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Trump signs bill undoing Obama coal mining rule

SouthernDemocrat said:
Lumber is hardly comparable. You log land and even if its old growth its going to recover fully within a few hundred years.

This is what mountaintop removal coaling mining does to the land:

View attachment 67214185

You can literally see the scaring of the land from space.
Click to expand...

Another poster showed an aerial shot of a mined mountain top that looked pretty good after 12 years. Looks like a good place to build a little community.

The simple truth of the matter is that the presence of mankind has changed the world whether you are looking at NYC, the coal mines of West Virginia or the mouth of the Willamette River.

Like anything else, we are just trying to make things livable.

What does the eastern seaboard look like from space? Can you see evidence of the actions of Man there?
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Lumber is hardly comparable. You log land and even if its old growth its going to recover fully within a few hundred years.

This is what mountaintop removal coaling mining does to the land:

View attachment 67214185

You can literally see the scaring of the land from space.
Click to expand...

So take a photo of the same spot in a few hundred years. I'm guessing it might look slightly different.

Nature does its share of eroding landscape also. The Grand Canyon is not the result of a large strip mine. The Appalachians themselves are an old mountain range, lower and smoother than the Rockies, a newer range.
 
code1211 said:
Another poster showed an aerial shot of a mined mountain top that looked pretty good after 12 years. Looks like a good place to build a little community.

The simple truth of the matter is that the presence of mankind has changed the world whether you are looking at NYC, the coal mines of West Virginia or the mouth of the Willamette River.

Like anything else, we are just trying to make things livable.

What does the eastern seaboard look like from space? Can you see evidence of the actions of Man there?
Click to expand...

If you look at the eastern seaboard outside of coal country, you will find the mountains relatively unscarred and the forests fairly healthy. We have actually done a pretty decent job of it. Granted, due to the high population densities, there is a lot of habitat fragmentation, but there are still tens of millions of acres of national and state forests there, as well as fairly large areas of forest like Adirondack Park (5 million acres there alone).

I am all for natural gas, I think pipelines are a necessary evil and far preferable to the alternatives. I am fine with nuclear and hydro. I just think that the environmental impacts of coal are so bad, so much worse than any other human activity, that the more of it we replace with natural gas, the better. I don't see how anyone that cares one bit about conservation could be ok with mountaintop removal mining.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Actually the pollution from coal burning worldwide has killed exponentially more people than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/

Access Denied

Air pollution causes 7 million deaths per year from lung cancer, strokes and heart disease

It's not even close.
Click to expand...

C'mon, man!

Isn't it time that we look at the big picture? Before the industrial revolution, the population of the world was pretty low and survival of individuals was pretty tenuous.

Poverty was everywhere and the misery of most was the reality. Read any Dickens Book to get a fairly good picture.

Then people started burning coal.

Since the start of the wide spread use of Coal, the lot of the average guy has improved exponentially. Since 1700, the wealth of the world and of the individual up and down the economic scales world wide in every corner of the Earth has improved.

Saying that the use of coal is lethal ignores the reality of the world.

If coal was really lethal and there were no benefits from its use, the curve in the image below would be downward, not upward.

 
jimbo said:
So take a photo of the same spot in a few hundred years. I'm guessing it might look slightly different.

Nature does its share of eroding landscape also. The Grand Canyon is not the result of a large strip mine. The Appalachians themselves are an old mountain range, lower and smoother than the Rockies, a newer range.
Click to expand...


Frankly, comparing natural geologic activity to blowing up entire mountains is just plain dumb. And while it might look a little different in a few hundred years, it will take tens of millions of years for that landscape to return to its natural state.
 
code1211 said:
C'mon, man!

Isn't it time that we look at the big picture? Before the industrial revolution, the population of the world was pretty low and survival of individuals was pretty tenuous.

Poverty was everywhere and the misery of most was the reality. Read any Dickens Book to get a fairly good picture.

Then people started burning coal.

Since the start of the wide spread use of Coal, the lot of the average guy has improved exponentially. Since 1700, the wealth of the world and of the individual up and down the economic scales world wide in every corner of the Earth has improved.

Saying that the use of coal is lethal ignores the reality of the world.

Click to expand...

We now have many other options that are cleaner and cheaper, specifically natural gas than coal was. Life sucked prior to whale oil burning too, but then we found better alternatives. Moreover, the higher the population, the greater the environmental controls have to be to obtain the same level of environment protections.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Actually the pollution from coal burning worldwide has killed exponentially more people than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/

Access Denied

Air pollution causes 7 million deaths per year from lung cancer, strokes and heart disease

It's not even close.
Click to expand...

It's also kept a lot of people from freezing to death.

Sorry, I need further documentation before I buy into the 7 million/year loss of life attributable to air pollution meme. Since coal mining, electricity, automobiles, et al began, human life expectancy has more the doubled.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
We now have many other options that are cleaner and cheaper, specifically natural gas than coal was. Life sucked prior to whale oil burning too, but then we found better alternatives. Moreover, the higher the population, the greater the environmental controls have to be to obtain the same level of environment protections.
Click to expand...

