Trump's Policies: Pros and Cons

[Stavros]

Coal has never gone away and when the price of oil per barrel was around $100 coal for many nations became a cheaper alternative, the overall demand is high globally and will remain high. The cons with coal are simple -it is dirty and in environmental terms, a killer, of both humans and the local ecology. Capital costs for new plant are high, and it is debatable with modern machinery, particularly in open-cast mining if it will ever be as labour-intensive as it once was, particularly deep underground mining.

The Economist from a few years ago has a fairly balanced view of the topic:
http://www.economist.com/news/busine...em-fuel-future

As for the major producers, South Africa is the only significant producer of coal, the top ten in order of production volumes are

World Facts Coal is proving critical in the world's energy growth. The need for coal is ever increasing, and ever larger percentages of electricity produced in the world is becoming reliant on power plants that use the resource. Regardless of the enormous distribution of coal reserves worldwide, these amounts are proving to not be enough. Furthermore, the ecological harms that come as a result of activities related to coal activities are grave matters and, thus, proper actions have to be taken. Consequently, it is essential for governments to discover innovative technologies for improved mining and coal processing, while also taking into account efficiency and the importance of environmental sustainability. It is paramount for policy makers come up with long-lasting technological solutions that look into future, hence putting the coal sector on a path that would allow it to respond better to future global challenges.

The Top 20 Coal Producers In The World

Rank	Country	Coal production (million tonnes)
1	China	3,874.0
2	United States	906.9
3	Australia	644.0
4	India	537.6
5	Indonesia	458.0
6	Russia	357.6
7	South Africa	260.5
8	Germany	185.8
9	Poland	137.1
10	Kazakhstan	108.7

http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/t...worldwide.html

[trish]

Reusing Rust Belt coal fields...

- Will bring more jobs

Probably not. Again, modern automation greatly reduces the number of laborers needed at any mining operation. One study suggests 96% of some mining jobs can be automated ( http://www.mining.com/study-shows-96...-be-automated/ ).

- Will raise depressed economies

. Were the economies of West Virginia (or other coal mining communities) not depressed when coal mining was at it’s peak? Ask the old timers. ( )

- Secure votes in GOP areas, take votes from the Democrats

Ha-ha. Seriously though, this belongs in the section for Cons.

Speaking of Cons: You let out quite a few. The damage done to the environment, for one. The bone Donald recently tossed to the coal industry was an executive order allowing them to dump coal ash in streams and rivers. The environment is not the only thing damaged. Public health is also at risk. Coal ash contains high amounts of mercury, arsenic and cadmium. The run off of these toxic elements into our waterways from flattened, eroding mountain tops is already a danger. Public health is not the only risk. Miner’s themselves run a significant risk of black-lung disease. The Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 created standards that reduced the risks of contracting pneumoconiosis, and somewhat relieved workers who had contracted it of their burdens both financial (requiring compensation for the cost of care) and labor related (moving them to jobs with less exposure without reduction in pay and benefits). Of course these are just the sort of regulations that some claim make coal mining unprofitable. Not so: fracking (which as it’s own serious drawbacks) is what made it possible for natural gas to squeeze out of the U.S. energy market. ( )

You can’t produce the energy required to run modern civilization without wreaking havoc one way or another; wind farms kill migratory birds by hundreds of thousands. Solar fields shade acres of habitat and require the production and refinement of rare-earth minerals. Hydraulic turbines require damns and lots of maintenance. Fission can be clean, until it isn’t. Then it’s a disaster. Fuels pollute and we use them at such a rate that even the one’s that are renewable in principle are being depleted. Sound energy policy requires careful cost-benefits analysis, not partisan politics. In my opinion: coal is one of the dirtiest fuels ever produced and probably has caused more death, heartache and environmental damage than any other source of energy humans have harnessed. You cannot ‘raise’ a ‘depressed economy’ by lowering the health or well-being of those it depends upon.

[martin48]

So, there you are, Trish

[Laphroaig]

Trish

While I agree with your statement that "coal is one of the dirtiest fuels ever produced", carbon capture technology may mean a resurgence in the use of coal in the future, though now isn't the right time and I suspect it won't be for many years. I do remember, when my Uni was embarking on a large (ie heavily funded) carbon capture project, telling my then head of department that maybe we'd be better just planting a few more trees. As you can probably imagine, that didn't go down too well.

One thing that does seem to be continually forgotten though in the whole cleaner energy debate is that oil not only povides fuel, but also provides the raw feedstock material for much of the plastics industry, something that carbon capture technology ultimately looks to replace (ie using CO2 as the feedstock). Whether it can be successful in this aim remains to be seen or at least did the last time I read about it. There almost certainly will have been developments since.

[holzz]

Probably not. Again, modern automation greatly reduces the number of laborers needed at any mining operation. One study suggests 96% of some mining jobs can be automated ( http://www.mining.com/study-shows-96...-be-automated/ ).

. Were the economies of West Virginia (or other coal mining communities) not depressed when coal mining was at it’s peak? Ask the old timers. ( )

Ha-ha. Seriously though, this belongs in the section for Cons.

