顶尖科学家在煤矿问题上抨击英国政府
2021-02-23 jiangye111 10483
正文翻译
‘Absolutely ridiculous’: top scientist slams UK government over coalmine
-Prof Sir Robert Watson says backing of Cumbrian mine refutes claims of climate leadership

“绝对荒谬”:顶尖科学家在煤矿问题上抨击英国政府
——罗伯特·沃森教授表示,对坎布里亚煤矿的支持打脸了英国要在气候变化方面发挥领导作用的宣称


(Prof Sir Robert Watson has led the UN’s scientific organisations for climate and biodiversity.)

(罗伯特·沃森教授是联合国气候和生物多样性科学组织的负责人。)
新闻:

One of the UK’s most eminent environmental scientists has called the government’s failure to block a new coalmine in Cumbria “absolutely ridiculous”.

英国最著名的环境科学家之一称政府未能阻止坎布里亚郡一座新煤矿的行为“绝对荒谬”。

Prof Sir Robert Watson said the UK’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 to tackle the climate crisis was “wonderful”, but that there had to be a focus on immediate actions. The UK is hosting a UN climate summit, Cop26, in November and Boris Johnson has pledged to lead a green industrial revolution.

罗伯特·沃森教授表示,英国承诺在2050年前实现零排放,以应对气候危机,这是“非常棒的”,但必须把重点放在立即采取行动上。英国将于11月主办联合国气候峰会——缔约方大会第二十六届会议,鲍里斯·约翰逊此前已经承诺要领导一场绿色工业革命。

“The British government says, ‘We’re going to lead Cop26 in Glasgow, we really care about climate change. But, by the way, we won’t override the council in Cumbria, and we’ll have a new coalmine.’ Absolutely ridiculous!” Watson said. “You get these wonderful statements by governments and then they have an action that goes completely against it.”

“英国政府说,‘我们将在格拉斯哥领导缔约方大会第二十六届会议,我们真的关心气候变化。但顺便说一句,我们不会推翻坎布里亚郡的议会决议,并且我们将新开一家煤矿。’这绝对荒谬!”沃森说。“你看到政府发表了这些美妙的声明,然后他们却采取了完全相反的行动。”

Watson has led the UN’s scientific organisations for climate and biodiversity, is a former chief scientific adviser at the UK’s environment department and worked for Bill Clinton when he was US president. He has also held senior positions at Nasa and the World Bank.

沃森领导了联合国的气候和生物多样性科学组织,是英国环境部的前首席科学顾问,并在比尔·克林顿担任美国总统时为他工作。他还在美国国家航空航天局和世界银行担任过高级职务。

The underground mine would be the UK’s first in 30 years. Critics, including the government’s official climate advisers, say it seriously undermines Johnson’s ability to lead a successful UN summit, which is seen as vital in averting the worst impacts of global heating. Ministers have repeatedly said the decision on the mine is a local one.

这座地下煤矿将是英国30年来新开的第一座。包括政府的官方气候顾问在内的批评人士说,这严重削弱了约翰逊成功领导召开联合国峰会的能力,而这次峰会被视为避免全球变暖最严重影响的关键。但大臣们一再表示,有关该矿山的决定是地方做出的决定。

Supporters of the £165m mine say it would provide 500 jobs in an area which is among the most deprived in the country. On Thursday, 40 Conservative MPs wrote to the leader of Cumbria county council warning that stopping the mine would “represent a serious risk to Cumbria’s economic growth”.

这座价值1.65亿英镑的煤矿的支持者表示,它将为这个英国最贫困的地区提供500个工作岗位。周四,40名保守党议员致信坎布里亚郡议会领袖,警告称,阻止开矿将“对坎布里亚的经济增长构成严重风险”。

The council approved the mine in October and communities and the local government secretary, Robert Jenrick, chose not to “call in” the plan for a central government decision, which is allowed if a project conflicts with national policy. Amid growing controversy, the council said earlier in February that it would reconsider the decision to take into account climate advice published in December by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).

