3jack

Trump did not promise to change the way coal is used, he promised to bring coal mining jobs back. That ain't going to happen,

son of witless

Obviously you are not so informed as you believe yourself to be. Coal fired plants have a minor linkage to coal mines. If you harm coal fired plants you harm the coal industry.

You obviously know zero about how industry works. Costs matter. If you raise the cost of burning coal through environmental mandates then other alternatives like Solar and Wind become more attractive, which is Obama and Hillary's point. Less coal burned, less coal mined, fewer coal companies, fewer coal miners.

Obviously you are stupid.

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

I'm guessing that when many jobs do come back you'll find some way to weasel out of this statement.

So be clear.

Are you saying there will be a 'ZERO' increase in coal mining jobs? - If not, be specific.

straightUp Loc: California

I wouldn't say that. First of all, we have lower tax rates on property than most other states (that maybe a tax you didn't have any experience with seeing that you were only here for 15 months, and our other taxes really aren't that excessive compared to most other states. We DO tax the hell out of gasoline and what we call luxury items, such as cigarettes (maybe that's what you noticed) but this is because we generally agree that it's better to tax items that people choose to buy rather than items that people NEED to buy. Notice I say "we". That's the other point worth mentioning. We don't get taxed without voting on it first, which kind of disqualifies your statement about "dictating". Most the tax in our state is supported by a democratic majority. Of course this doesn't please EVERYONE... but you let me know when you find a system that can please EVERYONE. In the meantime, we will stick to democratic majorities. In fact California is one of the most democratic states in the Union... show me where else you see governors being recalled by the people. Most other states don't even allow that.


Well, thanks for the support! :) Personally, I think the rest of the Union would hurt more than we would. We just happen to be one of the most prolific farming states, producing about the same amount of food as all the other 49 states put together... more cheese that Wisconsin more peaches that Georgia and more rice than Japan and we have the largest consumer market, hands down. We also lead the nation in technology and defense. And... we're not just progressive extremists (if there is such a thing) we happen to be home to more conservative Republicans than there are in the state of Texas! On it's own, California would still be a pretty even balance of left and right, with the left having an advantage that isn't nearly as one-sided as you might think.

For me, the biggest win would be improved representation. Our population is way too high to be forced into sharing a 435 seat congress with the rest of the Union. If everyone was guaranteed an equal vote we would have about 250 electoral votes not just 55.

moldyoldy

China is much more aggressive now on climate change.

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

All BS. moldy. They build a new coal plant a week and tell you climate change scarede's what you want to hear. Seriously. Why would you trust press completely controlled by the state? Oh never mind. You already do, here.

straightUp Loc: California

The polar bears are the canary in the coal mine. Don't tell me you don't understand that one. Back in the day, miners didn't evacuate because, aw the poor bird stopped singing. They evacuated because they knew it meant there was a bigger problem. As much as we all care about polar bears it's the bigger picture that we are really concerned about. Coal is dirty. When it's burned, it pollutes the air we all breathe. An estimated 200,000 deaths are caused by air pollution per year according to MIT.
http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829
We aren't talking about polar bears here asshole, we're talking about American people. So you need to find another job because 350 million people aren't going to accept shitty air quality and 200,000 deaths per year just so 93,185 coal miners can have jobs. Get real.

Besides, the solar industry, as of 2014, supports more jobs than coal does. Maybe you can learn about solar power and get a job in that sector, instead of being lazy and expecting the president to bully back your old job for you. Be adaptable and roll with the times like everyone else has to.

http://fortune.com/2015/01/16/solar-jobs-report-2014/

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

Who told you polar bears are the canaries of Global Warming/Cooling/Change/Whatever? People with an agenda?

Were they any smarter than the people that have been wrong about the climate for the past 30+ years?
Were they more honest than the people that created the famous 'Hockey Stick Graph'?
Were they more ethical than the scientists that deleted original collected data and only saved their own 'altered' data?
Were they as stupid as John Kerry who is famous for saying that the polar ice caps would be 'ice free' by 2013?


And before you answer.... Did you know there are more polar bears now than 50 years ago?


Would you like to find another canary now?

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

They believe anything that fits their narrative.
https://polarbearscience.com/2013/07/15/global-population-of-polar-bears-has-increased-by-2650-5700-since-2001/

eagleye13 Loc: Fl

StraitUp needs to straighten up. He be pretty crooked.

Docadhoc Loc: Elsewhere

Tell that to the industry that is gearing up by changing safety regs. And I assume you know that you are talking about only strip mining while I am looking at the entire industry.

