These babies are popping up all over the northern panhandle and southwestern PA:
Because we are in the middle of a post truth and post accountability election, I have no idea where the signs are coming from. There are no paid for markings on the signs, so I just have no clue. Could be the Romney campaign, could be a super pac that is anti-Obama, could be the Friends of Coal, or it could be just one wingnut owner of a coal company like Don Blankenship. What’s depressing, though, is it just keeps pushing the fals narrative that Obama is somehow killing coal. Hell, Obama has spent the last couple years blowing sloppy kisses at the ludicrous notion of “clean coal,” enraging environmentalists. At any rate, as we have stated over and over and over again, what is killing coal is natural gas:
Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States from January through March were the lowest of any recorded for the first quarter of the year since 1992, the federal Energy Information Administration reports. The agency attributed the decline to a combination of three factors: a mild winter, reduced demand for gasoline and, most significantly, a drop in coal-fired electricity generation because of historically low natural gas prices. Whether emissions will continue to drop or begin to rise again, however, remains to be seen, experts said Friday.
“While this is a positive step, we shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, we’ve got plenty of natural gas, we can just switch to that, problem solved,’ and move on,” said Jay Apt, the director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, who was not involved in compiling the study.
Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption totaled 1.34 billion metric tons in the first quarter, down nearly 8 percent from a year earlier, the Energy Information Administration said.
Although natural gas is a more efficient fossil fuel than coal, burning it still produces carbon dioxide emissions. One of its strengths lies in that it produces more kilowatts of power than the equivalent amount of coal and it provides more energy for each carbon dioxide molecule emitted into the atmosphere. This so-called carbon efficiency is one of the key equations that scientists use to project carbon dioxide emissions, with more efficient energy sources contributing less to global warming than the more inefficient emitters.
Claiming there is a war on coal is akin to claiming that Henry Ford declared war on horses. At any rate, if there was a war on coal, I wouldn’t say it is completely over, but troops friendly to natural gas are massing near Waterloo.
Villago Delenda Est
So, if I understand correctly, a more efficient fossil fuel, one that provides more energy per unit than coal, is Obama’s fault.
Wow. Next you’ll be telling me that hydropower, wind power, and nuclear power are all evil inventions of the Mooslim Socia1ist conspiring against the coal industry.
Svensker
You can’t argue with them, John. They know what they know. Fox/Rush/WND told them it’s true so it’s true. Your so-called “facts” are just liebrul bias.
Fax Paladin
@Villago Delenda Est: Solyndra! (/wingnutreflex)
Hill Dweller
@Villago Delenda Est: Of course it’s Obama’s fault.
Just like the reforms that Obama made to medicare(strengthening benefits, extending the programs solvency and saving seniors money on prescription drugs), which were included in both of Ryan’s budgets, is his attempt to destroy medicare. Thankfully, Willard and Ryan are here to save us.
Ash Can
Start asking people how to get one. You might find out.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Considering that coal is just about all WV has left at this point, it’s somewhat understandable. It’s nowhere near reasonable, mind, but I guess I understand why the fear about diminishing coal. The problem is that this was always going to happen. It’s not like Obama brought his hammer down on the Appalachias and said ‘FUCK YOU WHITEYS FOR MINING MY BLACK COAL!’
Unfortunately, this kind of shit just becomes impenetrable after a point. :/
TenguPhule
I give it three weeks tops before they play this ad in WV.
khead
So, here’s my hometown paper pimping natural gas.
This is the same newspaper that continually complains about Obama’s “War on Coal” .
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
That’s a bingo. Their way of life is falling apart, and the Party of Resentment is there to make sure to direct their anger at the Right targets.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, John Boehner did try to blame the drought on Obama, so I suppose it’s possible that he’s to blame for the existence of natural gas as well.
General Stuck
About all the low sulfur coal in the east has already been mined. So what is left is some nasty shit that cannot be burned in the states, so some third world foreign society gets to breath the shit. Not to mention speed along the future tropical paradise that will be Siberia.
Western coal is lower sulfur, but also lower BTU sub bituminous, but as you say the future is natural gas, despite some dubious effect for the environment mining methods, is much cleaner, and there is enough of it last a long time/
Eastern coal tycoons like Blankenship are blowing smoke up our asses claiming it hurts our economy, on the whole. It does keep a few families fed in the hills, and fat fucks like Blankenship in new Mercedes, and maybe a personal helicopter or two. But that is about it.
JPL
You would think that Byrd would have used some the money he brought to your state for other industry. Sorry.. no sympathy from me.
MikeJ
@JPL: Byrd got everything he could built there. You’d be shocked if you knew how much of the federal government runs out of West Virginia.
Even if you moved every single government job that’s currently in DC to WV, it wouldn’t replace coal mining. I’d guess that most of the people working in the IRS server farm didn’t quit a coal mining job to go to work there. Best case, it’s their kids that never had to mine coal.
jonas
War on coal? Talk to all the flacks for the fracking industry who are telling everyone in NY state that it’s “cleaner than coal” and the solution to global warming. The whole expansion of fracking in the Marcellus shale region is predicated on the idea that it makes coal mining/energy obsolete.
Downpuppy
Gas drilling has fallen by 2/3rds. Chesapeake, the big producer, is deeply fucked. Once we make it past the end of injection season, given even a half modest winter, the glut is over.
