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Concerning coal, some numbers and a thought
Heading Out, The Oil Drum
When I started posting to this site, one of the last things that I intended was to become an apologist for either the mining or petroleum industries. I worry however, sometimes, that if there is only one side of a debate being given visibility, then, by default, a public picture is painted that may not reflect reality, and which may in the future have unfortunate consequences. The immediate cause of the comment was the Jeff Goodell’s editorial in the [Washington] Post last weekend.
…Over this past week the editorial has continued to ferment in the back of my mind. I very much agree with the opening comments about the invisibility that is usually the miners’ lot, and the neglect that mining issues usually get in the Congress. But from that point on it takes an unmistakable tack against the industry. Why should this be of concern? Well consider, for a second, [the costs of energy from various sources]…
…In electricity generation coal, like nuclear power, is more commonly used for baseload generation, while natural gas is more for times of high demand, since it can be more easily brought on line and, later, turned off. However, as natural gas supply becomes more in question, then something will have to replace those generators. It is a debate that is facing an increasing number of communities around the country as increasing electricity demand begins to strain existing resources.
…The cheapest alternative would appear to be coal. The price differential between it and competing sources would still appear to be sufficiently large as to accommodate the cost increases that would be required for flue gas treatment and carbon sequestration (which as I noted in the past, could likely double the energy cost per kWh).
(5 September 2007)
No mention of the climate effects of coal in HO’s analysis – a glaring omission. -BA
Coal Rush Reverses, Power Firms Follow
Plans for New Plants Stalled by Growing Opposition
Steven Mufson, Washington Post
The mayor of Missoula, Mont., is the latest person to discover just how unpopular coal plants have become.
In early August, Mayor John Engen (D) won city council support to buy electricity from a new coal-fired plant scheduled to begin operation in 2011. He said the city government would save money on its electric bills.
But three weeks later, Engen pulled out of the deal after receiving hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from constituents upset that Missoula would contribute to the creation of a coal plant and concerned about what the town would do if the plant never got built.
“Coal is a double-edged sword,” Engen said. “I sort of felt both edges.”
A year after the nation appeared to be in the middle of a coal rush, widening alarm about greenhouse gas emissions has slowed the efforts of electric companies to build coal-fired power plants from hills of eastern Montana to southern Florida.
Recently, proponents of coal-fired power plants acquired a new foe: Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid. In late July, Reid (D-Nev.) sent a letter to the chief executives of four power companies in which he vowed to “use every means at my disposal” to stop their plans to build three coal-fired plants in Nevada. Last month, after a speech in Reno, Reid said he was opposed to new coal-fired plants anywhere.
“There’s not a coal-fired plant in America that’s clean. They’re all dirty,” Reid told reporters after speaking at a conference on renewable energy. He said that the United States should turn to wind, solar and geothermal power in an effort to slow climate change. “Unless we do something quickly about global warming, we’re in trouble,” he said.
Reid’s opposition to coal plants is the latest in a series of new obstacles for power companies seeking to use the fuel to generate electricity.
(4 September 2007)
A study in the art of framing and propaganda. The issue is described through the eyes of a politician who is frustrated in his efforts to “save money on electric bills” by buying electricity from a coal-fired plant. This framing leads us to sympathize with him and be suspicious of whoever is putting obstacles in his way. Ironically, this framing can be more persuasive than whatever the facts are.
If you can get past the framing, the story actually does a good job explaining the issue.
An alternate framing would be to start the story with citizen activists who were outraged at more support for coal-fired plants, since these plants are prime culprits in global warming and are multiplying at a rapid pace. (See the next article.)
Thd framing technique is propaganda since it exerts influence not through facts or arguments but by non-obvious emotional manipulation. The technique is a staple of fiction writers. Sometimes this framing is intentional, other times not. Often reporters just fall into it because they don’t see other alternatives.
I think the lessons are:
- Ask, who the sympathetic figures are in the article, what human struggle is being depicted?
- Ask, could the issue have been described using different figures, different conflicts?
