Guest “I don’t care who you are. That’s funny right there!” by David Middleton
HOPPY’S COMMENTARY
Coal is Back… For Now
By Hoppy Kercheval
August 23, 2021Coal is hot.
Even as the United States and many countries around the world pledge to reduce carbon emissions to slow climate change, the demand for coal has increased significantly.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently, “Coal use is surging in some of the world’s largest economies as electricity demand rebounds from the pandemic, illustrating the challenges to countries looking to wean themselves off the dirty but reliable fossil fuel.”
In an ironic twist, the contraction of the coal industry in this county is one of the primary reasons why coal is now booming. Demand for both thermal and metallurgical coal is outstripping supply, driving up prices to levels not seen in several years.
[…]
“It’s difficult to get off coal because of security of supply,” Kathryn Porter, founder of energy consulting firm Watt-Logic, told the Wall Street Journal. “At the end of the day, you need to keep the lights on.”
[…]
The question, however, is how long the boom will last. “We hope that this is sustained,” Hamilton said.
That is unlikely in the long term given multiple factors that put downward pressure on the industry. However, for now, it is good to be in the coal business.
MetroNews, The Voice of West Virginia
Hoppy Kercheval is known as “the radio ‘dean’ of West Virginia broadcasters.”
I went to the usually reliable EIA to get the latest graphs of historical coal production and prices and found this:
NYMEX coal futures
EIA no longer publishes NYMEX coal future prices, and all historical data are no longer available. You can find more information about NYMEX futures prices from the CME Group.
Coal Markets
And this:
This doesn’t really provide much context. Cancel Culture has apparently made inroads at the EIA.
So, I went to see FRED…
The global coal price benchmark is Newcastle (Australia) and it’s booming.
Soaring demand for the world’s least-liked commodity sees thermal coal prices jump 106% this year
PUBLISHED THU, AUG 19 2021Sam Meredith
LONDON — Soaring electricity demand, infrastructure woes and a surge in global gas prices have triggered an extraordinary rally for the world’s least liked commodity.
Australian thermal coal at Newcastle Port, the benchmark for the vast Asian market, has climbed 106% this year to more than $166 per metric ton, according to the latest weekly assessment by commodity price provider Argus.
The Newcastle weekly index, which stood at a 2020 low of $46.18 in early September, now appears to be closing in on an all-time high of $195.20 from July 2008. Its South African equivalent, the Richards Bay index, ended the week through to Aug. 13 at $137.06 per metric ton, up more than 55% this year.
To put thermal coal’s remarkable rally into some context, international benchmark Brent crude is one of few assets to have recorded comparable gains this year. The oil contract is up 33% year-to-date.
The resurgence of thermal coal, which is burned to generate electricity, raises serious questions about the so-called “energy transition.” To be sure, coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel in terms of emissions and therefore the most important target for replacement in the pivot to renewable alternatives.
Yet, as policymakers and business leaders repeatedly tout their commitment to the demands of the deepening climate emergency, many still rely on fossil fuels to keep pace with rising power demand.
[…]
CNBC
“Death Trains”?
David Gray | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Crackpot Nostalgia
Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them
James HansenSat 14 Feb 2009
[…]
The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for the extermination of about 400 species – its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm.
The German and Australian governments pretend to be green. When I show German officials the evidence that the coal source must be cut off, they say they will tighten the “carbon cap”. But a cap only slows the use of a fuel – it does not leave it in the ground. When I point out that their new coal plants require that they convince Russia to leave its oil in the ground, they are silent. The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, it set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young, let alone the unborn. These governments are not green. They are black – coal black.
[…]
The Grauniad
Who’s up for some Johnny Cash?
I Hear The Train A-Comin’; It’s Rollin’ ‘Round The Bend,
Johnny Cash
And I Ain’t Seen The Sunshine Since I Don’t Know When,
I’m Stuck At Folsom Prison And Time Keeps Draggin’ On.
But That Train Keeps A-Rollin’…
“At the end of the day, you need to keep the lights on.”
According to griff, if you live in Africa you should be happy if the government allows you to have a few hours of lighting after dark.
In Africa, to the ‘Greens’, it seems OK to burn down the forests to make charcoal for heating and cooking. This in turn causes 10002 of deaths from CO poisoning, destroys oxygen giving, CO2 absorbing forests and destroys habitats. It also opened the door to the Chinese to come in and provide coal plants for low cost power … so they can raid the massive mineral wealth.
Well, when you are sitting on huge coal reserves but can’t get a loan from the World Bank to build a coal-burning power plant, sometimes you have to get in bed with whoever is offering financing. Case in point, Nigeria, who desperately want to modernize and provide a better standard of living for their people.
Yes, Nigeria has to go where the money is. Our Western Elites, with their anti-coal fetish, drive them into the hands of the Chicoms.
Given the actions of the so called Western Elites, I can’t help but believe they want the Chicoms to win.
Much as most of them rooted for the former Soviet Union.
I certainly can’t fault the African countries. The only thing known to promote lower birth rate is prosperity, yet the Western elites would not allow Africa to prosper. It’s a tragic error.
