Originally published in The Washington Times.
Guest post by Steve Goreham
Exports from the Pacific Northwest are an ongoing battleground in the environmental war on coal. Last week, the Sierra Club and three other groups announced that they would file suit against Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and six coal companies over shipments of coal in open-topped train cars. The announcement is an escalation in the three-year battle to stop new export terminals proposed for ports in Washington and Oregon. Underlying all the rhetoric is a concern that mankind is causing dangerous global warming.
In 2010, Peabody Energy, Cloud Peak Energy, and Australia-based Ambre Energy announced competing plans to build export terminals in the Pacific Northwest to ship coal to Asia, with Arch Coal joining the fray in 2011. Five new export terminals have been proposed. Coal would be shipped by rail from the Powder River Basin coal mines in Montana and Wyoming, loaded on ships at the proposed terminals, and transported across the Pacific Ocean to meet the growing demand for coal in China and Asia. Potential coal exports to Asia are estimated at between 50 and 100 million tons annually. Environmental groups and students have mounted a growing campaign to oppose construction of the terminals and the planned coal exports.
The Sierra Club and other opponents claim that rail transport of coal is responsible for “emitting coal into waterways in many locations across Washington” in the form of coal dust and that this violates the Clean Water Act. They fear that, if the export terminals are built, additional coal trains will add to the problem. “Coal is a toxic pollutant and this action today seeks to stop illegal pollution and keep our river free of dirty coal,” said Brett VandenHeuvel, Executive Director of Columbia Riverkeeper.
Shipping coal by rail and exporting coal is nothing new. In 2011, the US exported 89 million metric tons of coal, up 143 percent from 2002. Most of those exports went through the East Coast ports of Norfolk, New Orleans, and Baltimore to Europe, which is using more coal―not less. Most of this coal was delivered to ports by rail and water pollution has not been a major issue.
Neither is coal dust new. In 1900, coal provided 70 percent of US energy consumption. Factories, railroads, electrical utilities, and home furnaces were powered by coal. During the 1940s and 1950s, fallen snow in Chicago was blackened with coal dust after only a few days. Homeowners washed their walls once a year to remove accumulated coal dust. But thanks to cleaner-burning coal-fired plants and our nation’s shift to natural gas and petroleum, US emissions of coal dust today are at a 50-year low.
While environmentalists complain about coal dust, the real reason they hate coal is their acceptance of the ideology Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. In 2009 Dr. James Hansen stated, “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.” Environmental groups believe burning coal will cause catastrophic climate change, so “coal dust” is used as an excuse to try to halt coal exports.
But there is no empirical evidence that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas. Only four of every 10,000 air molecules are carbon dioxide. Ninety-nine percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect is natural, caused by water vapor and natural greenhouse gas emissions from oceans and the biosphere. Global temperatures have not increased for more than ten years, despite a continued rise in atmospheric CO2, confounding the climate models. And despite the furor over Hurricane Sandy, history shows that storms, floods, and droughts today are neither more frequent nor more severe than in past centuries.
Yet, protests against coal in the Pacific Northwest continue to escalate. It seems that “yes we can” works except in the case of export terminals and pipelines.
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Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
the NRA needs to open season on environmental terrorists, ( good idea to stop the new legislation) after all that’s what the assault rifles were invented for.
Actually the BNSF website does have a section dealing with coal dust from coal trains. Seems that they now require the tops of the cars be sprayed so a crust can form and thus prevent wind born dust emissions.
I just think that is totally stupid to waste energy shipping coal to China so they can use it to make cheap goods to ship back to the US.
What a waste of energy.
The “Sierra Club” brand has been damaged goods for a long time due to their extremism. I consider them the equivalent of the KKK for the “environment”…
Most of the trains I ever saw in the Seattle area seemed to be going at a snail’s pace that wouldn’t blow any dust off them anyway.
Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Still the number one concern of most Americans.
Not all coal is considered “dirty” containing real harmful pollutants. Western coals are considered to burn clean because they contain less of these pollutants than Eastern coals. I don’t think they have any evidence that coal dust is polluting any rivers. The idea that CO2 is a pollutant is the big mistake.
I think the Sierra Club needs to picket and demonstrate outside the home of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway’s owner – Warren Buffett, or Berkshire Hathaway’s Board Member – Bill Gates. What’s good for the Koch brothers should be good for Buffett and Gates.
for AA: You made my day! Wonderful steam train vidios.
