Suck this, old king coal

Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company, best known for mountain-top removal coal mining in the USA, has finally woken up to its social and environmental responsibilities, and is launching a new programme — Coal Cares™ — to:

…reach out to American youngsters with asthma and to help them keep their heads high in the face of those who would treat them with less than full dignity. For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler, Coal Cares™ lets them inhale with pride.

It’s well worth digging around in the CoalCares™ web site, for the considerable environmental and energy wisdom on display:

So-called “solar energy,” on the other hand, refers to the direct use of the violent fusion reactions occurring deep within our nearest star. As you might expect, this kind of “solar energy” naturally comes with a host of dangers that coal’s million-year buffering is designed to avoid. Some scientists refer to so-called “solar energy” as “mainlining the sun”—and it doesn’t take an Einstein to see an overdose looming.

Or, on why it doesn’t make sense to install “scrubbers” to clean emissions from coal-burning power plants:

Locating the filtering mechanism at the point of consumption (i.e., your child’s mouth) is dramatically more cost-effective than locating it at the point of emission (smokestacks), and in turn means less need for intrusive and costly regulation.

Yes, it’s nice to see that the tide is finally turning…

[Or perhaps not…]

5 thoughts on “Suck this, old king coal”

  1. Oh dear. I missed the references to the references at the end, and spent several minutes fluctuating between “no, noone could possibly wake up in the morning and decide to spend the day writing stupid propoganda like that” and “well, if I started reading WUWT again, I could believe that”.

    tl;dr: I got Poe’d.

  2. Great site, wicked humour, viz.

    “Wind turbines can kill up to 70,000 birds per year, or 4.27 birds per turbine per year. Coal particulate pollution, on the other hand, kills fewer than 13,000 people per year.”

  3. I think it is significant that in the Peabody statement you link to they are committed to an “ultimate goal” of “near-zero emissions from coal.” So at least for them there is no skepticism, or argument that the science is not settled. Its just a question now of timeframes. The debate is moving. And evidence in pouring in.

    Just been bitten by a mosquito. Odd in mid May.

    1. And yet, and yet… Peabody may talk the talk, but where does their lobbying go? A bit like BP re-branding themselves as “Beyond Petroleum” — though they seem to have forgotten that in the last few years.

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