I'm always amazed when I look at just how fast coal use has dropped in the US It's a huge victory not just for climate but also for reductions in mercury, arsenic, and air pollution So many people will live longer healthier lives because coal use has dropped so much and I love it - ThreadSky

jamiedemarco.bsky.social • 64 days ago

I'm always amazed when I look at just how fast coal use has dropped in the US

It's a huge victory not just for climate but also for reductions in mercury, arsenic, and air pollution

So many people will live longer healthier lives because coal use has dropped so much and I love it

Comments

stankmaster.bsky.social•63 days ago

does Santa still do coal stocking thing??

shadawar.bsky.social•63 days ago

He did for me one year, but then again my dad’s a geologist and I actually asked for it….

daviddoniger.bsky.social•63 days ago

Gas in your stocking this year.

leahstokes.bsky.social•63 days ago

I hear it leaks tho

lp7.bsky.social•63 days ago

📌

stuadel.bsky.social•63 days ago

Manchin must be bummed. WV should probably get into some new industries......

rebelrabbit.bsky.social•63 days ago

they tried the locals had a fit. When they tried

acolyteofshadows.bsky.social•64 days ago

And yet I have family who think clean coal is real, and the way they clean it is by physically washing it off.

I'm hoping in the next 50 years the air quality improves dramatically.

raywolf.bsky.social•64 days ago

It already has in the Ohio River Valley upstream of Cincinnati with the closure of several old coal-fired plants. The chance is noticeable so there is room for hope.

nf1nk.bsky.social•63 days ago

The only downside to this is that now the fly ash you need for good long lasting concrete structures is getting harder to source.

thetallsister.bsky.social•63 days ago

Joe Manchin - last action as governor signs a renewable energy law. The measure was described as a way to increase the state’s amount of clean power to 25 % by 2025.

But it also shielded the waste coal that helped build Manchin’s fortune. Classifying it as an alternative energy source

mastaplannah.bsky.social•63 days ago

Wonder where WV is on this law. It must have been repealed with Jim Justice as coal baron governor? Last I saw West Virginia’s power generation was 91% coal. That was maybe a year ago. Electric bills skyrocketing in one of the poorest states propping up corrupt coal power.

andrewgo.bsky.social•63 days ago

I believe it was repealed around 2015. It was never a real RPS standard because of the saturation of things like the waste coal carve out that made WV “RECs” valueless.

janetlinde.bsky.social•63 days ago

And yet, Steve Daines, senator from Montana, who has been on the bandwagon to save coal mining in Colstrip, in the SE corner of the state. Because, you know, what will people do if you take away the main source for their livelihood? Screw the planet! It's 5K or so people's jobs that matters. 🙄

seriousness.bsky.social•64 days ago

Isn't coal use at a record high world wide? Like india or something is using a ton of coal.

alunbweird.bsky.social•63 days ago

China was opening a new coal power plant every week a few years ago.

umbrios.bsky.social•63 days ago

Yes, it was a record, & forecasts are that coal use will continue to grow at least until 2027. China is the largest user, then India, than USA.

valentenya.bsky.social•63 days ago

🐂 💩 I’m afraid. As others have pointed out, oil and gas has made up the difference. We’re still fucked and still not serious about unfucking this crisis. Hope is comforting but mostly toxic.

billstewart.bsky.social•63 days ago

Yup. The drop in coal use in the US is primarily because fracking has brought us a huge supply of natural gas,
which is cheaper and much more flexible than coal,
so it's not an unmixed blessing, but it's still a huge win,
and gas can handle peaks if solar/wind power is low,
so they're more practical

tempestarubida.bsky.social•63 days ago

If we could find a way to synthesize biogas from atmospheric CO2 then we could make gas plants essentially carbon-neutral. Gas tanks would essentially become batteries. The downside of this is that the best carbon capture facility we have is an enormous field of corn.

