Pirate's Cove

Cause “climate change”, y’all!

Frozen Pot Stickers Are Hastening The World’s Demise

Your favorite doughy midnight snack may be a contributing factor to world annihilation. A fascinating article in this week’s Times Magazine shows how China’s rapidly expanding network of freezers is having a huge impact on global warming.

The world’s number one carbon emitter (We’re Number Two!) is experiencing the boom in commercial and residential refrigeration the United States saw some decades ago, but on a much larger scale.

This [refrigeration] is not simply transforming how Chinese people grow, distribute and consume food. It also stands to become a formidable new factor in climate change; cooling is already responsible for 15 percent of all electricity consumption worldwide, and leaks of chemical refrigerants are a major source of greenhouse-gas pollution. Of all the shifts in lifestyle that threaten the planet right now, perhaps not one is as important as the changing way that Chinese people eat.

Usually, this would be a good time for a

and ending the post. However, let’s jump to the original article, which is not so much about pot stickers/Chinese dumplings, but simply using them as an excuse to whine about modernization and factories. There was actually a good point made early in that NY Times article, in terms of how these factories that spring up causing actual air pollution in China. You’ve seen the pictures of massive smog in China. However, instead of focusing on the dirty air itself, this bat guano insane Warmists have to bring “climate change” into the debate, attempting to make it the focal point, when the dirty air itself should be the primary focus.

The Times, along with Gothamist, are Very Concerned with the rise of refrigeration. The Times’ article notes how much better for human health refrigeration is, but, now that Other People are starting to use it, they are very much against it, cause “climate change”.

For all the food waste that refrigeration might forestall, the uncomfortable fact is that a fully developed cold chain (field precooling stations, slaughterhouses, distribution centers, trucks, grocery stores and domestic refrigerators) requires a lot of energy. In the city of Suzhou, I visited the research-and-development center of Emerson Climate Technologies, one of the largest manufacturers of refrigeration systems in the world. Emerson distributes the compressors, valves and flow controls that cool many of China’s new automated dumpling freezers and yogurt-display cases. (snip)

Calculating the climate-change impact of an expanded Chinese cold chain is extremely complicated. Artificial refrigeration contributes to global greenhouse-gas emissions in two main ways. First, generating the power (whether it be electricity for warehouses or diesel fuel for trucks) that fuels the heat-exchange process, which is at the heart of any cooling system, accounts for about 80 percent of refrigeration’s global-warming impact (measured in tons of CO2) and currently consumes nearly a sixth of global electricity usage.

This is all very easy for Warmists, like the writer, Nicola Twilley, to complain about, because they already have their own refrigeration, and are more than happy to shop at stores which have theirs. They want to stop Other People from getting the same.