- Ask, what is the issue in abstract terms? Is the article trying to influence you one way or the other?
- Pay attention to the first several paragraphs – that’s where reporters put the message they think is most important. Readership of early paragraphs is high. The farther down you go in the story, the fewer readers there are.
-BA
Offsets Aren’t Enough
Megan Tady, In These Times
Two environmental groups cave in to Big Coal in Texas
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…The massive plan for coal plant expansion in the United States just as climate change barrels forth with ferocity is as ridiculous and dangerous as a triple-bypass patient eating another Whopper. Equally treacherous is the doctor who orders the burger, or in this case, the environmental groups who give a nod to the coal plant.
Texas is not a painless place to rein in polluting industries, and battles fought in court can be insanely expensive, with victories far from guaranteed. I’m not suggesting that stopping mighty coal is another easy day in the office. But giving coal the green light should never be done, even on the hardest terrain. No new coal means no new coal, regardless of the corporations’ concessions.
…If we are to make any real effort at minimizing climate change, the default, mainstream approach from environmentalists has to be keeping fossil fuels in the ground, not burning them with an asterisk. But as long as our leading environmental groups continue touting offsets and emissions reductions like they’re viable solutions to our predicament, we’ll never move to a truly sustainable way of living.
(30 August 2007)
Mount Stripmine?
Editorial, Boston Globe
While the nation’s attention was focused on the nine lives lost in the deep coal mine of Crandall Canyon in Utah, the Bush administration has been busy pushing a form of strip mining in Appalachia that is lethal to land itself. It has proposed a rule that would explicitly allow mining companies to blast and bulldoze the tops of mountains and dump rock and dirt debris into streams and hollows. While this has been going on under existing rules and laws, critics of the dumping had fought it in courts. With the new rule, mine owners expect the legal fights to end.
In mountaintop removal mining, explosives or huge earth-movers strip off topsoil and rock to expose seams of coal prized for its low sulfur content. In some cases, loggers first cut and remove trees for lumber, but in other cases the mine owners don’t bother with timbering first. When companies are finished mining, they are supposed to replace the topsoil, but they often do not, said Margaret Janes of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in Lewisburg, W.Va.
Also, the surface becomes so compacted by the heavy equipment that it is “like concrete,” Janes said. It will take 200 to 300 years for trees to return to what has been the most diverse temperate hardwood forest in the world. Streams that are not filled in become highly polluted.
The alternative to trucking the debris to a nearby stream or hollow is to move it to unreclaimed mining sites that need fill. Janes acknowledges that this “might increase the price of the coal a bit.” As things stand, she said, there is no financial incentive for companies to do the environmentally responsible thing. Companies compete to provide coal, the fuel for half the country’s electricity generation, as cheaply as possible.
(4 September 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
Peak Oil and Climate Change? I Blame Cornwall.
Rob Hopkins
Well no not really, but I was very surprised to find when visiting St Ives Museum in Cornwall a couple of weeks back that the beginning of the fossil fuel era was so close to home. Although peak oilers like to trace the beginning of our current woes back to the drilling of the first oil wells in Pennsylvania in the 1850s, the real beginnings go back earlier, to 1712, and a man called Thomas Newcomen. It was that year that he finally got his steam engine working properly, which burnt coal to make steam, and then used that steam to drive a pump which drained water from the mines to enable vastly increased rates of coal mining. According to Bill McKibben’s recent book ‘Deep Economy’ (review gestating), his machine replaced a team of 500 horses walking in a circle, an astonishing breakthrough.
Newcomen’s engine was the first time that humans meaningfully began to dip into and make significant use of the vast storehouse of ancient sunlight beneath the Earth’s surface, a process that has, of course, grown exponentially ever since. As time went by we replaced coal with oil and oil with gas, but in essence, it is the same stuff, and the carbon dioxide side effects of its combustion have led to the dire situation we now face.
It was striking as well, walking around the museum, that just as Newcomen’s machine increased coal mining’s reach beneath the ground, it also hugely deepened the potential for miserable, back breaking and dehumanising work.
(5 September 2007)