billstewart.bsky.social•63 days ago

Batteries are much more efficient batteries :-)
The technology's getting better, though there's a lot of path dependent economics that affects distributed vs centralized beyond just the economies of scale.

tempestarubida.bsky.social•63 days ago

But the thing about chemical batteries is that the materials are in limited supply globally. There's only so much lithium and cobalt, and mining more often involves exploitation and cruelty. Tanks are just iron, which we have a shitload of.

valentenya.bsky.social•63 days ago

In Australia alone we have more lithium than the world will ever need. As far as exploitation and cruelty goes, those are choices made by the multinationals.

robvirtue.bsky.social•63 days ago

Where is the world’s biggest lithium mine? What is the human rights record of the major oil and gas exporters? Everything has an impact. Some are local and small, some are large and global.

thejasonlee.bsky.social•63 days ago

I very rarely see fracking mentioned this way and its great to see. It displaced *a lot* of coal with gas, which is a great trade environmentally. Now we can do fracking and renewables better.

jakefattie.bsky.social•62 days ago

let me know when co2 levels come down.

reader80.bsky.social•63 days ago

Fracking

jvandenbergh.bsky.social•63 days ago

It should be seen in context. The decrease coincided with huge increases in oil and gas production since early 2000s. Usage of fossil fuels was very slightly down since then.
The US became an exporter of LNG, which seems to be worse for climate than coal.
I don't know about overall health effects.

jamiedemarco.bsky.social•63 days ago

Yes, absolutely important context

I know there is a hot debate about the climate impacts of gas versus coal depending on gas's leak rate and whether you measure the impact of methane over 20 years or 100 years

But I think it is undisputed that coal is much more harmful in non-climate pollution

richdu.bsky.social•64 days ago

Thanks for sharing @jamiedemarco.bsky.social . Good climate news is always needed

lundieeducation.bsky.social•59 days ago

It's crazy to think that my grandmother had a coal fire in her kitchen, in front of which she dried damp clothes, drove a car with leaded petrol to work in a factory where machines whirred jute fibres into the air, and smoked about 20 cigarettes a day. How she lived to be 86 is a mystery and miracle

plasticsoldier.bsky.social•28 days ago

Survivorship bias rules the world.

mastaplannah.bsky.social•63 days ago

Coal produces 2x the CO2 as natural gas, which is the primary driver of coal power decline. Also the stream pollution, mountaintop removal, NO2, ozone, black lung in miners, super hot water discharges into rivers, SO2; coal is so destructive it really is awesome that it’s declining.

kumararepublic.bsky.social•62 days ago

Trump claimed to "dig coal", but he certainly didn't make coal great again.
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/us-coal-jobs-down-24-from-the-start-of-trump-administration-to-latest-quarter-61386963

patchmusic.bsky.social•63 days ago

Good thing we don’t put coal in people’s stockings anymore. 😉😁

daviddoniger.bsky.social•63 days ago

This is good, but gas is rising fast, rivaling CO2 from coal. Renewables and storage growing but have to grow faster. And don’t forget efficiency!

lmcboy.bsky.social•63 days ago

“Coke plants”? What is that?

rcsheets.net•63 days ago

You didn't know Coca Cola is made from coal?

aweiss.bsky.social•63 days ago

Coal product used in steel production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_%28fuel%29?wprov=sfla1

exinkygal.bsky.social•63 days ago

But now there’s Trump.

chipgorman.bsky.social•63 days ago

He said he'd bring it back during his first term and it continued straight down until a 1-year increase in 2020 election year somehow. His lack of productivity in terms 1 was astounding

taylorgrayson.bsky.social•63 days ago

He's planning on building a CO2 generating plant. No power, just CO2 to own the libs.

eightnil.bsky.social•62 days ago

Cheap and abundant enery has been Americas exceptionalism. Whilst the rest of the developed world reduced co2 emissions, the U.S. pumped out more. Energy is GDP, if we want a transition the goal has to be nearly free and plentiful electricity.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply