NUCLEAR !!! Oil and coal are not the one's to blame for global warming, the anti-nuclear movement is. Imagine the nuclear power technology that would have been developed over the last 50 years had the anti-nuke movement not killed the cleanest and safest form of energy.
The greater mortality issue is energy poverty. It seems that until a country achieves energy sufficiency, significantly more lives are saved by access to energy than by the pollution it creates. Of course one could say those deaths are “hidden” by increased lifespan due to reaching energy sufficiency and extinguishing energy poverty but in actuality, building energy sufficiency quickly is easier with clean coal and especially natural gas than it is with nuclear. Renewables without baseload does not create energy sufficiency. Africa has the resources to build energy sufficiency using fossil fuels. It is immoral for international organizations to prevent Africa to build out fossil fuel plants.
Scrubbers is all that is required. And these papers are always highly speculative. Life expectancy goes up uniformly where energy is more plentiful, but somehow they separate out the negative effects of the technology only and demonstrate a loss of life expectancy. It's analogous to what climate hysterics do with damage from cyclones. They focus on gross negative effects and don't adjust for confounding and sometimes beneficial effects. You've spent your life investigating the latter.
I think you need to also take into account the lives saved by the electricity generated from the coal. Agreed that we should eventually stop using coal because it is so dirty, but don't underestimate the importance of that electricity, and don't try to make the phase-out faster than it can be replaced. I see a lot of tendency to phase out coal plants before there is an assured replacement, which leads to power shortages, brown-outs, etc.
Roger, Roger, Roger, It’s almost like you need to write a piece every once in a while to appease the climate catastrophe crowd. While older coal plants do pollute more than newer ones with the latest emission controls, in the poor countries where they exist, what would exist if they did not? Much worse wood, animal dung or other combustion that takes place in the home and is much worse from an air pollution and premature death perspective.
You missed the right comparison which is not coal deaths , which are certainly overstated in your source, vs. a cleaner option that does not exist. The correct one is coal plants vs. what would otherwise exist which is lower tech combustion.
Come on Roger, you’re better than this!!! You know this is a bad argument full of holes.
“... it is carbon dioxide reduction that is the co-benefit that accompanies the large human health gains that follow from shutting down dirty power plants...”
Roger, have you read Breath by James Nestor? He cites authorities that say CO2 is more important than oxygen because CO2 facilitates the passage of oxygen through membranes. Therefore increased CO2 improves health. Hyperventilating eliminates CO2, thus leaving blood saturated with oxygen that can not pass to cells
Our air is cleaner than any time since the Industrial Age. Maybe poor lifestyle choices cause COPD which causes death by "pollution" here in the US. Have we started with an opinion on something and built a case? Do we take the social science studies that were created by biased organizations as fact now, or do we disect them for what they are? Weak correlation is now causation? Do we look at one dimension of an issue, deaths by pollution, and skip over the benefits of having enough energy in poorer nations to enhance the quality of life? We don't look at ways to use coal in even cleaner ways? Nuclear is all good now -- no residual effect? Same with Solar now -- if we never look at the whole life cycle. Other readers (like Brent Bennett below) have already made most of the comments I would have.
Insofar as this is an argument in favor of human flourishing, I support it. To the extent that it promotes the reduction of carbon emissions as an end in itself, I don't. Why should I. The time has long since passed for the world to embrace nuclear energy -- and through that human flourishing -- to the maximum extent possible.
And the time has long since passed for you -- of the best among us -- to mount a full offense for nuclear energy.
Dear Roger, According to today's Wall Street Journal, as of July 2023 China had 305 coal-fired power plants of greater than 30 megawatts capacity either announced as operational or in the works. These plants will generate some 391.7 gigawatts which is about 70% of the world's total "coal-fired capacity currently announced, planned, permitted or under construction.
Regarding coal mining, China reached a record high of 4.66 billion metric tons mined in 2023. Plans are for 217 new coal mines of 900,000 metric tons capacity (each, apparently), which would represent 57% of all new coal mine additions in the world.
In other words, a global coal exit agreement without China would be meaningless. And the Chinese apparently have no intention of doing any such thing or they wouldn't be building all those coal mines and coal-fired power plants.
Quite easy to build clean coal plants that capture the particulate, this is just a point to be managed, we can have cheap abundant coal fired power and clean air.
These stats remind me of the nonsense the NDP in AB cooked up for their plans to shut down our reliable coal plants, teaming with climate/insane NGOS to cook the books, stating thousands of deaths and a couple billion in health care costs per year.
All pulled out of the air, or more likely from between their legs.
Interesting post, thank you. Looking at the Lelieveld reference, Figure 4 suggests smoking produces twice the death that come from fossil fuels. Maybe we need to offer government subsidies to people who smoke so they can quit? (I was a three-pack per day guy. government money wouldn't have helped except provide money to offset rising prices).
