Admittedly im not all too familiar with coal outside of what i read about it being a relic of the past on the news. How much of our energy comes from coal today and are my conservative neighbours to the west crazy or are they onto something in thinking we need coal so badly that we can throw away good water supply to get it?

https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-coal-mining-rockies-oldman-river/

The Alberta government’s decision, in June, to rescind the 1976 coal policy has opened up 420,000 hectares of land classified as category 2, a designation that had prohibited open-pit coal mining. Much of the area is already covered by coal leases, meaning companies can begin coal exploration and apply to build new open-pit mines.

In January, the Alberta government signalled it had heard the increasingly loud chorus of opposition and cancelled 11 coal leases it had approved in December. But those leases represented a small fraction of the total in the eastern slopes.

Meanwhile, open-pit mining proposals are moving ahead. At least six coal projects are already proposed in the Oldman watershed.

coal is largely symbolic in nature in a political context. its a symbol of a blue collar past, "coal jobs" is a figure that's used to trick people into thinking that its a massive jobloss if we shift away from it. in the same way the left uses coal as a symbol for climate change, invoking thick clouds of smoke choking our airways. neither is factual. the coal mining industry employs a small number of people, many of the mining tasks having been automated out of existence. coal transport still represents a real sector, but its less than clear how many of these jobs can be preserved through diverting them into other areas should coal production and use decline. truckers truck, whether coal needs to be transported or not. Railways run trains, whether or not the cars are laden with coal. a real figure of jobloss is there, im sure, but its overstated when given wholesale as part of the "coal industry". again, lefties will use emissions from this transport as a figure to calculate climate effect, as if trains would stop running should coal fall out of use, or as if thats a good goal.

overall coal is far cleaner than it was decades ago, climate activists spurred on research to clean the process up, as this was far preferable to replacing coal wholesale. the costs of retrofitting coal power plants nationwide for some biofuel or another source would be astronomical compared to cleaning up their processes which can be done incrementally. what's clear is coal is on its way out, what's unclear is whether in the long run it will be replaced with a biofuel of another kind to keep turbines running, or if instead will be replaced by a completely different clean energy source. nuclear, solar, wind, realistically a combination of all of these, etc.

what's most clear is that when you hear a politician reference coal you're being bullshitted 9 times out of 10. they're either telling their base that America isnt changing or that its changing in a rapid manner, both lies.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Feb 2 2021 08:39am

Nuclear >

= to horse owners railing against Ford

Nailed it.

it's amazing how hard you had to strawman in order to shoehorn the issue into a bothsidesism, lol. you know that fossil fuel consists of more than just coal, right?

Coal is a superior energy source to wind and solar by every metric.

false

Coal without subsidies hasn't been cheaper than solar for about 6 years now. Coal with subsidies hasn't been cheaper than solar for about 2 years

Solar is still gaining Advantage from economy of scale. This comparison is not going to suddenly start flipping into Cole's favor

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Feb 2 2021 12:19pm

These arguments are difficult to have because there are so many factors involved in power generation.

Typically a coal plant is designed to last 30-50 years and so you have to divide the whole of the benefit by the number of years and the initial cost. Solar panels have a much shorter lifespan and create tons of heavy metal poisons that are very difficult to remove from the environment. The only reason we can use Chinese-manufactured solar is because China doesn't care about human rights in their country.

Then there is dispensability, which Solar obviously fails at. California saw rolling blackouts during the summer which is something that shouldn't happen in first world countries.

Then there is power loss as a result of transforming power. 10% of energy is lost when transferred to or from a battery which severely decreases the efficiency of solar.

If you don't believe that Solar is more expensive, just look at the disparate power costs of California VS other states. California's power costs are 50% higher but they still experience blackouts. Solar also receives billions in subsidies, so that argument is semi weak. Energy generation is a scientific field that leftists love because similar to healthcare there are so many factors involved. It is easy to simply look at operational costs while ignoring all other factors to come up with a conclusion that is less than usefull.

https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/electricity/what-is-the-true-cost-of-electricity/

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Feb 2 2021 02:39pm