Why do you bother invoking griff when he hasn’t even posted? You just sound obsessed.
That’s basically the reason I say that without a very large scale nuclear power buildout, every last kg of coal, every last barrel of oil, and every cubic foot of natural gas will ultimately be dug up, drilled, and fracked to be burned to keep the lights on… in a future when the wind and solar scams have finally run their course to the ultimate failure they represent.
Human progress and increasing living standards for thousands of years have always been marked by increasing energy density useage. Wind and Solar are orders of magnitude step down that scale from nuclear and an order of magnitude down from fossil fuel.
And because no one can make a new wind turbine, nor build a solar panel without using large amounts of fossil fuels, ultimately every bit of fossil fuel that can be burned, will be in a future without nuclear power.
“…without a very large scale nuclear power buildout, every last kg of coal, every last barrel of oil, and every cubic foot of natural gas will ultimately be dug up….” it will all be dug up with or without nuclear.
When all that digging and burning is completed, the CO2 concentration will not exceed 550 ppm, due to the fact that fuel can only be recovered at a certain rate and there is so much CO2 taken out of the atmosphere. The simple math of this is ignored in presentations on the future atmosphere. It does not go up and just stay there. The more CO2 there is, the faster it is used for all sorts of thing – natural processes. RCP-8, apart from being physically impossible, could not get the concentration up to 550 ppm.
Consider a barrel 1/4 full of water with a 1″ hole leaking water out of the bottom. It has a certain outflow rate. It is being filled at the rake of leakage.
If the inflow is increased to a rate higher than the outflow, the water level will rise in the barrel. As the level rises, the outflow increases. At some point the water level stabilises when the outflow again matches the inflow rate. The inflow rate has certain physical limits. Similarly the rate of burning fossil fuels has physical limits (apart from obvious economic ones) and CO2 leaves the atmosphere faster if it rises.
The ultimate solution is some form of nuclear power. Maybe the “right” one will be invented in 50 or 100 years. Maybe 500 years. It’s OK – we have time on our side.
Yep. Plants prefer double that, and humans are ok up to 10,000ppm.
The CO2 concentration will probably reach an equilibrium sometime in the future, as the CO2 removal rate from natural processes catches up to the emission rate, but it’s not clear that the limit is 550 ppm.
If all the man-made CO2 emissions remained in the atmosphere forever with no natural removal, a mass balance on the atmosphere shows that CO2 concentrations would rise about 1 ppm for every 8 gigatonnes (GT) of CO2 emissions. Man-made CO2 emissions for the entire world were estimated at 35.5 GT in 2019, which would result in a rise of 4.4 ppm/yr if all the CO2 remained in the atmosphere.
The trendline for CO2 at Mauna Loa over the past 10 years has a slope of about 2.4 ppm/yr, meaning that about 55% of the emitted CO2 remains in the atmosphere and 45% is removed by natural processes.
If the removal rate by natural processes is a first-order reaction (CO2 removal rate proportional to CO2 concentration), then the removal rate would catch up to the emission rate at 1 / 0.45 times the current CO2 concentration of about 415 ppm, or about 913 ppm.
If we accept a “climate sensitivity” of 1.8 C per doubling, this would result in a climate about 2.0 C warmer than today’s climate, which might render vast areas of northern Canada and Russia more habitable than they are now.
Of course, at the current rise rate of 2.4 ppm/yr, it would take over 200 years to reach that level (the year 2220), and the rise rate would slow down as the CO2 removal rate got closer to the emission rate, so that equilibrium might not be reached before AD 2300 or later.
If alarmists are worried about what might happen to today’s children or those in the womb, they will likely not live to see the year 2220, unless somebody finds a miraculous cure for aging in the meantime that doubles human lifespan!
With the record harvests reported in India this year (partially due to CO2 enrichment), how fertile would the world’s agriculture be with double the current CO2 levels, which would also make the crops more drought-resistant?
Who would’f thunk it? Turns out the CAGW crowd doesn’t want to starve in the dark. Otherwise they would all bicycle on vacation to offset the evils of coal, even to cross the ocean. Don’t wait for it.
I’ve heard of walking on water, but bicycling on water is new.
I don’t think it is. I’m pretty sure that bicycles with large inflatable wheels have been around for a while.
(edit: actually it’s a trike, which makes sense for balancing)
And here’s one that works by aquaplaning:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VaLanlBcdhs
Those swan boats are sort of cycling but they don’t do well in rough water….
” The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, it set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young, let alone the unborn. These governments are not green. They are black – coal black.”– there is a lie right there.The last election was billed as the “climate change” election and the people again voted for the least objectionable party. The other side wanted to go back to carbon taxes and other policies to appease the extremists.
The current government supports coal and supports meeting climate change objectives through free market and non-regulatory policies.Meanwhile State govermnents have set unrealistic unreliable energy goals that will kill industry and bankrupt the states.
fix the problem = tell the greentards where to go
Just tell them to stop exhaling, right now.
Since when do these “people” give a damn about the unborn?
Thanks for the post, David. As usual, it was fun to read…kept me smiling the whole time…so, my guess, it was fun to prepare.
