Obama´s "war on coal" has a silver lining?

President Obama and other western leaders - brainwashed by the huge warmist lobby - are waging a "war on coal". But maybe this senseless campaign against the coal industry will have a silver lining:

If the use of this valuable energy resource is going to be dramatically reduced, there will be plenty of it in store when it is really needed, maybe already in the 2030s!

The earth is 15 years from a "mini ice-age" that will cause bitterly cold winters during which rivers such as the Thames freeze over, scientists have predicted.

Solar researchers at the University of Northumbria have created a new model of the sun's activity which they claim produces "unprecedentedly accurate predictions".

They said fluid movements within the sun, which are thought to create 11-year cycles in the weather, will converge in such a way that temperatures will fall dramatically in the 2030s.

Solar activity will fall by 60 per cent as two waves of fluid "effectively cancel each other out", according to Prof Valentina Zharkova.

In a presentation to the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, she said the result would be similar to freezing conditions of the late 17th century.
“[In the cycle between 2030 and around 2040] the two waves exactly mirror each other – peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the sun," she said.
"Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other.
"We predict that this will lead to the properties of a ‘Maunder minimum'".
Maunder minimum, indicating low sunspot activity, was the name given to the period between 1645 and 1715, when Europe and North America experienced very cold winters.
 

Greenpeace UK endorsing a bigger role for coal?

John Sauven, Executive Director, Greenpeace UK, has found a way to save the world:

"What man-made, man can undo. 

First stop exploring for unconventional fossil fuels in Canada’s tar sands or underneath the Arctic. When in a hole, stop digging. Second, copy Germany."

Sauven most certainly must know what it means to copy Germany: 

A funny thing is happening on the way to the clean energy future.  While the US government wages a regulatory war on coal fired generation, in Europe, the land of the oh so politically correct the drive for greenhouse gas emissions reduction is meeting a new competitor—-reality!

The EU emissions trading scheme had fallen on hard times as the number of permits issued was large and demand in a falling economy was weak so prices fell.  Some reforms were made and the freebie credits were reined in but the economy was still weak.  While progress was still made in emissions reduction it was not the transformation some had hoped to achieve.

Then the Japan earthquake and tsunami sends Europe into a frenzy over the safety of nuclear power and Germany announced major closures of its nuclear fleet.  The Greens hoped killing off nuclear would give them a two-fer—less nuke and more renewables.

The German government policy is to encourage construction of 10 gigawatts of coal fired generation to displace aging nuclear plants and provide baseload backup for wind and solar power.  Worldwide coal plant construction grew 5.4% over the past year according to BP and now represents about 30% of installed capacity. The trade-off is to reduce the number of free emissions allowances to drive up the carbon credits markets.  To the Greens this is like paying penance for your sins.

But markets are a fickle mistress.  The lust for profits is a basic human business animal spirit.  So a story recently in Bloomberg BusinessWeek caught my eye. It said that European power producers planned to open six times more coal fired generating plants than gas-fired generators by 2015.  The story said profits at coal plants were expected to double repeating an analysis released September 13 by Goldman Sachs.

Read the entire article here

Greenpeace's support for the German model, is a clear endorsement for increasing the role of coal in global and European energy production. Will we soon see Greenpeace campaigning for a renaissance of the British coal industry? 

South Africa still needs coal for energy

Greenpeace has challenged South Africa´s major energy company Eskom in a spoof ad to cancel the building of the coal-fired power plant Kusile. However, Eskom´s reply to the enviro-fundamentalists is quite clear: 

The electricity utility's response to Greenpeace Africa's challenge was a stolid "no".

In its response, Eskom said the demand for power in South Africa justified the building of two coal-fired power plants - Kusile and Medupi.

The Medupi plant is nearing completion and Kusile, according to Eskom spokesman Hilary Joffe, is "on track to start emitting power to the national grid by 2014".

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"If we're to support economic growth and job investment, we need to make sure we can electrify households.

"Neither wind farms nor solar plants generate electricity all the time. That's why you need both baseload [sources] and renewables," it said.

According to Bruno Merven, a researcher at the Energy Research Centre at the University of Cape Town, solar, wind and nuclear power can provide only a very limited amount of electricity.

Read the entire article here

What Merven says certainly is true at least about solar and wind power. If South Africa wants to give its citizens a chance to a better life, it needs economic growth . Economic growth is not possible without energy. The best and most economic source of energy in South Africa is king coal, no matter how much  Greenpeace is trying to demonize it.