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Cool! About time we put people that will hold the run-away alphabet agencies in check. The have been creating regulations for decades, around congressional approval.
Cool! About time we put people that will hold the run-away alphabet agencies in check. The have been creating regulations for decades, around congressional approval.
I agree as it is the Constitutional way. The alphabet agencies should never be allowed to 'create' law without congressional approval.
However, we should also be aware of what congress has sitting in the wings to rectify this, also be aware of other issues, as well. (watch 'em like a hawk)
"For more than a century—going back at least to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration—Congress has established federal agencies and empowered them to make decisions to protect the public. Congress did not do this because it was lazy or interested in abdicating power or responsibility. Instead, Congress rightly concluded that some kinds of decisions required deep technical expertise and a balanced, judicious decision process somewhat insulated from political horse-trading and power plays."
Our Nation is rich precisely because of them massive regulation. Regulations prevent your competitor from poisoning the land to save money. Regs ensure buildings are safe and roads are consistent
Regs force bad actors to either not act or act good.
Regs Protect our IP, they set and ensure standards, they are the backbone of our investment markets and they make sure your family can eat whatever foods are commercially sold with little to no risk.
Is "sounds" great to roll back Regs, but one of the primary reasons new companies with great tech setup in the USA is our regs, it is the protections of our rules our laws.
If the likes of Trump had his way the USA would reap a short term gain in the form of increased profits everywhere and a massive long term loss, in terms of quality of life and income.
Lucky for the USA the rich powerful BLUE states that create much of the wealth will just add new regulations. Maybe WA will write new regs for the passage of coal through our ports.... maybe we will decide to require all coal carried on our rails must be "clean coal"....
Hmmm think i will shoot an email out to my reps in WA .....
Our Nation is rich precisely because of them massive regulation. Regulations prevent your competitor from poisoning the land to save money. Regs ensure buildings are safe and roads are consistent
Regs force bad actors to either not act or act good.
Regs Protect our IP, they set and ensure standards, they are the backbone of our investment markets and they make sure your family can eat whatever foods are commercially sold with little to no risk.
Is "sounds" great to roll back Regs, but one of the primary reasons new companies with great tech setup in the USA is our regs, it is the protections of our rules our laws.
If the likes of Trump had his way the USA would reap a short term gain in the form of increased profits everywhere and a massive long term loss, in terms of quality of life and income.
Lucky for the USA the rich powerful BLUE states that create much of the wealth will just add new regulations. Maybe WA will write new regs for the passage of coal through our ports.... maybe we will decide to require all coal carried on our rails must be "clean coal"....
Hmmm think i will shoot an email out to my reps in WA .....
Correct. Most companies are in it for short-term gains unless forced otherwise (there are exceptions, like Tesla). You can't tell me that companies like Ford and GM would really care much about trying to create more efficient engines if it weren't for the EPA mandates.
Back in the early 60's we "heated" a very drafty house with Anthracite coal. We also had a small shop that I heated with the same coal even after the house was converted to fuel oil. I became quite good at banking the coal stove so I would not quite freeze in this uninsulated building during a northern New York winter. Initially the coal was delivered to the house by a dump truck with a long slide. The shop fuel came in 50# bags. I also used the coal to heat metal in a home made forced air forge. The gadget could reach steel welding heat or, if I got careless, melt the stuff. I soon learned that files melted sooner then spring steel and wrought iron took a lot of effort to heat but was a delight to shape on an anvil. I got to like the smell of burning coal and white hot iron. If I could ever set up a shop again I would find a source of anthracite coal to heat the building and fuel another forge.
Now to the topic of excess regulation and trying to restore the coal industry. The real problem with the industry is losing customers because the electric power plants that burned coal were built about 50 years ago and are just about used up. these have to be replaced and most power companies see that natural gas burnt in a combined cycle plant where the gas is burned on a gas turbine that is hooked to a generator and the exhaust gas is used in a boiler to make steam that drives a steam turbine. That is like burning the natural gas twice because nearly twice as much electricity is generated for the same BYU's of fuel. That is why less coal is being used.
Note 1: I wonder why powdered Anthracite coal is not being used in specially designed dual fuel gas turbines where the molten ash that can clog the turbine blades of a natural gas turbine could be accommodated in some manner. Anthracite has a far higher heating value than NG so a device like this could be more powerful than a straight gas turbine and recreate a market for the real clean coal.
