Comments on: Friedman: China beating US on low carbon energy

By: Dappledwater

Dappledwater — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 05:07:19 +0000

So C3po thinks the Earth’s natural resources are limitless. Figures.

By: Macro

Macro — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:26:36 +0000

True Doug. There is no way an ever growing population is sustainable, and it is debatable if the human population isn’t already over the limit. With developed nations taking up about 10 hectares of arable land per person, it doesn’t leave much over for those in developing and undeveloped countries.
The task is to firstly reduce the requirement for earths resources from those in developed and developing nations and to improve the quality of life for those in undeveloped Nations in order that the human reproduction rates in all countries can begin to fall to a sustainable level.
It wasn’t that long ago C3 that dairy herds and piggeries were in central London. Animals were held at Smithfield Market for slaughtering. The advent of Rail led to the supply of fresh country milk at Sainberry’s and the ultimate demise of the cheaper, but less “savory”, town supply milk. This move of course added “food miles” to the equation. But then, who cared! Since then our cities, and the supply of food to them in particular, have become dependent upon transportation, first by rail and then by road. As cities have grown bigger and bigger, no longer constrained by the limitations of the transportation of food to the citizens, they have also become less and less efficient from the perspective of energy.
The advent of international food (eg frozen mutton from NZ in the 1880s, although the Romans imported most of their grain from Africa and oysters from the Thames estuary) doesn’t help either. But then who are we (NZers) to fuss about this. We can’t wait for a free trade deal with the USA in order to supply even more international food – our economy is dependent upon it. I see that there are plans to re-introduce sailing ships – there have been designs with highly efficient aerofoils etc. around for years, but have never come to fruition. Sea transport is a fairly efficient mode of transportation anyway, but the use of solar and wind energy could improve the efficiency further.

By: Doug Clover

Doug Clover — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:02:07 +0000

Strange where you see limitlessness I see desperation.

Next point is an ever growing population achievable or even desirable?

By: C3P0

C3P0 — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:35:49 +0000

Farm buildings for crops such as Lettuce and Tomatoes could well be the future of farming from all points of view. Once the price of the extra capital required drops below the price of land they may take off.

Exciting development all right and really shows the limitlessness of our ability to feed an ever growing population.

By: Macro

Macro — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 08:40:04 +0000

There is also an “environmental” city of 300,000 planned. Solar and wind powered and with high rise farm buildings producing food within the city and recycling waste etc. A new approach to the building of cities. This has been tried before – the garden towns of England in the early 1900′s for instance. But how do we change our existing cities to be more energy efficient? We have to do this, or the game is lost.

By: StephenR

StephenR — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:19:59 +0000

Interesting about the patents Bruce, seems the statement “…the U.S. specializing in energy research and innovation, at which China is still weak,” may be heading for a little more equity quicker than some people think.

By: Bruce Hamilton

Bruce Hamilton — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:51:25 +0000

2009 is going to be recognised as the year China claimed leadership in many areas. China is still spending nearly 1% of it’s GDP in R&D ( genuine physical sciences R&D, not social sciences etc. ). Combined with the market size and short product cycles, they are able to refine processes and products very quickly – faster than even Japan and South Korea.

I know peoples’ eyes glaze over when I mention chemistry, but in 2009 China surpassed the USA in chemistry-related patent applications ( which includes the material sciences underlying solar panels, nuclear, etc ).

Over the last decade the US chemistry patents grew by 240%, the Chinese by 2600%. The number of new chemicals listed by Chinese patents increased 2400%. Chemical patents are important because they provide monopoly status for a couple of decades – ironic given how China often disregards IP belonging to others.

Chinese authors now make up a significant % of all journal articles as well, showing they are building both applied and fundamental knowledge.

China has also encouraged a lot of ex-pat researchers back from the West to help establish industries. Pretty brutal stuff – back on good contracts for a couple of years, and then the contracts are renegotiated down, knowing it’s hard to return to the US with all the Pharma chemist layoffs..

If you’re interested in China’s new domination of chemistry, there’s a very interesting, and easy-to-read, article in the US chemistry magazine C&E News, entitled “China Ascendant”.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/88/8802sci1.html