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You can't make this nonsense up, ignoring concrete economic statistical data- expecting consumers to pay far more in electricity rates as all other sources rapidly decrease in price:
Correct, and there are thousands of jobs at stake. Sure, eventually, coal-fired electric plants will go away, and coal will be mainly used for steel production and chemical applications. Fracked natural gas is replacing coal in electric plants at a rapid pace. But it should happen gradually and organically instead of by arbitrary fiat that throws thousands out of work for capricious reasons.
Moderator cut: off-topic rant
We have lots of problems to solve in this country, but coal hardly ranks as one of the top ones.
These plants are responsible for the streams, rivers, and lakes around me being contaminated with mercury, the fish being unsafe to eat, etc. Jobs don't justify being allowed to poison water and in turn people.
These plants are responsible for the streams, rivers, and lakes around me being contaminated with mercury, the fish being unsafe to eat, etc. Jobs don't justify being allowed to poison water and in turn people.
Another example of unsubstantiated fantasy about the effects of industry on the environment.
I was doing research in my college days 50 y/a in Chicago. At that time the alewives were a big problem in L. Michigan and really fouled the beaches every spring a spawn time with their spent carcasses. They guy in the next lab was a paleologist who got specimens from the near-by Mazon R. valley-- a very fossil rich area. He collected alewife specimens and fossil fish specimens and analyzed them for Hg: IDENTICAL levels although specimens were separated by 100 million years. Hg is in the environment naturally.
Nobody should be fouling the water with industrial waste, but we reached the point of diminishing returns on regulations long ago.
Okay, go move on top of a coal power plant and see how much you enjoy it. NIPSCO and the public should easily prevail given facts and reality. However, facts and reality don't seem to matter anymore.
I grew up right next to a coal fired plant.
Close enough I could watch people walking on the catwalks on the plant.
Close enough that, twice, crusher house explosions cracked my windows.
Coal could eventually be replaced by something else, but as "blisterpeanuts" said:
"But it should happen gradually and organically instead of by arbitrary fiat that throws thousands out of work for capricious reasons."
All of the coal mavens can whine and complain, but renewable resources and natural gas are shutting those plants down about as fast as a utility can take action. Stick a fork in it, coal is done.
Well, we can always get coal burning stoves, and burn it ourselves
Good cheap fuel. Easy to store. If the electric companies
don't want to use it, it will be cheaper for the rest of us.
I grew up with a pot belly stove.
I am sure there are better ones today, that won't break the bank.
Well, we can always get coal burning stoves, and burn it ourselves
Good cheap fuel. Easy to store. If the electric companies
don't want to use it, it will be cheaper for the rest of us.
I grew up with a pot belly stove.
I am sure there are better ones today, that won't break the bank.
A few years ago I sold an old small potbellied coal stove to a young couple for $75. They wanted it to put in their foyer of their west Texas McMansion. I'm pretty sure the little stove came out of a Santa Fe caboose which the railroad companies used to heat the caboose cabins back in the day. Probably sold it too cheap but sometimes you get tired of tripping over things you never use in the barns.
Another example of unsubstantiated fantasy about the effects of industry on the environment.
I was doing research in my college days 50 y/a in Chicago. At that time the alewives were a big problem in L. Michigan and really fouled the beaches every spring a spawn time with their spent carcasses. They guy in the next lab was a paleologist who got specimens from the near-by Mazon R. valley-- a very fossil rich area. He collected alewife specimens and fossil fish specimens and analyzed them for Hg: IDENTICAL levels although specimens were separated by 100 million years. Hg is in the environment naturally.
Nobody should be fouling the water with industrial waste, but we reached the point of diminishing returns on regulations long ago.
In fact, in 2013, only ~1300 people were reported in the US to have acute exposure to Hg and only 24 of them got sick from it. NOBODY got sick from any chronic environmental exposures. https://www.medscape.com/answers/117...80257-overview
Your first reference is a meaningless account of how much Hg is expressed from coal plants each year. NO CONTROL info from yrs before coal burning plants is given for comparison. I have to laugh at their number of "58,000 lb of Hg are emitted each yea- detectable over a 1500 mile radius around the plant." What is that, something like one effing molecule per sq yd?
Please note that any Hg in coal, the remains of once living plants, was picked up from the environment in the first place by those plants. Those ancient plants did not manufacture it. We can therefore deduce that currently living plants are also picking up the same amount of naturally occurring Hg in the environment-- a point my previous post made obvious.
Also note that any recommendations made about safe levels of Hg in fish are arbitrary. There is simply no evidence supporting the numbers. The bureaucrats used the same methods to determine the safe levels here that they do in making auto exhaust emission goals: they pick the numbers out of their collective a--- um, thin air. No science to support it.
The debate is over guys. New wind and solar are so cheap that even those who love dirty coal plants are shutting them down. Take the loss guys. Pv < C
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