As soon as I read that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant or even worse Carbon pollution that's it for me. We need cheap energy and at the moment coal gives it to it. Carbon Dioxide is a harmless, odourless gas that assists in plant growth. It was in a time of far greater proportion of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere that huge plant growth existed and laid down the basis of the coal we are now mining. It was good then and is still good today.

All this global warming rubbish has spooked many people. I have asked a lot of school aged youngsters (and older adults) about what they think is the proportion of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. Answers have been up to 50%. They gasp in disbelief when I point out that it is less than 0.04%. This whole statement about 360 or 380 or 400 parts per million is designed to mislead people. Why not be honest and use the actual percentage?

Sure, Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas and is one factor warming the atmosphere. However, its effect is logarithmic, not linear, and its greatest impact is at the lowest levels. Current increases have only slight increases in temperature and actual temperature data does not support the computer models that forcast gloom and doom.

The other thing that is a great turn-off is that Labor and the Greens here are totally opposed to nuclear energy which has no Carbon Dioxide emissions. If they were really serious they would be crying out for the establishment of nuclear plants.

While I agree that CO2 emissions are the major contributer to climate change, and coal is the single worst offender, I am still irritated when I see such a pile of pseudo scientific / emotive twaddle.

Coal has been the single most common source of electrical power since it began to be transmitted. It has grown in lock step with electrical consumption for generations.

Coal is the cheapest source of energy (electricity generated from coal is about half the price of gas, and a quarter of that from "renewables"), and by orders of magnitude the most abundant, and is in places being used to produce gas, and petrochemical products.

When coal is pulverized and mixed with air it becomes explosive, and can be burnt in a very similar manner to gas. If this can be harnessed then coal could be as efficient as gas. The major sticking point is that the high velocity combustion stream is full of particulates that would strip turbine blades in days.

To say that coal is in an innovation dead end is pure ignorance.

I would like to have seen Geoff take this article to what I thought might have been a logical conclusion, the issue of “why are we still burning coal?”. The “Big Coal” angle simply demonstrates the need for laying blame, which according to Geoff is directed firmly at coal pollution.

If we were to look at the question of “why”, we may come to the view that there is another culprit. For some 20 years now, western governments have been chastised for not addressing the problem of carbon pollution; this has been created and backed by the conservation movement in general and by the commentariat in particular.

The result has been to drive weak politicians into populist decisions and to adopt “green solutions” to secure the populist vote. In the process there has been a drive to limit investment in coal generation, to legislate and fund renewables and to inhibit new nuclear build programs. That has left us with what precisely?

This has left most developed nations with a lack of energy security, an energy gap. Based upon the words and policy actions of many politicians, they are between a rock and a hard place, they cannot abandon the populist vote created by the AGW phenomena as the public is largely still sold on “doing something”. The politicians on the other hand seem to be looking at fixing the energy gap caused by their reluctance to maintain or build generation capacity.

When Germany recently announced the cancellation of decommissioning their nuclear power stations and that a coal fired generation program based upon Lignite was to be restarted, one has to wonder at the dramatic change of circumstance behind it.

The AGW movement and all its attendant component parts, has left us with no options. Renewables have maxed out at 10% contribution, are eye wateringly expensive and inefficient. Nuclear is a not acceptable and coal is a carbon poison.

What it is we seek to avoid, we create. That is what the AGW movement has created. We now have to build conventional generation capacity. Geoff’s article is just reflective angst.

"In the long run, of course, the coal industry is doomed".

Unlikely. We'd rather kill each other first then have to change.

Dear kuke, what a stunning analytical contribution? Your coverage of the key issues in both the article and the comments was truly breathtaking.

With the excessive export of coal, you won't have such a long time to be concerned with the illaffects of the CO2, as I think it will probably be just a memory before too many years have gone by, the Qld state government is claiming 500 million tons a day being shifted, that is getting close to depleting the whole Qld reserves in a couple of years, and all we will have is a memory of factories and providing our own essentials, with the gas production on top of everything else, even the farms are being hard hit, with polluted water. Sure Don't I look forward to coal - being used only for our own strong financial progress, not as a destructive element to destroy as it has been used. Damn our corrupt politicans.

