White House Reportedly Exploring Wartime Rule To Help Coal, Nuclear (arstechnica.com) 308
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to reports from Bloomberg and E&E News, the Trump Administration has been exploring another way to help coal and nuclear generators: the Defense Production Act of 1950. The Act was passed under President Truman. Motivated by the Korean War, it allows the president broad authority to boost U.S. industries that are considered a priority for national security. On Thursday, E&E News cited sources that said "an interagency process is underway" at the White House to examine possible application of the act to the energy industry. The goal would be to give some form of preference to coal and nuclear plants that are struggling to compete with cheap natural gas.
If the DOE decides not to invoke Section 202(c), the president may turn to the Defense Production Act. According to a 2014 summary report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the act would allow the president to "demand priority for defense-related products," "provide incentives to develop, modernize, and expand defense productive capacity," and establish "a voluntary reserve of trained private sector executives available for emergency federal employment," among other powers. (Some even more permissive applications of the Act were terminated in 1957.) Using the Act to protect coal and nuclear facilities would almost certainly be more controversial, as the link between national defense and keeping uneconomic coal generators running is not well-established. The Administration could apply the Act to "provide or guarantee loans to industry" for material-specific deliveries and production. "The president may also authorize the purchase of 'industrial items or technologies for installation in government or private industrial facilities,'" reports Ars.
If the DOE decides not to invoke Section 202(c), the president may turn to the Defense Production Act. According to a 2014 summary report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the act would allow the president to "demand priority for defense-related products," "provide incentives to develop, modernize, and expand defense productive capacity," and establish "a voluntary reserve of trained private sector executives available for emergency federal employment," among other powers. (Some even more permissive applications of the Act were terminated in 1957.) Using the Act to protect coal and nuclear facilities would almost certainly be more controversial, as the link between national defense and keeping uneconomic coal generators running is not well-established. The Administration could apply the Act to "provide or guarantee loans to industry" for material-specific deliveries and production. "The president may also authorize the purchase of 'industrial items or technologies for installation in government or private industrial facilities,'" reports Ars.
And here we thought only sustainable was bankrupt (Score:5, Insightful)
So who's the leech here, oil barons?
Solar? Wind? Geothermal? Biomass?
Nope, it's YOU fools.
Mythological war on coal. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. Because of fracking in the USA and Russian natural gas producers and others World wide, the price of Natural Gas plummeted to where is was much cheaper than coal. Power plants that had no legal reason to do so, switched to NG because it was cheaper.
The Free Market in action.
But it hurt the coal miners. And they paid off certain Senators like, Mitch McConnell and Orin Hatch to lie and say the Obama administration started a "war on coal." (He backtracked after Trump was elected.)
Hannity and Limbaugh (both liars themselves) propagated the lie among their gullible listeners as well as Trolls on facecbook and other places.
Bit as we see, it was all the coal miners bribing Republican Senators to keep their outdated business profitable for themselves.
Re:Mythological war on coal. (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans are all about subsidizing broken, obsolete or flawed ideas. It's their entire platform, while pretending to be against big deficit spending (for a few years)
Re:Mythological war on coal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live we call it civilization.
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OTOH, if we had a decent minimum wage AND would solve the illegal issue, then we would likely see all of this public spending go away. Sadly, you fascists want to keep supporting companies in this fashion.
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What jobs will Americans NOT do? We do them all, just not at below minimum wage.
And the illegals are actually bankrupting companies. The reason is that most are paid less than minimum, but more than their own nations pay (hence why they are here). It is the same issue for Europe and even China now.
BUT, the fact is, that illegals have taken many high paying jobs. For example, construction used to pay good money. Back in early 80s, I was paid $8-12 / hr for doing labor and $13-20/hr for carpenter wo
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Re: Mythological war on coal. (Score:2, Insightful)
Nah he's fine with being someone else's pawn. Doesn't care that tax cuts to the rich limit his ability to succeed while preserving their elite position for no other reason than they already occupy that position. Doesn't care that the debt that is drawn as a result of the tax cuts is then bought by wealthy foreign nationals and the very same people who got the tax cut allowing them to not only invest more but then get further benefits in long term stable bond interest rates - essentially his tax pays them in
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Dems support of Hollywood and Silicon Valley comes quickly to mind.
Clinton publicly promised to kill off H1B, and the privately promised to increase it from 50K yearly to 500K yearly.
Not much difference between her and Trump/top GOP.
Re:Mythological war on coal. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the coal industry has enough money to make big contributions to Republicans. Rather, I think the Republicans are playing on the notion that coal will save the states where there are enough fools in those states to think coal could do this.
As for the Republicans blaming Obama for a "war on coal", in some sense it doesn't matter what Obama did, they'd have picked on something else. They needed an "issue" and the "war on coal" guaranteed them Republican voters. Those states never bought into the whole Environment Degradation issue that is central to Democrats. The voters in those states more or less have a Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to coal. Coal can foul their air and their water, but they understand coal, they do not understand Env. Deg. E. D. doesn't provide jobs. The whole fact that coal doesn't provide many jobs and what jobs it does are being automated away is lost on the voters in those states.
