stopping. It has doubled since 2008.

Within that time, Coal production has stagnated. And as icing on the cake:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-new-coal-power-plant-capacity-2020-more-than-3-times-rest-worlds-study-2021-02-03/

China hasn't stopped building coal fired capacity. It's well known that China continues to expand its coal power generating ability. So naturally, if you use more, but produce less, that difference has to be made up somewhere. And it is:

The point of this all is simple. I don't think China can produce more coal faster. They're in a situation where they're highly incentivised to do so, yet the increases in domestic production are minimal compared to how much imports are skyrocketing. This article from the Global Times is also illuminating, considering we know it's a Chinese government mouthpiece, so we can compensate for the lies:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202110/1236983.shtml

First off, price caps never work in a calamity. That's because all they achieve is disabling the "pricing out of the market mechanic". Since people can continue to afford the asset, they will continue to buy the asset. If it runs out, that simply means it runs out, and nothing will be sold until the next batch which disappears immediately as well to be sold on the black market for triple the price, of course.

Governments know this, but price increases cause unrest faster then a few blackouts in the short term so that's the preferred option.

"After a period of centralizing efforts, State-owned coal producers now control much of the country's coal production and their pledges of being "willing to give up some profits for the common good and ensure a warm winter for the people" will likely produce an impact within a short time."

This is clearly rife with propaganda (the impact will be negative, if any), but that doesn't mean there isn't truth there. We now know that much of China's coal production is centralized - and from the intro above, you know what that means. They'll set production targets, but whether they actually hit them the blackouts will decide. Or in short, i don't think that's positive for production in the long run. All the production they increase now, will hit production harder later through mismanagement and corruption.

"The NDRC said on Tuesday that said it would ensure coal mines operate at full capacity and will achieve at least 12 million tons per day of output, which would be up more than 1.6 million tons from late September."

"This lift in daily coal production amounts to coal production of 4.3 billion tons a year, will push down coal prices and help the country go through the winter smoothly, said Han.

In comparison, total coal output at China's coal mines was 3.9 billion tons in 2020. In recent years, China has been phasing out outdated coal production capacity by 1 billion tons per year and closed 5,500 coal mines."

There's lots of stuff that can be learned from this, and it's the main reason i link the article - you can ignore the rest of the "it'll be impactful" stuff.

From this bit we learn that "full capacity" means 4.3 billion tons per year. This is about 7.5% above their previous all-time high in 2013 of 3.974 billion tons (naturally this isn't mentioned). So, if they need even more - they can't produce more, and it'll have to come from imports. They're not producing more then consumption either. That was 4,3 Billion tons in 2016 and they're using 25% more electricity now overall. They're cherry picking 2020 in which lockdowns forced consumption down. By now it'll have gone back to normal or even above normal again, hence the price spikes.

And the last sentence is the most revealing. "Outdated coal production capacity" is clearly propaganda speak for "depleted mines". Mines don't simply run empty, grades decline until the geographic formation that allowed the deposit to form changes. At some point, you'll still have coal, but it's simply uneconomical to dig it out at these prices or expected prices. While that doesn't mean "all gone", it does mean it's almost all gone, and we'll need alot higher prices to justify digging the rest out of the ground. And even if those prices come, the total usable reserves don't increase that much

So that China's closed 1 billion tons a year recently, multiple times, that's distressing - that's 25% of capacity each year!!! I keep double checking it cause i keep thinking i made a mistake, but no, no the man literally says "China produced 3,9 billion tons last year and closed 1 billion tons per year in recent years". No wonder they're having to increase imports - though calling it "diversified supply" is marketing speak i'll tip my hat to.

How long can they possibly keep that up? It's not like all those coal reserves are neatly stacked ontop of eachother either. It must be requiring massive amounts of CapEx each year just to continue feeding the dragon, in ever more difficult to mine locations.

Which is where we reach the point of "the problem is too big". Clearly this is only sustainable if in the near future, and we might already be there today, the rest of the world massively steps up coal exports to China. If that's even possible at all (via Zerohedge):

It'll require massive CapEx investment on the part of every other country in the world, right when they've declared coal the devil - but everyone also still needs it for their own power generation. And then the question becomes, does the rest of the world want to feed the dragon?

I mean, right now yes since all our supply chains are located in China. If China really runs out of coal our lives are going to get very expensive very quick. But in the future, 30 years from now? With globalization running in reverse?

Also that naturally means all those powerhungry industries move back to other countries, increasing their coal consumption, and increasing unwillingness to export fuel. There's no such thing as a free lunch, here or there production costs power. For China it's not a choice - about half of the power generated by coal is used for production, but the rest is used by the citizens. 1.4 billion people are far more people then any of us really realizes.

