Author: brother Mao this article is reprinted with the authorization of the official account brother Mao’s horizon (ID: maogeshijue).
one
A sweltering summer
This summer’s heat wave caught many people off guard. The state has issued several high-temperature warnings, and high-temperature weather above 40 degrees has occurred in many parts of the country. For most Chinese people, this is a very hot summer.
In this hot summer season, Chongqing is undoubtedly the saddest city in China.
Since August, because of the extreme high temperature of more than 40 degrees in a continuous month, 66 rivers in Chongqing have been cut off, 25 reservoirs have dried up, and 33 districts and counties and 585 townships and towns are facing water difficulties. Even the Jialing River, which has abundant water in the past and caused many floods, has many shoals at the bottom of the river.
In early August, in order to cool the extreme weather in Chongqing, Chongqing mobilized 107 anti-aircraft guns, 96 rockets, and more than 10000 high-altitude shells and 900 rockets to prepare for artificial rainfall. However, the people’s Liberation Army Artillery Corps preparing for artificial rainfall had their necks sore, and they did not see any clouds in the sky! The artificial rainfall plan came to naught.
Because of the extreme high temperature weather, the power load of residents has increased significantly, but because the river has dried up, the hydropower generation has decreased sharply, so that there is a huge gap in Chongqing’s power supply. In order to ensure the people’s livelihood, the factories in Chongqing are basically shut down, and the air conditioning limit of government units can only be set above 26 degrees. For the Office Park, a mandatory power cut of 2 hours per day is implemented.
Sichuan, which is adjacent to Chongqing, is even more miserable. In the past, Sichuan was a famous hydropower Province, and it had to support 100 billion kwh of electricity in the eastern region every year. However, now that the rivers are dried up, Sichuan’s hydropower generation is directly halved, and the proportion of Sichuan’s hydropower generation is as high as 85%, which means that Sichuan’s power gap is too large.
Although the State Grid mobilizes power generation vehicles from 12 provinces to fully support Sichuan, there are only 44 power generation vehicles in total, and the power produced is barely enough for 44000 1.5p air conditioners. Even for Chengdu, this power is a drop in the bucket.
It is estimated that many people are deeply impressed by this extremely hot summer.
However, there is another bad news that many people may not accept – if we stand in the future, this year may be the coldest summer!
Why?
because
The whole earth is entering the geological cycle of warming. The large amount of carbon dioxide produced by industrialization and modern life not only accelerates the geological cycle of warming, but also creates more extreme climates.
(2) global warming cycle
In 1972, Zhu Kezhen, the founder of modern geography and meteorology in China and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published the famous preliminary study on climate change in China over the past five thousand years.
Don’t think that without a thermometer in ancient times, it was impossible to master the temperature at that time. China is a great country with a splendid history of 5000 years. The rich historical documents of China have created extremely favorable conditions for studying the ancient climate of China. According to various historical and local records, academician Zhu Kezhen created the phenology of back extrapolating the ancient temperature. This phenological research conclusion was later verified by more rigorous geological isotope test results.
According to the research of academician Zhu Kezhen, the temperature change in China in the past 3000 years is roughly such a curve.
This picture is very interesting. We can see that in the warmer climate, the Central Plains regime is generally stronger and the country is basically unified; However, the cycle of cold weather is turbulent, and the Central Plains regime is prone to split.
After the climate reverses from the warm cycle, it is almost the time of the change of dynasties.
How to explain the above phenomenon?
In ancient times, it was mainly agricultural farming. The warm climate was conducive to agricultural production, agricultural output increased, natural and social stability, and the country was strong and prosperous; When the temperature drops, the agricultural output decreases, and the natural society becomes unstable.
In the past, after the change of dynasties, the new emperors often publicized that they were destined for heaven. From the perspective of the climate change cycle, there is a certain truth in this statement – for example, the separation of the feudal government and the town in the late Tang Dynasty was turbulent. It happened that the climate was cold during this period, but after the establishment of the Song Dynasty, the climate entered a warming cycle.
When the Song Dynasty was half dry, the climate quickly entered a cold cycle. Therefore, when the Northern Song Dynasty perished, Zhao Gou could only establish a small court in the Southern Song Dynasty.