Regards,
Bob
Its time to award a WUWT Science Writer of the year award. Come on Anthony time to give it at the Heartland Conference in Vegas. My vote is for Dave Middleton. The greentards are always giving awards for their Terminally Stupid.
I suppose I know from nothing but I have read that “biomass” burning, e.g. wood pellets for power plants, produce considerably more CO2 than coal per unit of electricity produced. Is this untrue?
Andy, that is true but the greens point to the renewable side that says the CO2 created in trees was in circulation before so it is not new.
So was the CO2 in coal…
That CO2 wasn’t in circulation yesterday though. That’s the difference between good CO2 and bad CO2.
It’s kind of like junk on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico. If we dropped it from a drilling rig or production platform, we have to go to great lengths to retrieve it. If the junk is >50 years old, it’s an archaeological resource that we have to avoid disturbing.
I definitely need a sarcasm font!
And, for the life of me, I cant understand how they can make that good CO2 arguement in one breath, and then bang on about cattle emitting methane in the next. Wasnt that also circulating CO2 days to weeks before?
Let me help you understand – they’re as thick as p!gsh!t
Thicker than pigshit, phil. Dumber than a box of rocks. Try confronting one of them with the reality and watch them flounder and flop around while they make excuses about – whatever….
What it tells me is that AGW true believers really have no idea about climate or any other science at all.
More evidence of the inherent irrationality of humans!
In California, old mining camps from the era of the Great Depression are now off limits to collecting any abandoned mining equipment, and prospecting for gold nuggets with a metal detector might get one in trouble if done at such a ‘historical site.’
What I find even more ludicrous is that the home I lived in while going to high school was built in 1955. In theory, removing it or doing any renovations are subject to approval of the county historical society.
My home is older than your country.
Rocks are older than your home.
My condolences! 🙂
“More evidence of the inherent irrationality of humans!”
SEXIST! or…. something.
Humanist?
Mason, what you say is right, BUT burning biomass is not, IT CAN NEVER BE, renewable, as they claim!
It would be renewable ONLY if the RATE of falling trees would equal the RATE of repacing the same amount of wood!
For producing electricity, say, for one day consumption, we need to burn a given acreage of forest, that is equivalent of a certain quantity of wood: but, during that day, what is the amount of wood produced in the same acreage? Answer: a very small percentage of what was burnt.
Even if the thermodynamics of the process of converting heat in electricity were highly efficient, which they are not, the process would be always in deficit. Such system would be a perpetual motion machine of the first and the second kind, violating both the first and the second laws of thermodynamics!
https://e360.yale.edu/features/wood_pellets_green_energy_or_new_source_of_co2_emissions
But… It’s good CO2…
But it takes decades for forests to resink what current Biomass generation releases in days
“But he and others say that not enough of such waste wood exists to feed the growing demand for wood pellets.”
Have they been to California lately? There’s plenty of wood waste there. A lot of it is burning right now, although it’s not producing any electricity.
Unfortunately most of the Waste Wood in California sits in the State House and might prove difficult to harvest due to Democrat Entrenchment
“A lot of it is burning right now, although it’s not producing any electricity.”
No, but it’s producing lots of nice potassium and such for feeding new trees.
Here’s how it works. The H:C ration of wood is the lowest, then peat, then lignite, then bituminous and anthracite coal, then oil, then gas, which is practically a hydrogen energy system, ie four H atoms to one C.
But because wood is “renewable” it wins out, despite producing far more CO2 per BTU generated than natural gas, ie CH4, methane.
“At the end of the day, you need to keep the lights on.”
That should be the defining question while listing all those ‘leaders’ and international policy promoters who assume someone else will ‘keep the lights on’ for them and their constituents.
I just hope we can keep the lights on and the heat available for the Afghan evacuees who do make out of the storm.
There are two kinds of people in the world–those who keep the lights on and those who arm wave and preach climate.
There are also two kinds of forecasts in the world–those that have real consequences with accountability and those that don’t.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
“The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains.” I hope that they are still going through Flatonia, TX, as they are still installing windmills on the Texas coast. I suggest that all those connected with wind power might be required to sail a boat without a motor for a sufficient period of time for the wind to die. Give them a phone and when they run out of water rescue them. That is the kind way unlike wind dependency being forced on us.
“When the wind dies down, backup electricity from a utility company or from an energy storage system becomes necessary….” From Miller, 1994, 8th edition, Living in the Environment. Even those teaching the narrative knew it.
The coal industry has replaced wool as the backbone of the Australian economy. Now we have the situation of the people being the sheep. Too many plumb the depths of stupidity by believing all the relentless propaganda. Both “climate change” and submit to the untested, experimental drug propaganda is going at fever pitch. In the case of the “vaccine”, our basic human rights have been confiscated and held for ransom. Only some of the confiscated rights will be returned in return to becoming lab rats. Other basic rights are still taken from us.
Coal exports inject around 60 billion in to the economy. With the multiplier effect of around 4.2, this is around 250 billion for 25 million of us. This is $10,000 per person- a massive proportion of our (supposed) wealth.
