China Coal Power Building Boom Shocks BBC’s Matt McGrath!
By Paul Homewood
Once again I am stunned by the obtuseness of Matt McGrath, who appears genuinely surprised by the fact that China is continuing to massively expand its coal power sector:
Building work has restarted at hundreds of Chinese coal-fired power stations, according to an analysis of satellite imagery.
The research, carried out by green campaigners CoalSwarm, suggests that 259 gigawatts of new capacity are under development in China.
The authors say this is the same capacity to produce electricity as the entire US coal fleet.
The study says government attempts to cancel many plants have failed.
According to this study, there was a surge in new coal projects approved at provincial level in China between 2014 and 2016. This happened because of a decentralisation programme that shifted authority over coal plant construction approvals to local authorities.
The report says that at present China has 993 gigawatts of coal power capacity, but the approved new plants would increase this by 25%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45640706
Perhaps if McGrath had bothered to actually read China’s INDC pledges for Paris, he would have discovered that they have absolutely no intention on reigning back the use of fossil fuels. Indeed their only goal is to continue growing their economy, which cannot be done without increasing emissions.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Renewables failed in winter and people were left freezing. The Government wants to avoid that happening this coming winter. Contrast that attitude with that of the UK government who don’t care if the elderly and poor freeze to death.
There you go again Paul, looking in a cesspit and sounding surprised to see sh.t.
Well you wouldn’t expect a BBC ‘Environment correspondent’ to examine the facts. Spin, propaganda and fake news are the only things that matter to the BBC.
It would be very unwise for McGrath to actually do any further personal journalistic research, such as that which has just shocked him about China’s total disregard of emissions.
There would be a risk that he might come across surveys which contradict the BBC line on sealevel rise or hurricane frequencies or sea ice expansion , etc and then he would have to excuse himself from further work for the BBC , by the BBC’s own rules concerning scepticism.
McGrath is very unlikely to do any research – he is a modern journalist. He was no doubt sent the information that made his article.
So our billion pound a year news organisation takes years to report what we all knew on this site all along. Either it’s incompetence, or they have an agenda. Take your pick.
The “agenda” is in the sneaky, lying, sentence,
“The study says that government attempts to cancel many plants have failed.”
The idea! That an utterly ruthless, monster of a Communist Dictatorship, which has already murdered hundreds of millions would be simply ignored by its junior officials! Forsooth!
The agenda is to continue pretending that “China” is a “good guy,” fighting for the sacred cause, and we in the West should be ashamed of ourselves for not doing more to follow their example. When, as we all know, really the rulers have set themselves the goal of regional hegenomy – which absolutely requires an economy at least five times bigger than at present.
So why pretend anymore, in our slumbering bit of the world? At least two reasons, in my opinion:
(a) So that the BBC, and the whole sorry bunch of people they represent, are not revealed to the sheeple as the knuckle-draggers they are; and so they can beat the drum a little longer – at least until their pensions .
(b) For religious reasons. The ‘Kingdom of God’ never comes on Earth. And to prevent madness in the minds of the Believers, there always must be an excuse for the delay.
Sneaky Chinese bureaucrats, helping ordinary people to live, is about the most risible explanation I ever heard!
Exactly my thoughts also. It is remarkably foolish to think the government allows anything it does not want by “local governments”. These were the people that forced sterilizations on any woman that went in for any surgery.
Coal is highly strategic for China, being a major net oil importer with a rapidly growing economy, they don’t want to be held hostage by oil embargoes. Electric cars are there for the same reason.
Contrast the strategic China with “green” Europe.
“…oil embargoes…”
It was the announcement by the United States of an oil embargo against Japan – which would have cut off the flow from the Dutch East Indies, and crippled them in their attempt to swallow up China – which impelled Japan to attack the United States and the British Empire, before the economy of Japan was productive enough to sustain a long war against such powers.
The fate of the last Asian power to try for regional hegemony is, I am sure, something of which the present rulers of China often remind themselves. Just as American rulers remind themselves occasionally, with satisfaction, how they destroyed the British Empire in the back-wash of smashing the Japanese Empire.
Japan had a strategic choice when it entered World War 2. They were between “Strike North!” which the Army inclined to, and “Strike South!” which was favored by the Navy.
‘Strike North!’ was to invade Russia, which was already reeling under the initial onslaughts of Germany, while temporizing with the Anglo-Saxons. ‘Strike South’ was to run amok in the Pacific for six months and then, with a huge buffer zone of conquered territory, seek terms from the USA and Britain before the the economy of the USA was mobilized for war – and before the Japanese economy collapsed.
It was the Emperor himself who made the decision to ‘Strike South!’ Probably the wrong decision. For a Russian agent in Tokyo reported the secret to the beleaguered Stalin, who immediately gambled that it was true and transferred thirty divisions from Siberia to the Moscow front. As we know, the German Army just failed to take Moscow…and Japan woke ‘a sleeping giant’…
“Just as American rulers remind themselves occasionally, with satisfaction, how they destroyed the British Empire in the back-wash of smashing the Japanese Empire.”