And then there's the developing world. Maybe it's more logical then i thought that hostilities between China and India have been increasing along their border, with China being the provocateur. India has the 5th largest coal reserves, and is the 2nd largest producer and consumer of coal, with a 200 million ton deficit in 2016. This makes them direct competition.

Mind you, at 4,3 billion tons consumption a year, those 107 billion tons would only last China 25 years. Problem is, at current rates, those reserves only last India another 111 years as well.

At current rates. If India increases its coal power consumption - which it is doing and will be doing more to develop industry - India's going to need all its reserves for itself. They've got a population of a billion and a half too.

And now, we really hit "the problem is too big" speeds. Because China has the 4th largest reserves, India the 5th, Australia the 3rd.... and if we look at the rest of the list:

Reserves start dropping like a brick after no.5 on the list. Oh sure, per country we have plenty because all the different energy mixes around the world and varying populations. But in absolute terms, keeping China's consumption rate of 4,3 billion tons in mind, we're almost out! It may not look it, but let me run you through my thinking:

- India basically needs all its reserves for itself if it continues to develop. If India were to ever expand its economy like China has over the past 40 years, their coal reserves will be gone just as fast by 2070. Also India has nukes.

- Russia's happy enough to continue exporting, for now - after domestic needs are met. China can't really do anything since Russia's loaded with nukes which it's much more likely to use on resource depleted lands it has no desire to invade anyway - and the Russian power center's an incredible distance away from the Chinese one for two countries which share a border.

- The United States is basically China's main rival now as a declining super power, and relying on it for coal exports in the future is basically political suicide. That's the fastest way to an embargo and societal destruction. Americans don't even wanna rip up their environment for themselves, let alone for China. Also, The US also has a ton of nukes.

- Australia is happy enough to export to China for now, but it's clear what side of the world it falls on, and with the recent AUKUS deal is going to have nuclear protection pretty soon. China has the manpower to overrun Australia, but only if the rest of the world stays out of it, which it won't.

- All other countries below that also use coal heavily for their power usage, and if they don't export to China, will have enough supply for the next century. If they do, it's all gone in less than a decade.

So where is China get more coal in 35 years, after India's developed and everybody is wary of Chinese power? Right now a blockade wouldn't do much as China still has mines and Russia's still willing to supply. But that situation will be vastly different in just 20 years from now. Without India and Russia, China's got no choice but take to the seas and forcibly take resources, and in the case of coal, Australia's their only logical target (other then cornering semiconductors via Taiwan/TSMC which is their first move to ensure energy supplies via Mutually Assured Destruction doctrines).

At current rates of consumption. I keep saying that, because people generally assume the current situation will continue. So far, China's been able to pay for its coal because not only did it produce and import more, the West used less and less coal power over the past decade (while driving ourselves into an ESG corner). US coal consumption and production both have halved since 2007. Australia consumes 1/10th of what it produces. Germany's down with a good 20%.

That doesn't have to stay that way. Especially not if people demand cheap power because the rest of life is getting too darn expensive. 2100 is a long time away when you're cold and hungry today. It's not like there haven't been any advances in cleaning up coal plant emissions. The more demand that comes from the rest of the world, the more competition China faces in the coal import markets.

Alright, well, clearly coal's a problem. But we (most likely, depends on how much China's lied) still have some time. How about replacing those coal plants before China runs out?

Well that's just again underestimating the massive size of this problem.

China consumes more coal than double the next 4 countries combined. Half of the world total by itself.

This results in (according to Wikipedia) a 1080GW installed capacity for coal in China in 2021. Luckily, we can do some real easy math to show the size of that problem:

- a 1GW nuclear reactor currently costs around $10 billion.

- 1080 reactors would cost $10,800 billion.

This is 72% of China's $15 trillion GDP. That relies for 29% on the housing/housing services sector. Which is imploding. Which China will have to spend alot of money on to stabilize. Luckily they have a low debt-to-GDP ratio and maybe they can borrow that money.

Eh, well, that used to be true. You really have to admire this picture for the massive debt run-up it shows.

Think about it for a minute. You're looking at GDP, and, the debt-to-GDP percentage. The first chart is a percentage, the second is nominal. And in classic economics, one knows: If your debt stays stable, and your GDP grows, your debt-to-GDP ratio goes down.

So the fact that the GDP went up ten times and the debt-to-GDP ratio still increased must mean their debt-load by now is epic. And it also means, because GDP can go down very easily while debt does not - they're about 1 financial crisis away from going full Greece. Did i mention their property market was imploding because it's a state sanctioned Ponzi scheme?

