Saturday, January 28, 2017

The Costs of Coal


A Wyoming representative, David Miller, is proposing that utilities be required to use fossil fuels and fine renewables because fossil fuels are allegedly cheaper:
Mead Gruver. Wyoming proposal would require utilities to use fossil fuels, fine for renewable. Salon, January 25, 2017, http://www.salon.com/2017/01/25/wyoming-proposal-would-require-utilities-to-use-fossil-fuels/
Wyoming is the nation's top coal-mining state, but favoring coal may not be such a good policy.  A group of Wyoming lawmakers is bucking the U.S. trend of stricter renewable energy requirements with a plan to do the opposite: Fine utilities if they provide energy produced by wind or the sun....

“I want the electricity at my house generated by coal, because that’s the cheapest way to go,” said Rep. David Miller, a Republican, of the fossil-fuel requirement he’s co-sponsoring with eight others.
I'm afraid Rep. David Miller has a very narrow view of coal's costs, a view that conveniently ignores the health and environmental impact of coal.

The full spectrum of coal's externalities are not captured in its market price. What are particularly missing in market-based valuations of coal are the biological effects on human development.


I wonder if Rep. Miller has children because those children could be harmed by the mercury and radioactive contamination produced in vast abundance by coal.

Coal is very, very dirty:

US Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS-163-97 October, 1997
Radioactive Elements in Coal and Fly Ash:  Abundance, Forms, and Environmental Significance
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

Fact Sheet FS-163-97  (https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.pdf).
Read about the biological effects of mercury exposure from coal on children here:
Bose-O’Reilly, S., McCarty, K. M., Steckling, N., & Lettmeier, B. (2010). Mercury Exposure and Children’s Health. Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care, 40(8), 186–215. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2010.07.002https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3096006/ 
The conservatives and neoliberal market zealots say they value free markets, but in reality are unwilling to account fully for externalities that shift hazards and liabilities to individual citizens, thereby fundamentally distorting market pricing.


24 comments:

  1. from Jen
    Now that the altright and the corporations have absolute control, they will get away with everything.
    http://www.opednews.com/populum/pagem.php?f=The-Enemy-IS-the-People--by-dale-ruff-Alt-right_Bill-Of-Rights_Dissent_Leader-170127-724.html

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  2. Why Leftists Are Violent | John Wright, PhD and Stefan Molyneux

    & Can something be done to significantly reduce mercury and radiation in the use of coal? I would think so. The other thing is the tendency for the USA to off shore pollution. We will let China use the coal in more primitive plants or get our oil from other nations, and let them ruin their environment. If we do the polluting here we directly experience the consequences whether than find out in UN reports and the like. That pressure can then lead to better alternatives. Meanwhile what do we use for energy?

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  3. How much does bannon pay you to post here willy? Majias a leftist and she's not violent. Most left of center people are not violent. Rightists kkk neonazis fascists tell people they will shoot them if they do not keep their mouth shut and accept the alternative facts. Maybe that's why the world is doomed to fascism. Lefte of center people believe in humanism, humanitarianism, protest. We are disposable. We are the majority yet, the power mongers will stop at nothing to get their way. This includes genocide, nuclear power, stopping renewables, putting many people in jails and prisons, disregarding the bill of rights, abusing power, calling the 75% marginal. What a nasty piece of work you are William.

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    1. Watch the video. Your opinions do not carry much weight with me based on my experience of your wild speculations. I find Breitbart rather boring and tedious. I would however prefer relating to Bannon than to you as Bannon is a very smart man with a great deal of experience and accomplishment whereas you appear to be something of an internet bum. Sorry.

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  4. Left of center means workers and a lot of the middle class. Will the little fascist librarian who went to Stanford for a while hates working people. Loves the crooks, ponzischemers, casino disaster capitalists that keep the ugly nuclear security state and vampires like the koch brother who would destroy everything for money. What a devil you are William.

