Germany to shovel climate fund dollars into coal plants

>>barnacle bill says: July 13, 2011 at 1:10 pm
>>It’s something we should have done long ago, with the coal reserves we are
>>sitting on, it’s a blindingly obvious route to take.
Errr – tell us where you are, Barny….
If you are UK based, than be advised that our coal is hugely fractured, geologically speaking, and thus very expensive and slow to remove.
Selby pit, the great white hope of the UK coal industry at the time of Thatcher, was going to revolutionise the UK coal industry and usher in a new era of modernity. It closed a few years later, because the seams were too fractured.
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Ralph:
Your post at July 14, 2011 at 1:29 pm demonstrates you know nothing about the UK coal industry past or present.
My knowledge of the subject on which you are completely wrong is based on my involvement as the Vice President of the British Association of Colliery Management. You say your assertions are based on a report in the Guardian Newspaper.
The once-great UK coal industry is gone: it finally closed in 1995 so there are now only three remaining deep mines and a few ‘small mines’ (usually operated by a single individual). It cannot be retrieved so I have no ‘axe to grind’.
I stand by everything I wrote in my post at July 14, 2011 at 11:30 am.
Richard

Ralph:
Re: your comment at July 14, 2011 at 7:16 pm,
Reality is what it is. You are entitled to your opinions but they do not change reality.
UK coal was the cheapest available to UK power stations throughout the 1980s and 1990s. A major reason for this was that the power stations were built in the coal field areas so transport costs were low.
The Selby Project was a complete success and ran its full course.
I said;
“The UK’s coal is not “hugely fractured” and if it were then this would assist its extraction except for cases where seams have slipped in deep mines.”
You assert;
“Unlike you, my experience was gained on the coal face itself – crawling along coal seams only 70cm high between the blades of the jacks – and then discovering that the seam jumps another 3cm downwards, and so the whole process stops for a couple of days …”
So, according to you, the exception – which I stated – proves your point. Well, no. Not in the real world.
I said the UK coal industry was closed for political (n.b. NOT economic reasons). I did not say what those political reasons were. But Wucash does (at July 14, 2011 at 7:25 pm ) and he is right when he says of Thatcher ,
“Seriously though, didn’t she turn on fossil fuel industry because she wanted energy to flow freely? Coal miners were causing trouble with their strikes …”.
Ted Heath’s Conservative government collapsed in 1974 in an election he called to decide, he said, “Who governs Britain?”. This was because the country was operating a 3-day-week with rationed power as a result of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) being on strike for the second time in two years. The election result was indecisive but the Conservatives lost office. They then regrouped by
(a) choosing a new Leader and their choice of Margaret Thatcher surprised everybody (including themselves)
and
(b) deciding how to “destroy the power of the unions” in particular the NUM.
Nicholas Ridley suggested destroying the coal industry would remove the miners (and, thus, the power of the NUM) from existence. He said this would require stockpiling coal at power stations and ports both in the UK and elsewhere such that the power stations could continue to operate for 18 months if the coal industry stopped producing because the NUM’s response to closure of the industry would be to strike. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1979 they immediately started to implement the Ridley Plan. They were helped in this by the NUM having appointed an incompetent leader, Arthur Scargill.
The Ridley Plan operated by defining each mine as an independent profit centre required to make a profit in each year. A mine that failed to be profitable in any one year was declared to be part of the “uneconomic tail” of the industry and was shut. This definition meant that each deep mine that was not part of the Selby Complex would close within a few years. The reason for this was as follows.
A mine developed a panel of a coal seam for removal by building tunnels, installing equipment, etc.. It had all its costs whilst conducting this development but it produced no coal and, therefore, produced no profit (only cost). The panel was then extracted so the mine produced much coal and made a profit in this production phase. The complete development/production cycle made a profit. An Area of the National Coal Board (NCB) planned the operation of its mines (i.e. which were developing and which were producing) such that the Area made profit because most mines were not developing all at the same time.
Declaring each mine an ‘independent profit centre’ meant that each mine would become part of the ‘uneconomic tail’ – and, therefore, be shut – when it reached a year of development. The only way a mine could avoid this would be immense investment in additional machinery such that it could operate and develop several panels simultaneously, but this investment would make the mine part of the ‘ueconomic tail’.
The Selby Project consisted of several integrated mines so it operated as an NCB Area and, thus, was protected from each mine being able to be declared an ‘independent profit centre’: in effect, the mines of the Selby Project were a single super-mine. However, the Selby Project had a scheduled life and would close – as it did – upon completion of that schedule.
The NUM did strike when they began to see what was happening but there were insufficient stockpiles of coal for the Thatcher government to break that strike. So, Thatcher then gave the NUM everything it asked for.
Two years later the stockpiles were in place and Thatcher triggered the NUM strike by deliberately – and blatantly – breaking an agreement with the NUM. This was at the start of the summer so coal usage would be low for months but the government could trigger the strike then because the incompetent Scargill had said he would call a strike if and when the agreement were broken.
The strike lasted over a year and the Thatcher government was assisted in breaking the NUM by conducting a successful ‘divide and rule’ policy on the miners. The power of the NUM was broken and the UK coal industry was closed in accordance with the Ridley Plan.
It is a political opinion (judgement?) as to whether closure of the industry was good or bad for the UK. But, as I explained, it is an economic fact that loss of the UK coal industry has caused severe and long-term economic damage to the UK.
Sometimes working on the coal face can provide a limited view. If you want to know how and why a battle happened then ask a general. The guy on the front line feels the full might of the battle where he is, but he only sees the little of the battle which is where he is.
Richard