In May of 2021, China had 14 nuclear reactors under construction, with 52 total being built across the world. This should be atleast 4 times as many in China alone if they want to replace coal power before the coal runs out! Because it's going to cost alot of coal to get those power plants operational (consumption will increase when the nuclear production sector expands, which must be taken into account), as well as expand Uranium and Thorium mining in order to feed that dragon yet again.

And the rest of the world is in the same boat, because once China runs out of coal, that means NO MORE CHEAP CHINESE GOODS! Not expensive ones, neither. Ask the car manufacturers how they've liked China based supply lines over the past 2 years. First chips, now Magnesium, soon Aluminium. Yknow why alot of Magnesium/Aluminium smelters are in China? Say it with me now! Cheap Coal Power for a very power-intensive application.

We can onshore all that production again, but that just means we have to burn energy to the tune of 2,1 billion tons of coal a year. There's no free lunch. And that still leaves that number again for the Chinese citizenry to be filled with other power sources, and it also means the rest of the world exports products to China. China won't produce a single thing for export.

There's a reason why China uses so much energy yknow. Just because we wanna live in a fairytale land where all this production happens in Santa's little workshop with happy little elves, doesn't mean reality will let us get away with that forever. The only other option is Less Products. If we don't build it, we don't have to use the energy to build it. Which means a drop in the quality of life for us living in the west, and i think people underestimate how large a drop that'll be.

And please. Don't even fucking start with "renewables." First off, the vast majority of all solar panel production happens in China (70%+) because of their low power costs. It costs them half as much per panel in power production costs as it costs the Germans (with French nuclear power).

If China starts using solar panels to build solar panels the cost will rise so much their infrastructure collapses long before they're even close to their goal. Also, that doesn't take into account that solar panels don't "use sand", they use high-purity quartz, which is another limited good. Which we also use for Computer Chips by the way. We run out of that, the digital economy dies.

China's digging 4,3 billion tons of Coal out of the ground this year to feed their power stations. How much various materials do you think they have to dig out of the ground to make enough solar panels to replace 1080GW of power? Also the average expected lifespan of those panels is 25 to 30 years, so to be honest, i don't think they can even build the last panel to replace coal before they have to start building panels to replace other panels at the same speed (or capacity drops). And then there's night time.

Same for wind power. Assuming they even have enough locations for that, the cost is about $1,3 million per Megawatt these days. So that's 1,080,000 times $1,3 million = $1,404,000,000,000. Only about a trillion and a half! Not bad assuming those costs don't go up once you try to build 1 million turbines over a span of 35 years. That pesky supply and demand for materials again.

Except that Wind turbines are only expected to last 20-25 years due to structural stresses involved (and one recently collapsed by itself in Germany before it could even be turned on). So, China would need to build and install 43,200 wind turbines every year, just to maintain 1080GW of power rolling across 20 years of time. And again, that's assuming the wind blows 24/7, otherwise you need overcapacity. Each turbine also needs to be inspected atleast 3 times a year or it breaks much sooner. Seems doable?

China'd have to outproduce US wind turbine production by 14 times. I'm not saying they couldn't do it, i'm just saying it'd be bloody hard. And that's just to maintain the current fleet. If they want to expand power capacity, they'd have to expand yearly production.

Also those blades are made from fiberglass, which is going straight into landfill since it can't be recycled (and with that volume the "epoxy" they use to harden the fiberglass won't stay cheap either). The important parts of turbines we can recycle, but not the voluminous parts. And again - wind don't blow, no power. Wind blow too much, and you'll have to shut half of em down, which also is a waste of resources - structural wear and tear doesn't slow down just because that thing stops spinning, especially not because wind is blowing too hard against it.

I'm not even going to entertain the idea of storing power in batteries on that scale. Anyone who does is a fool. Our best bet for safe energy storage on any sort of scale would be creating super-heavy vertical flywheels which sit perfectly level on hydrodynamic bearings to virtually eliminate friction without wear and tear (while being heavy enough to not make tensile-strength an issue due to rotational speed/force), and charge/discharge them by magnetically speeding up the flywheel up or slowing it down. Or we can watch entire battery farms go up in smoke because we've got very few ways to put Lithium out once it's exposed to air and catches fire. A recent fire at a Tesla battery power storage facility in Australia took 4 days to put out for one battery. No fire department in the world is prepared for this, or the EV transition in general for that matter.

So. To summarize:

- China uses a heck of alot of coal each year.

- At current rates of production and consumption they will run out before 2060, and consumption is expected to increase over time rather then decrease.