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    1. Projection is so much a part of your functioning persona that I wonder if you really are anyone at all. Please at some point write--I am not a robot! I can see you in middle age becoming an Evangelical Christian and going door to door with a Bible and several elderly ladies. Perhaps if you have any inherited money living off stocks like Green Jill invested in unrenewable energies and pharmaceuticals and perhaps a company making bombs. A fitting irony and conclusion to a live lived as legions of other people. In any case you are a funny guy almost worth an occasional laugh.

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  5. Instead of investing in renewables like China is the United states is condemning itself to be polluted to death like Japan, Belarus, and Ukraine the us is in a death spiral where the quest for corporate profits will destroy civil society. Any engineer will tell you that even with a hundred of the best scrubbers mercury vapor and radionuclide's cannot be kept out of the air with massive coal burning. Ol willy was going on about standing rock . now that bannon has said trump could not wait to sign an executive order forcing the natives to let a pipeline to be built on there land where ththis thing stand? Sounds like more of the rightwing violence and force by the violent minority on the majority. The natives will have to give in or face being murdered by cops and the us military.

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  6. Franco and more modern versions llike the current American Republican Party and Trump or pinochet work like this.

    "Who did Mussolini and Hitler support once they seized state power? In both countries a strikingly similar agenda was pursued. Labor unions and strikes were outlawed, union property and publications were confiscated, farm cooperatives were handed over to rich private owners, big agribusiness farming was heavily subsidized. In both Germany and Italy the already modest wages of the workers were cut drastically; in Germany, from 25-40%; in Italy, 50%. In both countries the minimum wage laws, overtime pay, and factory safety regulations were abolished or turned into dead letters. Taxes were increased for the general populace, but lowered or eliminated for the rich and big business. Inheritance taxes for the wealthy were greatly reduced or abolished. Both Mussolini and Hitler showed their gratitude to their business patrons by handing over to them publicly owned and perfectly solvent steel mills, power plants, banks, steamship companies (”privatization,” it’s called here). Both regimes dipped heavily into the public treasury to refloat or subsidize heavy industry (corporate welfarism). Both states guaranteed a return on the capital invested by giant corporations and assumed most of the risks and losses on investment. (Sounds like S&Ls, doesn’t it?)As in all reactionary regimes, public capital was raided by private capital. As a result, in Italy during the 1930s the economy was gripped by recession, a staggering public debt, and widespread corruption, but industrial profits rose, and the armaments factories busily rolled out the weapons. In Germany, unemployment was eased somewhat because of the massive arms program and the arms spending. But generally, poverty increased. But from 1935-1943, the net income of German corporate leaders rose 46%. In both countries, the conditions of labor deteriorated greatly: speed-ups, dismissals, imprisonment for workers who complained about unsafe or inhumane work conditions, longer hours for lesswages.Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols. In fascism, these irrational, atavistic appeals go back to the mythical roots of the people: for Mussolini, back to the grandeur that was Rome; for Hitler, the ancient volk. Then there’s the cult of the leader: Il Duce, the Führer. With leader worship and state worship came the glorification of militarism, war, and conquest-basically conservative symbols to get people distracted from their own immediate political/economic class-interests and get them galvanized into war, the conquest, militarism."

    Source: Fascism: A False Revolution by Michael Parenti – Dandelion Salad

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  7. Steve Bannon is the alright. Steve Bannon supports neonazis. Steve Bannon is Trumps right hand man.

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    1. Question: if a man is driving down the road and his wife says, turn alright here, what should the man do?

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  8. I am not sure how Steve Bannon got into this imbroglio of your creation. Are you taking anti-depressants or smoking too much pot? Perhaps you should put up some Swastikas in your place and goose step some each day. You probably don't read German, but a good English translation of Mein Kampf is easy to come by. Then apply a good dose of 20th century history and return to the subject. You are woefully under educated even for a high school student which is what you might be. I can see you becoming violent at a protest and breaking windows and feeling totally justified. Accept the fact that inside you is an SS recruit born too late or way too soon for action in your kind of utopia.