Speaking of Cons: You let out quite a few. The damage done to the environment, for one. The bone Donald recently tossed to the coal industry was an executive order allowing them to dump coal ash in streams and rivers. The environment is not the only thing damaged. Public health is also at risk. Coal ash contains high amounts of mercury, arsenic and cadmium. The run off of these toxic elements into our waterways from flattened, eroding mountain tops is already a danger. Public health is not the only risk. Miner’s themselves run a significant risk of black-lung disease. The Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 created standards that reduced the risks of contracting pneumoconiosis, and somewhat relieved workers who had contracted it of their burdens both financial (requiring compensation for the cost of care) and labor related (moving them to jobs with less exposure without reduction in pay and benefits). Of course these are just the sort of regulations that some claim make coal mining unprofitable. Not so: fracking (which as it’s own serious drawbacks) is what made it possible for natural gas to squeeze out of the U.S. energy market. ( )

You can’t produce the energy required to run modern civilization without wreaking havoc one way or another; wind farms kill migratory birds by hundreds of thousands. Solar fields shade acres of habitat and require the production and refinement of rare-earth minerals. Hydraulic turbines require damns and lots of maintenance. Fission can be clean, until it isn’t. Then it’s a disaster. Fuels pollute and we use them at such a rate that even the one’s that are renewable in principle are being depleted. Sound energy policy requires careful cost-benefits analysis, not partisan politics. In my opinion: coal is one of the dirtiest fuels ever produced and probably has caused more death, heartache and environmental damage than any other source of energy humans have harnessed. You cannot ‘raise’ a ‘depressed economy’ by lowering the health or well-being of those it depends upon.

well that's a hypothetical pro, but certainly from the GOP's standpoint. And much of the Rust Belt are swing states, like PN, IL, OH, MN.

[Stavros]

Trish
While I agree with your statement that "coal is one of the dirtiest fuels ever produced", carbon capture technology may mean a resurgence in the use of coal in the future, though now isn't the right time and I suspect it won't be for many years. I do remember, when my Uni was embarking on a large (ie heavily funded) carbon capture project, telling my then head of department that maybe we'd be better just planting a few more trees. As you can probably imagine, that didn't go down too well.

One thing that does seem to be continually forgotten though in the whole cleaner energy debate is that oil not only povides fuel, but also provides the raw feedstock material for much of the plastics industry, something that carbon capture technology ultimately looks to replace (ie using CO2 as the feedstock). Whether it can be successful in this aim remains to be seen or at least did the last time I read about it. There almost certainly will have been developments since.

I agree, as there are ongoing developments in carbon capture for both the plastics industry, and so-called 'clean coal'; two articles below offer a readable summary. The question for the US, where the petrochemicals industry is in better health than its European counterparts -largely because of the lower cost of feedstocks due to the 'shale revolution'- is how many jobs are there in this? The crude manner in which Trump presented his campaign implied lots of jobs returning to coal, whereas the modern technology involved may not be so labour intensive, and while these downstream developments with carbon capture may be an effective means of reducing emissions, in the case of 'clean coal' the problems may still lie in the upstream where the coal is being sourced from open cast mining without much care to the environmental damage that causes, particularly now that Trump has lifted some of the regulations that attempted to control the behaviour of coal companies, as mentioned in Trish's post above.

Carbon capture and the plastics industry-
https://www.plasticstoday.com/conten...85933200217701

Clean coal and carbon storage-
http://science.howstuffworks.com/env...clean-coal.htm

A contrast between the European and the US petrochemicals industry
https://www.ft.com/content/3f131eb8-...f-6bb9974f25d0

[Laphroaig]

I agree, as there are ongoing developments in carbon capture for both the plastics industry, and so-called 'clean coal'; two articles below offer a readable summary. The question for the US, where the petrochemicals industry is in better health than its European counterparts -largely because of the lower cost of feedstocks due to the 'shale revolution'- is how many jobs are there in this? The crude manner in which Trump presented his campaign implied lots of jobs returning to coal, whereas the modern technology involved may not be so labour intensive, and while these downstream developments with carbon capture may be an effective means of reducing emissions, in the case of 'clean coal' the problems may still lie in the upstream where the coal is being sourced from open cast mining without much care to the environmental damage that causes, particularly now that Trump has lifted some of the regulations that attempted to control the behaviour of coal companies, as mentioned in Trish's post above.

Carbon capture and the plastics industry-
https://www.plasticstoday.com/conten...85933200217701

Clean coal and carbon storage-
http://science.howstuffworks.com/env...clean-coal.htm

A contrast between the European and the US petrochemicals industry
https://www.ft.com/content/3f131eb8-...f-6bb9974f25d0

Thanks for the links, Stavros, some interesting reading in there. I take your point (and Trish's) about the other environmental damage caused by coal mining. However, I would hope that along with carbon capture, any revival in coal mining would also include measures and new technologies to minimise those impacts as well as improving safety records. Sadly, the drive for profit and mankinds increasingly voracious appetite for energy consumption and consumer goods makes that probably a forlorn hope. Much like the hope that Trump will eventually see reason and moderate his so-called policies, along with his ridiculous twitter output...

(Ironically, several projects I was involved in years ago to improve the reagents used in certain mining operations (not coal) came under the banner of "Greener Chemistry" There's not much green in mining...)