The Mongols killed the Southern Song Dynasty, but it only lasted less than a hundred years. The reason is that the whole Yuan Dynasty belongs to the cold cycle in terms of climate, and the agricultural output is decreasing every year. It is really difficult to maintain this situation. Then there was the rise of Zhu Yuanzhang. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the climate began to warm.
The end of the Ming Dynasty was the coldest time in China’s history. The bad climate of the little glacier was simply a difficult problem for the rulers of agricultural civilization. The fall of Beijing in 1646, followed by the entry of the Manchu Dynasty into the customs, was precisely the year when the little ice age ended and China began to enter a warming cycle.
At present, we are in this geological warming cycle. In 2006, the average temperature line of the past 3000 years was about 23 degrees. The worst average temperature in the future will also reach the level of the Song Dynasty, rising to about 24 degrees, but the greater probability is that it will reach the level of the Zhou Dynasty, that is, about 25 degrees.
Some people may have questions here. It seems that there is no big problem for the average temperature to increase by 1-2 degrees. How can there be such a big impact?
70% of our earth is the sea, and the huge ocean has a great regulating effect on the temperature. Let’s think about it. How much heat radiation is it that can increase the overall temperature of the world’s oceans by 1 degree. Under such heat radiation, how much heat wave will the land bear?
The most important thing is that the temperature difference in different parts of the earth is very large. There is such a huge natural air conditioning system near the sea. The average temperature increase of 1 degree will not be so obvious. If it is inland, it will be miserable. The average temperature in coastal areas will increase by 1 degree. For inland areas, it may increase by 7-8 degrees. In extreme cases, it may even increase by more than 10 degrees!
The same is true for the global average temperature to drop by 1 degree.
Give two Chinese and foreign cases.
According to the Swiss information network, since 1850, the average temperature in Switzerland has increased by about 2 degrees. As a result, the glacier volume of the Swiss Alps has melted by 60%. If the temperature rise rate in the past remains unchanged in the future, 50% of the glaciers in the 1500 Alps in Switzerland will disappear in the next 30 years.
The temperature of Zhou Dynasty in China was about 2 degrees higher than that of today. Then, the ecology of the whole northern region was very different from that of today. For example, Henan Province was rich in elephants in the Zhou Dynasty, and Henan Province is called Yu for short, which depicts a person holding an elephant.
In the Zhou Dynasty, the natural ecology of Henan Province was similar to that of Xishuangbanna. There were dense virgin forests everywhere. In addition to elephants, there are also tigers, leopards, rhinoceros and other species. In the pre-Qin literature, there is a record that the king of Zhou “drove tigers, leopards and rhinoceros away”. But where is there any shadow of forest in Henan Province now?
Therefore, there is no reason why the Chinese civilization was born in the Yellow River Basin. The land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River was too humid and hot in ancient times, which was too unfriendly to human survival.
Even in the geological warming cycle, the global temperature is rising slowly. In the whole 20th century, compared with the 19th century, the global average temperature has increased by about 1 degree. However, after entering the 21st century, the use of fossil fuels such as crude oil and coal has increased by leaps and bounds, and the carbon dioxide emissions have reached an alarming level. The direct result is not only the rapid rise of global temperature, but also the occurrence of unprecedented extreme weather.
For example, in China this summer, there were continuous high temperatures of more than 40 degrees. In Canada, an extreme high temperature of 49.5 degrees suddenly occurred, directly killing more than 130 people. In Britain, France and other European countries, there were also high temperatures of more than 40 degrees. It should be noted that Canada and European countries, because of their high latitudes, used to be around 30 degrees in summer, which is a very cool area. This summer, they were also attacked by extreme weather.
(source: observer network)
What will happen if the global average temperature rises by another 1 degree in the future, reaching the level of the Sui and Tang Dynasties?
First of all, it is very good for agricultural production (regardless of extreme climate). During the Sui Dynasty, because of the warm climate, the output of rice increased greatly, and the warehouses could not hold enough, so a large number of granaries had to be built for storage. Therefore, the peasant uprising at the end of the Sui Dynasty, as long as a large granary was built, it could feed tens of thousands of people for several years.