Nothing the White House can do on coal will save it, natural gas will eat the part of the lunch it hasn't already eaten. I'm unsure about nuclear. If the W.H. were serious about nuclear, they'd solve the waste issue first...but they aren't serious, and solving it would be unglamorous, take a lot of time, require far reaching policy decisions...in short, just what the Republicans are no good at.
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Here's a does of fiscal reality. Coal is fucked, they know it, dirty to mine, dirty to use and high cost to extract, store and transport. So why pump up coal. Easy shit current share price, make all sorts of promise to protect industry, up goes the share price. Insiders dump their shares when the price is high. Then of course, meh, coal industry to hard to preserve, doesn't make sense, won't do it. BOOM, down crashes share price, helped along with shorts by the insiders who sold high based upon empty promis
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Coal is something that Trump understands and can do something about by gutting the EPA, introducing tariffs and funnelling them federal money.
Republicans care much more about Obamacare, but are too dumb to do anything about it. Who knew healthcare was so complex?
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So if they can modernize the coal stations so that they don't emit carbon soot that would be a good thing. There are systems to scrub and collect all those gases and pollutants. Same with nuclear power. The old slashdot joke states that the nuclear industry wanted to decommission old plants and build new ones. The environmentalists wanted no more new plants and to decommission the old ones. So they compromised. Keep the old plants running and don't build any new plants.
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The problem is that the scrubbers cost a lot of money and are not 100% effective. So if you have a finite amount of money to invest in power generation you have to choose between cleaning up coal, gambling on nuclear or putting it into rapidly growing renewables.
Even if you don't care about the environment it's clear that renewables and energy storage are the better investment and the general direction in which everything is moving.
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it was all the coal miners
This isn't hard; repeat after me: "Coal Mining Companies." Coal miners are just folks desperate enough to feed their families that they're willing to endure [what for most Westerners] are dangerous, unhealthy and unimaginably unpleasant working conditions.
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Not the miners, the executives who take all the money.
Re: Mythological war on coal. (Score:5, Informative)
The Koch family empire was built on oil. Fred Koch's founding business was an oil refinery, and the present day Kochs run a diversified petrochemical business.
peaking plants (Score:4, Interesting)
Natural gas is not merely cheap, it also has a relatively low time to spool up for on-demand loads. Coal has a much harder time. Solar and wind have both problems with intermittency and peak loads. While grids can smooth that a bit there's no solution for that in the power source itself. Someday we will have flow batteries to handle surges and bridge short intermittencies, but even when those become technologically mature it's not likely they will have capacities in the giga-joule hour range. So that means some sort of base production with reasonably fast spin up times.
Germany perversely solves this problem by burning coal (cause it's cheaper there than gas, and nukes are out). They solve the spin up time problem by just running the plants all the time whether power is needed or not, then selling the power they don't need to their neighbors over the grid. Sometimes they even sell at a loss. It makes sense to sell at a loss since some money is better than no money if you were going to produce the power anyhow. So ironically the more they deploy solar the more coal they burn.
But if we do have things like flow batteries working for us, it's not just good for solar. It's also good for nuclear power too. These have slower spin up times than gas, but they may be cheaper (depending on how you factor in the externalities of waste and CO2 pollution and mining and fracking). So having stored energy like a battery also helps these become a reliable power source too.
Thus it seems like the future ideal power mix is Nuke+Solar/wind+battery and some off line gas plants for emergencies.
Re:peaking plants (Score:5, Informative)
it's not likely they will have capacities in the giga-joule hour range.
A giga-joule/hour is 277 kW. A single modern wind turbine generates ten times that much.
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it's not likely they will have capacities in the giga-joule hour range.
A giga-joule/hour is 277 kW. A single modern wind turbine generates ten times that much.
That answer has nothing to do with "Someday we will have flow batteries".
At least you weren't alone to miss the point.
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Otherwise, yeah, you are spot on. These new 8-10 MW wind generators are taller and in much better wind. Those are working at typically 50-60% of the time.
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Re:peaking plants (Score:4, Informative)
> Wait, what?
The grandparent post is somewhat confused.
Prior to the mid-2000's, coal represented 50% of US electricity production. It is now 30%, a reduction of 40% from what it was, or 20% of total electric production. Three-quarters of the shift was due to cheap Natural Gas, and one quarter due to new solar and wind. Nuclear and hydroelectric have been steady at 20 and ~6% of US electricity, because we haven't built or retired much of either the last decade. Hydro is somewhat variable by year because it depends on rainfall to till the reservoirs. The California drought, for example, cut into what they could produce.
