Up with Chris Hayes... coal

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Are you angry yet?

Solid waste combustion, sewage treatment, stone quarrying, marinas, and oil and coal-fired power plants have air pollution damages larger than their value added. The largest industrial contributor to external costs is coal-fired electric generation, whose damages range from 0.8 to 5.6 times value added

Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy
($)

HT TreeHugger via twitter

The findings show that, contrary to current political mythology, coal is underregulated. On average, the harm produced by burning the coal is over twice as high as the market price of the electricity. In other words, some of the electricity production would flunk a cost-benefit analysis. This means that we’re either not using enough pollution controls or we’re just overusing coal as a fuel. Here’s a bit of a shocker: “Coal plants are responsible for more than one-fourth of GED [gross external damages] from the entire US economy.”

Accounting for The Harm of Coal

More here Coal is the enemy of the human race, mainstream economics edition


But you, I and Mother Nature pay these costs, while Big Coal pockets profits. Are you angry yet?

Cost of Coal

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Prescription for Survival

"Prescription for Survival": A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and Anti-Nuclear Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott

What is needed is the truth

What is needed is perspective. Nuclear energy is not entirely safe, as Fukushima clearly shows, even if the current radiation-related death toll is zero and will likely remain so. But coal and other fossil fuels are far, far worse. And insisting only on renewables risks worsening global warming as an unintended consequence. We need a portfolio of clean energy technologies, deployed in the most environmentally responsible way. Above all, let us base our energy policy on a scientifically valid appreciation of real-world risk, and not on scare stories from the past.

Mark Lynas is the author of "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet" and "High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis." He lives in Oxford, England. He blogs at http://www.marklynas.org.

Why nuclear power is still a good choice


There are those who insist nuclear will supplant  renewable sources of energy, but I think, like the author above, that it is not a choice between nuclear and renewables, it's a choice between nuclear an coal. The reason? We have to build on the grid we have, and let it evolve to the grid we need for 100% renewables. We need a path to renewables, and nuclear is on that path.

I read one comment over at Grist claiming no amount of radiation is safe. This person likely has a very low opinion of the denier crowd (Climate zombies like WUWT). This same person is ignorant of the fact that we are constantly bombarded with radiation from natural sources.

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In a front-page story at today's Washington Post, David Brown spotlights research on the comparative risks of nuclear and coal power. As Brown reviews, nuclear power is far less of a risk to public health than coal generation, and this difference is magnified when factoring in the health impacts of climate change. Yet despite the comparative advantages of nuclear power, both to human health and in tackling climate change, many liberal groups remain in strong opposition. In a guest post, risk communication expert and author David Ropeik reflects on the the role of ideology in shaping views of nuclear power and climate change. Both liberals and conservatives tend to deal with science-related information on the two topics in similar ways, argues Ropeik. Each tend to reject information that is contrary to their existing viewpoints-- Matthew C. Nisbet.

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But the point here is not about nuclear power. The observation here is that our perception of risk is never a neutral unbiased view of the evidence. The psychology of how we perceive and respond to risk is an affective mix of facts and how those facts feel. And once we’ve made up our mind about a risk, Confirmation Bias takes over and we choose to believe the evidence that agrees with what we already believe. True liberals, non-wobbly liberals, are supposed to oppose nuclear power. Period. True conservatives, for some reason, are supposed to deny climate change. Period. Find the facts that fit. Toss out the inconvenient truths. Personally denigrate anyone who disagrees, because other views are not just a different way of looking at things. They’re a threat. These are litmus test issues for who gets to belong to the tribe, and who doesn’t.
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Nuclear Fear, Science, and Ideology

Black Swan Events and Crimes against humanity

The Black Swan Theory or "Theory of Black Swan Events" was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain: 1) the disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology, 2) the non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to their very nature of small probabilities) and 3) the psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs. Unlike the earlier philosophical "black swan problem", the "Black Swan Theory" (capitalized) refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.


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Taleb's ten principles for a black swan robust world
Taleb enumerates ten principles for building systems that are robust to Black Swan Events:[10]


1.What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become Too Big to Fail.
2.No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.
3.People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.
4.Do not let someone making an "incentive" bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.
5.Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.
6.Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning.
7.Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to "restore confidence".
8.Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.
9.Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible "expert" advice for their retirement.
10.Make an omelet with the broken eggs.

Black swan theory
By letting oil and coal companies get rich while they pollute with impunity, and we scramble to repair the damage (or pretend it isn't happening) we socialize the loss, while the profits are going to private enterprise. 


What would another Katrina do to New Orleans? Yet Louisiana's leadership is turning a blind eye to how vulnerable much of that state is to sea level rise.


Vitter of sea-rise-threatened Louisiana: “I do not think the science clearly supports global warming theory”

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The international community does not have a word for this type of crime yet, but the international community should find a way of classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against humanity.

A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?: The Fossil Fuel Industry's Disinformation Campaign On Climate Change

Crash Course

Our debt markets assume that the future will be (much) larger than the present.

Crash Course Lesson 12


This is very interesting and apropos to this blog. I listened to lessons 1 through 12, but I think readers will be able to get what this guy is saying without spending the time learning some of the details... so start with 12 and see how it goes.

This guy's predictions have not come to pass. He is, never the less, correct that something's gotta give, and it will likely occur in the next 20 years.

HT The Oil Drum
and The End of the World (as We Know It) Is Nigh

And this is worth reposting

Black Cross Movement

Across coal ash sites, coal-fired plants and coal mines in Illinois, black crosses are quickly emerging as haunting reminders of the human and environmental toll of coal on the region. Signs have been left with the quotation:


You shall not press upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns.
You shall not crucify us any longer upon a cross of coal.

Imminent Danger: Black Cross Movement Hits Big Coal Giants and Global Forum in St. Louis and Midwest Jeff Biggers.Author

Black crosses that appeared Monday in several locations throughout Southern Illinois were the work of an environmental group in protest of the mining and burning of coal for energy.

Local group protests coal use

Just as southern Illinois-born populist William Jennings Bryan stirred the nation in 1896 with his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, the Black Cross Alliance calls on the Obama administration and the state of Illinois to halt billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for multinational coal corporations, and bring an end to the scandalous coal wars in Illinois by re-investing in a sustainable energy policy for the future.


The Black Cross Alliance declares: You shall not crucify us any longer upon a cross of coal.

Black Crosses Continue to Rise Across Coal Belt as Warning



12 Monkeys?

Blame

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Who Cooked the Planet?

Things need to cost what they cost, but that would reduce demand, so big oil and coal have decided that the well being of world's population takes a back seat to profits... and to me that's evil.