Ralph:
I gave you the facts. If there are “political blinkers” then they are yours and not mine.
The Selby Project was a complete success and ran its full term. And the fact that some miners accepted propoganda that they wanted to believe does not change that.
The history of the closure of the coal industry is as I described and for the reasons I stated. They ae not refutable and you do not dispute them.
There is much more that students of political history will study;
e.g.
Joe Gormley hung on as NUM President to prevent the communist NUM Vice-President, Mick McGahey, becoming NUM President. Were it not for that then the “Walk ON The Beach” of Joe and Dereck Ezra would not have happened, so the Power Loading Agreement (PLA) would not have been accepted. And Joe’s acceptance of the PLA led directly to the young, fire-brand President of the Yorkshire NUM, Arthur Scargill, becoming President of the National NUM. A competent NUM President would not have assisted the Government to choose when it wanted to ‘fight’ the NUM.
Who could have guessed that Joe’s action to prevent a communist becoming NUM President would result in the NUM gaining a President who was so incompetent that he assisted in the conduct of more damage to the livelihoods of those who elected him than even a communist could have?
Richard
PS I was not a “mine manager”. I was the Senior Material Scientist based at the NCB’s Coal Research Establishment. My peers – including geologists – repeatedly elected me as Vice President of the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM) despite my never having worked in a mine (except for emegency duties during NUM strikes). They would not have done that if I were ignorant of the industry and its circumstances. Of course I visited several mines and crawled several coal faces. Also, I was the only reprsentative of the industry’s management who was invited to address an NUM Lodge during the 1984 NUM strike, and a South Wales NUM Lodge gave me the honour – which I accepted – of helping to carry their banner during a demonstration against the pit closures: I know of no other representativeof the industry’s management who had a similar honour. So, I conclude that some others in the UK coal industry considered me to be knowledgeable concerning what was happening to the industry.

>>Richard,
>>I was the Senior Material Scientist based at the NCB’s Coal Research Establishment.
Then how on earth can you suggest that fractured seams are advantageous to the coal industry? I have never heard such a crazy suggestion from someone in authority – it like the CAA asking for more near misses in LHR airspace.
How on earth do you hold up a fractured roof structure? Most mines were already leaving 20cm of coal at the top of the seam to strengthen the roof (which was then wasted and buried), because the shale was so weak – and you want more fracturing and more weakness? I suppose it was your advice that allowed ‘advance’ mining, instead of ‘retreat’ mining, with all the dangers that entailed of yet further roof collapse. How many miners died, because of your advice?
Your continual emphasis on the miner’s strike demonstrates that you are at heart a political animal, and not someone interested in safety or the economic viability of the coal industry. Thus you are obviously one of the keystones for the destruction of the UK coal industry. Selby was nothing to do with the strike – this was the great white hope of modernising the industry, it is where the government wanted to go to, not what it wanted to destroy.
.

>>Richard
>>I am now convinced that the disruption ofthis thread was – and is – your
>>intention, and I refuse to continue my unintended assistance of it.
Wrong again.
My posts were designed to counter the grossly erroneous claims that geology did not play a huge part in the contraction of the UK industry, and that fractured seams are in any way beneficial to the industry. The last point being a very worrying and dangerous claim, from mining management. It demonstrates their complete disconnection from the real world of the coal-face, and their total disregard for mine safety.
And my posts come from personal experience, working in a pit, which you obviously did not. And the (left-wing) rags I quoted, were to refute your continual claims that this was all the fault of an ‘evil’ Margret Thatcher. Even the left-wing rags knew what was going on, whereas it would appear that mine management were still fighting the Communist battles of the 1970s. You should have emigrated to the USSR when you had the chance, and seen what it was like to work in your beloved Soviet coal mines.
And all of this has a lot to do with this thread.
We could indeed have kept the UK coal mines open, if we had subsidised the 2 million workforce with massive subsidies to dig the world’s most expensive coal from the world’s smallest seams. And that, it would appear, is what the Germans are now contemplating. If they are not careful, they will not only emit millions of tonnes more CO2, they may also end up with a very expensive energy sector, and ruin their manufacturing industry. And a country like Germany cannot afford to impose import duties, because they depend too much on exports.
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Ralph (troll):
Address the issue of this thread or go away. Your nonsense is a waste of space.
Richard