"In a single year, a big coal plant emits as much carbon dioxide as 1 million SUVs"
john fernbach
Jeff Goodell is the author of "BIG COAL: THE DIRTY SECRET BEHIND
AMERICA'S ENERGY FUTURE"
>
KING COAL
> What It Costs Us
>
> By Jeff Goodell
> Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page B01
>
> Underground coal miners work in the darkness, invisible to most of us,
> and when they die -- also in the darkness, from methane explosions or
> rock falls or any of the hundreds of other hazards they face every day
> -- their deaths usually merit just a few paragraphs in the local
> newspaper.
>
> The attempted rescue of trapped coal miners, on the other hand, is
> often headline news. Networks love the real-time drama of the rescue
> efforts -- it's reality TV from the heartland, complete with anguished
> family members, heroic workers and dodgy mine owners.
>
> Sometimes, these stories have happy endings. In 2002, nine miners who
> were trapped in a coal mine in Quecreek, Pa., for 77 hours emerged as
> celebrities, feted by Oprah and photographed for Vanity Fair magazine.
>
> But not every mine rescue turns out so well, as the Crandall Canyon
> mine disaster near Huntington, Utah, has reminded us over the past
> three weeks.
>
> When three rescuers were killed trying to dig out the six miners
> who've been trapped since Aug. 6, the story turned, as Gov. Jon
> Huntsman Jr. put it, "from a tragedy into a catastrophe."
>
> In the coming months, tough questions will be asked about exactly what
> happened in the Crandall Canyon mine: Did federal mine safety
> officials do everything they could to protect the miners? Did Robert
> Murray, the co-owner of the mine, value profits over human life? And
> why, at the beginning of the 21st century, when we can download real-
> time images from Mars onto our laptop computers, has no one figured
> out a way to track or communicate with coal miners underground?
>
> "This is a defining moment for the history of mining," Huntsman said.
> "We all expect to come out of this better and smarter and safer."
>
> But if history is any guide, straightforward answers to what happened
> in Utah will be as rare as oxygen in the collapsed mine.
>
> We can expect a hue and cry about mine safety on Capitol Hill, a lot
> of blame-shifting and finger-pointing and, most likely, some modest
> mine safety improvements.
>
> But you can bet that you won't hear much about the real issue, which
> is the high cost of the United States' dependence on coal, and whether
> it's worth the price we pay.
>
> Many Americans think that coal went out with top hats and corsets. In
> fact, we burn more than a billion tons of coal each year in the United
> States -- about 20 pounds a day for every man, woman and child.
>
> We don't burn it in coal stoves, of course, but in big power plants
> that generate about half the electric power in the country.
>
> Politically, the war in Iraq has been a boon for coal, allowing coal-
> friendly politicians to tout America's 250-year supply as a substitute
> for our addiction to Middle Eastern oil -- even though, in the real
> world, there is no overlap between coal (used to generate electricity)
> and oil (used for transportation fuels, among other things).
>
> This is not to say that the coal industry would not dearly love to get
> into America's gas tank. In recent months, it has pushed hard for
> subsidies and tax breaks that would accelerate the construction of
> coal-to-liquid plants, a technology developed by the Nazis during the
> 1930s that can transform coal into liquid fuels such as diesel (for
> technical reasons, it's very difficult to make gasoline from coal).
>
> Coal boosters argue that today's industry is nothing like the industry
> of yore, and that many of the problems with the fuel -- like the fact
> that air pollution from power plants kills people -- have been solved
> by new technology.
>
> Coal is cheap, plentiful and clean, they say. What's not to like?
>
> Mine disasters such as the one in Utah, however, don't exactly fit
> this script.
>
> It's tough to argue that you've left the 19th century behind when you
> have Murray -- one of the most prominent coal barons in the United
> States, well known for his political connections and influence --
> insisting that the collapse was caused by an earthquake, directly
> contradicting seismologists who say that their instruments clearly
> show that the seismic activity was the result of the collapse in the
> mine.
>
> It may not surprise you that Murray also believes global warming is a
> hoax.
>
> Claims about a 250-year supply of coal won't stand up to scrutiny for
> long, either. Yes, the United States has more coal than any other
> nation. But we've been mining coal in this country for 150 years --
> all the simple, high-quality, easy-to-get stuff is gone. What's left
> is buried beneath towns and national parks, or places that are
> difficult, expensive and dangerous to mine.
>
> The blunt truth is, if we're going to become more dependent on coal,
> more miners will die. How many mining tragedies will we accept in the
> name of "cheap" electricity?