According to historical records, 60 years after the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, the rice left by the Sui Dynasty has not been eaten.
In the Tang Dynasty, the output of rice per mu of land could reach more than 600 Jin. This record was maintained until the 1980s, when China’s rural areas popularized improved seeds and large-scale use of chemical fertilizers. You see, it was only through the industrial revolution that mankind managed to surpass the effect of increasing the temperature of nature by one degree.
Therefore, if the global temperature rises by 1 degree in the future, the vast deserts in Northwest China will become oases, and there will be no problem at all if the cultivated land area increases by hundreds of thousands of millions of square kilometers. Now China imports 100 million tons of grain every year. In the future, there will be no need to import grain, and there may be a large amount of surplus to export.
In addition to grain, the variety and quantity of fruits will also increase significantly. We all know the story that Yang Guifei liked to eat lychees in the Tang Dynasty, but what many people don’t know is that many of the lychees that Yang Guifei ate were transported from Henan. Henan in the Tang Dynasty was not only rich in lychees, but also had better transportation conditions than Guangdong. It was more convenient to transport lychees from Henan than from Guangdong.
Although high temperature is good for agricultural production, it is not so friendly to ordinary people.
The capital of the Tang Dynasty was Chang’an (now Xi’an). Now Xi’an is cool in summer, but in the Tang Dynasty, the average temperature is 1 degree higher than the current one, the summer is very hot.
The poet Du Fu wrote a poem to describe the extreme heat in Shaanxi. During the day, it was like this:
“The birds died of bitter heat, and the fish in the pond dried up their mud.”
The birds died of heat, the pond dried up, and the fish died on the mud;
Write a poem at night and say again:
“Never let the sun go down. The burning steam will poison my intestines.”
A few days later, he wrote a poem to express that it was too hot to eat
“On July 6, it’s bitter and hot. It’s not enough for temporary meals.”
Compared with Du Fu, Li Bai is much more free and easy. He wrote in summer mountain:
“Lazily shaking the white feather fan, naked in the green forest.”
“Take off the towel and hang it on the stone wall, and the pine wind will spread on the exposed roof.”
Well, the great poet Li Bai directly chose to run naked and run into the green mountains and rivers to enjoy the cool breeze.
In the Song Dynasty, the average temperature was about 1.5 degrees higher than that of the current day, which was a little higher than that of the Tang Dynasty. At that time, summer was a disaster for the people.
The history of the Song Dynasty · records of the five elements II records as follows:
In May, when the weather is hot, the plants are withered and the springs are exhausted.
The grass and trees withered and the spring dried up. You can imagine how hot it was.
It’s not over yet!
Because the spring water dried up, the river also dried up, and water became scarce. According to historical records——
“The traveling capital is a hundred dollars for water, and the Jianghuai cup water is tens of dollars.”.
Poor people can’t afford such expensive water, so many people die of thirst.
The capital of the Song Dynasty was Kaifeng, Henan Province. The water in Kaifeng was sold for “100 yuan of water”. It was even hotter in Nanjing in the south. Therefore, Zhao Mingcheng, the husband of the famous poet Li Qingzhao, was appointed by the imperial court to guard Huzhou. He went to the capital city Jiankang (the ancient name of Nanjing) to report for the record. As a result, he was hot to death when he arrived in Nanjing. Li Qingzhao was deeply saddened and left a lasting sigh——
“Looking, looking, cold and desolate, sad and miserable.”
If there was an air conditioner at that time, how could Li Qingzhao be a widow? Of course, it is impossible to leave a beautiful poem that has been sung for thousands of years.
If the average temperature in the future rises by 2 degrees, reaching the level of the Zhou Dynasty, it is impossible to say how hot the climate will be in the future. This is enough to cause earth shaking changes in the global geographical landscape. The Arctic glaciers will basically melt, most of the Antarctic will melt, the sea level will rise by 2 meters, and most coastal cities will be submerged.