On a more serious vein, it would be helpful to compare deathprints in countries based on enforced emission standards. Further, the breakdown by capacity could be further differentiated by breaking plants down by age. Utilities are less likely (my supposition) to invest in expensive scrubbers for plants that are old and operated only to meet intermediate demands rather than provide baseload power.
It would also be helpful for Lilieveld to separate "fossil fuels." E.G., coal vs. gas. vs. oil, and transportation vs. electricity production. (I didn't dig deep into his work, and he may in fact do that.)
The study provides useful information, but highlights the need for additional research rather than be used for a policy decision.
I have no argument with the broad claim that there are millions of deaths from poor air quality but closing coal-fired power stations in developing countries where most people will continue to burn biomass - wood, animal dung, etc - for cooking and heating will do almost nothing to reduce overall mortality from poor air quality.
Didn't find any nits to pick, but I do have a problem with some of the assumptions that seem to be 'baked into' the analysis.
.
.
"The four coal power plants with the highest “death intensity” are each in India. The public health benefits of exiting from coal are not evenly spread around the world, and are concentrated in the regions with the most and dirtiest coal plants."
If these four were shut down tomorrow, how many deaths would result from the lack of electricity to all the homes and businesses supplied by them? How many years and how much money would it take to replace them? With what? In much of the world, nuclear power isn't an option because it has been demonized to the point where it is prohibitively expensive and takes decades even assuming all the required permits can be acquired. So, you shut down the power plants and save X million lives/year, but Y million deaths/year (where Y >>> X) due to lack of electrical energy once supplied by the coal plants.
I would bet almost any amount of money that if the Indian citizens supplied by those four coal plant were given a choice between NO power, and plentiful power at the cost of a slightly higher than normal death rate due to air pollution, the vote would be resoundingly in favor of keeping the power plants going.
This is all weak thinking - failing to understand or even care about all the OTHER things that even coal-fired plants do for civilizations. It's kinda like the anti-nuke crowd that refuses to think about all the lives SAVED by nuclear power, while loudly screaming about 'THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR PLANTS'.
Well done. Roger. Adding coal ash landfills and ponds to the co-benefit mix.
Interesting side note: it is possible we may be mining coal ash for rare earth elements in the U.S. some day. REE are fellow travelers with coal, more in some deposits than others.
Hi y'all! I'm just catching up, it has been a busy day.
Let me just say that this comment thread might just be my favorite ever at THB. Substance rich, informed debate and disagreement, total respect for each other. Selfishly, I'm also learning a lot.
NUCLEAR !!! Oil and coal are not the one's to blame for global warming, the anti-nuclear movement is. Imagine the nuclear power technology that would have been developed over the last 50 years had the anti-nuke movement not killed the cleanest and safest form of energy.
The greater mortality issue is energy poverty. It seems that until a country achieves energy sufficiency, significantly more lives are saved by access to energy than by the pollution it creates. Of course one could say those deaths are “hidden” by increased lifespan due to reaching energy sufficiency and extinguishing energy poverty but in actuality, building energy sufficiency quickly is easier with clean coal and especially natural gas than it is with nuclear. Renewables without baseload does not create energy sufficiency. Africa has the resources to build energy sufficiency using fossil fuels. It is immoral for international organizations to prevent Africa to build out fossil fuel plants.
Scrubbers is all that is required. And these papers are always highly speculative. Life expectancy goes up uniformly where energy is more plentiful, but somehow they separate out the negative effects of the technology only and demonstrate a loss of life expectancy. It's analogous to what climate hysterics do with damage from cyclones. They focus on gross negative effects and don't adjust for confounding and sometimes beneficial effects. You've spent your life investigating the latter.
I think you need to also take into account the lives saved by the electricity generated from the coal. Agreed that we should eventually stop using coal because it is so dirty, but don't underestimate the importance of that electricity, and don't try to make the phase-out faster than it can be replaced. I see a lot of tendency to phase out coal plants before there is an assured replacement, which leads to power shortages, brown-outs, etc.
Roger, Roger, Roger, It’s almost like you need to write a piece every once in a while to appease the climate catastrophe crowd. While older coal plants do pollute more than newer ones with the latest emission controls, in the poor countries where they exist, what would exist if they did not? Much worse wood, animal dung or other combustion that takes place in the home and is much worse from an air pollution and premature death perspective.
You missed the right comparison which is not coal deaths , which are certainly overstated in your source, vs. a cleaner option that does not exist. The correct one is coal plants vs. what would otherwise exist which is lower tech combustion.
Come on Roger, you’re better than this!!! You know this is a bad argument full of holes.
“... it is carbon dioxide reduction that is the co-benefit that accompanies the large human health gains that follow from shutting down dirty power plants...”