>
> Digging up hard-to-get coal will also devastate Appalachia, where huge
> mountaintop-removal mines have already buried 700 miles of streams and
> 400,000 acres of forests.
>
> (Mountaintop-removal is a particularly destructive form of mining in
> which entire mountains are blasted apart to expose the coal seams
> inside; the rubble is typically dumped in nearby valleys.)
>
> Instead of strengthening oversight of this type of mining, the Bush
> administration proposed last week to loosen regulations and allow it
> to expand. One recent study estimated that if this practice continues,
> within 40 years the region disemboweled by mining will be
> approximately the size of Rhode Island.
>
> As for "clean coal," it's a nice advertising slogan, but it's not a
> statement of fact. According to Americans for Balanced Energy Choices,
> a nonprofit group funded by coal companies and coal-burning electric
> utilities, emissions of conventional pollutants from coal plants have
> fallen by one-third between 1970 and 2000, even as the use of coal to
> generate electricity has tripled. What they don't tell you is that a)
> the industry fought the laws that mandated many of those reductions;
> and b) the amount of pollution spewed out by a coal plant is still
> enormous.
>
> According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a scientific advocacy
> group, annual emissions from a typical coal plant include 10,000 tons
> of sulfur dioxide, the major cause of acid rain; 10,200 tons of
> nitrogen oxide, a major contributor to smog; 500 tons of small
> particles, which cause lung damage and other respiratory problems; 225
> pounds of arsenic; 114 pounds of lead; and many other toxic heavy
> metals, including 170 pounds of mercury, which can cause birth
> defects, brain damage and other ailments.
>
> But the big issue is global warming. Burning coal accounts for more
> than one-third of U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the main
> greenhouse gas.
>
> In a single year, a big coal plant emits as much carbon dioxide as 1
> million SUVs. Coal plants that are built today emit just as much CO2
> as those that were built 50 years ago (there have been some marginal
> gains in efficiency, but not many).
>
> In the future, carbon dioxide might be captured from coal plants and
> pumped underground into abandoned oil wells or deep saline aquifers,
> but at the moment, these solutions are unproven and expensive.
>
> The coal industry is soaking up billions of dollars in tax breaks and
> subsidies to develop technology and study the problem.
>
> But according to climate scientists such as NASA's James Hansen, if we
> hope to have a chance of avoiding dangerous changes to Earth's
> climate, we don't have time to wait. That's why Hansen, along with
> former vice president Al Gore and others, has called for a moratorium
> on new coal plants that do not capture and store carbon dioxide
> pollution.
>
> And that's why Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are investing hundreds of
> millions of dollars into clean-energy technology -- because they know
> that confronting the problem of global warming is not just the biggest
> challenge that civilization has ever faced, but also the mother of all
> economic opportunities.
>
> It may seem like a long way from the melting Arctic to the mine
> disaster in Utah, but it's not.
>
> The lesson from Crandall Canyon is not just that we need stronger mine
> safety laws and better federal oversight of dangerous mines, but that
> as Americans, we need to be more conscious of the costs and
> consequences of what goes on behind the light switch.
>
> Otherwise, instead of coming out of this disaster smarter, stronger
> and safer, we're likely to find ourselves repeating this story again
> and again.
>
> Jeff Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and
> the author of "Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy
> Future."
Front Office
Here's a sort-of related fact that's at least a
little bit interesting:
Per capita energy use in the US is such that
one American, in an 80-year life span, uses
an amount of energy equal to half the energy
of the Hiroshima bomb.
john fernbach
>
> - Show quoted text -
That is interesting. Actually, I'm surprised that the figure isn't
bigger than that.
However, the "one American" that you're citing here is probably the
"average American," and I'll bet that the way someone derived the
"average American's" energy usage was by totally up all of the energy
used in the society in a year, then divided by the US population size.
That seems sensible at first glance, but it almost surely distorts
what the "median" American, say, is actually consuming.
First, Americans come from a variety of different social classes and
different income levels, and the distribution of money between the
different levels has been getting much more unequal since the 1970s.
When extremely rich Americans like Warren Buffett, Al Gore, Bill
Gates, Richard Mellon Scaife consume really enormous quantities of
energy on -- say, for example, jet airplane travel, and the heating of
super-sized homes, and extensive driving in their Hummers and SUVS --
they're bringing up the average for the vast majority of us who are
not so wealthy.
Which is not to say that the truly "average" person making only the
"average" income in the US is some kind of ecological saint. Probably
most of us use far more energy than the "average" European or Chinese
or African or Latin American does. BUT - there are millions of people
in the US who can't afford to own big gas-guzzling automobiles, can't
afford to do extensive jet travel, and can't afford to own homes even
remotely comparable to Al Gore's 10,000 square foot monster.