As for China, probably the whole northern region will become another Xishuangbanna, and many barren lands in Xinjiang, Gansu, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia will become a land of fish and rice, while the southern region is relatively miserable. The temperature of 50 degrees in summer is normal, and it is not impossible to reach 60 degrees in extreme cases.
Under normal circumstances, the geological cycle warming is very slow. Generally, it takes at least a hundred years or even hundreds of years for the average temperature of the earth to rise by 2 degrees. I’m afraid that the future carbon dioxide emissions will not be controlled, which will directly lead to the rapid global warming cycle.
In recent years, it has been an obvious example that extreme weather has come too frequently, and droughts, floods, and snowstorms that have not been seen in a century have come one after another without a break.
I have seen a data, but I haven’t found any reliable data to confirm it. Here I’ll tell you that the global average temperature has risen by 0.5 degrees in the last five years! This data is too scary. I hope it is not true.
three
Extreme droughts in history
As we said earlier, if the climate is mild and slowly rising, it is good for agricultural production, but we are afraid of extreme weather, such as continuous high temperature and no rain, which is extremely bad for agricultural production, because in this case, large-scale drought will generally occur, and agricultural production is basically no harvest.
In the 3000 year history of China, extreme weather is very common. According to the introduction in the history of China’s famine relief compiled by Deng Tuo, “in the history of China, water, drought, locust, hail, wind, plague, earthquake, frost, snow and other disasters, from the 18th year of Shangtang (1766 BC) to 1937 ad, a total of 5258 disasters occurred in 3703 years, with an average of about once every six months.”
According to Joseph Needham’s statistics, over the past 2100 years, there have been more than 1600 major floods and more than 1300 major droughts in China.
Therefore, drought and flood are the most common.
Drought is an extreme high-temperature climate. This high-temperature climate directly leads to the rapid melting of the glaciers in the upper mountains of our country. The dissolved ice water is roughly transmitted from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River to the middle and lower reaches after September, resulting in large-scale floods.
In ancient history, the drought records were often as precious as gold, but the most cruel truth was hidden in the short words.
Let’s look at some historical records of drought.
“Guanzi · light and heavy chapter” said: “seven years of drought in the Tang Dynasty, the people have no children.”
This is a record of seven consecutive years of drought during the Chengtang period of the Shang Dynasty (1766-1760 BC). As a result of this great drought, many people’s children were lost.
Why do these young children lose their lives?
Of course, many of them died of starvation due to lack of food. But why did the historian specially emphasize that “people have no children”?
I think the truth may be more cruel. Under the situation of severe lack of food, ordinary people can only exchange their own children to eat.
Then the Han Dynasty.
According to the book of the former Han Dynasty · the book of Emperor Wu (114 BCE), “in April, the drought in Guandong, more than 40 counties were hungry, and people ate each other.”.
“Cannibalism” need not be explained, right?
Records of the Sui Dynasty.
“In the 14th year of kaihuang (594), there was a great drought in the pass, and Emperor Wen led all officials and people to eat Luoyang.”.
Because of the drought, even the emperor and the officials did not have enough food to eat. They had to go to Luoyang to eat. Let’s think about the situation of the common people?
Since the Tang Dynasty, the records of drought have become more and more detailed. However, there is one record that basically follows the drought. This word is “people eat each other”.
——In the 4th year of Zhonghe in the Tang Dynasty (884), there was a severe drought in the south of the Yangtze River, causing famine and cannibalism.
——In the second year of Ming Dao in the Northern Song Dynasty (1033), it was recorded in the history that “there was a severe drought in the south, all seeds were destroyed, and many people fled into exile. Because of hunger, the disease became epidemic, and the dead were 12 or 13”.
——From the 1st year of Tianli in the Yuan Dynasty (1328) to the 1st year of Zhishun (1330), Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other provinces suffered from drought for years, and the hungry people ate each other.
After the Ming Dynasty, the historical materials about the drought became more and more detailed and abundant, and then we can learn more historical details.
In the 3rd year of Chongzhen (1630), Shaanxi was hungry again. Ma maocai, the governor of Shaanxi, said in his book “preparing for Chen’s hunger”, that the people competed to eat the grass in the mountains. When the grass was eaten, the bark was peeled, and the bark was eaten, they could only eat Guanyin soil, and finally died of abdominal distension. In the 6th year of Chongzhen, the “drought locusts in Shaanxi, Yaozhou and Chengcheng counties, and more than half of the people died”.
