Believe Me #Coal Does Not Affect Climate?

Coal industry lobby won’t admit to role in climate change

By Lee Fang
(Republic Report) – Does burning coal, one of the most carbon-intensive fuel sources on the planet, contribute to climate change? 

That simple question stumped the industry’s most prominent advocate, Robert 


“Mike” Duncan, at a Colorado mining conference last week. Asked twice by Republic Report, Duncan first said that a “lot of people believe” that coal causes climate change, before replying, “I’m not answering your question.”

Duncan, the president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), gave a talk to a room filled with mining industry executives about the dangers of new EPA rules concerning greenhouse emissions. ACCCE, which represents the largest coal companies in the nation, has pushed back against the administration’s coal power plant rules.

In an interview with E&E TV in January, Duncan said that instead of the EPA rules, his industry could take a gradual approach to reducing emissions with carbon capture sequestration, which he claimed can “make coal even cleaner. 





Read More

Sure Lets Just Burn More Mid-Night Coal 

New Chinese Laws Attack Pollution

China Takes On Pollution With Biggest Changes in 25 Years

BEIJING (Bloomberg News) – China’s legislature passed the biggest changes to its environmental protection laws in 25 years, punishing polluters more severely as the government works to limit smog and contaminated water and soil linked to three decades of economic growth.

Amendments to the law “sets environmental protection as the country’s basic policy,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday. The rules hadn’t been changed since first enacted in 1989 as China began consuming more energy as the most-populous country grew into a global manufacturing hub.

Now the world’s biggest carbon emitter, China has moved to address the environmental damage that has been a byproduct of its breakneck economic growth and become a leading cause of social unrest. Government reports and recent comments from top officials about pollution have revealed the extent of the damage and health issues related to China’s soil, water, and air. 

The amendments give the public and government “powerful new tools” to cut pollution, Barbara Finamore, senior attorney and Asia director at the Natural Resources and Defense Council in New York, said in an interview. “The pollution is now impossible to ignore,” she said. “This is very big news.” 

Read More 

Pollution Doomsday

Coal Demand on Upswing

Coal Burning Brightly as Demand Returns With Economic Upswing

By Scott Cohn and Brad Quick


(NBC News) – The first thing you notice at the Spring Creek mine in Decker, Montana, is the size. It's a sprawling, 9,000-acre site in Big Sky Country near the Wyoming line.

Giant coal hauling trucks the size of two-story buildings zip around the complex with surprising ease, considering the fact that they are carrying 255 tons of coal per trip. The coal is loaded onto mile-long trains—each car carrying more than 100 tons—that leave the mine 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

At the same time, massive 13,000-ton cranes known as draglines slowly peel back strips of earth and rock 200 feet deep to reveal the rich, black, 80-foot seam of coal below. As the coal is removed, giant machines are filling the strip back in, then moving over like a gigantic lawn mower and starting the process all over again.

Despite the dizzying amount of activity at Spring Creek, production is steadily returning to what it was after the recession forced many coal producers to cut output as demand and prices slumped. Also, many utilities switched from coal to natural gas to fire their power generators plants as gas prices fell.

But the Spring Creek mine's owner, Wyoming-based Cloud Peak Energy, believes coal is poised for a comeback. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, sees a long-term horizon for coal.

Read More

China Digs LA Size Coal Base; Carbon Grave Dooms Climate

China Is Building a "Coal Base" the Size of LA

Brian Merchant

(Motherboard) – China, faced with ever-worsening pollution in its major cities—a recent report deemed Beijing "barely suitable for living"—is doing what so many industrializing nations have done before it: banishing its titanic smog spewers to poor or rural areas so everyone else can breathe easier.

But China isn't just relegating its dirty coal-fired power plants to the outskirts of society; for years, it's been building 16 unprecedentedly massive, brand new "coal bases" in rural parts of the country. There, they won't stifle China's megacities; they'll churn out enough pollution to help smother the entire world.

The biggest of those bases, the Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry Base, spans nearly 400 square miles, about the size of LA. 

Just Adding to This Unbelievable Devastation 

It's already operational, and seemingly always expanding. It's operated by Shenhua, one of the biggest coal companies in the world. China hopes to uses these coal bases not just to host some of the world's largest coal-fired power plants, but to use super-energy intensive technology to convert the coal into a fuel called syngas and use it to make plastics and other materials. 

(Read More)

GOOD NEWS: US Coal Exports Double (2007-13)

GOOD NEWS: US Coal Exports Double

 (2007-12)

(Read More)

Should we not be dancing in the streets along with the stakeholders of the coal companies experiencing unprecedented success in export sales marked by Asian customers providing even faster growth? Funny thing - what is good news for some, is bad news for others. Sure this keeps  the pressure off energy prices and perhaps defers building more nuclear plants. Also local air pollution may decrease, but other forms of environmental damage from strip and conventional mining should offset this benefit. 

The bad news starts with the fact that we are still accelerating the depletion of this non-renewable resource, despite reductions in US domestic consumption. Global air pollution and carbon emissions also increases, ensuring that we continue supporting the long-term destruction of the bio-sphere.What is ultimately more devastating is that the increase with its exponential trend in mining, means that, at some point, a future generation will simply run of another energy source. 

By then there may be a mere 14 billion living on the planet when the lights actually go out. And do you think that this might set the stage for intense wide-spread global conflicts? Hmm. So today's good news creates tomorrow's bad news. 

Ah, but who cares, every generation faces its own challenges. Right?

Dr Peter G Kinesa

August 16, 2013  

How long does the dance last?