Slashdot Mirror
The World Falls Back In Love With Coal
Hugh Pickens writes "Richard Anderson reports on BBC that despite stringent carbon emissions targets in Europe designed to slow global warming and massive investment in renewable energy in China, coal, the dirtiest and most polluting of all the major fossil fuels, is making a comeback with production up 6% over 2010, twice the rate of increase of gas and more than four times that of oil. 'What is going on is a shift from nuclear power to coal and from gas to coal; this is the worst thing you could do, from a climate change perspective,' says Dieter Helm. Why the shift back to coal? Because coal is cheap, and getting cheaper all the time. Due to the economic downturn, there has been a 'collapse in industrial demand for energy,' leading to an oversupply of coal, pushing the price down. Meanwhile China leads the world in coal production and consumption. It mines over 3 billion tons of coal a year, three times more than the next-biggest producer (America), and last year overtook Japan to become the world's biggest coal importer. Although China is spending massive amounts of money on a renewable energy but even this will not be able to keep up with demand, meaning fossil fuels will continue to make up the majority of the overall energy mix for the foreseeable future and when it comes to fossil fuels, coal is the easy winner — it is generally easier and cheaper to mine, and easier to transport using existing infrastructure such as roads and rail, than oil or gas. While China is currently running half a dozen carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects — which aim to capture CO2 emissions from coal plants and bury it underground — the technology is nowhere near commercial viability. 'Renewed urgency in developing CCS globally, alongside greater strides in increasing renewable energy capacity, is desperately needed,' writes Anderson, 'but Europe's increasing reliance on coal without capturing emissions is undermining its status as a leader in clean energy, and therefore global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.'"
/sarcasm Yeah, that radiation. The coal plants around Pittsburgh's 3-Rivers have left a nuclear wasteland stretching to long Island.
We all hate moronic talking points - how about we agree to drop them? Chernobyl is an example of radiation problems. 3 Mile Island was a tamer example. And, now, Fukushima. The Greenies talk about all that radiation from coal, but they can't point to one example of a population center depopulated due to radiation from coal.
Try sticking to the REAL drawbacks of using coal.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I have heard coal emits 100x more radiation than nuclear (in normal operation), but that radiation is still is mostly harmless (it certainly doesn't emit less than an uncontained nuclear meltdown, though).
Gee, and all this time we were burning it, when we could just as easily put it directly into our nuclear reactors!!!
Does it ever occur to you that sometime, just sometimes, you should question what you "hear".
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Ah, the Alex Gabbard article in the Oak Ridge labs newsletter has got another follower. Note I said newsletter, since that bullshit never ended up in a peer reviewed paper and the guy that wrote it was a manager and not a researcher. It did end up in a bit of lazy journalism in Scientific American, but if you look at the comments on the online version you'll see a few pointing out precisely why it's fictional crap.
We've had the equipment to detect all this radioactive material that is supposed to be going up the stack for well over a century but nobody has seen it yet. I wonder why? Maybe Mr (not Dr) Alex Gabbard can write his first peer reviewed paper in his life about it. He won't be able to put a fantasy about terrorists being able to build nuclear bombs from ash in it if he wants to get past peer review unless he can back it up with more than just hand waving bullshit.