If you extend the green obsession to ending coal power for electricity to industry, the equation becomes even more absurd. With power prices 2-5 times more from renewables, even using the more rosy 2 times figure costs ( remembering that 75% of electricity use is by businesses-the higher costs translate in to lower incomes), this will reduce income per capita by well over $10,000 per capita. Higher production costs will make goods more expensive as well as destroying local industry. Cost of living will go up substantially while incomes plummet. Where will the tax come from? Just what will Australia contribute to pay its way in the world?? We currently do this by selling off our productive assets.
Then you add the costs of (flawed) PCR testing and poison “vaccines” to the debt.
Australia is being primed for The Great Reset” where all the dodgy debt is forgiven to allow the Elites to own EVERYTHING, including us. We will be deceived in to perpetual enslavement from the dodgy banking practices and corrupt “leadership.”
To quote Klaus Schwab of the WEF-“You will own nothing and you will be happy.” Sorry Klaus, we don’t buy this-you will own everything and be very happy.
Don’t buy it.
What a miserable life you must have seeing conspiracy at every turn.
In My mind the Governments of Australia are doing a great job with vaccination.
Our death rate is a tiny fraction of that of the USA and Britain. The bulk of the people see the lockdowns as a necessary evil to ensure that minimal people die.
I hope you are vaccinated or you may get very sick, or should I say sicker than you are now.
Why would I be stupid enough to take an untested, experimental drug for which there is no legal redress in the event of death or injury? The way every effort- carrots and sticks are used, along with confiscation of basic rights (which are held to ransom) is a sure sign there is something fishy about the “vaccine.”
If you have had the shots, be prepared for a never ending series of booster shots. Also, be prepared for an early death from the “vaccine” experiment you were conned in to becoming a lab rat for.
“Why would I be stupid enough to take an untested, experimental drug for which there is no legal redress in the event of death or injury? “
Because your chances of dying are higher if you don’t take it. Sadly it doesn’t cure stupid though.
At my age, I have a 99.98 % chance of survival if I were to catch “the virus.”
This is even without therapeutics like Ivermectin or HCQ. If we add access to these cheap, effective and safe therapeutics, the chance of death at my age drops to 1 in 100,000. As I can get my hands on Ivermectin and zinc quickly (take Quercetain and zinc daily anyway) I am not in the least bit worried.
Having never had a serious flu in my life- stiff neck, sore throat- so what, I regard this virus as not much worse than seasonal influenza.
We don’t know the long term implications of our organs becoming spike protein factories. Once you get “the virus” and recover, your body knows how to deal with it. A very large percentage of people who have contracted “the virus” have no symptoms-it is only discovered by a not-too-accurate test.
As for all the coercion to get the jab- haven’t you installed new batteries in to your BS meter? Isn’t it time to ask yourself questions about the entire narrative and how it is reported in the news? Isn’t it time to entertain the notion that (once again) , media have been “owned” by insidious forces? Why is it that dissenting views are censored without any kind of debate? This is the mark of a LIAR. It is also the mark of TYRANTS.
So, you have never had to contend with an absurd narrative being pushed endlessly? You must still believe in Santa Claus and fairy tales.
Time to wake up.
Oh really? How do you explain what is happening in Israel then, the most thoroughly vaccinated country in the world?
My chances of dying in an automobile accident are much higher if I drive to work than if I stay home.
My chance of getting fired if I stay home is pretty close to 100%.
Keeping a loaded .357 magnum in my nightstand increases the probability of me accidentally shooting myself. It also gives me close to a 100% probability of winning a gunfight with an intruder who brought a knife, and at least a 50% probability of winning a gunfight with an intruder who brought a gun.
The last numbers I saw indicated that unvaccinated people have about a 3 in 1 million probability of dying from the Shamdemic; while the vaccinated probability is around 0.5 in 1 million. The probability of suffering long term adverse side effects from the vaccines is totally unknown. Constantly being annoyed by @$$holes lecturing us about the vaccine actually lowers the probability that I will get vaccinated before I am fully convinced that the benefits warrant the inconvenience of having to remember two appointments.
They are called vaxxholes David
+42×1042
“The probability of suffering long term adverse side effects from the vaccines is totally unknown.”
That’s the big question I have.
A large percentage of people who get the Wuhan virus are experiencing after-effects from the virus, and that includes all ages, and all degrees of infection from mild to severe.
The Wuhan virus disrupts many of the body’s immune system functions, and inhibit substances that regulate blood clotting from working properly. As a result blood clots can show up in any part of the body.
The question is how long do these effects last? Do they cure themselves over time?
The good news is we have many drugs old and new, that can help us against the Wuhan virus after-effects.
Some people who were infected with the SARS-Cov-1 virus in 2003, are still experiencing adverse health effects from the virus.
My gut feeling is that the vaccines are reasonably safe and reasonably effective. However, I view the Shamdemic much like I view AGW… Both are real and government’s solutions to them are far more harmful than the underlying problems. I’ll get the vaccine, when it’s convenient for me.
There are currently 5.067B case studies indicating the safety of the injections with 1.08B case studies being administered in the last 28 days.