It is interesting that there is renewed interest in steam as a power for trains. Someone in the US is building a coal powder powered steam engine.
Many wonder how to make Amtrac a profitable endevor. Maybe if they powered all their trains with steam, give the great interest in steam excursions, they might be on the right road. Just a thought.
Thank you again for the vidios. I’m now going back to look at some more.
for jc above. You seem to think that the corruption of the conservation groups by the eco-terriorists{sp] will lead to the death of conservation. Nothing could be further from the truth. I submit that the average WUWT regular is more interested in true conservation then the Sierra club, whose founder says they have been corrupted..
@ur momisugly stan stendera says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:07 am
“…the average WUWT regular is more interested in true conservation then the Sierra club, whose founder says they have been corrupted.”
If that refers to the people who actually call the shots at the Sierra Club or I would say virtually all such organizations, I don’t doubt for a minute that that is true. It is very likely true when applied to most recent members or adherents, at least, as well.
I am not in any way saying that an indifference to conservation is a good thing.
I am saying that if and when those organizations and people who have inhabited the carcass of this outlook are discredited, then what they claim to have been their base will very likely be rejected to. This is a commonplace when such swings occur.
How much traction will a proposal that we should do this that or the other “for nature” get, when this has been relentlessly exploited in a way that effectively makes humans a secondary or non-existent consideration, and has been pushed by people who don’t care whether others outside their circle live or die?
That will be none. People will be hostile to the very idea.
covering the cars creates many problems, some very serious.
it creates afire hazard from the dust and hides fires from being seen as well as hampers any mitigation.
it also requires a lot of work to move them, most gondolas dump on a rotary and are not centerline dumped. ironically because its cleaner.
coal loads are profiled too in order to enable consistent handling.
as far as tying up traffic…well the railroad has right of way (ownership usually) and allows roads to cross over them. they can, and have, stopped that before.
jc, that is not true. In spite of the activities of, as you correctly point out, the leaders of the enviormental [?] organizations there exists among Man the desire for the beauty and wonder of our natural world. That will not change.
@ur momisugly thingodonta says:
April 10, 2013 at 11:27 pm
This is a much larger issue than can be properly addressed here.
I agree that at the start and finish it is ideas, their formulation and maintainence, that propel these things, and that current “academic” circles are at their epicenter.
Rather than reform, of the institutions and current practices at least, they should simply be abolished.
Independently of the “Climate Science” degradation, a realization that the current structures don’t work is dawning.
In a world where 40,000 people can attend a “lecture” via the internet, there is no justification for the status quo. This is even before looking at the explosion over 40 or 50 years of bogus disciplines and activities, the hacks that populate the halls, the fact that the number of students who are genuinely suited to research or scholarly pursuits is a fraction of current attendees, the retarding effect on secondary schooling that this shift has compelled, and the effect of the mediocre being the dominant grouping in staffing higher education and the most vocal.
By abolition, I mean closing down. All of them. Those institutions that can justify it can reinvent themselves – or rather to large degree, revert – to a model that can actually serve the purpose. The balance should simply cease to exist.
Given existing technology, this could be implemented fully over just a few years, starting now.
The only impediment will be the entrenched interest of those who can have no useful function outside of this. That will be a very sizable proportion.
Obviously a very brief, apparently brutal, and unsubstantiated proposition. All of the above can ultimately be shown in substantial part to be accurate, and I think it will form a significant part of a whole – forced – reevaluation of systems and institutions across the board in a way not seen for perhaps centuries. Or maybe ever.
@ur momisugly stan stendera says:
April 11, 2013 at 9:06 am
I sincerely hope that it isn’t true. But, outside what can be called domestic appreciation of parks and gardens there is no certainty at all. Even those are not currently a priority in most parts of the world, and with large parts of the population in any country.
As to the beauty and wonder of the natural world being perennial, that is actually not true. It is well established, and shown in art and literature, that appreciation for “nature” as a thing independently from man and his use of it, has developed in effect in direct proportion to mans capacity not to be dictated to by its vagaries, in sustainance and disease.
Previously, it was something to be feared, defeated or mollified.
That is, Environmentalism is actually primaevalism and is hell- bent on instilling fear of and obesceince before nature into the previously civilized. These are the conditions they have created.