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  9. I am not violent little willy. That ad hominem rant makes you sound pretty uneducated and crazy willy. Steve Bannon is the self proclaimed father of the altright. The altright includes neonazis and kkk heads. Their philosophy is based on violence. I have never done violence in my life. Considering that you can ramble for 2000 words and say nothing, says a lot for your lack of intelligence. You really know nothing about science. You lied and said you knew nothing of altright. They will use violence to build the pipeline on native american land. Steven Bannon of Goldman Sachs, wrote the executive order to do so and president trump signed it. You have threatened Mania here. You call me violent and know nothing about me. I have never done any violence nor am I an anarchist. Anachro capitalism and fascism are based on violence. The fact that you keep implying that majia and I are violent, when we are pacifists shows you are threatening us. It shows you have violent intent.

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  10. You also endorsed an avowed terrorist using a weapon of mass destruction to kill people of color.

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  11. “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Alexis de Tocqueville
    So your job, Anonymous, is to set a good example . . . but environment alone will not be enough . . . you will have to do charitable work like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked . . . in which case you will no longer have time to write silly and pointless comments.
    Actually your comments are themselves often filled with violence towards people you do not know nor have ever met. And I can hardly take your word for your behavior. No one is saying all liberals are violent; merely that as a group there is a surprisingly higher percentage of violent people who identify with the Left. That is my observation as well. Yours is apparently different but you are not a professor of criminology and have never done a study of the matter. So . . . watch the video and argue with the expert. By the way what is your science background? Your mathematics background. You might want to put a bit more emphasis on punctuation as you are very stingy with commas.

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  12. Please stop the personal attacks. We can argue and disagree but let us try and avoid making it so personal please.

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  13. As long as I comment here Anonymous will respond with varying degrees of contempt and sarcasm. The solution is obvious. I will stop commenting. In order to avoid the temptation of commenting I will stop coming to this site except on rare occasions. It has been educational. Thanks. Good luck.

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    1. William, don't stop. Majia can catch the IP and ban the jerk.

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  14. Majia can ban you too stock. And as everyone has seen on enenews you have turned that into one heckuva rightwing circus and chewed of all liberal antinukers. Majia has said she is left leaning and liberal. Not a racist. Your friend William says liberals are violent. As we can see you are a terrible racist bigot and right wing bully.

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    1. Most antinukers avoid enenews like the plague because of you and your gaggle of bully's.

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    2. Why don't you go post on your mean liberal hating and left of center websites and leave others alone. If liberals tried to post there they would be banned, harassed or worse. There are many antinukers who post on majias articles but are afraid to post on enenews because of stock and his friends attacks. There were many antinukers who posted on enenews who have moved on. They were attacked mercilessly by you because of your politics. You have no mercy or shame or pride really. It is sad there are mean people like you around.

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  15. Go Post on your mean liberal hating,left of center hating, progressive hating websites and leave us lone stock. We do not invade your spaces. You care way more about political issues, than practical ways to deal withe nuclear problems and Fukushima. You will attack, harrass, threaten anyone you do not see eye to eye with.

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  16. Neither the fascist clintonites or the fascist neonazi bannonites are the answer. The mean little hater stock will go after anyone who mentions the Green party. The greens have been the most effective in ending countries like Germany and Austria's allowance of nuclear reactors and weapon s in their countries. There will be no victors in a nuclear war beacuse, many nuclear power plants and fuel pools will go off as a result. This will make the fallout hundreds or thousands of times worse. For every 100 kg of stored nuclear fuel or fuel in a reactor is like a nuclear bomb. There are upto 10 thousand kg of stored fuel rods and core fuel, in any reactor, at any time. That is the equivalent of 100 bombs. So stupid the nucleoapes are. That includes the nuclear arms people and nuclear energy clowns.

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  17. I value diversity of opinion and hope we can all stay and debate civilly.

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  18. It is too bad people like stock have such a double standard on free speech.

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