Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Coal Kills

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 52 posts

Re: How Coal Kills

#31

Post by strictnein »

anon1385 wrote: post #23
strictnein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery, really? That's your analogy? What's your viable way to replace coal today? Include explanations of how your replacement can be as reliable as coal, and how the developing world can afford these sources without sacrificing other government services.

Literally millions of people are being killed by coal, without any choice in the matter[1]. What analogy would you prefer to use for something as devastating as that? Coal only seems affordable if the significant health and environmental costs are (incorrectly) assumed to be zero. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/12/china-coa... >Emissions from coal plants in China were responsible for a quarter of…

A study commissioned by Greenpeace. Yes, a very unbiased and honest source on these topics. Might as well list an NRA study on gun violence.

And read closer, please. The study claims to have found indicators pointing to shortened lives, not people being killed by coal, which is significantly different.

And, again: warmth and electricity and live to 65, or cold and darkness and live a little longer. And really, that wouldn't be the trade off, because electricity and warmth also lead to longer lives. So this study is meaningless and shows nothing at all.

Re: How Coal Kills

#32

Post by ghouse »

higherpurpose wrote: post #2

It seems unlikely we'll ever put a price on coal's impact on people's health (and therefore the cost of healthcare) and on the environment. But the very least we could do is cut the subsidies , and let it compete fairly against solar and other renewables. Eventually we'll chase it out of the market, because solar ill keep getting more cost-effective.

World-wide, in 2010, the IEA calculated that fossil fuel subsidies were $409 _billion_! http://www.iea.org/publications/worldenergyoutlook/resources...

Re: How Coal Kills

#33

Post by strictnein »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22
strictnein wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would prefer a world where only the rich can afford electricity and warmth? Because that's the world you describe.

Oh don't be a pedant. If coal were more expensive, it would be used for important things - not pissed away. That says little about rich vs poor.

I'm not being a pedant. Where does the inexpensive electricity come from? It is very much about rich and poor. And making electricity is a very important thing.

Re: How Coal Kills

#34

Post by Synaesthesia »

mavhc wrote: post #9

Coal contributes to most of the mercury pumped into our atmosphere, which is what's contaminating the fish, and more radiation than nuclear power.

Coal power also contributes more radiation to the atmosphere than nuclear power, or weapons ever did! It does this because of trace amounts of uranium and other radioactive elements which are in coal, released when burnt.

Re: How Coal Kills

#36

Post by Randgalt »

strictnein wrote: post #8

I'll flip the question: Considering that coal has provided a very significant amount of the electrical power and heat for humans over the past 100 years, how many lives has coal saved? How much has it improved the human experience? Put simply, a world without coal is a horrible world.

^^^ FTW

Re: How Coal Kills

#37

Post by sigmar »

strictnein wrote: post #27
sigmar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know where you have been, but coal use has decreased the past few years. Natural gas and renewables have already started to replace coal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_States...

That's just the US, where natural gas is plentiful and very cheap.

well, the article is exclusively about the US. If you are up for talking about other countries, let's discuss France's coal power

Re: How Coal Kills

#38

Post by malkia »

Symmetry wrote: post #24

That was completely devoid of any useful numbers. Here's a nice, well researched chart that actually puts coal in a useful context compared to other ways of generating electricity. http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml The rest of that is well worth reading, too.

I'm going nuclear over this page!

Re: How Coal Kills

#39

Post by tjradcliffe »

Symmetry wrote: post #24

That was completely devoid of any useful numbers. Here's a nice, well researched chart that actually puts coal in a useful context compared to other ways of generating electricity. http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml The rest of that is well worth reading, too.

Unfortunately it doesn't give any links to sources. In particular, the number for oil is surprisingly high. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just curious about where and how the deaths are occurring.

Coal kills in three distinct ways:

1) Miners: This depends enormously on the country and the mining technology. The trend in North America is toward fewer and fewer miners underground. I've worked in a support industry for hard rock mining, and coal is fundamentally different in a lot of ways, but in hard rock the push is toward "zero entry" mining, where everything underground is teleoperated or simply autonomous.

2) Transport: Coal has to be moved via train and truck, and the average thermal coal plant requires a boxcar load every fifteen minutes. This is one of the things that makes nuclear so much safer: uranium has such high energy density that transportation deaths are very nearly zero. Mining deaths are lower too.

3) Pollution: This is where coal really falls down. It's full of heavy metals--lead, mercury, arsenic--and governed by standards that let coal plants release more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear plants. Particulates cause premature death due to respiratory disease. On the good side, they may be cutting global climate change by more than half (1 W/m2 cooling due to particulates vs 1.6 W/m2 warming due to CO2).

Oil in contrast seems like it ought to be relatively safe. Drilling, refining and pipeline transport rarely kill people. Rail transport--brought to you by people who hate pipelines but love cars and electricity but oppose nuclear, solar and windmills--is far more dangerous but it would be surprising if it was that much worse than coal.

Here are some alternative data with some discussion of different sources and studies: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... (coal and oil are both still pretty bad compared to nuclear, but we knew that anyway: nuclear is overwhelmingly the safest way to generate electricity, despite its likely preventable issues with economically catastrophic failure.)

Re: How Coal Kills

#40

Post by Retric »

strictnein wrote: post #33
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh don't be a pedant. If coal were more expensive, it would be used for important things - not pissed away. That says little about rich vs poor.

I'm not being a pedant. Where does the inexpensive electricity come from? It is very much about rich and poor. And making electricity is a very important thing.

Coal is currently important, but not that important. As a finite resource it's also going to be gone in ~2 thousand years (big error bars on that though) which is a fairly short time period all things considered. For perspective let's ignore all non-renewables + wind and solar and just look at Hydropower.

Hydropower use reached a record 3,427 terawatt-hours, or about 16.1 percent of global electricity consumption. That on its own is enough to provide useful power to everyone sure we would not be using it for home heating but lighting, computers, and refrigeration would easily make the cut even if AC would be far too expensive for most people. aka, most people get a setback but not to the dark ages. Toss in just wind power and you could meet the world’s electricity needs at perhaps a 10-30% increase in electricity costs.

In the end there is a huge inertia in the current system; dropping coal in say 10 years would be possible, but ridiculously expensive. Dropping it over the next 100 might just happen without anyone noticing.

PS: Solar is really interesting as it's cheaper than coal in some areas, but inertia and changes in the supply curve are keeping their prices linked. We are heading to a supply shift so peak costs might actually start taking place at night.

Post reply on HN