To the degree that they have created such a trepidation, there will be the urge to express control over this force that can dictate mans existence or not.
So I think it can be expected that a wet-land reverts to being a swamp and is drained.
If I lived in the North West, I’d be concerned about the next major quake and not something like this.
Jc: We are not really in disagreement. However if man has no inate appreciatian for Nature why did cavemen paint on the walls of deep caves the likenesses of the animals in their enviorment?
Getting your comments posted immediatly is FUN!
@ur momisugly stan stendera says:
April 11, 2013 at 10:13 am
I am not up on the musings about why this might be so.
My guess is, that it was because they could. Having found natural pigments, and having dexterity and time to kill in the cave, or wanting a specific mark on places to assert their significance, they would reasonably quickly (for cavemen) have worked out that the marks they could make could be shaped, and the most obvious things for the shapes to imitate were the things around them.
I don’t think it shows in any way, an “appreciation” of nature, although there will be 10,000 earnest manufacturers of cultural product who will swear blind it means they had insight into the nature of Gaia, transgender potentiality, market volatility, or whatever else can be marshaled.
For the caveman, these animals were food.
“Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.” Thought provoking article.
I get the feeling that once the US has pretty much abandoned coal, the environmentalists for the most part are going to drop their concern with coal and look the other way as it’s shipped to developing countries.
Thank you for the steam video, AA. Made my morning!
This country started to go down hill when steam left the rails. 😉
Ths thread has touched on the issue of who is a conservationist and who has been corrupted. I think the attached link will be interesting to some readers. Exploitation of ignorance is probably more inate than an aesthetic for nature, which frankly does not exist in the modern sense for a subsistance economy. T. Roosevelt wrote the attached article to address missinformation, but his view was that of a scientist and one who appreciated the use of natural resources as well. His conservation ethic, I believe, was a selfish nostalga for the taming of nature. It contains the paradox that all hunters must deal with, i.e. the killing for enjoyment of something that they genuinely love. For a being with a predatory nature, no prey is down right depressing. Therefore, it must be conserved. Our modern nature lovers are not motivated by love of nature. They hate the nature of mankind.
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/naturefakers.pdf
From the horses’ …er, mouth:
http://youtu.be/HlTxGHn4sH4
Update on Thursday, April 11 2013
Here is the response to my initial public records request :
Prepared for release: April 11, 2013
Re: Public Records Request PR-2013-xxxxxx (COMPLETE)
Dear XXXX
This email is provided in response to your public records request for copy of all collected raw data for ( coal – my insertion ) Train Study.
Upon review, the Office of Public Records and Open Public Meetings has found the records wholly exempt from inspection and copying and has made the appropriate exemptions per the following Public Records Act provision(s):
FERPA STUDENT PRIVACY
The University finds the student records responsive to your request exempt from inspection and copying. In so doing, the University cites the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which is incorporated into the state’s Public Disclosure Laws by virtue of RCW 42.56.070. In prohibiting schools and institutions of higher education from releasing educational records the federal statute defines educational records as follows: “those records, files, documents, and other material which – (i) contain information directly relating to a student, (ii) are maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a person acting for such agency or institution.” 20 U.S.C. 1232g(a)(4)(A); 34 CFR Part 99.
In my request, I did ask for the students FIRST name where a student may have been collecting data. I did this so as to judge how many different individuals were doing collection.
I have just this afternoon advised the university :
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The important word here is the word directly and my position is that there is nothing that directly relates to the student. If the university wishes to delete from my original request, the students first name I would not object and amend my original request to so reflect.
The university ( your office ) has two choices, first, to take this response as an appeal with the office that you work in or second, to advise the university legal staff that I will file a complaint. If the university responds per my first choice, advise me as soon as possible. If the university selects the second choice simply advise me that your office states again, that my request is closed.
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In the greater context, know that my PR request asked for data on trains where such was collected and data on the instruments used and their calibration data.
People, there is no more playing civil, this is a war ( CO2 causes climate change, and all related charges ) and needs to be fought as such.
jc: These people painting in caves did not have alot of lesiure time. They were in a subsisence society. They bearly had time to find sufficient food, yet they went deep into caves to paint animals, left animal artifacts in the surviving grave sites, and seem to have had the beginning of a pantheistic religion.
We both hope I’m right and conserviation survives and prospers.