How it is used or who uses it is irrelevant. Mine it, sell it. Can you say China? Remember, under Trump climate change doesn't exist.

You need to read more than your lefty news.

Hillary will win in a landslide.

lolololololololol

son of witless

I do not work in the coal industry. I just have sympathy for those who get dirty making a living. I am sure you never got your manicured ladyfingers dirty while earning a paycheck. But I digress, lets us speak of this glorious Solar Industry of which you say so very many people make their living. It would be strange if more people did not work in the Solar industry than Coal when you consider that the Federal Sugar Momma doles out $Billions in Corporate Welfare to these Green Deadbeats, while the Coal Industry gets the back of the Liberal Hag's hand.

Now here is a f-a-c-t for you to consider. The whole time while this deadbeat industry is getting $Billions in Corporate Welfare it can't make a buck. The EU which is even more brain dead stupid than Obama also gives Corporate Welfare to it's Green Deadbeats. You know what, WHAT, , if you give me $ 39 B per year in welfare I can hire a few hundred thousand workers and then lay them off when I go bankrupt. By the way here is where I got the $ 39 B figure.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/report-solar-energy-subsidies-cost-39-billion-per-year/

I bet you di-int know that between Europe and the US 112 Solar Companies went belly up since 2009. I wonder how many people no longer have jobs in those 112 companies? That was fun.

" An estimated 200,000 deaths are caused by air pollution per year according to MIT. " A totally meaningless number for a couple of reasons. First it is a totally made up number, a projection.. Second you are blaming Coal for all pollution deaths.

Now lets us move onto the poor Polar Bears. Believe it or not they have not been around as long as other bears. Maybe 150,000 years they split from Brown Bears. In that time they have been through previous warming periods such as the Medieval Warming Period circa 1,000 AD. They survived.

straightUp Loc: California

I see... so dirt is the measure of a person's worthiness. I guess that means the doctors that bust their asses fixing people but insist on washing their manicured ladyfingers aren't worth shit, right? But all hail to the ditch digger.


Sounds good to me. Bottom line is... coal sucks... it's a bad deal for all of us. Solar promises a much better deal but it's new and still needs some development. Problem is, development isn't profitable so in the free market there's no incentive. So what do the people do if they want solar? They appeal to the government, that's what they do. Nine times out of ten, anything that requires innovation requires government funding because no one else is going to spend billions on a project that can't guarantee a quick return. Thinking about all those private companies that have rolled out innovative products? I can almost guarantee you their patents are based on groundwork funded by the government. That goes for the computer industry, the defense industry, biotech and just about any sector that deals with recent technology.

I would even support government funding for programs that help coal miners retool for other jobs. I mentioned earlier how several tech companies from California are setting up programs to teach the children of coal miners how to engineer. I am 100% in support of that. So, if anyone is screwing the dirty workers you have such compassion for it's you. Because while I'm suggesting and supporting approaches to help them adjust to the 21st century, all you and our fat-ass president is doing is spewing bullshit about jobs that are fading into the past. You might as well be screaming at us all to start taking stagecoaches to work. At least fat-ass has an excuse... He's trying to be popular. WTF is your excuse?


What did I tell you about research and development? Can you put two and two together or is that asking for too much?


Statements like that have a special place in the laughing stock when they're written by someone who can't even write a sentence.


freebeacon... LOL. I noticed the entire article was little more than a paraphrasing of a report released by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA). What's interesting is the author provides a link to the actual report and then proceeds to "quote" the report with sentences that aren't even in the report. This is what I love about fake news sites... they're so caught up in the bullshit they're dishing out that they forget things like integrity. Here's an example... taken right from the article you link to...

the report said. "American taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year over the past 5 years financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, bailing out failed solar energy boondoggles and otherwise underwriting every idea under the sun to make solar energy cheaper and more popular. But none of it has worked."

The report is only 11 pages and it doesn't say that at all. I'm curious, do you ever check this kind of thing or are you too caught in the bullshit too? You know what else doesn't show up in the report? $39 billion. That figure is nowhere in the report at all. Here's what the report says...

Over the past five years, the federal government spent an estimated $150 billion subsidizing solar power and other renewable energy projects.

(So about $30 billion per year)

The next bullet item in the report...

Preferable tax treatment given to solar and other alternative electricity initiatives cost Americans nearly $9 billion annually, according to the IRS.

