Posted on 03/26/2020 7:51:36 AM PDT by Zhang Fei
When Pennsylvania ordered coal mines closed because of the coronavirus, then reversed course and declared them to be “essential,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, who made a fortune in coal, was quick to mock his neighbors.
“Coal is so essential it is unbelievable,” said Justice, a Republican. “We have to have good electricity flowing into our homes.”
The mine workers union agrees with him. So does President Trump, who has spent the past three years talking up the coal business.
But in the face of the pandemic, is coal mining actually so essential?
Because of the nature of the work — a lot of crowding, coughing and spitting — and the significant incidence of lung damage from years of exposure to coal dust, silica and diesel exhaust, coal miners may be especially vulnerable to the coronavirus, medical researchers say. And coal provides less than a quarter of America’s electricity, at a moment when demand for power is falling and there are already large stockpiles of coal nationwide because of the warm winter, as well as a glut of cheap natural gas.
In fact, last week, as oil prices collapsed and gas continued its downward slide, coal for the first time became the most expensive fossil fuel. There are about 51,000 miners employed in surface and underground mining in the United States, according to the U.S. Department Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On the economics alone, said Jeremy Richardson, a senior energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, “for a lot of plants, it would just make sense to shut down for now.” The rest of the grid has plenty of capacity, he said.
But there’s more than economics at stake. Though black lung disease sharply fell among miners from the 1970s to the 1990s, it has been on the rise
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
1,000 MW coal fired power plant to be shuttered. 1 wind turbine provides 2.5 MW, 4 acres of solar panels provides 10 MW. Is there enough land left over to farm after we cover the nation in “renewables”? Will there be any birds left? ...
facts are off the top of my head, but they are very close to best case scenario
people om ventilators should just hold their breath when the wind isn’t blowing.
Three mile island is closed.
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