“I’ll get the vaccine, when it’s convenient for me.”
So it’s really about stomping your feet and saying “you can’t make me.” How mature of you given the risks to others’ health and wellbeing not to mention the very real risk of this thing mutating the longer we wait.
Just looking for a reason…
😎
Fair enough but I want to delay any spilling of my blood for as long as I can, even if it is for a good cause.
“Constantly being annoyed by @$$holes lecturing us about the vaccine actually lowers the probability that I will get vaccinated”
….. I am vaccinated. I believe the science that says my chance of dying from this disease is significantly lower than yours. I also believe the quicker we knock this thing on the head the less chance it will mutate into something nastier. The best way (I think) to do that is to vaccine.
“The last numbers I saw indicated that unvaccinated people have about a 3 in 1 million probability of dying”
Not according this this data.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Of course that assumes you catch the virus. But if you do catch it…. in the US you are at 1.7% chance of dying and that would assume you are not older or with any underlying health issues which would bump these numbers up.
“The probability of suffering long term adverse side effects from the vaccines is totally unknown.”
There are lots of unknowns in this world. But at the moment the vaccines look extremely safe.
“In the case of the “vaccine”, our basic human rights have been confiscated and held for ransom. Only some of the confiscated rights will be returned in return to becoming lab rats. Other basic rights are still taken from us.”
Maybe things will change for the better in a few months. Pfizer and several other groups say they will have new therapeutics available around the end of this year, that can stop the Wuhan virus and its variants in their tracks.
So there may be no need to take an experimental vaccine, and then the totalitarians won’t have an excuse to order you around.
Governor DeSantis of Florida seems to be using the drug Regeneron as a therapeutic successfully. This has to be injected at the present time, but they are coming out with a pill form soon.
Vaccines are not the only fix to this Wuhan virus problem. Ask India.
Here’s a little follow-up on new therapeutics:
https://scitechdaily.com/inescapable-covid-19-antibody-discovery-neutralizes-all-known-sars-cov-2-strains/
“Experiments showed that this antibody, called S309, neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 strains – including newly emerged mutants that can now “escape” from previous antibody therapies – as well as the closely related original SARS-CoV virus.”
“The FDA granted an EUA for sotrovimab in late May after trials showed that people with mild to moderate COVID-19 infections who received an infusion of the therapy had an 85% reduction in rates of hospitalization or death, compared with placebo.”
““This antibody, which binds to a previously unknown site on the coronavirus spike protein, appears to neutralize all known sarbecoviruses – the genus of coronaviruses that cause respiratory infections in mammals,” said Nix, who is an affiliate in Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area. “And, due to the unique binding site on mutation-resistant part of the virus, it may well be more difficult for a new strain to escape.”
Subsequent tests in hamsters suggest that this antibody could even prevent a COVID-19 infection if given prophylactically. The new work was published in Nature.”
end excerpts
Sounds promising.
Even as I type, US mainstream media outlets are feverishly looking for angle to pin this on Governor DeSantis.
The Leftwing Media is looking to pin anything they can gin up on DeSantis, because they see him as a potential presidential candidate, and their job is to smear any Republican who looks like a viable candidate.
The people the Leftwing Media attack are those people the Leftwing Media fears politically.
“The people the Leftwing Media attack are those people the Leftwing Media fears politically.”
I think you are right, but …. I also think that is true of politics in general, left and right. It’s a dirty business. After all let’s not forget Trump was clearly worried about Biden enough to ask a foreign leader to look for dirt on him. And as it turned out, he was right to worry Biden would beat him.
I don’t think Trump was worried about the election at all. He thought he was going to win. Why wouldn’t he? Did you see all the thosands of people that came out to his rallies. Joe Biden couldn’t buy an audience.
Btw, I reported about 30,000 people turned out for Trump’s rally last Saturday. It turns out, the number was more like 50,000 people.
Biden’s approval ratings are in the tank and going lower. He may be removed from office, either by impeachment and removal or using the 25th Amendment questioning his mental capacity to be president.
A lot will depend on how many Americans Biden gets k!lled with his delusional policy.
None of this had to happen. Every horror scene you see regarding Afghanistan is on Biden’s head.
Biden is trying to blame the debacle on Trump, but Trump’s plan has finally become public and it turns out Trump was planning on leaving a small contingent in Afghanistan along with the NATO allies leaving their 7,000 troops, and Trump intended to keep Bagram airbase operational, which means Trump would have been able to support the Afghan army. The Afghan army would not have thrown down their weapons and run away because they would still be supported by the U.S. firepower and therefore the Taliban would not have walked in and taken over the entire country.
The first thing Biden did was pull out of Bagram airbase and this pulled the rug out from under the entire Afghan army. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and it looks like this was deliberate sabotage by Biden himself.
Biden apparently thinks the U.S. military is a power unto themselves, and by closing Bagram, Biden sought to cripple the U.S. military’s ability to remain in Afghanistan. Biden wanted out at any cost. Just what you would expect from an appeaser mentality.
And now we see the results of an appeaser mentality, don’t we.
