According to 53-page report here released by environmental activist group urgewald.org/, which looks at financing of the coal industry by major banks, global coal consumption has risen “to a staggering 7.9 billion tons annually”; that’s a 69% increase since the year 2000. A real “climate catastrophe” hyperventilates the Urgewald report!
And so applying global warming theory, which claims that CO2 is the dominant climate driver and that coal is the big source, you’d think that global mean temperatures would be skyrocketing upwards by now. But here’s a chart that tells us the reality of the time period referred to by Urgewald:
GLOBAL TEMPERATURE COMPARED TO GLOBAL COAL EMISSIONS
Global temperature (green) compared to global coal consumption (black). While coal consumption has soared 70% since 2000, global temperatures have eased since 2002.
What does that tell us about coal’s impact on the climate?
In fact by almost every measure, global living conditions for humanity have improved worldwide, this is in large part thanks to the affordable energy delivered by that 70% increase in coal. Coal has lifted millions of people worldwide out of grinding poverty and horrible lives without electric power.
The Urgewald paper is just the latest lapse into a fit of doom and gloom. There’s no denying the temperature reality of the last 15 years: no rise!
You’re more than welcome to read the 53-page report, but it’ll probably cause you to suffer a spell of Doomer Depression.
It’s worse than we thought!
There is enough cold air heading south out of the Arctic region into central North America that coal will be the only thing keeping many people from freezing during the next few days. Here in Washington State the jet stream is likely to be south of us, thus, allowing that air mass to push into our region and well south of us. We are supposed to get -8 to -10 C degrees each morning for the next 5 days. [Local hydro power from the Columbia River provides electricity at nearly the lowest cost in the USA]. A realignment of the jet stream could warm us up some (not likely) but the central part of the continent will not be spared. They’ll be thanking King Coal.
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