Therefore, it was very scary in the areas where the great drought broke out later, because people saw this picture when walking in these areas——
All the fields are bare, and no grass can be seen. The village is quiet, and no dogs can be heard, and no people can see it. Because the bodies of starving people have been eaten by the hungry people. Only in the graveyard can you see groups of wild dogs. Each one is fat and strong, and his eyes are red. He looks at the lonely pedestrians and sees a group of wild dogs that specifically eat the dead bodies.
It is a scene of hell on earth.
If the extreme weather we are now experiencing had been a large-scale drought in ancient times, countless people would have died. However, in modern China, even in Sichuan and Chongqing, where the high temperature is the most serious, we still have enough food, clean drinking water, at most there is a gap in electricity, and the electricity consumption of residents’ air conditioning can not be fully guaranteed. Compared with ancient times, even compared with other countries, China’s situation is much better.
The extreme weather encountered by backward countries is a major drought, and countless people die.
The great drought in Africa from 1983 to 1985 killed 50 million people, and the great drought in India in 2009 left the poor with only one meal a day. In this extreme weather this year, countries in Africa and the Middle East have a high probability of major drought and famine.
Extreme weather in developed countries is also very troublesome, and the power gap far exceeds that of China.
In the summer of this year, the electricity prices in major European countries all increased significantly. The electricity price in France reached 2.86 yuan / kWh (in RMB, the following are all), more than five times the average price in the past five years; The electricity price in Germany rose to 3.76 yuan / kWh, more than four times the average price in the past five years; The most frightening thing in Britain is that the electricity price has risen to 80 yuan / kWh, which is 50 times the average electricity price in the past five years! Such an exaggerated price is estimated to be affordable to few families even if the electricity is not available.
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four
How to solve power shortage
For human society, extreme climate is the most difficult to predict and cope with.
China is rich in water resources, and hydropower accounts for about 15%. Sichuan is a big province of hydropower, with hydropower accounting for more than 85%. In the past, Sichuan often gave up a lot of power because of too much power generation, but this year, it is precisely Sichuan that has a severe power shortage.
Why?
The media simply attributed the reason to the high temperature causing the river to dry up.
In fact, this is not entirely the reason.
I learned from my communication with friends in the power system that it was predicted that there might be rainstorms in summer and autumn this year, and all the hydropower stations in the Yangtze River were discharged in the second quarter. Therefore, the power generation of the Yangtze River power increased by 60% in the second quarter, and there was no shortage of electricity.
However, in July and August, not only did the rainstorm not come, but the extreme weather of continuous drought and no rain occurred in most parts of the Yangtze River Basin. Therefore, in July and August, the power generation of the whole Yangtze River Basin (including the branch rivers) decreased sharply, almost halving.
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The weather forecast, especially the forecast of more than one month, is originally to predict a probability, and the occurrence of small probability events cannot be solved by manpower.
If there is rainstorm in summer and autumn, the previous operation is to avoid possible major floods and save countless economic losses. However, the extreme drought can only be considered unlucky.
In 2021, China’s power production structure is as follows: thermal power generation accounts for 71%, hydropower generation accounts for 15%, and nuclear power generation accounts for 5%. The rest is photovoltaic and wind power generation. In addition to thermal power generation and nuclear power generation, hydropower, photovoltaic and wind power generation all depend on the weather. Therefore, there is often a mismatch between power production and demand.
To solve this problem, especially if we want to vigorously develop photovoltaic and wind power generation in the future, we must solve the problem of electric energy storage. So that the daily surplus power can be stored and released when there is a gap in power.
However, power storage is a worldwide problem. On the one hand, it requires technological breakthroughs, and on the other hand, it also requires the state to invest heavily in the construction of power storage facilities. All these require time. As long as we can build a large-scale power storage facility (equivalent to a power warehouse) in the next few years, we can cope with the extreme weather.
This article is reproduced under the authorization of the official account cat brother’s horizon (ID: maogeshijue).