The non-2008 growth rates are why people like Michael Shellenberger tell a certain tech magazine things like, “”If China burns all the coal that it is set to burn between now and 2050, we are super-deeply fucked.” The 2008 growth rate is why people like the environmental economist, Alan Randall, say things like, “These are not ordinary times, but there is a silver lining – recessions tend to be good for the environment.”

This data is coming out of Richard K. Morse’s group at Stanford, who told the New York Time’s Andy Revkin that even though China “had seen slowdowns in the growth in electricity supplies recently, often because of shortages of coal or the ability to get the fuel where it was needed,” the jump off the cliff beginning “in the last few months is new.”

Via > Andy Revkin’s DotEarth
Image Credit: Richard K. Morse, Stanford University. Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics

“[Mr. Chu] is an indication that Obama really is committed to pursing renewable energy, which the Energy Department has been subsidizing and researching for 30 years,” Ebell told the Washington Times. “It’s a boondoggle.”

Well, for the best-known alt energy technology, solar photovoltaics, here’s what that “boondoggle” has cost the taxpayer: less than $75 million a year since the early 80s. That’s nothing!

I’d be willing to be that our government probably spent more than that on beer for the military.

Via > National Renewable Energy Laboratory