1100 jobs lost in Western Colorado

Colorado state GOP chair Steve House reminds us of another reason to vote for Trump:

The miners have a specific message for Mr. Trump. They know that Hillary will kill mining as she has publicly stated. 1100 jobs lost in the past 3 years in western Colorado alone where families lost their $134,000 income producing the cleanest coal in America. We burn dirty coal while families and communities suffer which helps our environment how? When you vote remember that the livelihoods of many more miners and people who work in Oil and Gas are at stake. There is work to be done at the state and federal level to insure that we move forward with our greatest assets for immediate economic development so vote the ticket to insure these hard working families can take care of themselves as better strategies are put in place.

Climate fine-tuners

George Will writes at National Review,

...as the ink dries on the Paris gesture of right-mindedness, let us praise the solar energy source most responsible for the surge of human betterment that began with the harnessing of fossil fuels around 1800.

The source is, of course, coal, a still abundant and indispensable form in which the sun’s energy has been captured from carbon-based life. Matt Ridley, a member of a British coal-producing family and author of The Rational Optimist, notes that the path of mankind’s progress, material as well as moral, has been from reliance on renewable but insufficient energy sources to today’s 85 percent reliance on energy from fossil fuels.

The progression has been from reliance on human (often slaves’) muscles, to animal energy (first oxen, then horses), to burning wood and peat as stores of sunlight, to energy from water and wind, to, at last, fossil fuels. Sustained economic growth, a necessary prerequisite for scientific and technological dynamism, became possible, Ridley writes, when humanity was able to rely on “non-renewable, non-green, non-clean power.” Because “there appeared from underground a near-magical substance,” Britain’s landscape was spared: “Coal gave Britain fuel equivalent to the output of 15 million extra acres of forest to burn, an area nearly the size of Scotland. By 1870, the burning of coal in Britain was generating as many calories as would have been expended by 850 million laborers. . . . The capacity of the country’s steam engines alone was equivalent to 6 million horses or 40 million men.”

And cheap coal produced the iron for new labor-saving machines. The environmental toll from burning coal (it emits carbon dioxide, radioactivity, and mercury) has been slight relative to the environmental and other blessings from burning it.

In May 1945, Aneurin Bevan, a leading light among British socialists, said: “This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.” Genius was not required. Socialism — command-and-control government of the sort that climate fine-tuners recommend for the entire planet — soon accomplished this marvel, with coal rationed and the price of fish soaring.

Read more here.

What is the impact of fracking on environmental quality?

Josiah Neeley writes at R Street,

As with many environmental issues, the debate over hydraulic fracturing is often framed as a conflict between what’s good for the economy and what’s good for the environment.

The economic case for fracking is strong. According to a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution, fracking has been responsible for annual declines in residential natural gas bills of $13 billion a year between 2007 and 2013, an average savings of $200 a year per household. Analysis by IHS Inc.’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates (IHS CERA) found that, in 2012 the fracking-led energy boom contributed $283 billion to U.S. gross domestic product, an increase of more than $1,200 in income per household.

But do these economic benefits necessitate sacrificing environmental quality? The answer, in brief, is no. Many of the claimed environmental harms from hydraulic fracturing do not stand up to scrutiny, while other concerns can be managed and limited by effective oversight. Fracking is not only an economic boon, but it is also a net positive for the environment.

Climate effects of fracking

U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have fallen significantly in recent years. U.S. GHG emissions in 2013 were lower than in 1995, and per-capita emissions are comparable to emissions levels in the mid-1960s.



Both coal and natural gas are fossil fuels, but when it comes to carbon-dioxide emissions, not all fossil fuels are created equal. Burning natural gas releases about half the CO2 per unit of electricity generated as does coal. By helping to reduce the price of natural gas, fracking has therefore been a major factor in recent CO2 reductions.

While some methane clearly does escape during oil and gas production from fracked wells, most analyses have concluded that, even factoring in methane emissions, electricity from natural gas still has half the total greenhouse gas footprint of an equivalent amount of coal.

For an equivalent amount of electricity generated, power plant use of natural gas produces less than a third as much of the nitrogen oxides, and about 1 percent as much of the sulfur oxides, as coal. Burning natural gas also produces far fewer particulates than coal per unit of energy generated. Burning coal also produces emissions of other hazardous substances, such as mercury, which are not present in natural gas.

...Despite numerous investigations, there are currently no cases where the fracking process has been shown to have contaminated groundwater supplies in Texas. Indeed, geological considerations make direct contamination via fracking unlikely. While groundwater supplies typically lie a few hundred feet below the earth’s surface, shale oil and gas resides several thousand feet down. For fracking to contaminate groundwater, chemicals from the process would have to migrate up through thousands of feet of solid rock.

...As with air quality, water use for hydraulic fracturing has to be compared to the water use that would be required to produce the largely coal-power electricity that natural gas displaces. A 2013 analysis found that “water saved by using natural gas combined cycle plants relative to coal steam turbine plants is 25–50 times greater than the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing to extract the gas.”

Every source of energy has plusses and minuses. Wind farms provide zero carbon electricity, but this energy is intermittent and the turbines themselves can kill birds and other species. Hydroelectric dams can provide reliable power, but can radically alter local ecosystems. To evaluate an energy source properly, one must look at it not in the abstract, but in comparison to the most likely alternatives.

Judged from this perspective, the environmental record of hydraulic fracturing looks pretty good. Fracked natural gas has supplanted significant amounts of coal electricity, delivering low cost electricity with half the levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions of other harmful compounds are also drastically less. Fracking poses little risk to water quality, and uses less water than coal. While hydraulic fracturing can pose environmental challenges, particularly in certain local areas, these can be managed via appropriate regulation and oversight.

Read more here.

Most nations value getting richer over getting greener

Stephen Moore writes at Investors Business Daily,

At the very moment President Obama has decided to shutter America's coal industry in favor of much more expensive and less efficient "renewable energy," coal use is surging across the globe.

• Some 1,200 coal plants are planned across 59 countries, with about three-quarters in China and India, according to the World Resources Institute.

• Coal use around the world has grown about four times faster than renewables, according to the global energy monitoring publication BP Review of World Energy 2015.

• German coal "will remain a major, and probably the largest, fuel source for power generation for another decade and perhaps longer," the Financial Times concludes.

• "The U.S. is dropping coal plants at an unprecedented rate, but still nowhere near as quickly as India is adding them," Bloomberg Business reckons.

It's a tremendously expensive gesture that will cost America hundreds of thousands of jobs, raise utility prices by as much as $1,000 per family and reduce GDP by as much half a percentage point a year when we are already barely growing. The poor will be hurt most.

What makes the Obama administration regulations doubly destructive is that the U.S. has more coal than any other nation.

With at least 300 years of supply at a value of trillions of dollars, we are truly the Saudi Arabia of coal. To leave it in the ground would be like Obama telling Nebraska to stop growing corn, Idaho to stop growing potatoes and Silicon Valley to give up on the digital age.

Ironically, the president justifies his war on coal by arguing, "We must lead so that others will follow." But outside of dreamland, the rest of the world has no intention of following Mr. Obama's act of economic masochism. Most nations value getting richer over getting greener — as well they should. Given the sad state of our economy today, so should we.

Read more here.

EPA regulations to force coal plant shutdowns

The Associated Press reports more than 32 mostly coal-fired power plants will close and another 36 plants could also be forced to shut down as a result of new EPA rules regulating air pollution.

Go here to see the location of these coal plants.