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Finland Set To Become First Country To Ban Coal Use For Energy (newscientist.com)
Finland could become the first country to ditch coal for good. As part of a new energy and climate strategy due to be announced tomorrow, the government is considering banning the burning of coal for energy by 2030. From a New Scientist article: "Basically, coal would disappear from the Finnish market," says Peter Lund, a researcher at Aalto University, and chair of the energy programme at the European Academies' Science Advisory Council. The groundwork for the ban already seems to be in place. Coal use has been steadily declining in Finland since 2011, and the nation heavily invested in renewable energy in 2012, leading to a near doubling of wind power capacity the following year. It also poured a further $85 million into renewable power this past February. On top of this, Nordic energy prices, with the exception of coal, have been dropping since 2010. As a result of such changes, coal-fired power plants are being mothballed and shut all over Finland, leaving coal providing only 8 per cent of the nation's energy.
The better question is: Which country will be last? The last to protect the health of their residents, the slowest to adapt, the slowest at actually growing their economy.
"the lack of evidence for global warming"
So why is the north pole ice melting, why are the glaciers clearly receding.
Do you also deny that it gets hot in green houses,
Do you deny that mankind releases billions of tons of CO2?
Do you deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
Tell me, which is it?
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It's all well and good to reduce dependence on coal, but I think the populace will think different and force their government's hand when 1. they see how damned expensive renewables are (as flowery and nice as they might seem, they're still HEAVILY subsidised, and by taxes on coal too, a subsidy that will disappear when the coal is banned) and 2. how they'll fare in the first storm that lasts more than 24 hours when hydro is off because the rivers flow too fast, the wind generators are shut down because they only work in slow wind, and the solar plants shut down because you know, clouds, something finland has more of than almost anywhere, not to mention the small amounts of usable insolation.
I'll be watching them crawl back to coal within a year, and I'll be eating popcorn and grinning all the way.
You openly admitted here recently that you spent years fighting in online forums against creationists.
Basically, you're an online zealot. Climate change is your latest gig.
Find a new hobby. We're tired of semi-pro flamers here.
I'll bet if you really think about it, you'll figure out why those things are not really equivalent.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unfortunately, nuclear power is the most expensive electricity. High cost, long lead times, unresolved problems with design and waste. Not a good option. Nuclear only gets built with massive subsidies and public liability for cleanup and accidents.
Wind and solar are cheaper and cleaner.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Also, with the greatest possible respect (watch "Yes Minister" for why I used that phrase), coal production costs are incredibly low as it is (due to a lot of automation) and wage costs are a tiny percentage of the total costs.
I'm sure you are good are something but the above post is more than a little embarrassing, especially the crack about unions when wages of miners are set by enterprise agreements these days.
Yeah... clearly the problem with science is that it's done by scientists. Damn them and their dedication to reasonable conclusions based on empirical evidence! Damn them all!
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
It's only the US Santa's problem. The finnish Santa lives in Rovaniemi. And the original Santa was living in what is now South Turkey.
Hah. Given most people are simply not interested in climate change, this is all moot. [1]
But seeing as this is Slashdot, and a Friday, the thing is, most "climate change deniers" don't have an issue with any of those points. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and mankind releases CO2, and greenhouses do indeed get hot (why this last one is on the list is beyond me, as "greenhouse" is just an analogy here).
The point which EVERYBODY is up in arms about, is how much warming will actually come from feedbacks, and not from CO2 itself.
The mainstream respectable "in the field" "non-denialist" expert view is that the feedbacks could give you 4 or even oh I dunno as it is a feedback who can say where it would stop maybe 8C for all we know... and the denialist view is that this is ludicrous as why didn't the Earth just accidentally cook itself already.
The science issues are really all about feedbacks, not "basic physics". And the people and politics issues are really all about values. [2]
[1] So much for superordinate goals which could appeal to the different values systems of the global population.
[2] Human beings grow through about 6 or 7 major stages of worldview, each with its own values-system. This is why everyone is usually quite sure that their own way of looking at the world is the "right" way. Climate change isn't just science. Climate change is often really about trying to get the world to adopt a particular values-system. (And then when this values-system gets rejected by people, we end up thinking about them as "selfish", "consumerist", etc.) And in many ways climate change is about bringing forward a better set of values for the world. But because nobody seems to know that values cannot simply be imposed, like how you can't impose democracy on Iraq by bombing the old regime out of office, ie. because people actually grow through values in a particular way, in an organic, life experience kind of way, and cannot be made to change, even if the planet is burning or whatever, then the fact remains, most of the world does not care about climate change, because the way climate change is framed, it is all about a particular set of values, and most people are not at that stage of values. They just aren't. And if climate change proponents would stop being so narrow minded, they might see that. Someone somewhere made a huge blunder in trying to tie a new values system to a science theory (theory in the strong sense of the word). The values system should have been made subject of philosophy and ethics and even religion. But no, it was tied to a science theory, as if "reality" would force you to change how you value things. Which is just not how human beings work. So climate change will fail. It has been failing. It'll continue to fail. It'll really not be going anywhere, it is so failed (you Americans seem to like this kind of phrasing!) But as I say, this is Slashdot and a Friday, so who cares anyway.
At the time of Einstein, it was well understood that something was wrong with Newtonian physics. Light was measured to move at a finite fixed speed, yet this speed didn't change relative to the relative velocities of the sender and receiver. Different reference frames for the same beam of light didn't match up. An explanation had to be found. It was one of the great problems of physics of the day.
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!