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Why has the world started to mine coal again? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Metal_Zealot@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.

Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?

Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.

Now I'm more depressed than when I posted this

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[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't think I buy it. Like, there is a lot of uranium around the world, but most of it is prohibitively expensive to mine, the mining itself is extremely destructive, Australia has the largest uranium reserves but most of the rest is in the hands of authoritarian fuckwits like China and Russia, society's collapsing into wars and suffering climate catastrophes around the world so the safety of nuclear plants is increasingly in doubt, it takes decades to build them...

Honestly, if we're gonna spend decades on clean energy megaprojects, wouldn't it be better to go with something like a space solar power station which is a lot safer and the rectennas on the surface a lot easier to fix and replace?

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You think mining for solar panels is free or something?

[–] pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Out in space, it'll unironically be exponentially cheaper both financially and in terms of he environmental damage caused by surface mining as the decade goes on. We actually could get a lot of material to make mirrors to bounce sunlight around from lunar regolith, and where you have mirrors and a liquid to heat up, like water, you have a solar thermal generator, and up in space, that kind of a generator can provide endless amounts of power.

I feel it'd be a better investment than nuclear and all of its political problems.