All this shale stuff is bloody expensive. Shattering metamorphic rocks to let a bit of gas seep through is never going to be like an old fashioned well where you just drop a pipe & let it flow.
So coal will have another day. Mostly Wyoming coal, which is cheaper, but gas & liquid fuels are near tapout.
Also, too, of course – Cruise ships to the North Pole!
And let’s tak about next years drought.
Ben Franklin
This is the same lot who fought the war against Tungsten. Those curley-cue bulbs made Moe Slap-happy.
“Some guy came to my farm and said he could deliver my goods to market for 25% of what I spend to use my oxen. I kicked him in the balls, cuz…FREEEEEEDOM!”
Litlebritdifrnt
My local RWNJ radio host keeps telling me how wonderful it would be if we just allowed fracking here in NC, that it would be a boon for the State, completely forgetting of course that the entire east coast depends on an aquifer for our water and the chances of the fracking operations screwing that up are seriously high.
4tehlulz
“Fire Obama”
Trump?
cathyx
Well, it’s not like the people in those regions were going to vote for Obama anyway.
MLRjr
More people working in coal than in decades and….and….and….they want to get Obama out? And after UBB for anyone WORKING in coal mining to be complaining about the enforcement of safety regulations is just…is just I do not know!
cathyx
@MLRjr: Yeah, it’s hard to feel sorry for people who shoot themselves in the foot from their own stupidity.
MikeBoyScout
As a Burgher ex-pat I offer you this
Go look at the photos that accompany the piece.
http://digital.library.pitt.edu/images/pittsburgh/smokecontrol.html
robertdsc-iPhone 4
And here I thought it would be a post on Tunch & Lily being their irrepressible selves & Rosie being crazy.
mainmati
I grew up in Pittsburgh, which is not the same thing as SW West VA but there may be some similarities. The Pittsburgh industrial unions of which my Dad was a member were totally integrated into the companies in the 1960s. It was a culture.
So the companies and the unions were in this co-dependent relationship. Some of the companies like my Dad’s Westinghouse, were serious about the relationship, partly because a large part of the union members were highly skilled.
US Steel, which later called itself US X was, on the other hand, a truly evil company. Quit aside from its awful 19th and early 20th century history, during the height of the Vietnam War when it was making huge amounts of money, it systematically invested in real estate rather than in upgrading technology in steel-making because it knew that Korean and Brazilian low-cost competitors (at the time) could price it out and was uninterested in being technologically competitive. But their public excuse was to blame environmental regulations and labor unions.
So. rather than develop a competitive response to overseas, low wage competition they chose to desert the market and blame the lefties. This is the classic pattern of American industrial capitalism – slovenly cowardice and blame others.
Same with the coal industry today.
JWL
West Virginians understand coal, if it’s understood anywhere. Which means they understand energy markets.
How can a Madison Ave ad campaign dissuade them from their own understanding?
Sly
They’re probably distributed by a PAC affiliated with Murray Energy. They’re the largest mine operator in the U.S., and Bob Murray is a major Romney donor. Organized a few events for him in Ohio, including his “energy speech” a few days ago.
JoyfulA
There’s a rich western PA coal mine owner who won the Republican nomination for the Senate to run against Bobby Casey.
He’s a possibility, although figuring out why he’d do that is convoluted (fewer votes for Obama > fewer votes for Casey > more votes for the GOP guy, whatever his name is?). It’s the corner of PA where Obama is least popular; then again, these signs would have an adverse effect, if any at all, on the Main Line.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
If this were 150 years ago, they’d be flapping on about whale oil.
Buffalo Rude
Lately, my job – in the coal killing natural gas business – has had me working in Middle-of-Nowhere, WV (go to Morgantown, continue south for an hour to an hour-and-a-half, hang a right and drive another hour on some of the most mind-numbingly winding and up/down roads I’ve ever traversed). I haven’t seen those signs much down here, yet. Lots of “Friends of Coal” bumper stickers and shirts, however. But on my way back and forth to home on I-79 or I-70 there are a few billboards with, essentially, the same layout and font.
Robert Sneddon
@MikeBoyScout: Coal soot was regarded as a cheap fertilizer in times past. It contains sulphur and nitrogen but modern fertilizers made for the job are vastly better than simple soot ever was.
cmorenc
Obama’s chances of winning West Virginia are near-zero anyways, and so whomever is behind financing the pro-coal anti-Obama signs in West Virginia, it’s wasted money that fortunately isn’t going instead to anti-environment wacko winger candidates for congress and state legislatures. Where such signs might have some modest impact is in helping push anti-Obama turnout in coal-mining areas of southern Ohio.
Ben Franklin
@cmorenc:
I think this is true. But I think it’s because Dems have not shown the necessary intestinal fortitude these hard-luck cases look for in a candidate. Mebbe, we can slow down that perception, if we continue to attack, attack, attack the oppos.
Mike G
@MLRjr:
Stockholm Syndrome. Corporate serfdom.
Little Dreamer
If they have no markings showing who sponsored them, are they protected signs under campaign laws?
They look like a blight. If they are in general locations and not protected, I’d toss them.
Hal
War on Christmas, War on Caterpillars, War on Coal…temporal cold war, oh wait, wrong show.
Caz
If there’s a war on women, why can’t there be a war on coal?
I guess the liberals are the only ones that can make up wars to use for political purposes.
What a bunch of fucking hypocrites!
Omnes Omnibus
@Caz: You can’t really be that dumb, can you?