- It's highly unlikely that a country so reliant on coal consumption can pull another hundred billion tons of reserves out of its ass, their exploration investments must be massive already compared to scaled back exploration in other countries. Production might've peaked already.

- We don't actually know what their current reserves are, as we must assume they've lied about that like they lie about everything else, especially now that coal companies have consolidated into state hands. It wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a need for it, as it didn't happen until recently.

- The rest of the world might not be willing to scale up to feed the dragon and ruin their environments on China's behalf, especially not if it increases emissions by the most of all options available.

- Resource depletion and the changing realpolitik of the situation will force China into a belligerent stance, even more then now, as acquiring enough strategic resources becomes vital.

- There is very little chance of replacing current coal fired capability in China with anything else before 2060; merely keeping pace with expanding energy needs will be hard enough.

- China's not going to change their ways until the day they hit a brick wall. They're still expanding coal capacity, reducing the time left their reserves have. This is simply how Communism works, the central planners cannot admit failure as they don't think it's their failure in the first place. Taking blame is political suicide.

So we're basically all screwed. There's no answer to this except the rest of the world putting their coal up for sale to China and India - which'll extend the problem to ~2150 at the latest, and then it's all gone, worldwide. Even if we shift production back to Western countries, that'll just increase our demand for coal, as none of the other options can scale as fast as we need them to (Gas'll run out at some point too yknow).

Unless....

There still is one option left to "save the future", but we must drop this silliness of worrying about gaseous substances. For the next decade, atleast, we'll have to use more fossil fuels, not less, to affect this change. If that raises the global temperature by 1.6 degrees instead of 1.5 degrees by 2100... That's not a big loss compared to the total collapse of China and its effects on the world economy!!! And that's 2060, by 2100 at this rate India's gonna be empty too. That's 3 BILLION people combined. You really think they're just going to sit idly by when they run out, while we still have enough resources to feed ourselves? In the name of airborne plant food?

The only option is bringing that $10,8 trillion dollar cost for 1080GW of nuclear energy down. It literally is the only way. In 35 years we'll have a fuckton less Gas, Oil, and every other form of hydrocarbon than we do now. It is inevitable. It is mathematically set in stone. We need energy in some form. WHATEVER the price of "renewables" is now, in 35 years, it'll be more expensive, not less, as their supply chain runs on cheap coal that we won't have anymore, and that goes for pretty much everything right now.

What we don't have now however, is an Economy of Scale in the Nuclear sector. It's been so unloved for such a long time there's still alot of jobs we can develop there, from high-tech jobs to sheet-metal construction worker jobs. Expensive also means complex, which means alot of labor. We need to come up with something new when the current solutions don't work, just like we once came up with solar and wind, and what we can still expand is the supply chain for modular nuclear reactors. Small or big doesn't matter, all that matters is that we can produce these things in bulk, they're safe, and they use Uranium or Thorium to run. Those designs do exist, or are being finished as we speak.

What we don't have is thousands and thousands of workers assembling parts for many nuclear plants. Supply and Demand works for everything, even nuclear reactors. If you produce hundreds where you first produced tens, then the price drops nigh tenfold. While the total investment cost will be higher ofcourse, that is justified by its function: You get baseload power for 80 years in return per investment, while the amount needed for investment continually goes down per reactor built. That's also the only reason Solar is so cheap now, because China scaled up their production ten fold (with state subsidies in order to crush Western competitors, sucessfully, btw).

We don't have that because the "green" parties in Europe and the US are vehemently against nuclear power because of a few mishaps that combined don't even put a dent into the yearly deaths from coal pollution - while letting aging reactors of old design run because there's literally no alternative. At this point it should be clear anyone opposing nuclear power isn't looking for solutions, they're looking for stuff that puts fear in people's hearts so they can gain control over frightened people. And nuclear sounds scary. Well, i'm not afraid of what might go wrong. I'm afraid of what will go wrong.

What sounds far more scary to me is replacing 13,6 gigawatts of wind power at a cost of $17,68 billion which The Netherlands will need to spend by 2045, considering we have that much installed capacity now, and those turbines don't last past 25 years. The 894MW installed capacity from 2000 is already gone. The only reason it's that cheap at $17,68 billion is because of government subsidies, which were another ~$7 billion in 2017 alone. For that cost we can already put down 2 "large and cost inefficient" 1GW reactors, which we can build to last 80 years with modern tech and basic maintenance.