Roger, have you read Breath by James Nestor? He cites authorities that say CO2 is more important than oxygen because CO2 facilitates the passage of oxygen through membranes. Therefore increased CO2 improves health. Hyperventilating eliminates CO2, thus leaving blood saturated with oxygen that can not pass to cells
Our air is cleaner than any time since the Industrial Age. Maybe poor lifestyle choices cause COPD which causes death by "pollution" here in the US. Have we started with an opinion on something and built a case? Do we take the social science studies that were created by biased organizations as fact now, or do we disect them for what they are? Weak correlation is now causation? Do we look at one dimension of an issue, deaths by pollution, and skip over the benefits of having enough energy in poorer nations to enhance the quality of life? We don't look at ways to use coal in even cleaner ways? Nuclear is all good now -- no residual effect? Same with Solar now -- if we never look at the whole life cycle. Other readers (like Brent Bennett below) have already made most of the comments I would have.
Insofar as this is an argument in favor of human flourishing, I support it. To the extent that it promotes the reduction of carbon emissions as an end in itself, I don't. Why should I. The time has long since passed for the world to embrace nuclear energy -- and through that human flourishing -- to the maximum extent possible.
And the time has long since passed for you -- of the best among us -- to mount a full offense for nuclear energy.
Yeah another home run point by you this week.
Dear Roger, According to today's Wall Street Journal, as of July 2023 China had 305 coal-fired power plants of greater than 30 megawatts capacity either announced as operational or in the works. These plants will generate some 391.7 gigawatts which is about 70% of the world's total "coal-fired capacity currently announced, planned, permitted or under construction.
Regarding coal mining, China reached a record high of 4.66 billion metric tons mined in 2023. Plans are for 217 new coal mines of 900,000 metric tons capacity (each, apparently), which would represent 57% of all new coal mine additions in the world.
In other words, a global coal exit agreement without China would be meaningless. And the Chinese apparently have no intention of doing any such thing or they wouldn't be building all those coal mines and coal-fired power plants.
Quite easy to build clean coal plants that capture the particulate, this is just a point to be managed, we can have cheap abundant coal fired power and clean air.
These stats remind me of the nonsense the NDP in AB cooked up for their plans to shut down our reliable coal plants, teaming with climate/insane NGOS to cook the books, stating thousands of deaths and a couple billion in health care costs per year.
All pulled out of the air, or more likely from between their legs.
Interesting post, thank you. Looking at the Lelieveld reference, Figure 4 suggests smoking produces twice the death that come from fossil fuels. Maybe we need to offer government subsidies to people who smoke so they can quit? (I was a three-pack per day guy. government money wouldn't have helped except provide money to offset rising prices).
On a more serious vein, it would be helpful to compare deathprints in countries based on enforced emission standards. Further, the breakdown by capacity could be further differentiated by breaking plants down by age. Utilities are less likely (my supposition) to invest in expensive scrubbers for plants that are old and operated only to meet intermediate demands rather than provide baseload power.
It would also be helpful for Lilieveld to separate "fossil fuels." E.G., coal vs. gas. vs. oil, and transportation vs. electricity production. (I didn't dig deep into his work, and he may in fact do that.)
The study provides useful information, but highlights the need for additional research rather than be used for a policy decision.
I have no argument with the broad claim that there are millions of deaths from poor air quality but closing coal-fired power stations in developing countries where most people will continue to burn biomass - wood, animal dung, etc - for cooking and heating will do almost nothing to reduce overall mortality from poor air quality.
Didn't find any nits to pick, but I do have a problem with some of the assumptions that seem to be 'baked into' the analysis.
.
.
"The four coal power plants with the highest “death intensity” are each in India. The public health benefits of exiting from coal are not evenly spread around the world, and are concentrated in the regions with the most and dirtiest coal plants."
If these four were shut down tomorrow, how many deaths would result from the lack of electricity to all the homes and businesses supplied by them? How many years and how much money would it take to replace them? With what? In much of the world, nuclear power isn't an option because it has been demonized to the point where it is prohibitively expensive and takes decades even assuming all the required permits can be acquired. So, you shut down the power plants and save X million lives/year, but Y million deaths/year (where Y >>> X) due to lack of electrical energy once supplied by the coal plants.
I would bet almost any amount of money that if the Indian citizens supplied by those four coal plant were given a choice between NO power, and plentiful power at the cost of a slightly higher than normal death rate due to air pollution, the vote would be resoundingly in favor of keeping the power plants going.
This is all weak thinking - failing to understand or even care about all the OTHER things that even coal-fired plants do for civilizations. It's kinda like the anti-nuke crowd that refuses to think about all the lives SAVED by nuclear power, while loudly screaming about 'THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR PLANTS'.
Well done. Roger. Adding coal ash landfills and ponds to the co-benefit mix.
Interesting side note: it is possible we may be mining coal ash for rare earth elements in the U.S. some day. REE are fellow travelers with coal, more in some deposits than others.
We are doing studies in Alberta on oil sands tailings ponds, looking at titanium and other valuable outputs.
Hi y'all! I'm just catching up, it has been a busy day.
Let me just say that this comment thread might just be my favorite ever at THB. Substance rich, informed debate and disagreement, total respect for each other. Selfishly, I'm also learning a lot.
You guys are great. Thanks!