A major significance of the research is that if you are trying, for example, to get people to adopt energy efficiency the messsage should be stop wasting money.

However it’s usually ’save’. A quick snapshot search shows how far we are from effective implementation of this research. Article on this here>>>

I know it’s local, and not indicative of anything in particular, but if this is what global warming is bringing, then I don’t want it.

124 million tons CO2/year. = 33.9 million tons coal.
Assuming US efficiency, initially:
http://www.ucsusa.org/ clean_energy/ coalvswind/ brief_coal.html

A 500 megawatt coal plant produces 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power a city of about 140,000 people. It burns 1,430,000 tons of coal,

33.9/1.43 = ~24 plants with 500 MW capacity. They use dirtier, low heat value fuel and the plants were probably old and small. So the closures probably correspond to the capacity of 20 plants or ~ 2 GW.

The president tells us he wants to look forward, not backwards. But in order to confront the lie of perpetual growth and limitless abundance that is at the centre of both the ecological and financial crises, we have to look backwards. And we have to look way backwards, not just to the past eight years of Bush and Cheney, but to the very founding of the US, to the whole idea of the settler state.

Modern capitalism was born with the so-called discovery of the Americas.
…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/ 2009/ jul/ 30/ sarah-palin-capitalism-climate

The latest closures will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain by an estimated 1.1 million tons and carbon dioxide output by 124 million tons per year, Sun said. He said the closures involved moving 400,000 workers to new jobs.

One hundred twenty four million tons per year of CO2 avoided.

Oh, my God, I’m in love. Bless the Chinese. Let’s hope they keep it up, and carry through on their proposals.

One thing this does show is the effectiveness of direct socialist action in dealing with this sort of emergency.

We need to seize our own coal fired power plants, and convert them into biomass or biochar/ oxyfuel combustion / enhanced efficiency / CCS power plants, making them carbon negative.

If we did this, we could start putting a billion tons of carbon (3.6 billion tons of CO2) back underground per year, beating this Chinese contribution to solving the problem by roughly a factor of 30.

- There’s never been a hotter day in Vancouver, Abbotsford, and many other parts of B.C.! A new all-time temperature record was set at YVR (the official weather station for Vancouver) on Wednesday as the mercury hit 33.8 degrees. The past record was 33.3 degrees set back on August 9th, 1960. And in Abbotsford, it was also the hottest day on record, hitting 38.0 degrees, beating the old record of 37.9.

Downtown Vancouver also set an all-time record, with a reading of 34.9 degrees, breaking the old mark of 32.7. The humidex reading in Vancouver came close to 40, and in Abbotsford, it felt like 42. People in the downtown area were grabbing whatever air conditioning they could find, scurrying into stores just to get out of the heat.

Daily records also fell in Victoria, Port Alberni, and Hope, along with a number of other towns and cities. Victoria’s high of 35 shattered the previous record of 31, set in 1971). Hope also has passed its 1971 record, with a high of 38.9 (old record 37). And Port Alberni hit 40 degrees (previous record 36, set in 1971). Other high temperatures of note: Lytton 39, Lillooet 38, and Whistler Village 36.