The EU is Banning Almost All Coal Mining on Jan 1 (futurism.com)

Every unprofitable coal mine in the European Union must cease production by the first day of 2019, the date on which all public funds for the mines will come to an end. From a report: In Spain, that means that 26 coal mines are about to close up shop, according to Reuters. This move away from coal is a refreshing bit of bluntness -- letting the failed remnants of a fossil fuel industry fade away -- compared to how the federal government in the U.S. is grasping at anything to keep coal alive. But it remains to be seen how much of an impact the coal closures will have in the ongoing effort to curb climate change. The deadline was set back in 2010 as the EU sought to move away from fossil fuel dependence, according to Telesur. The EU wanted to end public aid to coal mines sooner, but groups from Germany -- which shuttered its last coal mine earlier this month -- and Spain are responsible for extending the deadline all the way to the end of 2018.

Comments

Re: Press F to pay respects

[apoc.famine]

You hit the nail on the head. Here's what being a climate skeptic looks like: The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic.

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.

Richard Muller is the poster child for what a real skeptic looks like and how they behave. He saw what he thought were serious errors in measuring climate change, and decided to do it right. What he found was that he just didn't really understand the field, and he didn't understand why things were being done the way they were. He was excessively and very inefficiently thorough, but doing it his own way he got the same answer, because he was rigorously applying proper scientific and statistical techniques. When you do that, reality doesn't change.

What he didn't do was to prosecute climate change in the media, where reality can take a back seat to flash and entertainment. What he didn't do was make some blogs up and cherry pick evidence to feed to an audience who doesn't want to believe. What he didn't do was go into the comment section of articles on climate change and flatly deny everything we know to be true about climate change. None of that is skepticism. It's trolling at the best, or a bizarrely dogmatic decision to be wrong at the worst.

I think his most powerful point, and one that deniers really need to address, is this:

The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.