地方议会于去年10月批准了该项目,社区和当地政府部长罗伯特·詹里克选择不将该计划“提请”中央政府作出决定——如果项目与国家政策冲突,中央政府是允许这么做的。在越来越多的争议中,地方议会在2月早些时候说,它将重新考虑气候变化委员会在12月发布的气候建议的决定。

Watson said decisions to stop carbon emissions were needed immediately: “We need action now. A lot of governments have said, ‘We’ll be zero carbon by 2050’. That’s wonderful [but] it’s 30 years away. The key message on climate is we need to have a 50% reduction of emissions by 2030. We’ve got to focus on short-term actions, not [just] long-term targets and goals.”

沃森说,立即需要做出停止碳排放的决定:“我们现在就需要采取行动。很多政府都说过,‘到2050年我们将实现零碳排放。’这很好(但)还需要30年。关于气候变化的关键信息是,我们需要在2030年之前减少50%的排放。我们必须把重点放在短期行动上,而不仅仅是长期目标。”

Other leading scientists have criticised the mine. Prof James Hansen, who has been called the “godfather of climate change”, told Johnson his “actions and decisions now will either establish or undermine your claim to climate leadership”. Prof Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, said the mine “is a big mistake”.

其他顶尖科学家也对该矿山提出了批评。被称为“气候变化教父”的詹姆斯·汉森教授告诉约翰逊,他“现在的行动和决定将确立或削弱你对气候变化领导地位的主张”。英国政府前首席科学顾问大卫·金爵士表示,开矿“是一个重大错误”。

The mine would produce 2.7m tonnes a year of coking coal, which is used in steel-making rather than burned in power stations. About 85% of the coal from the mine is planned for export, although there is no shortage of such coal globally.

该矿每年将生产270万吨焦煤,用于炼钢,而不是用于电厂燃烧。该煤矿约85%的煤炭计划用于出口,尽管此类煤炭在全球并不短缺。

The mine has planning permission to 2049 but the CCC has said “there may be no domestic use [for coking coal] after 2035”. Green experts say steelmakers will have to deploy new technology to reduce their emissions under the UK’s net zero targets and that green industries provide more secure jobs.

该煤矿获得了到2049年的规划许可,但气候变化委员会表示,“(炼焦煤)可能在2035年后不会在国内使用”。环保专家表示,在英国的净零排放目标下,钢铁制造商将不得不采用新技术来减少排放量,而且绿色产业提供了更有保障的工作岗位。

Cumbria council has yet to set a date for its planning committee to meet and reconsider the mine application, but it is expected before council elections in May. It is thought locally that the council is unlikely to overturn the original backing for the mine.

坎布里亚郡议会尚未为其规划委员会确定开会和重新考虑采矿申请的日期,但预计将在5月议会选举之前举行。当地认为,议会不太可能推翻对开矿的最初支持。

Earlier in February, the website Responsible Investor revealed that EMR Capital, the firm financing the mine, is a signatory to the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment, which requires “incorporating environmental, social, and governance issues into decision-making processes”.

2月初,“负责任投资者”网站披露,为该矿山提供融资的EMR资本公司是联合国支持的《负责任投资原则》的签署国,该原则要求“将环境、社会和治理问题纳入决策过程”。

The UK has cut emissions faster than any other rich nation in recent decades by phasing out coal burning for electricity, as well as with the closure of much of the country’s heavy industry and importing more manufactured goods from overseas.

近几十年来,通过逐步淘汰燃煤发电、关闭该国大部分重工业并从海外进口更多制成品,英国的减排速度比其他任何富裕国家都要快。

But ministers are being criticised over a series of decisions that run counter to cutting emissions, including backing a gas-fired power station that would be the biggest in Europe, a third runway at Heathrow airport and committing £27bn to new roads, a policy now under legal challenge. It was also reported last week that one of Johnson’s flagship green policies, a £1.5bn green homes grant scheme, is likely to be scrapped having reached just 4% of the homes intended.