Ah... so that's how the the dumb-blonde came up with $39 billion... Now, if only she had an IQ a little bigger than her bust measurement she might have understood the first statement as the total in subsidies and the second statement as the cost to the tax payers. To explain the difference, I will use another article published in the Washington Times (a real newspaper) in which the conservative author is debunking the "liberal myth" that taxpayers subsidize the oil industry.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/7/debunking-the-big-oil-subsidy-myth/

Here he talks about the Center for American Progress (CAP), which regularly insists that taxpayers are “subsidizing big oil companies"...

CAP shrewdly - but inaccurately - conflates two completely different terms in public finance: subsidy and deduction. A subsidy is a payment made by the government, usually to promote the prospects of a specific technology or action - be it solar energy, ethanol or something else. Subsidies are often equated with handouts - a derisory term for sure. A business deduction, on the other hand, is designed to ensure that a firm is taxed only on its net income. Deductions allow businesses to write off legitimate expenses from gross revenue to calculate net income. Deductions are widely regarded as proper in a system that taxes income, not revenue.

So what he is saying is that tax payers don't actually PAY for someone else's deductions. Now, these terms are often tossed around loosely but if we go back to the TPA report, we can see how it makes sense, the $30 billion a year is provided in tax credits and deductions while the money that the government actually takes from the tax payer and spends on renewable energy projects is only $9 billion a year... which is exactly what the report says. Not forgetting that it says "solar power AND other renewable energy projects". The dumb-blonde misconstrued the whole report and actually "quoted" it falsely saying specifically that "taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year"... "to make solar energy cheaper and more popular."

And that's your source. LOL

Maybe you ought to try some of the more professional media outlets... Don't assume just because they're educated they're going to say liberal things you don't want to hear. One of my favorite conservative papers is the WSJ. You can get conservative perspectives AND integrity! (imagine that)


Actually, I didn't know that but the only thing that surprises me is that it's only 112. That's a pretty low number for 8 years in a combined market of roughly 800 million people. I've worked for a fair number of start ups and even co-founded two of them myself. Start-ups are like baby alligators... most of them die in their infancy. That's just how business is.


That's it? No counter argument? No errors to point to? Just... denial? Man, I feel ripped off... I go through all this trouble to PROVE your number is erroneous and the most you do with mine is just deny it? *sigh*

Well, it's not just a made up number. I've been following this trend for years now. The MIT study is just an update to many reports that came before. When people die, their cause of death is recorded. Respiratory disease is pretty easy to identify and so are it's causes. The CDC records all this and they publish the numbers every year.

I was going to explain further but... I dunno, it's not as fun arguing with someone once I know they aren't going to challenge me intellectually.


Well, at least you were able to come back with that. I agree. We can't blame coal for ALL of the air pollution deaths, but patterns have been identified that indicate coal is a major factor. It's not a perfect science but in general, coal is used almost entirely in the eastern states. Out west it's mostly natural gas. Now have a look at where most of the pollution is...

http://blog.epa.gov/blog/wp-content/uploads/science/2014/04/Air-Quality-Awareness-Week.jpg


Yeah the Japanese people survived atomic bombs too... So does that mean they shouldn't be worried about North Korea? Just because a species survived something in the past doesn't make them indestructible and besides the Medieval Warming Period was nothing compared to what we're dealing with now. Most of the focus on the Medieval Warming Period is fixed on the North Atlantic where it was warmer than it is today, which makes a great argument against the concern for global warming in general, but the inconvenient truth of that matter is that in other regions like the tropical Pacific it was actually cooler. Given the global mean, the Medieval Warming Period at it's height was about the same as the global mean temperature about 50 years ago. We're way beyond that now.



I'm not sure how long you're going to continue to deny that global warming is a problem... Even Trump is starting to admit that it's not just a Chinese plot and that it might actually be a problem. It's like watching people in a crowd, who one by one come forward reluctantly saying... "OK, the world is round."

PeterS

In 1973 there was a global hunting ban on Polar Bears. For some odd reason when you stop killing something the population tends to explode. Strange how that works but I've found it to be true...

PeterS

God are you really trying to convince conservatives that global warming is a real event? Good luck with that. Land ice around the globe is shrinking at an ever increasing rate. Glaciers in N America are all in retreat but for some odd reason conservative fail to understand that less ice each years means that the temperature is warming up. I think it's simply because they don't want to have to sacrifice their quality of life to correct the damage that leading that quality of life does to the environment. It's just that it's easier to stick their heads in the sand and let their children and grandchildren pay for the damage they've done to the environment...