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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.
for all the jobs lost because of climate change religious zealots
...
This will hopefully drive the cost of business for US coal miners way up, since there is now a smaller market of buyers. The real question is why are we providing welfare for the mediocre?
Subsidies in general I'm against...
However the real question is - will this have any impact or energy prices or availability in the EU, or in Spain?
If not, great. But if it does cause prices to rise, or it means electricity becomes more reliably... well then perhaps there was more to the subsidy than just supporting coal.
Ending the use of coal is a noble goal, if for no other reason than the reduction of real pollution. But we also have to be careful not to leave too many people out in the cold, to have alternatives.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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You're telling me mining in EU countries like Poland or Bulgaria will stop? LOL. That will put a major proletariat force out in the street, a force that the yellow jackets will look feeble next to.
I mean, it was the Polish miners who brought about the collapse of Communism, remember?
No, most of coal mining will remain operational in the EU under various forms of grandfather agreements for the foreseeable future, regardless of what bullshit sellers like "futurism.com" peddle as "news".
Picking winners and losers.
Now we get to see the knock on effects like the cost of coal increasing as the supply drops, making coal mines elsewhere more profitable and less likely to be replaced with renewables.
To not stop coal mining! E.U. is P.U. in the eye of the E.P.A. Prepare. U. are over-ruled by the power of the E.P.A. It compels U.!
I believe that human caused climate change may be reduced to a sustainable level. All climate change due to natural forces would be unaffected, since nature does not usually burn coal. I am hopeful because this means that exports from the EU to the US would not be subsidized except if the US decides to directly subsidize within the US. A big concern has been that US subsidies get transferred to other countries. Origination of energy (or other product) in the EU would strip the subsidies on export and naturally the US is not going to want to directly subsidize a third world coal company.
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We don't even need to get that far. It's about *unprofitable* coal mines. That absolutely doesn't mean this is a move away from coal. This just means this is a move away from unprofitable coal mines. Expected consequences are a loss of many jobs and the accelerated profitability of the remaining coal mines, which is probably going to be pretty easy once we have gotten rid of all the unprofitable ones. Another possible consequence for Germany (for instance) is the future need to import coal from less picky countries. :D
EU countries will just import more coal from overseas.
The ending of government subsidies to coal mines will have an equalising effect on the cost of coal (up to the new cost of production) making it easier for renewables to compete on an even playing field.
US has increased mercury emission limits so it can burn dirtier coal, but that doesn't mean the EU has.
So US dirty coal cannot be sold to the EU.
Importing coal won't be the solution.
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Wait... they have coal?
Which they all say Russia bad, but they buy their gas to allow them to buy more arms. Fabulous! https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2018/07/19/how-dependent-is-germany-on-russian-gas/#76a44963b489
Also, what FUCKING ROBOT is going to post on Slashdot?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All that is being banned is government support of coal mines. If a billionaire wanted to run a money losing coal mine they are more than welcome to. They just won't get any help from the government to keep it open like they would have up to today (2018/12/31).
Closing mines doesn't mean anything, except for impacting the people working there and in the town nearby. The power plants will just get the coal from the mines that are profitable. When the EU is closing the coal fired power plants and replacing them with something that generates fewer emissions then they'll see the reductions that they are seeking.
BC won't support Canadian pipelines to the coast so that the country can benefit economically selling oil (and until other countries stop buying oil why not make money from it... it can finance green research). But meanwhile, the British Columbia socialist NDP government is just fine shipping millions of tonnes of American coal through the ports in Delta BC and Surrey. Better support for America than for Canada.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
What dumb-ass wrote this summary, 40 percent of the world's electricity comes from coal. And in India and China, it's 70 percent.
Coal baby, powering your planet.
Actually, it turns out that isn't quite the deal. Mostly for the benefit of their workers, the mines were offered money some years back to attempt a "chapter 11"-like reorganization. As of 1 January, they must either:
The crazy billionaire (or Spanish government) would have to not only pay their ongoing operating losses, but pay back the EU the reorganization support money. Since this third option is extremely impractical, it amounts to an order to shut down.
You're right that it does nothing directly for consumption (Spain imports 90% of its coal already; this will only affect 10%), but by eliminating subsidies on its production, this will drive up the price of coal at least a little bit and further accelerate the switch away from coal.
Like the effort to curb the demise of Napster?
Ur $$ for everything I've ever known and loved... the risk is not worth it u greedy fucks.