但英国大臣们正在因一系列与减排背道而驰的决定而受到批评,这些决定包括支持一座将成为欧洲最大的燃气发电站、在希思罗机场修建第三条跑道,以及承诺投入270亿英镑修建新公路——这一政策目前正面临法律挑战。上周也有报道称,约翰逊的“旗舰绿色政策”之一——一项15亿英镑的绿色家园资助计划——可能会被取消,因为只达到了预期建造房屋的4%。

评论翻译
Lanfeix
I used to work for the steel plant in Port Talbot on the blast furance. At the time we didn't like the Welsh coke and preferred the Japanese coke. The trials showed between Welsh and Japanese showing that the Welsh coke was to dirty and was clogging up the chimney (the airflow stack your meant to have in the furnace to maximise production) when they used it as the primary source. I worked on burden distribution at the time and the samples of those cokes where very different the Welsh coke crumbled and flaked compared to the Japanese coke in the same condition. The structure of the under lying coal must have been different but that wasn't my focus.

我以前在塔尔伯特港的钢铁厂工作,在高炉上工作。当时我们不喜欢威尔士焦煤,更喜欢日本焦煤。在威尔士和日本进行的试验表明,威尔士的焦煤在用作主要来源时太脏了,而且会堵塞烟囱(为了提高产量,你应该在炉子里放置气流堆)。我当时负责配料分配,发现那些焦煤样品——威尔士的焦煤和日本的焦煤在相同的条件下特点有很大的不同。地下煤的结构肯定有所不同,但那不是我的重点。

Bbrhuft
Few mines in the UK produced high grade coal suitable for Steel making, one of them was open cast Boughton Lodge in Cumbria. I visited it in the mid-1990s.
Also, as far as I recall, the Coke was coming from China not Japan. The owners of the Broughton Lodge mine told me they were close to closing, undercut by cheap Chinese coal.
Another interesting thing I saw when there was the old mine they intersected, they found a child's shoe a tunnel, likely dating from the 18th century. It was grim to think that they had young children mining the narrow coal seams.

在英国,很少有煤矿能生产出适合炼钢的优质煤,坎布里亚郡的鲍顿露天煤矿就是其中之一。我在20世纪90年代中期去过那里。
而且,据我回忆,焦煤来自中国,而不是日本。布劳顿洛奇煤矿的老板告诉我,由于中国煤炭价格低廉,他们即将倒闭。
我看到的另一件有趣的事是当他们穿越旧矿井时,他们在隧道里发现了一只小孩的鞋,很可能是18世纪的。一想到他们有年幼的孩子在狭窄的煤层中开采,就觉得很可怕。

WaldenVolk
And what was the carbon footprint of importing coal from Japan instead of getting it locally?

从日本进口煤炭而不是从本地开采会产生多少碳排放?

SynthD
What's the point in reducing the distance that 2.7t of coal has to go, if steel is made of 99% iron? If you cared about domestic steel production (a plausibly worthy goal) then we need to mine our own iron. If we have no iron mines why have a coal mine?

如果钢铁是由99%的铁制成的,那么减少270万吨煤的差距有什么意义呢?如果你关心国内的钢铁生产(一个看似有价值的目标),那么我们需要开采我们自己的铁。如果我们没有铁矿,那建煤矿还有必要吗?
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EpsteinTest
Steel is an amazing all rounder. Iron is one of the most abundant metals on the planet, so its cheap and relatively easily accessible compared to aluminium, nickel, cobolt, gold, titanium etc. It's one of only three magnetic elements. With a few small elemental additions and heating and stress cycles it can be made soft or hard, brittle or flexible, resistant to corrosion, and can be used to build SO MANY THINGS that we rely on. These include any sort of high rise building, cars and other transport vehicles, transformers to get energy from power plants to the rest of the country, food cans and lots and lots of infrastructure and other items (tools, weapons etc.).
However, it comes from the ground as haematite , or iron oxide. It needs to be reduced to iron, which is why coal is so important. There are some processes that can use electrolysis to extract the iron, but they require massive amounts of electricity and other elements to be consumed that is usually more expensive than the iron being made. The coal not only provides the energy but the reducing agent. The carbon scavenges the oxygen from the iron oxide, leaving iron as a solid to melt and producing carbon dioxide. There are pleanty of other elements that could do this but none are as abundant as coal, and hence not as cheap. The coke used in blast furnaces in particular (coke being treated coal) is needed in the internal structure of the blast furnace.
The point is that iron is so essential to our way of life that to be a country without the ability to make its own steel is to be completely at the mercy of foreign traders. Any country in this day and age needs steel to survive, and importing the raw materials is cheaper than importing steel, hence why you import ore and not the finished product.
Add to that energy concerns and carbon footprint. You can melt scrap to produce iron and steel without using coal or even natural gas, but at the minute the demand for steel is higher than the scrap market can handle, hence blast furnaces are still necessary. But the steel industry is working hard to increase efficiency, which requires cleaner coal to begin with and ore with a richer iron content.
Tl;dr/ summary: Its not as simple as saying no iron mines, why are we producing coal from coal mines and making steel? Steel is now a necessity and a country's economy cannot function without it. Nothing can replace it in terms of cost and adaptability. Coal is needed to make iron from iron ore and the scrap market cannot keep up with demand. Maybe one day it will but it can't at the moment.

