Donald Trump, Coal Miners & the myth about 'clean coal'.

My husband lost his job after being a machinist with the same company for more than 20 years. One day they told everyone, your job is going to Canada. So poof, end of 20 year job. Lucky for him, unemployment was able to provide him with training and job placement in an entirely new line of work. So that's what coal miners should be thinking about.

 

wrong forum, sorry

 

Renewable energy or green energy may be getting cheaper but it's still expensive.

Who came up with the phrase "renewable energy" ? Another example of playing games with words to further an agenda.

Electrical power isn't renewable, you use it when it's available and if it's not used when it's generated, it's gone. It doesn't go back to the generating plant. It's not being stored any place to be used later on.

Any electrical power that is generated be it gas, oil, nuclear, hydro, solar or wind has to be used when it's generated not ten minutes later or hours later or days later.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...e004e6-622d-11e5-8475-781cc9851652_story.html

Of the world’s 1.3 billion people who live without access to power, a quarter — about 300 million — live in rural India in states such as Bihar. Nighttime satellite images of the sprawling subcontinent show the story: Vast swaths of the country still lie in darkness.

India, the third-largest emitter of greenhouses gases after China and the United States, has taken steps to address climate change in advance of the global talks in Paris this year — pledging a steep increase in renewable energy by 2030.

But India’s leaders say that the huge challenge of extending electric service to its citizens means a hard reality — that the country must continue to increase its fossil fuel consumption, at least in the near term, on a path that could mean a threefold increase in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030, according to some estimates.

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We are not going to have a "cleaner environment" until we can create electricity that is cheaper than fossil fuels. The US tendency is to go the opposite direction and only support things that will drive up the cost.

 

Solar farms need workers - solar panel manufacturers need workers, crap! I just posted a thread about how a company here has found a way to mine old tyres for biodiesel. Imagine the work that could mean for anyone living near a tyre dump

 

Now imagine for a minute what we could sell all those millions of Indians if we could come up with some real alternative energy generators. But we need to spend money on investment and that brings the inevitable screams from the denialists about "my money going to support the rest of the world"

 

Sheeesh!

The source is renewable - as in not used up. Coal once burned is gone but wind is always there another day - especially if eating onions

You are all missing the point - as this new technology is used more commonly it becomes cheaper and when it becomes cheaper the third world can afford tt

But America - please keep denying there is a role for yourselves in this global market and leave all that lovely cashing in to us in Australia!!!!!

 

Of course not, they need heavy subsidies from government.

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Sure, I guess that is why heavily renewable energy Germany has some of the most expensive energy.

 

'Clean Coal' is a concept that works to mitigate carbon dioxide, green house gases and radioactive materials. It will necessarily significantly increase the cost of coal IMO unless the more strict EPA regulations are eased. Coal plants have already invested more than $30 Billion on fume scrubbers.

http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2...ts-invested-more-than-30bn-on-scrubbers-.html

"According to the report, scrubbers were installed at around 110 coal-fired power plants in 34 states during that time, raising the amount of scrubbed generating capacity in the U.S. from 115 GW to just more than 191 GW. That number represents a little less than 60 percent of coal-fired, steam electric generation capacity in the U.S."

Right now we need coal because the 'magical' renewable energy and the 'magic' car fuel has yet to be invented and the tyrannical EPA has thwarted the building of more nuclear power plants.

 

You're describing the sort of jobs that Republicans favor. After all, they're the ones who want to destroy unions and are always telling their base to settle for what the man gives them (it's called "trickle down")

Real wages have begun rising this year for the first time in 16 years.

They never rose under Bush (there was a lot of job growth then too.......all of it in government).

 

Burger King or McDonald's? How about both? That will make your real wages rise. Thanks Obama.

 

So far, the electric power industry has shown little real interest in clean coal.

Not only will clean coal require retaining the expensive infrastructure required to feed any conventional coal plant, but it will require some sort of carbon sequestration method, which is even more expensive.

The Obama Adminstration threw a bone to the coal crowd by backing the Kemper clean coal project in Mississsippi.