There are reasonable, helpful regulations and intentionally hurtful and agenda driven regulations.

Science is an amazing industry and produces amazing results. Figuring a way to burn coal cleanly is one of those things that Science can and should do.

Outlawing the mining of coal in the US will not help to advance this technology. Absent the technology to burn coal cleanly, the coal fired plants in India and China coming on line at the pace of one more plant every week will continue to pollute the air.

If clean coal technology is developed and made cheap by research in the US, that technology will be employed elsewhere.

Absent research in the US, where will these solution come from? Where has it come from?
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Frankly, comparing natural geologic activity to blowing up entire mountains is just plain dumb. And while it might look a little different in a few hundred years, it will take tens of millions of years for that landscape to return to its natural state.
Click to expand...

In tens of millions of years, Michigan has gone from a salt water coral reef to a large fresh water lake dug by a miles thick ice pack. Just one example out of thousands.

You're not making your case very well.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Read more here: Trump signs bill undoing Obama coal mining rule | TheHill

The coal industry has literally destroyed thousands of miles of streams and rivers with mountaintop removal mining. This is a shame.

They are turning thousands of miles of mountain waterways into this:

View attachment 67214183

BTW, the regulation would have created as many jobs as were lost: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/coal...uld-have-created-as-many-jobs-as-it-cost.html

On a side note the Coal Mining Industry Lobby claimed the regulations would cost 280,000 coal mining jobs. Pretty easy to call bull**** there when the whole industry currently employs 81,000 people.
Click to expand...

How often are government assessments accurate? Can you cite a couple that have even come close to their predictions?

These environmental regs make coal too expensive to produce, by design. We have O'Bama on video proudly proclaiming he would bankrupt coal companies. Now, maybe rolling back these rules goes a bit far, but I suspect there are other rules in place to control any wanton destruction of streams. That is the problem with today's EPA, it is more of a political tool than an environmental champion. People are sick and tired of that.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Where is the other 1000 plus feet of the mountain? Where is the forests that one stood upon it? You think taking mountains that are hundreds of millions of years old and at best turning them in to a field is not environmental damage?
Click to expand...

Liberals don't seem to understand that it can take years for trees to grow.
 
reinoe said:
Liberals don't seem to understand that it can take years for trees to grow.
Click to expand...

Trees are never going to regrow there. Its mining debris covered by a thin layer of soil.
 
jimbo said:
In tens of millions of years, Michigan has gone from a salt water coral reef to a large fresh water lake dug by a miles thick ice pack. Just one example out of thousands.

You're not making your case very well.
Click to expand...

We have been around for about 200,000 years. We diverged from a common ancestor we share with chimps and bonobos approximately 6 million years ago. The Appalachans are about 300 million years old. So, it can quite some time to regrow mountains. Even mountains along two continental plates still take tens of millions of years to form.
 
code1211 said:
There are reasonable, helpful regulations and intentionally hurtful and agenda driven regulations.

Science is an amazing industry and produces amazing results. Figuring a way to burn coal cleanly is one of those things that Science can and should do.

Outlawing the mining of coal in the US will not help to advance this technology. Absent the technology to burn coal cleanly, the coal fired plants in India and China coming on line at the pace of one more plant every week will continue to pollute the air.

If clean coal technology is developed and made cheap by research in the US, that technology will be employed elsewhere.

Absent research in the US, where will these solution come from? Where has it come from?
Click to expand...

Even if we develop perfect clean coal technology for power plants, it will still be the dirtiest fuel in the history of mankind if we continue to blow up entire mountains to get it.

China has a far, far greater incentive to develop clean coal technologies than we do. Even if we completely got out of the coal business, which we won't, they still will develop the technology.
 
jimbo said:
It's also kept a lot of people from freezing to death.

Sorry, I need further documentation before I buy into the 7 million/year loss of life attributable to air pollution meme. Since coal mining, electricity, automobiles, et al began, human life expectancy has more the doubled.
Click to expand...

Life expectancy doubled due to vaccinations and antibiotics. You seem to act like there is no alternative here, that if we quite blowing mountains up we would return to the stone age. Natural gas fracking is already putting coal out of business in the United States.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Read more here: Trump signs bill undoing Obama coal mining rule | TheHill

The coal industry has literally destroyed thousands of miles of streams and rivers with mountaintop removal mining. This is a shame.

They are turning thousands of miles of mountain waterways into this:

View attachment 67214183

BTW, the regulation would have created as many jobs as were lost: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/coal...uld-have-created-as-many-jobs-as-it-cost.html

On a side note the Coal Mining Industry Lobby claimed the regulations would cost 280,000 coal mining jobs. Pretty easy to call bull**** there when the whole industry currently employs 81,000 people.
Click to expand...

on the one hand you have a rule imposed by autocrats at the EPA followed by a response from the voters

and the voters get the last word on the subject
 
code1211 said:
I assume there have been EPA type regulations passed before the one that was revoked.

If the economics of the use of coal are that bad, then the use of coal will end. Problem solved.
Click to expand...

