Many countries have been at the crisscross of warfare between anti-coal establishments and the traditional coal industry. Despite the elite-empowered and politically motivated worldwide campaign to phase out coal, demand for coal is on the rise! Coal has been “enemy No. 1” for the climate establishment. In fact, it would seem that the entire global warming movement is hinged upon the singular aim to eliminate coal from use. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) is a notion that … [Read more...]
Why Solar and Wind Are Not the Future
Wind and solar are hailed as the future of our world. Are they? Wind farms were a familiar sight for me as they were an integral part of the landscape near my hometown in southern India. The general assumption was that these windmills would generate a significant amount of electricity to aid the energy sector that was struggling to meet soaring electricity demand. However, the wind farms turned out to be a burden, not a boon. They generated unreliable and expensive electricity that was … [Read more...]
Has Scott Pruitt Brought Armageddon to the EPA?
According to two former Administrators, current federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has set the agency back by anything from several years to as much as three decades due to “regulatory rollbacks, mass attrition and budget cuts.” That sounds ominous. It isn’t. At present EPA is operating under FY2017 funding levels. While projected FY2018 funding cuts will be substantial, they have not yet taken place. The FY2018 budget’s 28% reduction for the Superfund program … [Read more...]
Trump Departs from Mainstream Climate Alarmism in SOTU, Speaks on ‘Beautiful’ Coal
In his State of the Union address, American President Donald Trump steered clear of explicit reference to climate change, but to the dismay of climate doomsday propagandists, he declared coal “beautiful and clean.” What does this mean for America and the developing nations, whose fossil fuel-based energy infrastructures, and hence their economies, face the threat of a forced conversion to renewables in the name of combating global warming? Trump’s marked departure from mainstream climate … [Read more...]
Coal Helps Developing Countries Fight Poverty And Disease. Quit Whining About It
Developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America face the uphill task of reducing mortality due to diseases, many caused by poor hygiene and other localized pollution concerns accompanying poverty. Poor communities are constantly exposed to diseases caused by poor hygiene and lack of basic facilities like latrines, sewers and sewage treatment plants, and purified water supply. Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, water borne diseases like diarrhea, and others are common among people … [Read more...]
Time for the Clean Power Plan to Go, Endangerment Finding Should Be Next
Even before the ink was dry on former President Barack Obama’s signature mandating the creation of Clean Power Plan (CPP) regulations, state governments and industry were rushing up the courthouse steps to challenge the plan and block its implementation. Despite the fact CPP is just two years old, it has already traveled a long and winding road to its final oblivion (one hopes)! CPP required states to reduce their electric power sector carbon-dioxide emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels … [Read more...]
Trump and the end of Obama’s bitter ‘war on coal’
Cornwall Alliance advisory board member Dr. H. Sterling Burnett, who is also a research fellow on energy and environment at the Heartland Institute, published a great piece at The Hill a couple of days ago. Here are some excerpts: Before he was elected president, Barack Obama promised to bankrupt coal companies, and after eight years of his administration’s anti-energy policies, that pledge turned out to be one of the few promises he kept. Obama imposed regulations limiting coal mining near … [Read more...]
The Gory Facts about Solar vs. Coal Energy Employment
On Fox News Sunday with Mike Wallace June 4, former Vice President Al Gore said solar energy has created jobs 17 times faster than the U.S. economy as a whole. He also pointed out that solar now employs more people than coal. He saw those both as reasons to celebrate. The truth is the opposite. Why? Because solar jobs are a tragic waste of human labor. Gore's right that solar employs more than coal now---roughly twice as many. At the end of 2016, solar employed about 374,000, while … [Read more...]
Trump’s Rollback of EPA Overreach: What No One is Talking About
President Trump’s actions yesterday (March 28) to rein in the EPA on a number of fronts involves the usual tension between environment and prosperity. Trump has rightly asserted that we can have both a relatively clean environment and prosperity, but this falls on deaf ears in the environmental community. His actions are painted as Republican’s desire to harm your children, because a more polluted environment is claimed to be worse for human health and welfare than achieving a cleaner … [Read more...]
Why Does ExxonMobil Want the U.S. to Stay in the Paris Climate Accord?
The Financial Times reports that ExxonMobil "has written to the Trump administration urging it to keep the US in the Paris climate accord ...." Why? The main reason is that staying in the Paris accord offers "the opportunity to support greater use of natural gas, which creates lower carbon dioxide emissions than coal when burnt for power generation." But of course we only need to reduce CO2 emissions if harms arising from them outweigh benefits and benefits of reducing them outweigh harms. … [Read more...]
