Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

The Republican War On Science

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
I going to put this in the Climate Change thread, but they hit some points in this interview that relate to this subject. This happened on Monday and I highly recommend you watch this. Leo is serious about this issue and asks meaningful questions that spur great discussion with Obama and climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

 
  • Funny
Reactions: snellenr
Well... that's a little hyperbole... yes... there is more radioactivity in coal ash than nuclear waste... but it would be equally true to say that there's more radioactivity in dirt or the ocean... just because there's so much more of it...
I agree that the title is sensationalistic, but the article itself is factual and Scientific American is respectable and accurate IMO.

This article quantifies the type and amount.

http://phys.org/news/2015-09-radioactive-contaminants-coal-ash.html
 
Last edited:
I agree that the title is sensationalistic, but the article itself is factual and Scientific American is respectable and accurate IMO.

Well... not really.... with contamination it's all about concentration, concentration and concentration. There's an old rad protection joke. If you have 750 DPM on your left hand what's the quickest way to clean it up? (limit is ~300 DPM) Rub your hands together then rub your hands on your knees. 'Clean' ;)
 
  • Like
Reactions: omgwtfbyobbq
Hillary said she wanted to put coal miners out of business. She didn't qualify it in any way. She didn't have exceptions for clean coal processing. That's what is meant by a war on coal.
2 things. The speech was about transitioning the workers to other types of work. It wasnt put the coal miners out of business. Second the amount of coal miners left is such a small number relative to the US work force. Amazes me war on coal gets talk, but climate change doesnt. Check the statistics there are less then 80k coal miners left. It is time to stop giving so much political capital to so few people. In reality it is the coal companies that are spinning loss of jobs.
 
Meanwhile, the coal companies keep going bankrupt, keep racking up safety violations, continue to not pay the fines, and keep screwing the (surviving) workers, screwing the shareholders, screwing the pubic, and paying bonuses to the executives. Personally, I'd say the worst enemies of coal miners are their employers...

Aside from electricity, coal is mostly used for steel production. In theory, any decently pure carbon source can be used, it's just that coal has been very cheap. Agricultural waste biochar (roasted rice & wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, for instance) would probably work fine (although be more expensive) and break that industry's fossil carbon dependence. Given the Paris Climate agreement is going into effect starting in 30 days, we'll likely see more and more attention paid in many traditionally dirty industries going forward.
 
There certainly is 'clean(er) coal.' Plants like Wabash River are very different from traditional coal fired power plants, with radical reductions in emissions and improvements in efficiency that bring coal pretty much in line with natural gas.

(Gassifier, sulfar extraction, combined cycle turbine rather than just a boiler.)

Nice, but Natural Gas is also too carbon intensive to continue burning at the scale needed. It's an improvement from traditional coal, but it's not a long-term solution to our power needs.

In the long term, it doesn't matter. In the great plains today, wind is the cheapest new electricity - cheaper than gas even with gas at historically stupid-low prices. And the price of wind keeps dropping. Solar is catching wind, surpassing it on price in some places in the world (lowest known PV public bid is US$0.0230/kWh, recently in Abu Dhabi).. Prices for solar keep dropping too, another 35%-40% in the US this year at utility scale. Project that out over the life of a new gas or coal powerplant (or nuclear).

Storage is following fast and rapid cost declines are happening there too, which will be putting oil- and gas-peakers out of business over the next decade.

Republicans blocking renewables are now engaged in a war on rational economics, not just a war on science. And again, it probably doesn't matter. As their old donors go broke, their new, cleaner-industry donors will cause their platform to green.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: TaoJones
Nice, but Natural Gas is also too carbon intensive to continue burning at the scale needed. It's an improvement from traditional coal, but it's not a long-term solution to our power needs.

In the long term, it doesn't matter. In the great plains today, wind is the cheapest new electricity - cheaper than gas even with gas at historically stupid-low prices. And the price of wind keeps dropping. Solar is catching wind, surpassing it on price in some places in the world (lowest known PV public bid is US$0.0230/kWh, recently in Abu Dhabi).. Prices for solar keep dropping too, another 35%-40% in the US this year at utility scale. Project that out over the life of a new gas or coal powerplant (or nuclear).

Storage is following fast and rapid cost declines are happening there too, which will be putting oil- and gas-peakers out of business over the next decade.

Republicans blocking renewables are now engaged in a war on rational economics, not just a war on science. And again, it probably doesn't matter. As their old donors go broke, their new, cleaner-industry donors will cause their platform to green.

That's why I wrote the second paragraph that isn't in your quote - I do think we should be building a solar/wind based grid with stronger interconnection and storage.

I just object on principle to folks dismissing all of the work people have done and the real progress they've made without actually looking at it.

A gassifier -> turbine plant would seem to be a suitable way to cleanly burn biomass when dispatchable power is needed, too. Turbines are among the faster reacting power plants, though the gassifier might take longer to start /stop. This seems like a logical backup system as we transition.
 
Pew Survey: Republicans are rejecting reality of Climate Change

.... On the subject of rejecting reality... IMO thinking that you can discuss climate change without acknowledging that A LOT of people reject it for purely political reasons is also a rejection of reality... so... making it a political discussion is sadly very much on topic...
Does it really matter why they reject reality ? I say ignore the lot of them and get on with life. There is too much to do and not enough time.

Which is quite different than not knowing they exist. I just prefer to not waste any time on immovable stupidity.
 
  • Like
  • Informative
Reactions: CliffG and Xenius
Does it really matter why they reject reality ? I say ignore the lot of them and get on with life. There is too much to do and not enough time.
I think it matters in the sense that if you do not make an effort to understand the opposition you are less likely to be able to convince at least some of the opposition to change their point of view.

But I really do not understand why anyone who can read a graph cannot look at this data and be concerned:

24_co2-graph-021116-768px.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Skotty
I think it matters in the sense that if you do not make an effort to understand the opposition you are less likely to be able to convince at least some of the opposition to change their point of view.

But I really do not understand why anyone who can read a graph cannot look at this data and be concerned:

24_co2-graph-021116-768px.jpg
nice chart. Where did you get it?
 
I think it matters in the sense that if you do not make an effort to understand the opposition you are less likely to be able to convince at least some of the opposition to change their point of view.
That is my point though, the more effort you put in to change a denialists opinion, the more entrenched it becomes.

Scientific debate is one thing, rejection of science is another. Some people believe the Earth is flat, others that the moon is made of cheese, others that Obama is a Muslim, and still others that climate change is a Chinese conspiracy to take over the US. <<<< shrug >>>>
 
Some facts.

There are about 174,000 full time jobs in the coal sector. 83K in mining, 31K in transportation and 60K in power plants. Those numbers are declining.

As of last year, there are about 209K employed in solar, of which 188K are jobs that are 100% dedicated to solar. 120K are installers. The installation sector grew 24% in one year.

Solar alone already employs WAY more than coal without the pollution of the environment AND without the pollution of the miners.

Now let's add wind power - and it's 88,000 jobs (20% increase 2015-2016).

Tell the coal miners we will retrain them in solar and wind and they can tell the people poisoning them to go to hell.