“After all let’s not forget Trump was clearly worried about Biden enough to ask a foreign leader to look for dirt on him.”
Recall at the time, that Biden was all over television with his claim that he made the Ukranians back down on prosecuting the company his son, Hunter, worked for. Biden said he told the Ukranians if they didn’t get rid of the prosecutor, they would not get $1 billion in U.S. aid. And Biden bragged that it wasn’t long before the prosecutor was fired.
So it was reasonable for Trump to ask the Ukranian president to have Biden’s activities looked into, since Biden was publicly claiming he had bribed Ukranian officials using U.S. taxpayer money.
The IEA thinks that coal use peaked in 2014.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-coal-consumption-1978-2020
Now, I didn’t see any contradictory 2021 data in the body of your post, but I didn’t open up every link either. So, if you have a 1 year counter trend, would you please point it out to us?
I never claimed that global coal consumption had increased.
So, you have no data to counter your inference (per your header) that coal is not in long term decline. I.e., no actual use data. This channels your oil and gas cheer leads, where you confuse $ trading with industry vitality…
I just have no time for serial logical fallacies.
Worming as usual. The point of your post is most obviously that coal is resurging. Yet, the use trend belies that. And since you can’t counter the actual data, you collect single points of light to detract from it.
BOB, with 43 new coal plants in China, how is it that you determine that coal use is peaking?
Thanks!
“BOB, with 43 new coal plants in China, how is it that you determine that coal use is peaking?”
I looked at the IEA use plot in my link. Are you claiming that coal use will increase in and after 2021? Yes, it might, but we have a durable, 6+ year trend that is pointing down. Do you have any use projections that say otherwise? With respect, references to those 43 plants without overall use projections is just another point of light. Mr. M. prefers them over actual data, but I’m guessing that you want the actuals.
Yes, I have reality, which shows that coal use, thanks to China, India and all other countries which want the most BTUs at the cheapest possible cost, will continue building coal plants.
What color is the sky on your home planet?
“Yes, I have reality, which shows that coal use, thanks to China, India and all other countries which want the most BTUs at the cheapest possible cost, will continue building coal plants.”
Yrs, when labor costs are minimized and the external costs are communized, extraction is maximized. This is true, even in the US, with coal worker pension and health costs being shirked. You paint a sad future, that may be what actually happens.
Does bob believe that CHina is going to stop building coal plants anytime soon? Or that those already built are going to be shut down?
“Yes, I have reality, which shows that coal use, thanks to China, India and all other countries which want the most BTUs at the cheapest possible cost, will continue building coal plants.”
AGAIN, no numbers to accompany. The EIA, which actually does the numbers, disagrees.
The 6 year decline was caused by frakking, which has recently been banned.
A 6 year trend is nothing.
Has, or has not coal usage been increasing recently?
If it has, then David is correct.
Your attempts to change the subject not withstanding.
That’s what I aksed. All the info points to decreasing. Do you havd short term 2021 info that disagrees?
Direct from the IEA on 2021 usage
After a major drop in recent years, global coal demand is forecast to rise by 2.6% in 2021
A global economic recovery in 2021 is expected to drive a short-lived rebound in coal demand following the major drop this year triggered by the Covid-19 crisis, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.
However, there is little sign that the world’s coal consumption is set to decline substantially in the coming years, with rising demand in some Asian economies offsetting declines elsewhere. As coal is by far the single largest source of global energy-related carbon emissions, the trends outlined in the report pose a major challenge to efforts to put those emissions on a path compatible with reaching climate and sustainable energy goals
Well, there you go! Bob might quibble with the term “forecast”, but that’s about all he can do.
Mr. bob: Good on you! After I pointed out that Mr. M lives in your head rent free, you decide to pay him rent!!
It is supposed to work the other way, but anybody who needs to see last month’s numbers of use so he can ignore today’s price surge might just miss a bigger picture, and might just not understand how it works. You present as knowing about energy, but refusing to see this price signal tells us you are a time-server, not a decision-maker. Your comments consistently turns independent-minded readers to Mr. Middleton’s side. Let’s see if that gets absorbed.
There are explanations for that decrease that make a lot more sense than your fantasies about the end of coal.
Just because you want something to be true, doesn’t make it true.
According to the IEA Global Energy Review 2021 coal consumption by Region from 2000 – 2021 was
Thus total increase of 1926 Mtoe (Million tonnes of oil equivalent)
They also say that whilst there was a fall in coal production of 4% during 2020 because of covid they expected a 4.5% bounceback in 2021
Sorry total increase of 1526 Mtoe (Million tonnes of oil equivalent)
Coal will decline until it is no longer more expensive than natural gas.
Even without the ludicrous bans on fracking, the increased demand for gas and the decreased demand for coal were already cutting into natural gas’s price advantage.
As to your alleged evidence for peak coal, you are once again seeing what you want to see.
Fracking is an economic hot house flower. It will stay on low level life support until the lower CAPEX and OPEX/boe OPEC+ oil is produced off. I.e., for at east another decade. Then the remaining PUD’s* will be produced – for a few years – and the asset retirement costs will be communized onto the rest of us.
Coal is getting MORE expensive, as we increasingly aks them to pay for their actual costs. Coal is death spiraling….
*Sorry, insider talk. Proven, undeveloped, reserves. I.e., wells we THINK will make money, once we drill and complete them.
Mr. bob: Again with the display of ignorance! You think coal is priced based on cost??!! Not on the price a buyer will pay??!!! Trolling is more effective if you stop after one comment, rather than continuing to comment and prove that you don’t know what you are talking about.
Insider talk, how funny.
Remember, when the bigoldboob says “insider talk”, he means the voices inside his otherwise empty head.
I see bob is still trying to pretend that people who are making billions using fracking, are actually losing money.
If only they were as smart as bob, they would be able to see it.
David, you got an involuntary chuckle out of me!
Can’t just average numbers again.
My laymen’s explanation #-Rud could give proper economics explanation
The global coal production dip is due to the considerable drop of production in the USA.
This is a local supply and demand issue.
More local cheap gas meant reduction in local coal demand.
The USA coal is still there to be dug up.
But local mine to port infrastructure means the unused USA local coal will not become world coal.
Main coal exporters Indonesia and Australia never really exported to USA.
So when considering world coal supply and demand, USA local supply and demand must essentially be ignored or treated independently.
Here’s what the IEA thinks w.r.t. future coal consumption.
https://www.iea.org/news/a-rebound-in-global-coal-demand-in-2021-is-set-to-be-short-lived-but-no-immediate-decline-in-sight
Mr. M’s pointless (per his own defense of criticisms as non sequiturs) posts conveniently leave out such actual, researched forecasts….
“No immediate decline in sight”…
Folks, actually read the article. Not just Mr. M’s cherry pick.
You mean this from the article?
“Renewables are on track to surpass coal as the largest source of electricity in the world by 2025. And by that time, natural gas will likely have taken over coal as the second largest source of primary energy after oil,”
What is it about socialists and their inability to separate government mandates from market forces?
I posted the article to show what Mr. M. was posting about, but didn’t want to defend. That coal is not resurging. Yes, it will remain important for some time, but has peaked.
And yes, natural gas is an ideal bridge fuel. Even the domestic shale biz – now on life support and only harvesting their proved developed production and passing the proceeds as dividends – will finally snap out of it and spend the increasing CAPEX/boe to produce more. But not for another decade or so, until the lower cost OPEC+ oil and gas is produced off.
Said it before. If Mr. M. had saved up when oil was $100+, then he wouldn’t be in the position of pimping unfunded CCS projects and spending his days looking for hydrocarbon extraction feel good articles to post, and then to deny that he was trying to make any specific point in so posting…
But it’s such a sweet cherry and is counter to your statement of ever decreasing coal demand/usage and is from the same site you quoted
Irony is best served… Ironically… 😎
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnSnfiUI54
Coal!
IfI had a magic wand…I would wave it and the USA would be converted to mostly thorium MSRs for electricity…next wave of the wand would block all trade with the CCP….next wave would send these demrats like Joey to Cuba…or Afghanistan….next wave would bring back George Washington and his kind of government…next wave…
Oh, BTW, since we’re collecting happy face stories about coal, think I’ll party poop with a little US reality check.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/peril-and-promise/2019/08/coal-industry-falls-apart-miners-face-losing-their-pensions/
The US coal industry is collapsing not because of coal fading globally, but because American Green whackos won’t let “death trains” loaded with low S, high BTU US coal go to China.
When the lights start going out because renewables aren’t capable of powering an economy, then coal will come back. Quickly.
With Bob in charge, we’d still be trying to figure out what to do with all that horse manure.
While bob certainly has been prolific, I don’t believe that even he can produce that much horse manure.
2019??
And the way to fix their pensions is to combine them all teachers’, democrat legislators’ current and retirement income, major city pension funds, trial lawyers wealth tax, etc. hitting all democrat party special interest groups, since the decline in coal electrical generation was mostly caused by the Democrat party driven legislation through Obama and Harry Reid, NOT JUST NATURAL GAS PRODUCTION!
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=43675
BTW BOB, how are all the “renewable” solar and wind projects to be decommissioned when the ware out? Who will pay?? You still won’t answer that question.
“BTW BOB, how are all the “renewable” solar and wind projects to be decommissioned when the ware out? Who will pay?? You still won’t answer that question.”
Already did. Look thru the comments on this post.
That news is so last year’s last year
If thermal coal deposits are being preserved through market forces because we have found a more ready source of efficient / economical fuel in gas, that’s not such a bad thing, as we will need all the coal and gas we can burn see us through when solar & wind are abandoned and until we can get enough new-generation nuclear plants online.
Seems to be the case.
There’s still 400yrs worth of coal in the UK, and the UK made, designed & built their own Nuclear industry.
The same idiots who allowed wind farms and solar panels in some of the most beautiful parts of the island don’t want to know about what happens when they wear out….that they sold off the nuclear industry, and as the north sea oil & gas is exhausted.
Ie.their reliance on others to keep the lights on.