Half a dozen midwest coal plants are expected to shut down in the next year. They continue to lose to Natural Gas, solar, and wind, which are all substantially cheaper these days. The change isn't all at once, because it takes time and money to replace half the US's generating capacity. If prices stay where they are, in another 15 years, coal will be gone. This naturally upsets people in the coal mining and coal burning industries. So they are doing everything they can to prevent it, including bribes, um, I mean, campaign contributions, to certain politicians.
Re: peaking plants (Score:4, Interesting)
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Fuck you and your anti China lies.
Chinese troll detected.
Virtually NO coal plant in America would pass Chinese regulations,
Go on, pull the other one [npr.org].
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Unlike China where you constantly put up MORE new coal plants than you do AE.
Hopefully, once you folks have your nuke reactors going, you will build those instead.
Re:peaking plants (Score:5, Insightful)
They solve the spin up time problem by just running the plants all the time whether power is needed or not, then selling the power they don't need to their neighbors over the grid. That is nonsense. We have no strange spin up times where coal can not handle it.
Coal plants have lots of issues with starting up quickly [epa.gov]. 23% of all coal plant cold start-up events fail (produce no electricity). These failed start-ups persist for a median of 4 hours before being retried, though the average is 8 hours (i.e. a substantial number persist much longer). Of the start-ups that succeed the average start-up time from the beginning of combustion to producing power is about 8 hours.
Coal plants are strictly base load plants, unable to deal with load fluctuation on a scale significantly shorter than a day.
OTOH, natural gas peaking plants start-up in a matter of minutes.
And: coal is down ot 40% of our power mix.
And: we still produce 10%-12% of oir power by nuclear.
Eh? No. In 2017 it coal power production was 30%, nuclear was 20%. [eia.gov]
Get a damn clue and stop spreading FUD.
Maybe you should start looking up actual data and providing citations.
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In fact, if America wants to really clean up, we simply need to tap yellowstone. That alone can provide 25-33% of America's electricity and that is without harming the park. Add nukes, more geo-thermal in America and we would be cleaner than all but Sweden/Iceland/Costa Rica/In
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Yes but they are not really great ones yet. They are not hitting efficiency and cost marks. Hydro storage has very restricted places it can work, and it often causes evaporation.
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Nuclear is very powerful! Listen carefully to what the President of the United States of America has to say about that:
Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
What about us? (Score:5, Funny)
The horseshoers of America have been having a tough time as of late since the Army isn't using as many warhorses as they used to. #MakeAmericaShodAgain
Re: What about us? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't mean to nag but there are too many neighsayers for that to work.
Re: What about us? (Score:2, Funny)
Sure, it may not provide a stable income like in its hayday, but ponying up the money should reign in those complaining they've been saddled with a raw deal. It's only a few bucks.
Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coal is not clean at all. It causes lots of air pollution, especially in the form of carbon. The carbon dioxide is causing global temperatures to rapidly warm and is threatening mass extinctions. Yet you right wing nutjobs are obsessed with coal. Your obsession with coal is helping to destroy the Earth, along with your obsession with huge SUVs that waste gasoline. Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth?
Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth?
They don't hate the Earth, They love power at any cost. Evil is not about I think I'll pollute the earth today because I'm evil. Evil is about not giving a fuck about polluting the Earth because by helping this group they can help keep their power to do other things.
It is power and control at any cost. Some of their coalition no doubt even care about certain issues and so the Faustian bargain continues because they must have power to advance those issues, so will turn a blind eye to everything else and what is more they will rationalize _anything_ for their people because they advance their key issues.
Many of them truly believe in their moral cause, and that is what is so scary. Even now Trump has a really good approval rating among republicans, and no amount of corruption is going to change it, because they truly see it as the lesser evil.
Hell the one and only saving grace about Trump is he seems to care about nothing but his own brand. If he was a zealot of some kind we might be in three more wars by now. That doesn't mean he isn't doing enormous damage to our country and our planet and to simple standards of human decency. He is. It just means it could be worse.
Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re Trump and his approval rating among Republicans. It is possible that the Republicans have chased a fair number of the normal people out of the Party that simply cannot stomach him. So his approval rating would remain high in the left over dregs.
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Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth?
The big effects of climate change are several decades into the future, propping up coal wins votes in 3 years time.
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Coal is not clean at all. It causes lots of air pollution
This, exactly.
It's time to double down on nuclear plant construction.
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Coal is not clean at all. It causes lots of air pollution
This, exactly.
It's time to double down on nuclear plant construction.
Double down on nuclear power and double up on your power bill. Ask the folks in Georgia who've been paying about $100/year extra for the Vogtle nuclear plants since 2011. That's over $2 billion Georgia Power has collected so far. And so far those plants are $4+ billion over budget and 3 years behind schedule. Do you really like paying extra for your power so you can get nuclear?
Re: Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:2)
Sure, we'll just spin up a test planet in a lab and do experiments on that. Simple. Science isn't religion. Once you learn that science includes more than just faith and doctrine, you'll understand why your statement is one of scientific illiteracy.
Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Informative)
If that's not enough, read all the good science referenced here: http://iopscience.iop.org/arti... [iop.org]
If you've gotten this far and still are unconvinced, you must not believe in the scientific method of thought or are in the extreme minority, more here on that topic: https://climate.nasa.gov/scien... [nasa.gov]
One does not have to be a scientist to know that something is terribly wrong.
Happy earth day.
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try svante arrhenius from 1896 http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
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Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Please cite at least one peer-reviewed, scientific study that demonstrates CO2 greenhouse gas effect."
Please cite at least one that doesn't.
"Find one original experimental study which shows a direct, causative link between CO2 and temperature increase."
Right after you find me a couple hundred identical planets, to use as test and control groups to come up with a statistically valid experiment to your satisfaction; right after you give me the technology to control and vary climate composition levels directly.
"Ten years ago, I tried and I failed. Blown my mind at the time."
It blew your mind that climate science, the study of a global scale phenomena of which we have exactly one to study, and of which we have very little direct control isn't awash in studies which show direct causative links between A and B ? Really?
"I can now freely admit that I was a clueless fucking librtard."
I don't know about libtard, but 'fucking clueless' is apt.
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Ouch! That's gotta hurt...elegantly put
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Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Informative)
> "Find one original experimental study which shows a direct, causative link between CO2 and temperature increase."
The temperature of Venus (863 F) is much higher than can be accounted for by being closer to the Sun. It gets 91% more sunlight, and basic thermodynamics says the equilibrium temperature should be 17.6% higher on the Kelvin scale, so 353 K = 80 C = 175 F. Therefore early science fiction stories assumed it was cloudy because it was hot and steamy, but people might be able to live near the poles. The first probes that got there found this was not at all right. The surface pressure is 90.8 times Earth's, and it is 96.5% CO2. Carbon Dioxide being a greenhouse gas, it traps infrared heat, warming the planet to the temperature I noted.
Mercury is much closer to the Sun, and gets 3.5 times as much sunlight, but is airless, and therefore is somewhat cooler than Venus, even at equatorial noon when it is hottest.
Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Informative)
Lets put it that way: The Greenhouse Effect is a wellknown phenomenon since at least 150 years (hey, we build greenhouses for some reason!). And of course every material that has different absorbtion properties at different frequencies comes with a greenhouse effect, because it is transparent to some frequencies and absorbs energy at other frequencies. Thus energy that at one frequency passes the layer gets trapped at other frequencies. Glass for instance is very transparent for electromagnetic waves from the visual spectrum, but is not for frequencies of the thermal spectrum. That's why we build greenhouses with glass roofs. Because of Ludwig Boltzmann's, Josef Stefan's and Gustav Kirchhoff's work, we know the distribution of the frequency of a Black Body's radiation, and we know, that Earth at a surface temperature of 290 K on average radiates its thermal energy at frequencies (Kirchhoff's Law, Planck's Law) where carbon dioxide, vapor and methane are absorbing electromagnetic waves. On the other hand, the Sun (with a surface temperature of 5700 K) emits its energy at much higher frequencies, for which most atmospheric gases are transparent. The Sun's energy enters the Earth's atmosphere at frequencies close to the visual spectrum, the light gets absorbed at the Earth's surface and heats it up to 255 K (on average). Then the Earth radiates the energy, but the atmosphere is intransparent at thermal frequencies due to the presence of vapor, carbon dioxide and methane. Only if Earth gets heated up due to the trapped energy to 290 K, it radiates enough energy to get into a thermal equilibrium.
That's the greenhouse effect on Earth. We have greenhouse effects at the other planets too, if they have an atmosphere. Venus is famous for its strong greenhouse effect which causes Venus's surface to have temperatures above 700 K. Mars has a greenhouse effect too, but because of the thin atmosphere, it's quite small and increases the surface temperature about 20 K above the Black Body temperature.
The current greenhouse effect of Earth is about 35 K, but it is highly dependent on the actual atmospheric composition. Changing the makeup of the atmosphere changes the strength of the greenhouse effect.
Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Informative)
Let's do a brain test on you. Please cite at least one peer-reviewed, scientific study that demonstrates CO2 greenhouse gas effect.
Here you go (the second hit in the search is a good one, and as you keep going down the list you should be able to get at least a hundred more):
https://scholar.google.com/sch... [google.com]
This search doesn't even include the basic physics behind the phenomenon which were established back in the 19th century.
Ten years ago, I tried and I failed. Blown my mind at the time.
Are you sure that you had a mind to blow? Based on your post it seems you had a void where you brain should be that suffered implosion rather than explosion event.
I can now freely admit that I was a clueless fucking librtard. Let's see if you can be equally honest now.
You are still fucking clueless. Not sure what librtard means. Please define.
Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:5, Funny)
Let me restate the original question in simpler terms: where does it say anything about the causative role of CO2 in global warming?
Maybe, for once, you libtards could stop assuming that your opponents are stupid brainless hilter trump russia nazis?
Oh no Sunshine, I am not assuming anything. I am basing my conclusion that you are an ignorant idiot (stupid and brainless apply too) on the fact that you did not read past the abstract of the first article. Have you read further you would have found that "The greenhouse effect of doubling CO2 is 4 W m-2 and that of human activities during the past century is ~2 W m-2.". Again, I fail to understand some aspects of your last sentence. Please define the following terms: "libtards" and "hilter trump russia nazis". Some of them may apply to you too, but I don't want to jump to conclusions without knowing what you mean by these terms.
Re:Why do you right wing nutjobs hate the Earth? (Score:4, Informative)
Find one original experimental study which shows a direct, causative link between CO2 and temperature increase.
You know what's great about science? You can do it yourself!
Here [youtube.com] you'll find one of many youtube videos that demonstrates a simple experiment that you can perform using commonly available materials in your own home to show a direct, causative link between CO2 and temperature increase, just as you've asked.
Hopefully your mind will be equally blown this time around.
Also, your google-fu sucks. Seriously. That video took me all of 10 seconds to find, and the experiment it describes could be performed by a kid in grammar school.
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"Please cite at least one peer-reviewed, scientific study that demonstrates CO2 greenhouse gas effect."
That's going to be tough. The reflectivity of CO2 to infrared, and thus the greenhouse effect, was discovered a long time ago, so you'd have to go quite a ways back. It's a pretty common high school science fair experiment though, so you could check out one of those.
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Let's do a brain test on you. Please cite at least one peer-reviewed, scientific study that demonstrates CO2 greenhouse gas effect.
Here's one:
Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010 [nature.com]
Abstract (emphasis mine):
The climatic impact of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is usually quantified in terms of radiative forcing, calculated as the difference between estimates of the Earth’s radiation field from pre-industrial and present-day concentrations of these gases. Radiative transfer models calculate that the increase in CO2 since 1750 corresponds to a global annual-mean radiative forcing at the tropopause of 1.82 ± 0.19 W m2. However, despite widespread scientific discussion and modelling of the climate impacts of well-mixed greenhouse gases, there is little direct observational evidence of the radiative impact of increasing atmospheric CO2. Here we present observationally based evidence of clear-sky CO2 surface radiative forcing that is directly attributable to the increase, between 2000 and 2010, of 22 parts per million atmospheric CO2. The time series of this forcing at the two locations—the Southern Great Plains and the North Slope of Alaska—are derived from Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer spectra together with ancillary measurements and thoroughly corroborated radiative transfer calculations. The time series both show statistically significant trends of 0.2 W m2 per decade (with respective uncertainties of ±0.06 W m2 per decade and ±0.07 W m2 per decade) and have seasonal ranges of 0.1–0.2 W m2. This is approximately ten per cent of the trend in downwelling longwave radiation. These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.
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If by imminent, you mean in a year or less, there's nothing we can do but evacuate half the country. If you mean in a hundred years, quite a bit. We can:
Coal is dead, and Natural Gas killed it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coal is dead, and Natural Gas killed it. (Score:5, Insightful)
preferring an industry whose workforce doesn't want to adapt or change
More to the point, it's about preferring any policy option that will make liberals cry. If they actually gave a crap about reality, they'd be pushing investment in infrastructure and human capital to accelerate the transition to a sustainable economy (kinda like China is doing). But no, this is just pure, spiteful politics to gin-up their base and ass-kiss their donors. Not much to see here...
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Politically, yes, it's pretty much just hippie punching, though aimed at currying support from the brain-addled Trump base, rather than centrists. There is almost definitely a financial layer to it, given that the whole administration is a giant shakedown.
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Even if you cut renewables out, Natural Gas is cheaper to extract, requires fewer workers,
I don't think that's often the case any more. A lot of coal is done with huge strip mining operations now, which have vast diggers and trucks and takes much fewer people to operate than an underground operation. The big mining companies prefer that because it's cheaper. The sad thing is of course that the miners voted for pro coal politicians, but they support the companies which are reducing the workforce anyway.
They
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Even if you cut renewables out, Natural Gas is cheaper to extract, requires fewer workers, and is safer both to burn and acquire. This isn't propping up fossil fuels, this is preferring an industry whose workforce doesn't want to adapt or change.
And "natural" gas IS a fossil fuel. It is a marketing name the fossil gas industry came up with to make it sound friendlier.
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Natural gas was called that long before "natural" came to mean "good" to hippies.
It's called that because it is, well, naturally occurring and seeps out of the ground in gaseous form. The Chinese were capturing it and piping it around for heating stuff up in 500 BC.
It's also a fossil fuel. Virtually all fossil fuels are naturally occurring.
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Natural gas was called that long before "natural" came to mean "good" to hippies.