Does our "average" yearly energy consumption add up the way you
indicate? I don't think so. Again, I'm not saying we're saints - I
know I'm not. But for Gore, Bill Gates, Richard Mellon Scaife, the
Bush family, the Kennedy clan, Ann Coulter's family, and all of the
other economic elites to have energy consumption that's "above
average," as they undoubtedly do -- many of the rest of us have to
have consumption that's "below average." And for some of us - the
poor crazy street people I see begging in Washington DC near where I
word, for example -- yearly energy consumption is far, far below the
average.
The other probable problem with your statistic, I suspect, is that it
implicitly attributes to ordinary consumers some of the enormous
energy appetites of giant corporations in particularly energy-
gluttonous industries.
For example, the whole aluminum industry has an enormous appetitute
for energy. The passenger airline industry is similar. And there
are undoubtedly other US industries, some of them probably quite
specialized, who consume far more than their aliquot shares of oil,
coal, natural gas, hydropower, etc. etc.
The "average" American may indirectly participate in their energy
gluttony through purchasing their products and services - or might
not, depending on where these energy glottons are located in the
economy.
But in any case, it isn't necessarily that Joe and Jane Average are
purchasing X number of barrels of oil each year, taking them home in
their SUV and burning them in the stove for fun. A great deal of the
"average" American's energy use is being accounted for by corporations
that the ordinary person never sees or thinks about, would be my guess.
Front Office
> On Sep 29, 3:32 pm, Front Office <YoMo.nos...@erols.com> wrote:
>
>>john fernbach wrote:
>>
>>>>From the Washington Post
>>
>>>Jeff Goodell is the author of "BIG COAL: THE DIRTY SECRET BEHIND
>>>AMERICA'S ENERGY FUTURE"
>>
>>>KING COAL
>>
>>>>What It Costs Us
>>
>>>>By Jeff Goodell
>>>>Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page B01
>>
>>>>Underground coal miners work in the darkness, invisible to most of us,
>>>>and when they die -- also in the darkness, from methane explosions or
>>>>rock falls or any of the hundreds of other hazards they face every day
>>>>-- their deaths usually merit just a few paragraphs in the local
>>>>newspaper.
[shortened here]
>>>>Jeff Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and
>>>>the author of "Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy
>>>>Future."
>>
>>Here's a sort-of related fact that's at least a
>>little bit interesting:
>>
>>Per capita energy use in the US is such that
>>one American, in an 80-year life span, uses
>>an amount of energy equal to half the energy
>>of the Hiroshima bomb.- Hide quoted text -
>>
>>- Show quoted text -
>
>
> That is interesting. Actually, I'm surprised that the figure isn't
> bigger than that.
>
> However, the "one American" that you're citing here is probably the
> "average American," and I'll bet that the way someone derived the
> "average American's" energy usage was by totally up all of the energy
> used in the society in a year, then divided by the US population size.
Right.
> That seems sensible at first glance, but it almost surely distorts
> what the "median" American, say, is actually consuming.
>
> First, Americans come from a variety of different social classes and
> different income levels, and the distribution of money between the
> different levels has been getting much more unequal since the 1970s.
>
> When extremely rich Americans like Warren Buffett, Al Gore, Bill
> Gates, Richard Mellon Scaife consume really enormous quantities of
> energy on -- say, for example, jet airplane travel, and the heating of
> super-sized homes, and extensive driving in their Hummers and SUVS --
> they're bringing up the average for the vast majority of us who are
> not so wealthy.
>
> Which is not to say that the truly "average" person making only the
> "average" income in the US is some kind of ecological saint. Probably
> most of us use far more energy than the "average" European or Chinese
> or African or Latin American does. BUT - there are millions of people
> in the US who can't afford to own big gas-guzzling automobiles, can't
> afford to do extensive jet travel, and can't afford to own homes even
> remotely comparable to Al Gore's 10,000 square foot monster.
Agreed.
Here's how I did my calculation: From Science Magazine, the average
human energy usage is taken as ~13-trillion watts (equivalent to the
energy of one Hiroshima bomb [12.5 kilotons TNT equivalent] every
four seconds).
I assumed that the US energy use rate is 1/4th of the world energy
use rate.
I also assumed that the average human metabolic energy to be
~100 watts (2000 Calories/day basis).
Assuming a world population of 6.5-billion, the world percapita
energy consumption is 20 times the basal metabolic energy.
I.e., each human being is, from an energy usage point of view,
equivalent to 20 human beings.
Taking US population as 300 million, the US percapita energy
usage is 108 times the metabolic energy of one person, which
means that each American is equivalent, energy wise, to 108
human beings.
