Henry Payne for April 15, 2016

Peabody takes on debt by buying a huge coal company in Australia. The price of coal collapses because demand goes down all over the world, including China. They can’t pay their debts. It’s Obama’s fault.

Plus elimination of coal benefits the planet. Obama should complemented not condemned..

Fracking makes natural gas cost less and it burns cleaner than coal and power plants are easily converted to its use causing the free market system to change fuel. I never knew my paternal grandfather as he died of black lung before I was born. Digging coal is not a healthy job.

Obama also got rid of all the whale oil jobs.

Automation and mountain top removal ended those coal jobs a long time before Obama policies had any effect whatsoever. Yes as to Peabody, only government is able to make poor decisions and screw their own pooch, right??? Also consider the coal executive doing only one year for killing 26 miners (in just one incident) working for Murray.

I’m betting Payne never worked in a coal mine.

Bishop: Safety Rules that Undermine Safety Are Irrational

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 14, 2016 -Today, Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the final well control rule for offshore energy exploration and development. Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) issued the following statement:

“I was not alone in pointing out the many failures in the original draft of this rule that would harm existing safety innovation and undercut responsible offshore development. I am pleased to see that our efforts to shed more light throughout this closed-door process yielded modest changes. Development is safely occurring in the Gulf right now, and it will take some time to see how this rule impacts the vast reform that has already been put into place over the past several years.

“As we review the final rule, one thing remains certain: our nation’s regulatory process is broken. In this case, the Administration failed from the get-go by locking technical experts out of the regulatory process until the announcement of our Gulf hearing prompted Interior to begin scheduling technical meetings. We need more transparency and a collaborative dialogue to produce better results for American businesses and families. Nobody cares about safety and environmental stewardship in the Gulf more than the families who live there and proudly produce American energy. Washington owes it to them to not threaten the future existence of their jobs.“A bureaucrat in Washington will never be able to manufacture and force safety comparable to what industry experts have and continue to create. We urge the Administration to shift their philosophy to one that encourages the production of affordable energy and believes in human ingenuity.”

The last paragraph is especially important to consider with regard to the “safety” of Massey Energy, BP in the Gulf, or Shell’s two failed efforts to even get ships into postion to drill in the Arctic. Yep, Bishop’s view of safety is really in touch with the reality of the disasters brought about by “industry” writing their own rules! Jailed executives of course prove their “integrity”, over dead miners.

yes, let’s transition to renewables so we leave nature natural.

When it comes to energy, do you want clear lungs, water that is pure to the tongue and wind power that is cheap and no one suffers in the long run? Sorry for the fossil fuel guys but they had the market cornered for over two hundred years now and we are all SICK of it, even the guys who work with the Picks- Black Lung Disease, so should we put health over wealth (Koch brothers in particular?). It’s an easy choice for me, sorry that some of us have difficulty with choosing right from wrong.

Payne, coal jobs are decreasing because it is no longer as profitable to mine coal. Even the destructive mountaintop removals where they destroyed pristine streams and the lax regulations that injured and killed many miners weren’t enough to save the industry.

Just think of all the black lung cases that won’t happen. Yep, it’s Obama’s fault.

A lot of the drop in coal consumption in the power business has nothing to do with regulation. Rather, it’s the money. The operating costs for a steam electric plant tend to be higher, compared to combustion turbine driven plant — a lot more machinery to machinery to buy, maintain and replace. Large piles and pools of waste by-product to maintain. On top of all that, the best efficiency that can be gotten with a steam cycle is around 40%, while combustion turbine combine cycle turbosets are now reaching 62%. Coal is no longer competitive with natural gas. As a result, more and more coal plants are being mothballed, scrapped or “repowered” with combustion turbine – generator sets.

We can always create new jobs but we can’t create a new earth