Importing NPPs from people like the CCP, electricity from the French, coal from Russia or Ukraine or oil from the EU (cos they closed the important refineries), or wood pellets from the USA,
It seems to have made for a suicide balance of payments and a reliance on being constantly reliant on others…
Heck, the British even imported the ever more expensive and largely pointless Trident nuclear missile system!
When will someone start to turn on “common sense” in Bojo-wunderland?
The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone.
Nor did it end because prescient bureaucrats decided it was time to move on to the Chalcolithic Age.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we make more things out of rocks today, than we did back in the Stone Age… ⚒️⛏️
“The German and Australian governments pretend to be green…”
Yes James, attack them because they have consumed the green Kool-Aid and have useless and expensive RE policies to deploy wind and solar energy that still requires retention of the FF assets, but don’t mention China, the country that is actually deliberately causing the dramatic increase in global emissions.
It was a Labor government back in 2009, and it was elected on industrial relations issues, nothing to do with climate. It was also a minority government which needed Greens’ support for passing other legislation, and hence the carbon tax.
This Climate Fraud is many layers deep.
An easy “Tell” that the whole thing is a lie is the lack of any Basic plan that can replace all fossil fuels (by their 2050 deadline). That is… a plan with energy generating capacity to handle PEAK DEMANDS without tanking the world economy.
The scope of such a MONUMENTAL transition is never talked about concretely. Just lots of hand waving.
For the US that would require building a couple Gigawatts of Nuclear Power capacity every week until 2050. That’s over 3000 1 Gig Nuc plants. And that assumes we’ll develop synthetic aviation fuels generation system (batteries will not “fly” commercial aircraft before 2050…if ever).
Replacing the required capacity with renewables will increase energy costs at least 400% (which Germany is learning the hard way) and trash/clutter our landscapes and the environment…and would require covering an area which is a large % of the State of Texas…which would be another environmental disaster.
Then…there’s China. The other BIG TELL that they are lying.
“At the end of the day, you need to keep the lights on.”
And the other point is at what cost : The public will demand :” As cheap as possible”
One could write multiple posts on that subject. It will keep fossil fuels in use for quite some time
Demand for coal surging?
A record-equalling 37.8GW of coal plants closed in 2020, led by the US with 11.3GW-worth of retirements and EU with 10.1GW, according to the NGO’s seventh annual survey of the global coal capacity pipeline. It finds that US President Trump’s promised coal boom was a bust, as US coal plant retirement during his four-year term rose to 52.4GW, exceeding the 48.9GW of retirement that occurred during President Obama’s second term.
Outside China, less than 12 GW of coal plant was commissioned and, taking into account closures, the global coal fleet outside China declined by 17.2 GW in 2020. Outside China, there was a marked slowdown in 2020 commissioning. India, notably, grew its coal fleet by only net 0.7 GW in 2020, after adding an average 15.0 GW a year from 2010 to 2019. There have been cancellations of future coal power across the globe: Bangladesh, Japan, S Korea and Vietnam in particular. Spain close 47% of its coal capacity last year. German started its coal close programme…
It is just China increasing coal.
Hopefully, the US will restart those coal plants. Coal is such a great resource, because it is reliable.
No, China is the main source of increase but it is also increasing in other countries :-
China increased coal consumption by 1481 Mtoe (Million tonnes of oil equivalent) between 2000 and 2021 whilst other countries increased by 445 Mtoe over the same period. In comparison the fall in advanced economies was 400 Mtoe so there was an overall increase of 1526 Mtoe. (IEA Global EneryReview 2021)
Keep lying.
He will. It’s all he knows how to do.
From the article:
“James Hansen
Sat 14 Feb 2009
The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for the extermination of about 400 species – its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm.”
So, 400 species go extinct for every 100ppm rise in CO2? I never heard that before.
I wonder if Mr. James Hansen has a list of the species that have gone extinct since CO2 went from about 280ppm in the 1930’s to today’s 420ppm. He must have a very long list of species that have gone extinct during this time.
When I was a very little girl (1st grade), we lived in a large house that had a coal-fired heating system. My dad would go down to the basement and pull the clinkers out of the firebox and shovel in more coal. I never thought anything about it, nor did we have black soot on the walls. And what do you do with the clinkers (large cinders)? You put them out in the trash barrel and they get picked up for use in road construction, and in the winter, they were crushed and put on icy roads. Yes, even back then, they were good for something.
We could always tell when the train was coming, because you could see the smoke from the engine’s firebox and the steam from the water supply. We’d go over to the tracks and wave at the engineers. I guess things were just simpler then.
Coal is King! And the King does not give a f**k about feelings.
Solar is coming to get ya coal baby-
“In something of a eureka moment for energy watchers, solar backed by large-scale batteries successfully ran an electricity network for 80 minutes.”
Onslow is a town with seemingly unlimited solar energy, but it’s grappling with power supplies (msn.com)
No doubt about it as coal’s days are numbered-
Onslow Demographics (WA) Local Stats
What we all need is a ‘landmark trial’ like that too.
Weird. I have to keep refreshing the page to get images in the head post to appear. Then some will disappear and others appear.