钢铁是令人惊叹的“多面手”。铁是地球上最丰富的金属之一,所以与铝、镍、钴、金、钛等相比,它便宜而且相对容易获取。它是仅有的三种磁性元素之一。只要添加少量元素,再经过加热和应力循环,它就可以变软或变硬,变脆或变韧,抗腐蚀,可以用来建造我们所依赖的许多东西。这些设施包括各种高层建筑、汽车和其他交通工具、从发电厂将能源输送到国家其他地方的变压器、食品罐头、大量的基础设施和其他物品(工具、武器等等)。
然而,它以赤铁矿或氧化铁的形式来自地下。它需要被还原成铁,这就是为什么煤如此重要。有一些方法可以使用电解来提取铁,但它们需要消耗大量的电力和其他元素,通常比制造铁的成本更高。煤不仅提供能量,而且还提供还原剂。碳从氧化铁中清除氧,让铁作为固体融化并产生二氧化碳。有很多其他元素可以做到这一点,但没有一种像煤炭那样丰富,因此也不像煤炭那么便宜。特别是用于高炉的焦炭(焦炭即处理后的煤)是高炉内部结构所必需的。
重点在于,铁对我们的生活是如此重要,以至于一个没有能力自己生产钢铁的国家将完全听凭外国贸易商的摆布。在这个时代,任何国家都需要钢铁来生存,进口原材料比进口钢铁便宜,所以为什么你会进口铁矿石而不是成品。
此外还有能源问题和碳排放问题。你可以在不使用煤甚至天然气的情况下熔化废钢来生产钢铁,但目前对钢铁的需求高于废钢市场的承受能力,因此高炉仍然是必要的。但钢铁行业正在努力提高效率,这首先需要更清洁的煤炭和含铁更丰富的矿石。
总结:这不是说不开铁矿那么简单,为什么我们要从煤矿中生产煤炭,生产钢铁?钢铁现在是必需品,没有它,一个国家的经济就无法运转。就成本和适应性而言,没有任何东西可以取代它。从铁矿石中提炼铁需要煤,而废铁市场无法满足需求。也许有一天会,但现在还不行。

TWeaKoR
I thought this wasn't just a coalmine, but also a coke refinery? Coke usage isn't really going anywhere anytime soon, it's integral into most steel manufacturing. Replacing coke is possible, but it basically has 3 roles with steel and the alternatives for each are very energy and cost prohibitive.
We need steel to build stuff - like wind turbines - so we can get the electrical infrastructure to support a green nation.

我以为这不仅仅是一个煤矿,还是一个炼焦厂?焦炭的使用在短期内不会真的消失,它已经融入了大多数钢铁制造业。替代焦炭是可能的,但它基本上对钢铁有三种作用,每一种的替代品都非常耗能源和成本高昂。
我们需要钢铁来建造东西——比如风力涡轮机——这样我们才能得到电力基础设施来支持一个绿色国家。
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TJSmudger92
The real source of the problem, and the reason that the Cumbrian council have chosen (or forced down) this path to open a coal mine is to create jobs for the local area. 500 jobs is a lot and could really benefit the area. As seen time and time again the current government don't care about anything north of Watford. This whole issue could be easily solved by the government stepping in and working out a plan to bring in a green initiative (wind/solar, a super recycling centre, forest planting) to take the place of the mine, and Cumbria gets their jobs and the world doesn't get a pointless coal mine which could be easily shut down in 5 or 10 years as climate change will take a turn for the worse (which it will).
The Tories bloody austerity will be the death of us all. After this lockdown is fully eased up, the spending tap will be turned off and people in places like Cumbria are going to be the ones who suffer