It's called that because it is, well, naturally occurring and seeps out of the ground in gaseous form. The Chinese were capturing it and piping it around for heating stuff up in 500 BC.
It's also a fossil fuel. Virtually all fossil fuels are naturally occurring.
It wasn't called natural gas originally though. Because it predates non-natural gas by a millenia or more.
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Virtually all fossil fuels are naturally occurring.
I think that's kind of implied by using the word "fossil".
No national security reasons?! (Score:4, Insightful)
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If that's true about Iraq, then why didn't we take their oil after we invaded?
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You misunderstand. It's not that energy isn't vital to national security. It's that the continued profitability of Trump's butt-buddies' businesses isn't.
I know I surely misunderstand. Helping out nuclear power generation would surely be the kiss of death for Coal power in a quasi-sane world. Perhaps we will build some North Korean type empty cities and power them with 100 percent government subsidized coal power plants.
Anyhow - good to see that the Republicans are sticking to their free market no regulation model, except when they model themselvelves after early 20th century Soviet system Expect the five year plan to come out soon.
Re:No national security reasons?! (Score:5, Informative)
DNS-and-BIND blithered:
Before the Syrian civil war, two pipelines were proposed by Qatar to get gas to Europe. Going through Syria. Now, don't forget, Qatar are (were) major Clinton Foundation donors. Iran, a Russian ally, also proposed a pipeline. It also went through Syria. Guess which one Assad approved?
Oh, for pity's sake!
The Clinton Foundation's relationship with Qatar had NOTHING to do with Assad's decision. Instead, as is the case with Middle Eastern politics in general, Islamic sectarianism was the deciding factor.
Qatar is and, since the expansion of Islam beyond what are now the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina, has always been ruled and principally inhabited by Sunni muslims. Syria is (and has been, ever since the Assad clan and its associated Ba'ath Party came to power) a Sunni-majority "nation" (if you're unclear why I put that term in quotes, go look up the Balfour Declaration for background on why "national" borders across the Middle East are arbitrary constructs that exist because of British arrogance, rather than naturally-derived nations that emerged from the traditional tribal and sectarian divisions in the region), ruled by an authoritarian, Shia-minority government that exerts control over the Sunni majority via oppression and terror. (In effect, it's a mirror image of the Iraqi power structure under Saddam Hussein, where a Sunni minority ruled a Shia majority via the same strategy.)
The Assad clan chose the Iranian pipeline proposal because it has, ever since Iran's (Shia) Islamic Revolution of 1979, ALWAYS been an Iranian client state (as is the Hezboll'ah quasi-state in the Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon, which both Syria and Iran support with money and arms) and ally. There was never any serious possibility that the Assads would accept the Qatari proposals, because that would have obligated them to Sunni bankers - and, in the Middle East, such obligations always come with unpublicized, but very real political strings.
Not to mention such an arrangement would have publicly humiliated the Iranian mullahs - which would have been unwise for an authoritarian state that depended heavily on arms and oil money from Iran to maintain its control over its own people and its supply pipline to its Hezboll'ah co-clients.
This kind of myopic, USA-centric, profound misunderstanding of Middle Eastern politics, and its concomittant ignorance of how power actually works in the Islamic world is why we had no business whatsoever invading Iraq, why our experiment in enforced regime change in Libya backfired so spectacularly, and why allowing ourselves to be drawn into the developing quagmire in Syria is such a Really Bad Idea. We have NO idea what the fuck we're doing there, and our accumulated previous experience should have (but clearly has not) taught us that thrusting our military dick into the Middle East without a Waterford-clear idea of what we're trying to accomplish, precisely how we propose to accomplish it, exactly who the other players are (and what their respective power bases and goals are), and a precisely-defined exit strategy in hand, is arrogant foolishness of the very highest order.
And it's essentially begging to be taught that lesson yet again, in the most humiliating and expensive way possible ...
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, we have been at war in the Middle East for decades for one reason: energy. It's why we had Gulf War I, Gulf War II, and so many others. Fun fact, did you know the reason we refuse to withdraw from Syria despite the fact that ISIS has been defeated is energy? Yup. A proposed pipeline to supply from Qatar to Europe would weaken Russian influence. That's why we can't stop making war there. So let's not trot out the fiction that energy has nothing to do with national security, because it absolutely does.
And what does that have to do with promoting domestically produced Coal and Nuclear over domestically produced Natural Gas and renewables?
Grandpa like to rant about things now and again. He's been like this since they elected that chocolate guy from Kenya. Just nod your head and say "Damn liberals anyhow!"
Who wouldn't exploit a rich brat? (Score:2)
MOST people would take advantage of a rich arrogant ignoramus who thinks they are better than everybody else and entitled to everything they were born into? The EU is doing just fine and will continue to do so whether or not the USA continues to play the fool.