[($)]
All I ever hear of is the EU banning one thing or another. Do they ever accomplish anything useful or productive, or is that beyond the Old World at this point?
Putin says thank you. Enjoy that energy dependence on your biggest geopolitical rival...
Also, good job kicking your working class in the teeth one more time!
sry :)
[($)]
"EU must not burn the world's forests for 'renewable' energy"
See also: Unintended consequences
The others become MORE profitable.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Unfortunately, there are a lot of time lags in the system, and we have probably already made changes that will result in 2 degrees Centigrade warming...or more. The oceans have been warming and so has the permafrost. (Most of the current rise in sea levels is due to the warming of the oceans, as warmer water takes up more space than colder water down to around 4 degrees Centigrade.)
So while reducing the impact of current actions is extremely highly desirable, it's probably not going to stave off unpredictably unpleasant results. (We can't say just how bad it will be, because we're pushing the models outside the range within which they have been validated. ... And they weren't really good at detailed predictions anyway, which is why an ensemble prediction approach was used, with large error bars.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I see a market for superior American coal to power all those EU coal-fired power-plants. We can put our coal miners back to work, provided that safety regulations are enhanced to maximize cashflow. That coal will need to be transported to the customer. I foresee fleets of supertankers outfitted with giant wheels that allow them to cross both mountain ranges and oceans. Make the wheels from frozen humus and the chickpea surplus is solved. Kill two birds, or a farmer and an miner, with one stone I say.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I live in BC. And probably unlike you, I was born here. Your hyperbole is utter BS, Chicken Little. There are more tankers moving between Alaska and Seattle refineries on a daily basis than a new pipeline will add. Why aren't you crying about those? Probably because the US based environmentalists who make money coming to protest in Canada haven't told you to. smh
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Meanwhile, why aren't you crying about all that coal going out of Delta Port?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I was born in BC, probably older than you and I am pretty sure I've considered what I say very carefully. My hyperbole to you is real concern. And increasing tanker traffic without ensuring there is a way to deal with mistakes (which of course never happen until they do) is very real. Read my above comments and read this as it explains why the lies currently being perpetuated https://www.nationalobserver.c... Some of us in BC actually care about the planet and about the industries that keep our province an amazing place now and forever and aren't willing to sell them out so Joe Bob in Alberta can have 2 four wheelers, a boat, a $100,000 pickup and a 5 bedroom house. Of course if Joe Bon knew about economics he would have realized his inflated oil economy salary wasn't something he should have banked on.
Devo's cover of Working In A Coal Mine.
Loretta Lynn's Coal Miner's Daughter
Incubus's Diamonds and Coal
Tennessee Ernie Ford's Sixteen Tons
A minor nit - only fresh water is densest at 4 deg. Salt water expands from its freezing point upwards.
In Poland there are 76 coal mines and they must operate to supply fuel for 90% of Poland energy generation.
If most coal mines close, it will drive up the price and make it profitable again!
Thanks EU, helps other countries economies, like Australia's.
In order to believe greenhouse gas theory, I must reject the second law of thermodynamics, but have not been able, It's just too ingrained. Fortunately future generations of engineers will do so, since universities have removed a large part of thermodynamics from their curriculums.
Good luck people, your going to need it, enjoy the consequences of dogmatic stupidity.
The electricity prices are soaring... (think yellow vests in France)
What if somebody invented cheap filtering technology that would make coal burning safe for the environment... Would coal be still considered bad? Oh wait.. Could it be that such technologies already exist?
How can you choke Trotsky-slut warmists on plumes of CO if ya don't keep the mines open ? Garbage-in garbage-out as they say ... Shame to lose that nice pink color among a cold-blooded vipers-nest of Shumero-Pelosites! .
Cars contribute immeasurably more to CO2 emission. What to really do something? Force govt agencies to buy electric cars only. Yes, it is more costly, it requires an infrastructure, but it will work, and it is beneficial in the long run because it creates jobs and is basically the same as spending on infrastructure projects which all governments love (employment, kickbacks, hype).
Overpopulation (because no one will mention it.)
Faith is taking something as true in the absence of evidence (and in some dictionary, cannot be based on evidence). But here is the thing all those stuff you said you took at faith value, in reality are based of a lot of evidence you accepted while learning and you are full well aware that most if not all you could check for evidence of it if you had enough money to spend : ,etc...etc...). Basically FAITH you never really revisit the premise. You work around making up excuse - people abandoning faith and switching to another are actually quite rare. That is not the same with TRUST where it can happen often.