If you subtract Americans and American energy usage from
the world energy usage, the world average energy use rate
works out to ~16 times metabolic energy.
What's the chance that an average American, like say a white
guy in Bethesda, Maryland, can get his personal energy usage
down to that world average level of 16 times metabolic energy?
Not good.
My house consumes a year-around annual average energy
of 6 kW, or 60 human metabolic equivalents. (And I use no AC.)
My car, which I drive ~5,000 miles/yr, adds about 7 to that, and
my personal dietary energy adds at least 3 more -- assuming
that each dietary Colorie requires 3 fossil Calories to plant,
cultivate, fertilize, harvest, cook, and so on.
If I pitch a tent in my yard and cut off the utilities and do my
laundry by hand in cold water, I think I could get my personal
energy use rate down to the world percapita energy usage
rate -- unless Europe (which uses about half the percapita
energy of the US) is removed from the world average.
(Sorry to run on so, but those of my assumptions.)
> Does our "average" yearly energy consumption add up the way you
> indicate? I don't think so. Again, I'm not saying we're saints - I
> know I'm not. But for Gore, Bill Gates, Richard Mellon Scaife, the
> Bush family, the Kennedy clan, Ann Coulter's family, and all of the
> other economic elites to have energy consumption that's "above
> average," as they undoubtedly do -- many of the rest of us have to
> have consumption that's "below average." And for some of us - the
> poor crazy street people I see begging in Washington DC near where I
> word, for example -- yearly energy consumption is far, far below the
> average.
I have a friendwho travels all over the world, more than
100,000 miles/year. Assuming that she gets 70 passenger
miles per gallon, then her travel is equivalent to the metabolic
energy of 60 human beings. (BTW, each round-trip from the east
coast of the US to Europe is equivalent to the annualized average
metabolic energy usage of 6 human beings.)
My point is that, yes, the wealthy use huge amounts of energy,
but that so do we ordinary people, when you compare us to
other people in the world.
> The other probable problem with your statistic, I suspect, is that it
> implicitly attributes to ordinary consumers some of the enormous
> energy appetites of giant corporations in particularly energy-
> gluttonous industries.
Indeed, yes. When you buy, say, a car, you are the recipient
of the product of the energy that is expended in getting metal
out of the ground, shaping it, assembling it and shipping it to
a dealer. We are the recipients of the products of said energy-
gluttonous industries.
> For example, the whole aluminum industry has an enormous appetitute
> for energy. The passenger airline industry is similar. And there
> are undoubtedly other US industries, some of them probably quite
> specialized, who consume far more than their aliquot shares of oil,
> coal, natural gas, hydropower, etc. etc.
I agree. But these factors are included in the calculations above.
> The "average" American may indirectly participate in their energy
> gluttony through purchasing their products and services - or might
> not, depending on where these energy glottons are located in the
> economy.
>
> But in any case, it isn't necessarily that Joe and Jane Average are
> purchasing X number of barrels of oil each year, taking them home in
> their SUV and burning them in the stove for fun. A great deal of the
> "average" American's energy use is being accounted for by corporations
> that the ordinary person never sees or thinks about, would be my guess.
Agreed.
Bob
john fernbach
The next question is one that Lenin asked, in a fairly famous book on
revolution he published in 1902. Namely - "What Is to Be Done"?
The thing is, I don't think it's politically feasible to ask Americans
- or compel Americans -- to take up living in tents in their back
yards, in order to reduce our per capita energy consumption.
Clearly, "we" as a society -- I put the "we" in quotes, because many
of us have fairly little to do with the major decisions made in this
society, which in many cases are made by "Them" -- "we" as a society
have to get our energy use down quite a bit, in order to avoid
destabilizing the climate and causing other problems.
The question is - how? And the answer needs to be workable physically
and materially, in terms of total BTUs we end up using per person per
year, and in terms of how we generate those BTUs.
But the answer also needs to be workable economically, socially, and
politically. Saying to the American people, "Okay, after 200 years of
industrial progress, everyone has to go back to living in trees and
caves" is just not going to work.
Do you have any suggestions as to what's going to be be feasible
socially & politically, Bob?
> Bob- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
Front Office
the carbon dioxide and global warming issue, which
seems less immediately pressing.
Major energy shortages seem likely during this century
and will be a far greater stressor on our species than
global-warming.
Pessimism rules on this end. Our species can expect
a major die-back this century, most plausibly
accompanied by residual radioactivity from nuclear
weapons.
I see no solution as long as human population is
anywhere near its present size and efforts are made
to maintain the percapita energy use in rich countries.