Australia, the coal capital of the planet, Earth

We love to beat up on Coal in the USA but folks you have not seen nothing yet. Australia has the command of the Coal Market for the world.
This video is well worth watching.

Who has hands on experience mining coal?

 

I happen to like coal

 

Fantastic. Our national pride...

 

I like watching videos of those massive coal and ore trains in Australia, along with the road train trucks with like 10 trailers.

 

Apologies, I meant that to be sarcasm.

We are one of the sunniest countries in the world. There's no excuse for us to mine coal.

 

The "excuse" is that coal is a useful and valuable product that other countries are willing to pay good money for.

 

True

the up side of that is ours is black coal which does burn faster and cleaner.

But this is also why we need to tackle this issue on the international stage through global agreements. You know like the Paris agreement that Trump pulled out of?

 

Trump did not pull Australia out of the Paris agreement.

 

Well apparently others think there is an excuse given they lead the world in exporting Coal.

 

And that's not all. Australia is also the world's primary source of uranium for nuclear power plants.

So highly ironic that Australia has a policy of not allowing any nuclear power plants on their own soil. US aircraft carriers are even prohibited from stopping at Australian ports if they are powered by nuclear reactors. This has resulted in some inconvenience for US military forces stationed in the Pacific.


The country of Norway is another example of a hypocritical county. They are a huge exporter of natural gas, and some oil, to other countries. The drilling operations are completely government owned. Yet they use all this money to pay for very expensive green energy projects attempting to make their entire country "carbon neutral", and imposing severe restrictions on their own citizens and how much fossil fuels they can use.

 

Paris did not shut down.

What happened is Trump refused to send to the French American tax dollars.

 

As far as coal is concerned most of it is exported to meet demand from overseas. And about half of our production is metallurgical coal used in steel making not thermal coal used for power generation.Our coal fired power stations are aging and being closed down as they reach the end of their life spans. There are 19 plants currently in operation, by 2040 perhaps 5 will be left, if that. And no new ones are build despite pressure from some parts of the fossil fuel industry.

As far as atomic power goes your confusing Australian with New Zealand (you know like its easy to confuse the USA with Canada). New Zealand has a ban on port visits. Australia does not. What is true is we have resisted using nuclear power (again despite lobbying by some sections of the community). This was largely because;

1) The numbers economics didn't stack up. With an abundance of easily accessible coal deposits near waters sources coal fired plants always came in way cheaper. (In part this was because overseas experience has shown that nuclear plants have a history of coming on line late and over budget (which is true). That circumstance might change if some of the new modular designs prove to be a safe, cheap and efficient as the numbers say they'll be I won't hold my breath waiting though.

2) Accidents overseas put the wind up politicians who by nature are risk adverse and don't see a big 'win' in promoting nuclear power.

Lastly solar is stacking up to be waaaay cheaper than nuclear and if there's one thing we have more of than coal or uranium its sunshine.

We do however have a nuclear reactor for the production of out national stockpile of nuclear medicines - some of which we also export.

 

That might be true of what we export, but it certainly isn't true of what we burn. Victoria has long been powered by brown (lignite) coal as was some of SA. Qld & NSW are overwhelmingly black (anthracite) coal. I'm not sure if they even bother mining any stray lignite coal in those states.

 

I thought that they closed Hazelwood biput it appears there is still Yallourn. Victoria is waaay behind the eight ball on this and it is not as if there are no alternatives - they live next door to one of the most powerful consistent wind tunnels in the world - bass straight

 

Which was never an expectation in the first place so that was an easy promise to the gullible

 

That is nothing until you have seen a dragline “walk”

 

I get information from sources such as yours.
The only way to verify it is accurate is to chase all over the internet and locate experts.
I do not care that much.
Thanks for the added information.

 

Australia uses 1.5% of the world's coal usage
China uses 50.5%
US uses 8.5%

Weird how these anti-coal folks always whine in high voices about the US and never say squat about the the Lying Outlaw Polluting Slavers of Beijing. It's almost like their real goal is just finding different reasons to attack the US or something

https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-country/

 

I suspect Australia is a key source of Coal for China.
I agree that posters do defend China and at the same time point fingers at the USA who has taken action to not use coal.

 

That would make sense. China is also the world's biggest coal producer and the Aussies are 4th.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_production

 

China is the major importer of Australian coal as feed stock for both their electricity & steel industries. Exports to other nations are like India who are expanding their power grids are also increasing. Long term? Coal is facing doubtful future since the push is no to replace its use in both sectors. This will take time, but even China want's to phase out coal eventually.

 

It has nothing to do with the gas known as carbon dioxide. That gas is colorless and widely used in food products.

China wants to be able to see it is daylight once the Sun comes up in their cities.

 

Where did I comment about CO2? I just confirmed that yes, China is a major importer of Australian coal.

That aside burning coal produces both CO2 and particulate pollution. So if one goes they both do, regardless of which ranks highest on China's list of concerns.

 

China would be smarter to ban beverages with carbon dioxide in them.

Say will Biden ban beverages with that gas in them?

 

That's a ridiculous argument, and you know it. The amount of CO2 used in commercial food preparation is minuscule.

CFSs used to be the propellant of choice for asthma inhalers and continued to be used for years after the initial ban on use of CFS came into force. Why? Because initially they were exempted from the ban given the minuscule amounts required for that purpose. In fact they only stopped being used when commercial production of CFC wound down and other choices were found to be equally suitable anyway.