问题的真正根源,以及坎布里亚议会选择(或强迫)这条渠道开煤矿的原因,是为了为当地创造工作岗位。500个工作岗位是很多的,可以真正使该地区受益。正如我们一次次看到的,现任政府对沃特福德以北的任何事情都漠不关心。整个问题就很容易解决:只要政府介入并制定出一个引入绿色倡议的计划(风能/太阳能,超级回收中心,植树造林)以取代煤矿,并且坎布里亚能得到他们的工作岗位,使得世界上不会有一个毫无意义的在5或10年内很容易被关闭(它将会)的煤矿(因为气候变化将会变得更糟)。
保守党血腥的紧缩政策将会害死我们所有人。在封锁完全解除后,消费龙头将被关闭,坎布里亚郡等地的人们将会遭殃

TreczoksEuropean unx
Opening a coal mine? Do they want to do this all with robots?
I cannot imagine such an endeavor to be profitable in any way. They spend money, create 500 jobs. and the next thing you'll see is that they threaten the government to close shop unless they get subsidies.
Heck, even the Australians think about closing coal mines because the coal price fell through the bottom. And there the coal nearly jumps into the waiting trains, at least in comparison to European (and British, if you want to count them separately, even though I'm speaking geological here, not political) pits.

开煤矿?他们想用机器人来做这些吗?
我无法想象这样的努力会以任何方式获利。他们花钱,创造了500个工作岗位。接下来你会看到,他们威胁政府关闭商店,除非他们得到补贴。
见鬼,就连澳大利亚人都在考虑关闭煤矿,因为煤炭价格跌到了谷底。在那里,煤炭几乎会跳进等待的火车,至少与欧洲(和英国,如果你想把它们分开算,即使我在这里说的是地质,而不是政治)的煤矿相比是这样。

PsychedelicSailor
But a lone coalmine doesn't make much difference and we are already relying on China's coalmines, with much worse conditions both in terms of emissions and labour.
I'm a scientist. There is nothing in science which proves that we shouldn't have coalmines.

但是,单独一家煤矿并没有多大区别,而且我们已经在依赖中国的煤矿了——它们的排放和劳动力条件都要糟糕得多。
我是一个科学家。科学上没有任何东西可以证明我们不应该有煤矿。

Spe99
As a child I lived through the blackouts caused by miners strikes preceeding Thatcher. Constantly Demanding ridiculous rises and if they didn't cave in the electricity went off.

作为一个孩子,我经历了撒切尔夫人之前矿工罢工造成的停电。不断地要求荒谬的涨价,如果他们不同意,就会断电。

The-Dirty-Turtle
Seems PM Thatcher was ahead of her time, she would have been deemed a Saint today!

看来撒切尔夫人走在了她的时代前面,她今天会被视为圣人!
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king_walnutEast Sussex
As much as I hate her and I hate the Tories, had the mines stayed open, closing them would have been high up on Labour manifestos from the late 90s onwards. The mining towns of the north were going to be fucked up eventually no matter who was in charge.
People can say "Thatcher was a cunt because of how brutally she did it" and they're right, but there'll never be a kind way to destroy an industry and thousands of people's lives. If she hadn't done it then Major, Blair or Brown would have.

尽管我讨厌她,也讨厌保守党,但如果煤矿继续开放,从90年代末开始,关闭它们也将成为工党宣言中的重要内容。不管谁掌权,北方的矿业城镇最终都会被cao。
人们会说“撒切尔是个biao子,因为她做得太残忍了”,他们是对的,但永远不会有一种善良的方式来摧毁一个行业和成千上万人的生命。如果她不这么做,梅杰,布莱尔或布朗也会这么做。

lesser_panjandrumDevon
There might not be a perfect way to end an industry that affects whole communities and thousands of people's livelihoods, but there are definitely kinder alternatives to Thatcher's brutal approach.
Investing in regional development outside of London could have been a huge help, but she chose not to do it.