No, not solved. The energy companies on the east coast that burn coal are under fire to get rid of the coal ash ponds and storage in the home states because they keep leaking into rivers and water supplies. They want to bring coal ash by the dozens of rail cars daily to a landfill 9 miles north of me. They have been bringing in truckloads for the last few years and last year they had a positive test for heavy metals at a test point. So the landfill has already failed and may eventually contaminated ground water. That cannot be undone. If you dig a two foot deep hole here, several inches a water will seep in within minutes. Think Okefenoke swamp.
So if you want to dig coal, burn coal, then keep the leftovers in your state. That waste will be around a long time after those companies are gone and the state taxpayers will be on the hook for any cleanup.
And in regards to lumber, timber is one of our largest industries. And it's renewable. Forests are harvested and replanted every 20 years or so. Southern pine groves are separated by native hardwoods and other trees and support so many critters you can harvest 10 deer per year here. I can't keep the deer, squirrels, rabbits, etc out of my garden.
Now if you want to talk western red cedar, redwoods, and several oaks, well, those take a loooong time. And we should never harvest the last ten percent.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Read more here: Trump signs bill undoing Obama coal mining rule | TheHill

The coal industry has literally destroyed thousands of miles of streams and rivers with mountaintop removal mining. This is a shame.

They are turning thousands of miles of mountain waterways into this:

View attachment 67214183

BTW, the regulation would have created as many jobs as were lost: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/coal...uld-have-created-as-many-jobs-as-it-cost.html

On a side note the Coal Mining Industry Lobby claimed the regulations would cost 280,000 coal mining jobs. Pretty easy to call bull**** there when the whole industry currently employs 81,000 people.
Click to expand...

I suspect that the number of jobs lost in this kind of situation are speculative, till they are gone. When industries close there are down stream businesses that disappear and fewer shopkeepers and hamburger flippers and char ladies are required.

There is also an interesting questiin of who should pay the costs of regulations that are so high. Also the political discussiin and arguments seemingly used by US negotiators at the time of the Paris Climate Accord indicate that the coal was to be phased out by regulation in order to reduce co2 exhaust. Should governments use regulations and their costs to help achieve quite different objectives. This destroys trust in government. It is among other things a reason Trump won.
 
US coal tonnage reached a high in 2012 and has been in decline ever since. Most US mined coal is exported (Europe is the biggest customer) but this avenue is declining as European nations get greener. Due to mechanization and weak demand, labor in the US coal industry has fallen below < 80,000. Over 40% of US coal is mined on US federal land. Most US coal used internally (93%) is for power generation, but such usage is also declining due to newer green technology and increased domestic sources of gas/oil. The main business benefactors of coal mining are the 10 major US coal mining companies, mining equipment manufacturers, electric utilities, and railroads (due to the many hundreds of thousands of coal hopper railroad cars).

US air, land, and water quality will be under heavy assault for the next four years by the Trump/Pruitt aim to gut the EPA and severely weaken federal environmental protections.
 
code1211 said:
C'mon, man!

Isn't it time that we look at the big picture? Before the industrial revolution, the population of the world was pretty low and survival of individuals was pretty tenuous.

Poverty was everywhere and the misery of most was the reality. Read any Dickens Book to get a fairly good picture.

Then people started burning coal.

Since the start of the wide spread use of Coal, the lot of the average guy has improved exponentially. Since 1700, the wealth of the world and of the individual up and down the economic scales world wide in every corner of the Earth has improved.

Saying that the use of coal is lethal ignores the reality of the world.

If coal was really lethal and there were no benefits from its use, the curve in the image below would be downward, not upward.

Click to expand...

This is it. This is the dumbest post.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
We have been around for about 200,000 years. We diverged from a common ancestor we share with chimps and bonobos approximately 6 million years ago. The Appalachans are about 300 million years old. So, it can quite some time to regrow mountains. Even mountains along two continental plates still take tens of millions of years to form.
Click to expand...

Not really. This one formed overnight. Mass can not be created or destroyed, just moved around and converted into different states. Coal mountains were turned into energy used to create a higher quality of life for humans, animals, and even nature (see indoor plants, crops, heated pools, fans). Why do we want more mountains? Who is to say the mountain is the ideal state of being? Well, humans. So why cant we decide it isnt?

Hunga Tonga volcano eruption forms new S Pacific island - BBC News
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Read more here: Trump signs bill undoing Obama coal mining rule | TheHill

The coal industry has literally destroyed thousands of miles of streams and rivers with mountaintop removal mining. This is a shame.

They are turning thousands of miles of mountain waterways into this:

View attachment 67214183

BTW, the regulation would have created as many jobs as were lost: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/coal...uld-have-created-as-many-jobs-as-it-cost.html

On a side note the Coal Mining Industry Lobby claimed the regulations would cost 280,000 coal mining jobs. Pretty easy to call bull**** there when the whole industry currently employs 81,000 people.
Click to expand...

Isn't it interesting that this regulation was finalized in December a full eight years after he was elected. It was also one month after his party LOST the election, so he knew this regulation would not move forward under the new administration.

So is the news what Trump did, or that Obama tried to sneak another one of his agenda items that the voters in West Virginia, Ohio etc. rejected.
 
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