* At school you were taught basic stuff trivial you could check for yourself and later on built upon it with stuff you could check on your own time.
* this built upon stuff you could check with lot of time and money (and here we go geology, geography, and most basic science covered).
* None of this is faith based, as you could any time use your money to VERIFY the existence (e.g. travel to Australia) what you meant is that it is based on TRUST , e.g. trust that all the information given to you during school is true
* Science function on a similar system of TRUST, TRUST is not FAITH, FAITH is believing without evidence but TRUST is accepting something as true based on a repeated pattern of evidence presented to you constructed on a pyramide of previous evidence.
* If that TRUST is broken, you then reject the previous accepted facts or rules. FAITH on the other hand simply tend to "work around" that ("he had not enough faith", "my prayer were not answered because of gods not having time/not praying enough/not being worthy", "gods work in mysterious ways" , "satan placed those bones here"
* Only one thing could be said to be "faith" and those are AXIOMS. Which is basically stretching the meaning of faith until meaninglessness.
All of this show you why FAITH is not what we use from scientist to lay person when TRUSTING a result we do not take time to verify ourselves.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The article is bullshit, or in todays terms, fake news.
The opposite is true, at least for Germany. We are keeping our old coal power stations running while shutting down nuclear power. There has been a conflict this autumn over the expansion of one of several surface mining sites. This is surface mining - the tiny trails in the foreground are from giant trucks.
Coal is the only energy source that Germany has on its own soil. The amount of oil and gas we have is a rounding error, and there are no uranium mines. That is why all through the Cold War, coal has been kept running with subsidies, for military strategic purposes (energy independence in case of war). Because of that, no transition was even started until fairly recently, and jobs and industries are tied to it that can't be quickly moved elsewhere.
And the government that is using every PR opportunity to point out how conscious of the environment they are is actually doing the exact opposite and has been doing that for years. Brown coal (lignite), the one that you get by surface mining, which has much lower energy density than black (bituminous) coal that you get from mines, is the primary coal used in Germany. Its share of the energy mix has been almost constant for the past 30 years, falling from about 38% to about 29% in that time, or 0.3% per year on average. At that speed, it will be another century until we stop using it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Only the cited website (futurism.com), reddit and slashdot are carrying this "news". I'm putting it between quotation marks, as it isn't news: it's fake. Not a single respectable online news source, not a single respectable newspaper carries this. Also, I'd never heard about futurism.com before I read this "article". Moreover, I live in the EU, am professionally familiar with the EU regulation mechanism and am the CTO of a company whose technology, among other use cases, is used to detect fake news. And fake this news is.
Don't get me wrong: I'd love for this to be true, for many reasons. But it isn't. msmash has fallen prey to a fake.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
They're ending public subsidies for *unprofitable mines*!
The ending of government subsidies to coal mines will have an equalising
No it does not.
It is not the coal that is subsidized. It is the wages of the workers. The subsidizing stops, there is less coal on the market (as the mines are closed). If there is a price change it might go up, but it is just more likely that the drop in the ocean that is now no longer dropping is replaced by a few ship loads of coal from China or Australia.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Demand for coal will remain the same. It will simply be imported CHEAPER, it will cost jobs with the EU governments paying for unemployment benefits, it will increase dependence of foreign energy and it will negatively impact the balance of payments for the importers. Another win for the globalist bankers.
Is deindustrislize and depopulate China at gun point if needed
And renewables are not heavily subsidized? Even playing field only if both aren't
There are other purposes for coal besides burning it. Coke is needed to refine iron into steel.
What Germany stopped mining last summer was the last of its 500 years of domestic anthracite. It is still opening new lignite mines and building new lignite-fired power plants, because to Merkel being antinuclear is more important than cutting carbon. Meanwhile, the older power plants that burn anthracite are not being replaced by anything. They are just importing anthracite instead of mining it locally.
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Because they HAVE NO COAL left to mine in 90% of the EU. Only the poor eastern block countries have some coal but not much. And I bet if you read the fine print there are loopholes that allow for mining of coal in 'other forms' as well as exceptions for the countries that will "pay a tax" for the right to do so.
This is just more socialist bull crap from the continent that gave you Hitler, the best Social-Democrat of all times.
EU countries don't burn much coal to start with.
Granting trading priorities to countries that don't burn coal or similarly restricting trading with countries that does depending on the amount of coal it burns, may work.
