Doesn't seem like there is going to be much change in our demand for coal, or other fossil fuels, in the near future. Hopefully we have the technology now to prevent failures like the one that happened in centralia in 1962.
The demand for coal has gone down in the US because of natural gas, which is a big reason why coal is struggling. Safety tech is great, but without govt oversight, companies will cut corners to boost profits. So if we eliminate regulations to help the coal industry (which will only slow, not stop, coal's decline) there will be more accidents.
The Export Import Bank made loans. They did not commit to fossil fuel projects; they are not and were not the administration. Whether they should have or not, or imposed tighter restrictions may be a valid question. What is your point here?
i first looked up Centrailia while reading stuff about the Silent Hill game & its movie. didn't realize how close it is to Eagle Rock resort which i visited in summer of 2013 and again in February 2014
U.S. demand for coal may have slowed somewhat but worldwide it's use has grown considerably (more than doubled) in the last 15 years . Regulations here are pretty useless if China is using about half of the worlds coal. Need to see more than one year where use dropped off to consider it a trend.
They made loans knowing exactly where the money was going toward; high risk, fossil fuel projects. The "restrictions" were ignored. You understand the point. You just choose to ignore the failures.
China appears to be moving away from coal over the next generation. This makes some sense if they're trying to hit the GH gases targets. The next generation is going to be about who is more responsible and fit to lead the world moving forward. I would not bet on the USA vs China at this point in the year 2050. That's not because I prefer China's policies, because I don't and by a wide margin. It's because China will be able to do things more coherently and follow through on their commitments and the USA is going to keep flopping back and forth on policy due to the internal civil war that has been going on in civil society for 50 years now.
For climate change regs you're right. I was talking about mining and accident prevention regs, which are useful no matter what China's doing.
Are you an environmentalist lol? Or are you implying libs are hypocritical? If so it isn't working, you're just showing Obama wasn't totally bound to liberal ideology.
China moving away from coal may involve them incorporating more of other fuels into their power generating processes but unless the other fuels come down in price they will still be using a large percentage of the worlds coal. Their increase in use over the last 20 years may level off or even drop a little, but a little drop after the huge increase they had won't mean much. That being said looks like the reduction will wait a while, China stated they planned to increase coal capacity by 19% over the next 4 years, non-fossil-fuel power generation will increase by about 48%
True, the regulations are worlds above where they were in the 60's and even with Trump talking about reducing regulations I don't see any way he really rolls back all that much. Certainly not much at all as far as safety is concerned. I could be wrong but I don't see it.
Since the theme of the thread was a shot at the current administration plans to harvest clean coal and other fossil fuel production. Just pointing out how much the last administration committed to the same endeavor around the globe... with little precaution or oversight; and exacting devastating consequences.
Science , practice , growth, advancement , development , learning from mistakes (centralia 1962) I think br4d is high as shit if he thinks China is going to be ahead of USA in clean harvesting of fossil fuel. I believe USA, and especially the American companies tasked with fossil fuel projects today are held to a much higher standard. Hopefully I'm not wrong either, for all of our sake. May we never have another centralia. And maybe in 20-50 years we will have completely moved on from fossil fuel. As of right now over half of our energy use comes from fossil fuels.
but all the technologies that prevent another centralia would just be professors having fun in the lab if it wasn't for the public/private collaboration work of the DOE and regulations from the EPA... energy companies aren't going to spend extra money on this stuff just for fun.
I actually think you are wrong about the bolded. Definitely wrong about the "fun" part. Energy companies are far from perfect, but I think they invest a ton of money in R&D. There was actually a new episode on "VICE" , the liberal "news" television series on HBO. Episode 1 of their new season. They interview a scientist that worked for Exxonmobil.
They invest in R&D that increases their profits not R&D that protects our water supplies for example. Come on man you know how businesses work
Not true - there is nothing revolutionary, nothing "high-risk" about the projects cited. How much control do you believe an American Bank can have over a foreign government?
“A federal agency of the United States of America should hold their financed projects to better and more neutral standards. Development is good, but not at the cost of the environment and the people who give away their everything to make way for such projects.”
