Do you believe that the use of coal has peaked? Allow Rurika Imahashi to set you straight in her piece at Nikkei Asia:
TOKYO — Coal-fired electricity generation around the world is expected to reach an annual record in 2021, undermining efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report by the International Energy Agency released on Friday.
Global power generation from coal is expected to increase 9% this year to an all-time high of 10,350 terawatt-hours, according to the agency’s latest Coal 2021 report.
IEA estimates that global coal demand could hit new highs next year — depending on weather and economic growth — and will likely “remain at that level for the following two years,” underscoring the need for fast and strong policy action.
The largest consumers China and India hold the key in steering future coal demand. The two economies account for about two-thirds of overall demand.
In 2021, both China and India are expected to see a record high in coal-fired electricity generation, with 9% growth in China and 12% in India as their economies recover from COVID-19-induced slumps.
I don’t know if you have different ideas but to me to eliminate something I would think its use needs actually to, like, go down. Sounds like we’re heading in the wrong direction.
U. S. use of coal has been declining sharply over the last ten years. We are now using less than half the coal we used just ten years ago. If we were to eliminate all domestic coal usage it wouldn’t offset the worldwide increase in the use of coal.
There is an element of nationalism in China and India’s use of coal. To transition to natural gas as the U. S. has largely done they’d need to import it. And the U. S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal.
Heh. Reading the title and the first sentence I knew where this was going. Let me put this as scholarly and delicately as I can: the leftist environuts are damned fools pissing in the wind………………if they believe what they say. Which most don’t.
Take two: the environuts are vermin profiteers with (ironically) purely capitalist desires to get grant money, and to destroy capitalist economies.
You point out an often missed point. If you want Mean Villain Fossil Fuel usage deleterious effects reduction, you could go natgas as a step forward. (we are) But that means good for US??? What? Well hell no. Environuts have no real compass other than devolution, or fantasy solutions.
For the umpteenth time. “Green” is, variously, an anti-capitalist philosophy, tax everything in sight scheme, encapsulated in a political talking point. Only fools buy it. China laughs out loud.
I taught civil/environmental engineering for 37 years. The percentage of actual lunatics in the environmental movement is scary.
As to coal and decarbonization: The world was warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now. We are essentially recovering from the Little Ice Age (ca 1300 AD to 1850 AD), although environmental charlatans deny it. It was yet warmer during the Roman expansion, and even warmer than that during the Minoan Age. For the last 10,000 years the world temperature has been trending down.
There were no environmental disasters during the previous warm periods. A warmer planet is better for all plants and animals, except those cold-specialized. A warmer planet would like result in a major expansion of arable land: most of Canada, Scandinavia, Greenland and Siberia are uninhabitable.
By the way, neither the Greenland nor Antarctica icecaps melted during the previous warmer spells.
A question that comes up occasionally is why did the Romans stop their conquests where they did? Why didn’t they continue into Germany and Scotland, for example?
The answer is that in the first century although England, Spain, France, and Northern Italy could support a Roman lifestyle (growing grapes, olives, lemons, wheat, barley) you couldn’t do that in Scotland or Germany. The answer usually given amounts to fierce resistance but I think that’s an exaggeration—the Romans just weren’t that interested.
The key point is YOU COULD GROW LEMONS AND GRAPES IN ENGLAND then.