Shale oil is lousy stuff and it's not that cost effective; the current situation is a result of Obama's regulations forcing the use of oil permits coupled with the now repealed Pelosi law forbidding export of US oil/gas. One can expect the market now
What about the free market? (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing all this bullshit from one side of the aisle about the "free market" being the best thing ever but then when the free market stops promoting their favorite industries then they suddenly need to swoop in and bail them out. What's worse is that they are rapidly expending shared capital: our uncontaminated environment.
The truth of the matter is that goods (including energy generation) should have to pay for the pollution caused by their production. That money can then in turn be used to remove said pollution from the environment. This is how the free market should really be and it would be utterly devastating to regressive industries that pay no mind to the damage they do to our environment.
Unleash the free market and destroy those who are hellbent on destroying the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Well for years they went on and on about how important it was to cut the deficit (and debt) too but as soon as they could they increased both by a massive amount in order to bring in a massive tax cut to the rich and to companies.
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I was going to say "Wow, I want some of what you've been smoking!" But I really don't if it takes you that far from reality. As others here have observed coal's biggest problem (economically) is cheap natural gas.
Coal production versus manpower productivity (Score:5, Informative)
So assuming coal had maintained the same level of production between 1950 and 2011, the coal industry would have shed 75% of its manpower due to automation and has proven it can get to 80% reduction if it needs to. Then add in the reduction in coal consumption and it is a no-brainer as to why no one is being hired to work in the mines.
So it Trump tries to boost coal consumption (which is the goal of his actions here); more coal may get produced and purchased, but very few additional workers will be hired. If anything, the mine owners will buy more automated equipment.
Its not like any local town is going to build a coal power plant. Those take years of planning, approvals, oversight, and construction. Power plant planning and construction can easily take five to ten years, beginning to end. So any of this "make people buy more coal" rhetoric is not going to produce more jobs in any of the coal towns that are out there.
Cited Reference:
https://www.eia.gov/totalenerg... [eia.gov]
Re:Coal production versus manpower productivity (Score:5, Informative)
A big issue is this: Coal has been steadily automating its mining systems. In 1950 underground mining was at the rate of 0.68 tons per man hour and surface mining was at the rate of 1.9 tons/manhour. By 2011 underground mining was at the rate of 2.76 tons/man hour and surface mining was at 8.8 tons/man hour. There were productivity peaks in 2003 of 4.04 and 10.75 tons/man hour.
Pretty much this. It is nothing short of amazing how quickly a few men can tear a mountain apart to extract the coal in it. I had a lot of relatives that worked in coal back in the day. Now, not one. Even jobs you would think were safe have been eliminated by just making the machines bigger. Like this http://www.mining.com/belaz-la... [mining.com]
A mere 450 tonne payload, twin turbo diesels, and 65 Km/Hr speed. These trucks can be filled by the likes of "Big Muskie" (no longer in service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which could do 220 cubic yards per scoop. We can build 'em as big as you want - in fact bigger than most mines will ever need
The only way that the Trumpian/Miner coal jobs wet dream will ever materialize is by returning to the good old days of this: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/af/2... [pinimg.com] , this, https://c8.alamy.com/comp/DAHJ... [alamy.com] and this https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Gains in employment will be obtained by using mules in the mines, making the use of steam drills and jumbos and road headers illegal, just human and mule power, picks and shovels.
Otherwise, as you point out, coal mining is pretty darn automated. This is yet another "jerbs, Jerbs, JERBS! event, where people who might not think out the whole situation are promised jerbs, and are pursuaded to vote for people who have no intention of making jobs for them, or perhaps aren't thinking either.
The math is simply not there.
Re: (Score:2)
A big issue is this: Coal has been steadily automating its mining systems. In 1950 underground mining was at the rate of 0.68 tons per man hour and surface mining was at the rate of 1.9 tons/manhour. By 2011 underground mining was at the rate of 2.76 tons/man hour and surface mining was at 8.8 tons/man hour. There were productivity peaks in 2003 of 4.04 and 10.75 tons/man hour.
Furthermore underground coal is only about 1/3 of U.S. production, and it is steadily declining. As the market for coal shrinks those high-labor cost underground mines are going to close first.
Coal production is down by 25% of the last few years, and no one expects the trend-line to change, least of all coal companies who have not bid for one new lease in the last few years. The have instead been abandon leases they have already sunk some money into.
Re: (Score:2)
So it Trump tries to boost coal consumption (which is the goal of his actions here); more coal may get produced and purchased, but very few additional workers will be hired. If anything, the mine owners will buy more automated equipment.
And what... you think Trump cares about getting people jobs?
What nuclear really needs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is more R&D into advanced GenIV designs like MSR, VHTR, or small modular reactors, and a less punishing regulatory review process. We are abdicating our leadership to China, India, and Europe.