Rules like this need to spread like GPL otherwise it has no chance of saving the planet.
about any of it?
[($)]
Opinionated phrases on the article /. readers are smart enough to see this editorial opinion piece as an opinion piece and not a plain news article.
- move away form coal is a REFRESHING bit of BLUNTNESS
- the FAILED REMNANTS of a fossil fuel industry
- U.S. is GRASPING at anything to keep coal ALIVE
- the coal closures will have in the ongoing effort to CURB climate change
- for the transition to CLEANER power
- a CLEAR sign that major world powers are taking THEIR RESPONSIBILITY to help prevent our IMPENDING climate change CATASTROPHE seriously
- in STARK contrast to the U.S.
Cliff notes version:
Spain is ending government subsidies to coal mines Jan 1, 2019. Most or all of the X remaining Spanish coal mines will close. Z Spanish coal mine workers will lose their jobs with most of them taking a retirement buyout package from the Spanish government. The EU mandated ending coal mine subsidies as of .....
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Ok, lets ban all coal mining. Does it mean the EU will stop manufacturing steel too?
Ban volcanoes. They are soooooo bad for the environment. They could, like, cause so much pollution that everything on the planet would die. If you really want to save the planet, you will demand that your government ban every volcano ever.
See subject: "Allahu ahkbar" 100's of years ago when EVERYONE ELSE RAN (except lithuania) vs. muslim hordes (who would CUT OFF YOUR HEAD & RAPE YOUR WOMEN if you didn't "convert") & we were OUTNUMBERED like 100:1 & STILL BEAT THEIR ASSES (better strategy, stronger men, great cavalry & GREAT GENERAL who iirc, became a pole king).
* We were known as "the defenders of Christianity" & I had family who were ancestral KNIGHTS then (very proud of that here & WHO I come from (proud AMERICAN/U.S. Citizen GENERATION #1 here too)).
APK
P.S.=> Me? LOL - I stop a DIFFERENT THREAT & like poles BEFORE ME?? I do it for EVERYONE (for the ABSOLUTE good) https://news.slashdot.org/comm... (even for advertisers that INFECT/TRACK/SLOW us as they often use hosts to PROTOTYPE TEST their own heinous machinations in ads))... apk
See subject: Like our "relatives" in Russkies we can sleep in it. We took Russia & HELD IT (Hitler + NAPOLEON failed, we didn't (St. Petersberg occupied by POLES for 2.5 yrs.)). IIRC, nobody ELSE has EVER done that to "The RUSSIAN BEAR".
* So tell us all ANOTHER ONE you undereducated DOUBTLESS MONGREL weezil...
APK
P.S.=> Oh, I'm having a FIELD-DAY on YOUR obviously UNEDUCATED ASS between this & my other post here https://news.slashdot.org/comm... WHICH YOU HAD TO LAMELY TRY TO "downmod hide" & DELETE too (I have the screenshot proof) you weak fool... apk
See subject: BEST LAND in EUROPE (w/ the Ukraine) bar-none & have HELD OUR MUD/GROUND per https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
You can't "MAKE MORE LAND" & let alone some of the most fertile on the planet for millenia like poland has & I've BEEN there + saw WHY storks (giant birds, 6-8 ft. tall) MIGRATE for centuries from Africa to eat landfrogs (frogs MEAN CLEAN LAND is why)).
* Now, isn't /. AFFILIATED w/ DUBAI like that "nice guy" DARTH CHENEY HIDING FROM INTERPOL THERE TOO?
(Lookup BizX & DUBAI - don't be TOO amazed @ the BULLSHIT "SJW" BRAINWASHING /.'s been doing since WHIMPSlash took over (he's their pawn imo)).
Lastly: We're not EDUCATED?
Ask who helped BREAK the ENIGMA MACHINE CODES of Germany in WWII w/ english folks fool... & tell us MORE of your bullshit, you UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous WORM weezil.
APK
P.S.=> Go on now WHIMPSlash & /. "editors" - downmod hide OR DELETE this like you've been my posts by the 100's this week - I'll just BLOW YOU AWAY (& more @ midnite for our NEW YEAR TRADITION too, lol - publicly - @ YOUR EXPENSE)... apk
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I have my own personal coal mime and I will continue to mine. Screw the EU!
Humans killing all other living things faster than anything else is.
Grow trees for charcoal. It's environmentally friendly. Not even kidding.
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