SM. If it is so cheap, why does it still require subsidies?
Also, when coal (or gas) is burned it is used to heat water, which becomes steam, which drives turbines. The latent heat of evaporation and condensation are essential ingredients in how heat becomes electricity. So no, the coal exhaust does not strip turbines as it gets nowhere near them! Coal has been *extensively* researched for over 100 years...yes it is indeed near the end of it's innovation cycle! Renewables however, even in a hostile financial environment are becoming more viable every year.
When one accuses other's of ignorance it pays to be somewhat accurate.
Now some facts:
"Clean coal" is a marketing myth and can never be viable. Solar thermal is already cheaper.
Coal requires massive infrastructure: mining, transport, Generation and transport of power. Existing businesses are profitable because they only have to maintain the infrastructure...not build from scratch.
That infrastructure was subsidised heavily by governments as "nation building" exercises. (exactly the sort of spending the profiteers like to deride in political circles these days).
As the article states, the coal industry is spending up big to mis-inform the public (more anti-science), buy politicians and generally use warfare methods to remain a large part of the economy...not by becoming more efficient or by paying the costs that they currently pass off to the rest of society.
In short "Value" is benefits minus costs. The coal industry is overstating their benefits and denying the real costs. Of course they do, it's their job! What is sad is that politicians, respecting power above all else, are allowing them to screw us all so easily.

Ozandy says:

"When one accuses other's of ignorance it pays to be somewhat accurate."

Indeed it does. It seems Ozandy is talking past Shadow Minister in saying:

"... when coal (or gas) is burned it is used
to heat water, which becomes steam, which
drives turbines. The latent heat of evaporation
and condensation are essential ingredients in
how heat becomes electricity. So no, the coal
exhaust does not strip turbines as it gets
nowhere near them!"

SM made the point that, using his own words, "to say that coal is in an innovation dead end is pure ignorance", in contradiction to a concluding assertion of the article that:

"In the long run, of course, the coal industry
is doomed. No amount of lobbying or political
power can save them from the fact that coal
is on the wrong side of the innovation curve."

SM highlighted the innovative prospect of pulverised coal being used directly as a GAS turbine fuel, and with that highlighting also pointed out with commendable honesty a recognised hurdle to that prospect becoming a reality. His point was that innovation in respect to coal is continuing. One innovation developed in Australia already promises to overcome this particulates erosion problem, and that is underground coal gasification (UCG). The mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen produced (synthesis gas) is capable of either being burned as a gas turbine fuel, or being used as a feedstock for liquid hydrocarbon synthesis, or some combination of the two.

This is exactly what Linc Energy is in the process of developing with a stranded coal deposit in the Walloway Basin in SA.

It is true that coal has conventionally been used as Ozandy says, "to heat water, which becomes steam, which drives [steam] turbines". Whether the cost effectiveness of synthesis gas from UCG is greater than that of natural gas generating electricity via a gas turbine, I do not know. It just seemed a pity for two good posts to be at cross purposes.

The article's payload is the unchallenged assertion that coal interests are 'big', in comparison to those of oil.

The problems that will come with failure to cut back GHG emissions have more than enough mainstream science behind them. The problems with developing real and effective policy to deal with it are the failures of mainstream party politics; mainstream politics should have been active on this but they've been giving us greenwash at best and denial, doubt and delay at worst. In actuality they're giving us a combination of these.

The less than ideal solutions put up by green idealists are not the reason policy to date has been so pathetically inadequate, it's the compromised-beyond-effective pretend policies, aimed at feel-good deflection of public concern that are stock in trade of (within Australia) Labor and the blinkered and blunt refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of the issues of Liberals and Nationals that are the reason for failure to date.

Real mainstream policy in Australia is to expand and exploit exportable fossil fuel resources at the maximum rate possible - before the boom comes down. And the prospects of an adversely affected world looking for nations and governments besides their own to blame for those impacts are completely passed over. Australia's role as profiteers in producing global warming will come back to bite us.

Thanks spindoc.

I think what Ken and all the other idealists completely misunderstand is the level of support for green policies that significantly affect the average person/familiy standard of living. There's support for feel good green policies which won't cost too many jobs, but not for the kind of fundamental changes the green movement want.

The reason that the recent bank interest rate increases have caused so much trouble is because they affects the very stretched bottom line of the average australian household. The idea that a political party could do away with coal revenue ( which underpins the current level of prosperity ) and increase costs by introducing ridiculously expensive, boutique technologies to produce electricity is laughable.

"Real, mainstream philsophy to export as much coal and iron ore as possible" is almost universally supported outside of the southern capital cities. And the only reason there isn't higher support there is becasue they don't undertand that the reason they still all have their good jobs is because of the money mining brings in. Without mining Australia would be worse off than Greece.