Re:What nuclear really needs.. (Score:5, Informative)
The funny thing about MSR is that the US had experimental reactors running and had tons of knowledge about them, but it was more or less deep sixed since LWR was the way to go so the military could get their fissionables for atomic weapons.
All meltdowns to date (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl & Fukushima) has been LWR's. Due to how LWR's function they are all accidents waiting to happen if their cooling breaks down.
China is busy trying to get Thorium MSR's up and running since they are better in all aspects compared to LWR, and Thorium is a much more abundant ore than Uranium.
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The funny thing about MSR is that the US had experimental reactors running and had tons of knowledge about them, but it was more or less deep sixed since LWR was the way to go so the military could get their fissionables for atomic weapons.
No country has ever produced "fissionables" for atomic weapons with a LWR.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes they have, it's just that they are unusable until they are separated and enriched from the spent fuel.
Re:What nuclear really needs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is more R&D into advanced GenIV designs like MSR, VHTR, or small modular reactors, and a less punishing regulatory review process. We are abdicating our leadership to China, India, and Europe.
We don't need that research becaus Nuclear is perfectly safe already. We need laws forcing building plants before any other power source is considered. Except for coal. Coal needs plants built before nuc except where nuc plants are built before coal.
While that might sound sarcastic, it is the basic premise of Trump's concept.
By the way - if we declare that coal and it's mining is a critical defense need, what happens to the 88 million metric tons that we exported in 2017? https://www.platts.com/latest-... [platts.com] What the hell kind of country exports that much of a critical strategic product? Sounds like aiding and abetting possible enemies of our country. This must end and end now! America's future is at stake.
Re: (Score:2)
There are a lot of countries with the technology to build nuclear power reactors, if they choose to. Most of France's electrical power comes from nuclear power.
Now. Provide a list of every molten salt power reactor operating in the world.
Heck how many are currently under construction? Planned? Proposed?
Let me make is super-easy. Here is a list of every operating, under construction, planned, and proposed power reactor in the entire world- 447 of them. [world-nuclear.org] Which ones are molten salt reactors?
Even easier, here is [world-nuclear.org]
We're at war with Eurasia (Score:3)
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
Re: (Score:2)
Eastasia.
The depth of this mans stupidity (Score:2)
is revealed more each day and it is staggering.
is this about vote buying for 2020? (Score:2)
A law from 1950 (Score:4, Funny)
The time period seems quite in line with Trump’s thinking on most things.
Coal, Nuclear or... flaky, fragile natural gas (Score:2, Offtopic)
Once upon a time, not long ago, I was generally headed for Vermont and was prepared to encourage my children to settle there also. As a place of natural beauty it ranks highly with many other places, but in uncertain times I felt drawn there for another reason, one in keeping with my technical interests and survivalist tendency.
You see, I wanted to join the folks at Vermont Yankee. Vermont Yankee was the greatest jewel mankind had yet produced: a nuclear power plant connected by direct and exclusive feede
Re: (Score:2)
You need to remember that Vermont Yankee had a design lifetime of 40 years, which it met with reasonable success. I always worry about what the thoughtful engineers of old were thinking when they said that the plant would last that long. There are a couple of aspects to this.
First and foremost, Nuclear power in its present state is completely unforgiving. While there are newer designs that overcome many of the problems, the fact remains Vermont was an aging nuclear plant. One of the cooling towers collapsed
Lumping nuclear and coal... (Score:2)
Nuclear and coal are almost opposite when it comes to power generation
Coal: Cheap upfront, expensive fuel, lots of CO2, widespread pollution, low potential for disaster
Nuclear: Expensive upfront, cheap fuel, almost no CO2, highly localized pollution, possibility of disasters
FTA (Score:2)
great if applied to nuke power (Score:2)
First, we already subsidize coal WAY TOO MUCH.
Secondly, we are on the right path in that our coal plants have been being shut down. We need to continue this.
Artificially changing the economics for coal is just plain stupid.
With nukes, it makes sense, since they are clean and more importantly, if we push SMR tech, it is 100% safe.
Likewise, we can burn up most of our nuke waste while converting to energy and ideally
Re: (Score:2)
However, experts in the coal field of montana [billingsgazette.com]
Other Americans continue to point to coal rapid closing. [washingtonpost.com]
Here is the massive navajo plant that will most certainly close down. Note that this is America's single dirtiest plant going. [nbcnews.com]
Nice article about the continuing closings of coal plants (assuming that Trump is not allowed to subsidize coal anymore than w [prnewswire.com]
Small government (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree it's best to be prepared if enemies or wars clog up energy sources, but I'm not convinced the Administration is preparing correctly or just misusing the law to hand out political favors.
Reading the act the Koch brothers will approve greatly.
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"Democrats are the ones who pushed the narrative that we are at war with Russia"
They did?
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The "Peopel's" money is insignificant when compared with corporate wealth.
That is why multinational oligarchies control big governmental entities in our world. No amount of throwing it back to states will help that because oligarchies control them as well.