So far, it has turned out to be an expensive boondoggle, and the state has had to regulate its market and impose some of the highest electricity rates in the US on customers in order to make the numbers work, yet they still don't. The plant has had a 200% cost overrun, and is awash in lawsuits in investigations.

http://fortune.com/2016/07/05/clean-coal-mississippi/

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...t-highlights-all-thats-wrong-with-clean-coal/

Clean coal is a campaign stump myth, although I am sure Donald Trump does not know that.

I suspect Obama did all along, but went along in order to allow the industry to try and prove itself and let the facts speak for themselves. Of course the project is in Mississippi, whose Governor, Haley Barbour still runs the most powerful conservative lobby shop in DC.

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Making it up again as usual!

 

Why would they buy it from you if they could get electricity from coal cheaper?

 

Actually you are since you could easily search for current prices if you really wanted to know.

 

The cost of energy production from renewables is coming down, the cost of energy from coal is going up. The costs will cross over. Should your country not try and get there first or do you want to stay living in the past?

 

South America and Asia are continents, not countries..

 

The 'clean coal technologies' that you are obviously referring to that are currently being developed to remove or reduce pollutant emissions to the atmosphere, technically and collectively it is referred to as 'Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS)', and it isn't as simple as the coal industry would have you believe.

New Scientist magazine recently provided a good overview of CCS technology. It quotes a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study called The Future of Coal, which concludes that, "the first commercial CCS plant won't be on stream until 2030 at the earliest."Oil-giant Shell "doesn't foresee CCS being in widespread use until 2050."
I never "mindlessly swallow the crap" as you obviously have because you choose to believe your own information but I prefer getting my information from scientific sources and from learned institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So, moving on.....and as I said before. "clean coal is a myth"

 

Health first:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/asia/china-coal-health-smog-pollution.html?_r=0

And some nice pictures:

 

What do you mean 'who came up with the phrase renewable energy?" How can you not know what this means? Okay, lesson 101 on the phrase 'renewable energy'. Fossil fuels are a NON-renewable source. They are limited in supply and will one day be depleted. Nobody really knows when the last drop of oil, lump of coal or cubic foot of natural gas will be collected from the Earth. All of it will depend on how well we manage our energy demands.There is no escaping this conclusion. The sun will always be here, the wind will always be here, hopefully sea water will always be here. (constantly renewable energy) The power obtained through solar panels is stored in batteries and can be used when there is no sun. There is research and development currently being done to improve the methods and limits of storage systems for all alternate fuels like wind, hydro-electric and solar.

 

If the past is cheaper, then that is where I want to live.

 

I have changed careers 3 times. One was owning a machine shop. Changed to real estate sales. But nobody but me did it.
I had to take schooling. i had to pass many tests. it cost plenty of money. Not everyone is goal driven the way I have been.

 

Good on you!!
Realistically, many people will not do what you did
The question then becomes
What if anything should we do for them?
Should we just tell them that they deserve their sorry fate and walk away?

Btw, I also have made several different career shifts
But also know that things would not have been so easy for me if I lived in West Virginia or detroit

 

I did not have laws forcing me to change careers.

Yes, I, unlike the eco-terrorists feel sorry for the miners, the shippers and the coal infrastructure jobs. I feel sorry for consumers whose energy bill will climb. I feel sorry that for each job clean energy produces, it costs 2.2 jobs.

They on the other hand have no guilt feelings.

 

Do you think that tunnel coal miners only are out of work because of laws?

Or steel workers, or car workers?
Or tv and iPhone workers, or telephone operator, or garment workers

 

Your ratio is completely skewed. There's no more than 80,000 jobs in the entire country either directly or indirectly connected to coal production. That includes miners, engineers, handlers, sorters, transporters and distributors. In the State of California alone, there's been more than 500,000 new jobs created through wind, solar, hydro-electric and a recent study done within the last month shows that nationwide, if we accelerate the move to a clean energy economy, it will produce a net additional million jobs by 2030.

I happen to have been born in a small Pennsylvania mining town. My father owned a small farm and a mountain on his property, there was coal in that mountain as well. He worked for a mining company and he died at the age of 46 from black lung. My mother re-married about five years after he died. My new stepfather was also a coal miner. He was killed in the collapse of a section of the mine he was working in along with five others.

Folks, this is not what we would imagine as being the best career choice for any one of our children. If we could go back in time and had the choices for careers in the field of alternative fuels back then, we would do it in a heartbeat.