也许没有一个完美的方法来终结一个影响整个社区和成千上万人生计的(高排放)产业,但肯定有比撒切尔的残忍方法更温和的选择。
投资于伦敦以外的地区发展可能会有很大帮助,但她却选择不这么做。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


International_Yam966
Not when the unxs were making it harder. They could have worked with the Government. Not tried to 'rebel' (i.e: cause a fuss, heads lining own pockets and fuck our workers)
Though I agree investment needs in the north but that's also every single Government refusing to do so

当工会让这种选择变得更困难的时候,就没有意义了。他们可以和政府合作。而不是试图“反抗”(即:引起骚动,自己捞钱,cao我们工人)
虽然我同意北方的投资需求,但每个政府都拒绝这样做

Nicecoyot
ironic these thatcherites opening a coal mine 30 years after she closed them all

具有讽刺意味的是,这些撒切尔主义者们在她关闭所有煤矿30年后又开了一座煤矿

PsychedelicSailor
You don't know what you're talking about.
We didn't replace coal with green energy. That wasn't on Thatcher's agenda at all. Her ideology was actually extraordinarily destructive to the environment, and CO2 emissions didn't register at all.
We replaced coal with by burning more natural gas, and also increasing our dependence on energy production abroad (through purchasing more of a finished, energy-expensive product), in China for example, thus passing the buck to someone else with even worse conditions and regulation.
If the UK had really wanted a green agenda in the 80s and 90s it would have followed the Scandinavian countries and tried to exploit its wind and water, which are the UK's most valuable resource.
It did not do that until very recently. In fact Cameron massively cut funding to renewables. Until the last year or two it was only Scotland in the UK that was seriously pursuing renewable energy.

你不知道你在说什么。
我们没有用绿色能源取代煤炭。这根本不在撒切尔的议程上。她的意识形态实际上对环境造成了极大的破坏,而二氧化碳排放根本没有被记录在案。
我们用燃烧更多的天然气取代了煤炭,同时也增加了我们对国外能源生产的依赖(比如在中国购买更多的高能耗的成品),从而把责任推给了条件更差、监管更差的国家。
如果英国在80年代和90年代真的想要一个绿色议程,它就会效仿斯堪的纳维亚国家,尝试开发英国最宝贵的资源——风能和水资源。
直到最近它才做到这一点。事实上,卡梅伦大幅削减了对可再生能源的资助。直到前一两年,英国只有苏格兰真正在追求可再生能源。

donttellpike
So stop fracking, that was going to employ a shit load more of people, and get a cleaner fuel source which has more abundance....
But lets bring back the dirtiest fossil fuel, that has worse seismic and waste repercussions for significantly less jobs and is more finite.
yeah sick.

所以停止水力压裂法,那将雇佣更多的人,并获得更清洁的燃料来源,也更丰富……
但是,让我们回到最脏的化石燃料上来,它会造成更严重的地陷和浪费,导致工作岗位明显减少,而且是有限的。
是的,很病态。

Vitekr2
Coking coal is currently in abundance in the world and I doubt that UK based coal mine can produce it cheaper than Ukraine or Russia. Looks like political project to brag about job creation.

目前世界上焦煤储量丰富,我怀疑英国煤矿生产焦煤的成本是否能低于乌克兰或俄罗斯。这看起来像是吹嘘创造工作岗位的政治计划。

Pie_sky
I doubt the UK can produce cheaper coking coal than other areas in the world and since domestic use will be severely lowered past 2035, why would you want to invest in such old world industry.
The jobs in mining are terrible and even modern mines are not very worker friendly. Why not invest in new world technologies in Cumbria.

我怀疑英国能否生产出比世界其他地区更便宜的炼焦煤,而且到2035年以后,国内煤炭使用量将大幅下降,你为什么要投资这样一个旧世界的产业呢?
采矿业的工作很糟糕,即使是现代矿山也不太适合工人。为什么不投资坎布里亚郡的新世界技术呢?
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


monkey_news_ya_cnnnn
I bet this scientist drives to work in a car made from steel, or gets on a steel train, to work in a building help up by steel girders, and eats their sunday lunch with Sheffield Steel cutlery.

我敢打赌,这位科学家一定是开着钢铁制造的汽车去上班,或者坐着钢制火车,在一个由钢梁支撑的建筑里工作,周日午餐还会用谢菲尔德钢制餐具。

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