Wut?
In the eyes of the chinese commies BBC and western greens are useful idiots .
Thanks to articles posted on this very site, I have know about the intentions and reality of China, Germany, India, and other countries for some years.
Does anyone at BBC have the ability to read? Or was that lost when they gave up their ability to think and reason?
When are these BBC reporters and their ilk going to grasp that modern industrial economies can’t operate on mickey mouse power from sunshine and breezes? It’s not rocket science.
It may not be rocket science, but anything to do with technology is well beyond the comprehension of the BBC lackeys.
Yes Phillip – and the comprehension of our politicians as well, as all of them with a science or engineering qualification can meet in a telephone box.
Does anybody know if the Corbyn brothers actually talk to each other??
Hard to believe this moron actually studied journalism, but he did.
Was he always a mindless, green, sock-puppet, or is this a requirement for a BBC journalist?
Our pits should never have been closed. Once neglected, they are gone forever
I don’t believe that the Beloved Leaders of China could care a fiddler’s fart about your average Chinese worker or peasant.
But they aren’t thick.
Why would they have the workers in the productive sector shiver in the dark, just to suit the occidental GoreBalls Warming agenda? It is in their interest that the people don’t shiver in the dark.
Compare & contrast with all three main political parties in the UK. They haven’t even the gumption to figure out that the underlings freezing in the dark might be a problem for them, even in their cosy bubble.
So they are about as concerned about affordable and reliable energy as they are about the mass grooming and rape of the proles’ daughters.
The “idiot-left” have been claiming for years now that China is some kind of “Climate Leader”.
Of course sceptics have been pointing out that the opposite is true, and as usual, have been proved right.
Be fair, Paul – China is a climate leader. The problem is the direction in which it’s going.
It is sad when you start believing your own propaganda.
OMG Matt McGrath must have believed to utter clap-trap from the Chinese leadership.
What a wazzuk! and not a journalist or reporter with any merit.
Mark Lynas – no climate sceptic – had the measure of China’s position on climate nine years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas. He noted how China’s negotiating hand (at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit) was strengthened by
And nothing has changed since then.
Under the Paris Agreement both China and India are projected to triple their CO2 emissions by 2030. Why is Mr McGrath so surprised?
The mystery is that countries like the UK and my own are expected to commit seppuku for the sake of a harmless gas. India and China prove it is harmless or they’d be cutting their own throats. They aren’t since their climate scientists are real ones.
what is a “coal fleet”?
China is doing whats good for them …… and it works,
Trump has been correct on this and the on going trade imbalances, but the lefty liberals just dont like to hear it. Its just good business in action.
Someone should tell Corbyn,who would like to double the number of on shore windmills,and multiply by six,the number of off shore windmills in the UK.
I tried to do the £s,but my calculator melted.
Mr Corbyn doesn’t seem to be very good with money.
‘Anyone got any euros?’ Corbyn struggles to pay for taxi keeping EU waiting (27 Sep)
I thought he had a magic money tree, with Diane Abbott responsible for doing the sums up to five.
Is Matt a bit dim / naive – or is he a simple propagandist? or a bit of both?.
Earlier this week I discovered that one of the foundation stones of the present ocean plastic panic – the “baby fishies eat plastic like McDonalds!” – punted on the BBC’s web site by Matt is still up there – with no hint that the paper has been retracted as fraudulent and false.
Your TV Tax at work
China is the elephant in the warmists’ room. India is in the next room. Africa should be joining them in a couple of decades. The audacity of believing people are willing to take a step back in evolution to bring others up to enjoy the same accomplishments they earned is beyond me.
There is a whole herd of elephants in the room (Turkey, Indonesia, Brazil,……). Someone’s going to get trampled.
As for the matter of asking poor people, in effect, to stay poor; many warmunistas who are not malicious have deluded themselves that they are not doing this, because they believe the word ‘Renewables!’ is the answer to the question,”How will we live?” Many more seem to have the attitude expressed by the American humorist Artemus Ward during the American Civil War,
“I am strong for the Union Cause! I have already sent two cousins to the fight. I am willing to send more!”
The leading warmunistas, of course, are simply fanatics and misanthropes who enjoy the rapture of their group-think.
Here I go again – the UK produces less than 1.5% of global CO2, so it doesn’t matter a jot whether we halve or double our emissions. We should immediately repeal the pointless virtue-signalling of the Climate Change Act and generate our electricity, subsidy free of course, by whatever method is the cheapest – industrial and domestic consumers would all benefit, as would the economy. And Brexit affords us the opportunity of escaping from EU environmental legislation as well.
McGrath works for the beeb, he is therefore only capable of green bias and thus makes him: incapable of cogent analysis and indeed of grasping the reality – that China is not going green.
What needs to be focused on and as has been pointed out above, our own HMG lot are focused, driven to making our lives as cold as hell, remember that well before you put a cross next to liblavCON.
Our country is run by a set of dorks who are in turn run by a corporate blob and an alien administration only given to one thing – screwing the nation over and over until we are ground down into the dirt – and Mrs May is fully signed up to all of it.