Once you take into account you'd have to spend ~$20 billion every 20 years to replace 13,6GW of intermittent power, or you spend $80 billion total supplying 8GW for 80 years consistently.. then the cost isn't so far apart anymore. And subsidies for nuclear power are almost non-existent right now compared to renewables, which pale in comparison to fossil fuel subsidies (which i have nothing against right now because if those weren't there our lives would be considerably more expensive already. Don't rely on sheltered brainwashed 18 year olds to make policy).

It won't be just to China's benefit if we start an "arms race" in nuclear power generation. Nuclear is still the only CO2-free baseload power option. The amount of emissions digging Uranium or Thorium out of the ground considering they're so energy dense are negligible.

It's not just for country-power either. Why are we still using Diesel powered ships to haul Diesel around?! You idiots do realize one of those cargo freighters could run a decade on a single nuclear fuel load? Y'all realize we've been developing that technology anyway for decades to run Nuclear Submarines with?! It's on the goddamn shelf for Christ's sake!

You people do realize that when Coal starts running low, we're not going to use less, we're just going to substitute it with Oil and Gas and burn those faster as well?

No. The only way forward is abandoning this stupid push for solar panels and wind turbines, as well as all other make believe solutions. Because frankly, we no longer have the time or energy to spare. Creating an economy of scale isn't done overnight, and i think China's already starting to run short now that we've printed a crapton of money and pulled so much demand forward, which burned alot of coal to make products now stuck in containers all over the place. Why else are they running short on coal now when they've never produced this much PLUS they have historically high imports of the stuff? They can only run low if they've used even more then that.

Western governments MUST quadruple their efforts on creating a Nuclear reactor supply chain, and support mass-producible designs. Nuclear proliferation must also be revisited, because i'll tell you what:

The entire yearly supply of power for the United States would only produce a single bathtub worth of 100-year radioactive material if we allowed full reprocessing of nuclear waste. The technology has been known for decades.

The reason why we don't do that is because that reprocessing involves enriching the uranium to the point where it's weapons grade. You can stick Plutonium in a nuclear reactor as well as in a warhead.

But here's the thing right? How much waste are we actually talking about pre-processed?

If we have to stick that all into breeder reactors... How many breeder reactors do we need? Because if we only need like 10 of them for stage 2 and 2-3 for stage 3 before all the fuel's used up on a yearly basis... Well why don't we just build those in centralized locations and station an army around it like Fort Knox? The gold doesn't even produce anything for us, yet there's nobody alive who thinks somebody can steal it from Fort Knox (... actors outside of the US government itself i mean).

The US, Russia, China, France, the UK, plenty of countries are still producing nuclear weapons to this day. They need plutonium to do that. Ergo, plutonium is already being mass-produced, safely and without incident as far as i know. Are you telling me we really can't control that supply chain?

Instead we keep sticking masses of radioactive waste in caves that'll have to stay there for 10,000 years, because the non-reprocessed stuff has a much lower energy level and thus takes FAR longer to decay.

If we stick em in caves at all, since the US abandoned the long term storage facility it was building inside of a mountain. Because of protests against the transport of nuclear waste in canisters that couldn't break even if you rammed a train into it. THREE TIMES.

AND THEN SET IT ON FIRE:

Guess where all that nuclear waste within the US is stored right now?

That's right! Stored at the Nuclear plants because they've got nowhere else to put it and transport immediately gets demonstrated against. So incredibly safe guys!!! You bunch of dumb-fucks.

We really, REALLY need to get our priorities straight. Because reality's not going to wait for us. The power YOU used to read this, has forever been spent, we won't get it back - and there's a very good chance coal was part of it. And we can either start planning and executing the major changes now, or there's not going to be anyone left by 2100 to admire the slightly-warmer-then-usual winters. We're not even going to make it to the run-away greenhouse process if we don't expand out into space to mine those resources. Which won't even include alot of carbon by the way. Since Coal and Oil are basically compressed dead plant matter, and since our planet is the only one with life within our solar system - once it's gone, it's gone... And we will form the next supply for our distant descendants. Nuclear's our only option in space as well.

We won't make it to 2100 not because of the sky falling down, but because of the ground beneath us running out of stuff for us to be foolish with. For the future's sake - we have to act now, on much bigger issues then CO2. The consumption of fossil fuels is happening much faster then most of us realize. China's never gonna turn honest in time and we won't get the coal we already used to make cheap plastic shit with back, but if we're smart about what's left, maybe we can still avoid the loss of a space-faring future and the collapse back into an agrarian based feudal society, and the many deaths that'll bring. This is not the time for an ego-centric worldview.

Waiting any number of years won't change the solution. It will, however, make it vastly more expensive the longer we wait. If we wait too long... well.

- Kirian "Deso" van Hest.

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