Sunday, April 4, 2010

Wow. That's A Lot.

China is the world’s largest consumer of coal, burning more than the United States, the European Union and China combined. China has rapidly increased its imports in the past year, partly because domestic supply has not increased fast enough to keep up with power plants coming on line.
Okay, dumb mistake in a serious story. A freighter has run onto the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. My first impression seeing this earlier was that it was an oil tanker; I was mistaken. Its primary cargo is coal, but there are about 1000 tons of bunker oil aboard, and early reports are that some of this fuel is leaking. There appears to be optimism, though, that the oil can be pumped off the ship before too much more leaks.

I do wish that articles like this would post a map, if for no other reason than many of us may not be familiar with the location of Great Keppel Island, and actually enjoy learning the geography of this wonderful planet of ours a little better. Gladstone, the port from which the ship had sailed a few hours earlier, is toward the bottom, a little right of the middle. Great Keppel Island, which is near the location the ship grounded is under the cross hairs, upper leftish. Here's the Flash Earth location.
Followup: I went to get a screen capture of the mis-phrasing above, and it has already been corrected to what I assumed was meant in the first place. "China is the world’s largest consumer of coal, burning more than the United States and the European Union combined."

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