Note 2: Most explosives are no longer detonated by electric blasting caps due to the wide spread use of radios. The blasters use nonelectric devices connected by detonation cord or shock tubes. These are not sensitive to RF radiation inducing electric currents. I suppose some smaller operations still use simple gunpowder fuses to trigger the blasting caps.
Note 3: Some coal contains uranium as a mineral contaminate. When this coal is burned in a suspension fired furnace the Uranium and other transuranic minerals concentrate in the glass particles that constitute the fly ash. Some fly ash storage areas are nearly concentrated enough to be ore bodies for uranium. The radon is driven off as a gas during combustion.
Trump clearly doesn't want this country to succeed. He has appointed people to departments that wants to destroy them. Republicans obviously don't care about our environment or planet. They are more concerned with letting the top 1% make even more money. Cutting their taxes and regulations aren't the way to do it though.
The mega wealthy that control the Republican Party just want the government to get out of the way so they and continue to make ever more money no matter how many lesser people are harmed or enslaved.
You can't tell me that companies like Ford and GM would really care much about trying to create more efficient engines if it weren't for the EPA mandates.
To quote the guy from "Who killed the electric car", "GM would sell you a car that ran on pig **** if there was market for it." The auto manufacturers sells what the market wants, your problem isn't caused by the auto makers. It's caused by a market not interested in the vehicles you want. In fact someone like me who wants a larger vehicle is paying much that I should have to. The auto makers have to sell those puddle jumpers at far less profitability than they would normally to entice people to buy them, this allows them to sell the more of the larger vehicles at jacked up prices to make up the difference that most of the population wants.
Note 1: I wonder why powdered Anthracite coal is not being used in specially designed dual fuel gas turbines where the molten ash that can clog the turbine blades of a natural gas turbine could be accommodated in some manner. Anthracite has a far higher heating value than NG so a device like this could be more powerful than a straight gas turbine and recreate a market for the real clean coal.
Firstly because of the greater expense they are not going to mine anthracite for power production, that leaves you with the left overs. It's small market relative to the entire coal industry so there isn't a great deal of this product.
The final process for anthracite is sizing. Common sizes range from barley which is like a very coarse sand up to stove which is about the size of softball. This coal has lot of value, it would be about $140 per ton if you wanted to pick a ton up yourself.
Anything smaller than barley is typically sold from the coal processing facilaity as one size which is going to range from a little smaller than barley down to microscopic dust. These smaller sizes are inevitably created during the crushing process and if they could glue it back together they would. They aren't going to purposely make more of this smaller product on purpose because it does not have as much value.
There was plant near me built in the 60's that burned this product because they could get it for next to nothing at the time but they switched to gas recently, in this case it was no brainer because it now has a lot of value.
This product has a market for industrial processes, coking and water filtration. <gasp> It's used as a replacement where sand filters are used. Sand is round, anthracite fractures into odd shape pieces and the filter can last much longer. The filter media companies will take that product sold by coal processing facility and size it into even smaller sizes for their purposes.
The cleanliness and the ease of use are the big factors, soft coal tends to clinker which will jam grates and stoker mechanisms and can make a lot soot. Heat is not necessarily a factor, Appalachian bituminous is going to have about the same or just little bit less heat content compared to the average anthracite.
One thing to remember is anthracite was expensive back then as it is now. It's more difficult to mine. As far as the RR goes the Lackawanna RR used anthracite as marketing gimmick.
Northeastern PA has the largest and best deposits of anthracite in the world, it's fairly rare coal. I'm aware that there are some deposits elsewhere, no active mining I'm aware of in the US. the EIA provides data on production and PA is the only state with anthracite listed. That's not to say there is none as there might be some really small scale mine somewhere but if there is anyone that should be aware of it would proabaly be me.
Yes, the whole "Phoebe Snow" and hard coal being clean burning for passenger convenience or whatever was a crock. The Lackawanna (later DELAWARE, LACKAWANNA & WESTERN RAILROAD) burnt hard coal in their steam locomotives because they had access to plenty of cheap anthracite from the mines of Pennsylvania. Indeed a bulk of the DL&W freight business was built upon hauling anthracite coal out of PA. When the market began drying up, so went a huge part of that RR's money.
That isn't to say the DL&W didn't burn hard coal in some of their steam locomotives; but it is sort of a case of tail wagging the dog. If they didn't have access to the stuff at "cheap" rates you wonder how things might have turned out otherwise.
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They aren't going to purposely make more of this smaller product on purpose because it does not have as much value. 
