So you’re actually admitting you’re just self-centred, wasteful and ignorant. Not only you personally, but the way your whole country is acting atm. Thank you, that’s exactly the point I was trying to make, actually it’s exactly been the whole point of that thread!

F’in disgusting behaviour in all honesty.

”Humans will adapt, nothing lasts forever” Yeah, “it doesn’t matter if deserts grow bigger and bigger in Africa...as long as the people fleeing to Europe, not the states. We’re not taking people anyway, just causing havoc on the whole planet cause that’s what we do, That’s what we know best!”

Seriously, I’m a rather peaceful person usually but if I ever meat you in person remind me to give you a fat-slap!

Sorry guys...the rest of you I mean.

Give it up. All hope is lost with this one.

This doesn't prolong any jobs since they are going away with automation just like other industries have gone that way as well.  This is only perserving invested money to people in power willing to go for the buck and forget anything else.  If you are so concerning about all this vulnerable communities and social mobility, why are you not avocating the Coal industry implement more clean coal solutions to combat its dangerous effect on those same people lives. I believe the reason why is that you pretty much do not care as long as it doesn't effect you.  

As for empthy for coal miners, I definitely have that.  My solution is the one already said in this thread.  Put money in retraining them into the green tech which is gaining a lot of traction and probably will be the path forward.  Why put money and effort into the coal industry for those miners when their jobs are already getting replaced by automation.  Train them to do something else and I am sure the nation would be more acceptable to that.  

So much anger emanating from you, LOL ... (keep getting irritated then)

And how can you be certain that we're the ones causing damage ? (The fact that you harbour so much ill intent for a random poster on the internet means that you were never peaceful, how can you claim yourself so if you're never open minded ?)

I'm just saying that coal should be our stepping stone and it has been for a long time. It is thanks to industrialization that our quality of life dramatically elevated because of our usage of fossil fuels ... 

I'm not purposing that we use coal to develop interstellar technologies (that's just preposterous of course) but are you proposing that we stunt the growth of poorer countries by putting limits one of the most easily accessible resources ? (You should at the very least have mercy on the poorer nations who can't possibly afford the infrastructure of renewable and battery technologies, no ?)  

I'm just saying we should use whatever tools necessary for the development of humanity and that we should have no limits barred on that ... 

I don't deny the very possibility we could develop interstellar travel without coal but how can you be so certain that we'll ruin our planet in the process before the sun does ? What's more is are you OK with making the human race poorer by forcing them to transition to the usage of renewable energy ? 

I don't understand why people are so bent up about fossil fuels vs renewables when I simply see both as nothing more than tools to be expended ... (you and the others should not deny the benefits of fossil fuels while ignoring drawbacks of renewable sources, that's just academically dishonest in an intellectual discussion) 

Funnily enough it's the manufacturing and service sector that is most threatened by automation, not so much for resource extraction since automation is more underdeveloped in that sector. Miners are still going to persist for at least another decade or so before a reliable replacement comes in ... 

As far as mining investors making a buck that hasn't been true recently since they've been running thinner and thinner margins several years back to back. The ones making a buck are the actual larbourers themselves so the ones struggling are the brass ... 

Implementing more clean coal at a time where the coal industry is struggling to be profitable ? The industry already has to comply with EPA standards for mercury emissions ... (What more do you want ?) 

Miners aren't getting replaced by automation yet and the only renewable source of energy that could realistically meet american consumption is wind energy but that's still a big stretch ... (tapped out on hydro power and solar power has poor value/low output) 

We're going to have to increase our imports of natural gas and ramp up nuclear energy ... (I doubt we'll be able to train the vast majority of miners into operating nuclear power plants) 

There's less potential for renewable energy in the US than you think ... (heck the US isn't even the biggest offender when it comes to emissions, China has 2x higher emission per energy consumption and compared to the US) 

Despite the fact that China has a higher portion of it's electricity generation come from renewables than the US, they have 2x higher emissions per generation so the US isn't doing all that bad ... (looking at absolute emissions isn't the best way to do a comparison, a better measure would be is how efficient each country is when consuming energy such as emissions vs kW/h) 

The US will have capitalized as much hydropower they can get their hands on which stands at 6.5% of their electricity generation. The only other source of renewable energy that has potential to meet capacity is wind energy which currently stands at 5.5% of electricity generation but even then you'd have to move to the middle of america to reap the most benefits ... (Solar power is fairly ignore worthy at this point)

How do you propose we can realistically make up our lost 30% of the power generation due to coal ?

I have and they usually don't have anything conclusive to say ... 

The rest of what you said is nothing but alarmism. We're literally at no risk for a runaway greenhouse effect. This is even something Stephen Hawking, a renowned theoretical physicist got hilariously wrong! 

If we were at immediate risk of runaway global warming like we see with Venus today it would've happened long ago during the paleocene–eocene thermal maximum where CO2 concentrations were five times higher than it is today not too recently. To even trigger runaway global warming today, you'd at least need CO2 concentrations of above at least 10000 ppm (that's still not enough) and we don't even have enough fossil fuels reach that high either ... (I can see us reaching there if we burn every organic material including the last lifeform out there but even that's a stretch) 

There's a reason why life still existed before even with CO2 concentrations being 10x higher in the past ... 

There's almost no chance of us creating a wasteland before the sun does in a billion years ... (the wait is longer than you think) 

Easy, it's just one less resource that you're able to use for energy ... 

I just listed out the reasons ... 

Reaping the most out of renewable energy requires following the geography of these sources of energy. The most populated parts of United states live in these coastal areas where wind or solar energy is not abundant ... 

It gets very cold in the east coast of US state's such as New York where solar energy gets dimmed down and there isn't a whole lot of wind power either. For the west coast such as California, their biggest renewable source of energy is hydropower which has very little potential left to capitalize on ...

I guess for the liberal residence of these states they should move to less glamorous states such as Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Texas if they want to save the planet so badly where those places are a haven for republicans LOL ... (liberals should pack up and take an L for once since they can't ever have leadership in renewable energy in their own states) 

Do I have to when I showed you that using coal is not an immediate threat ? 

No, I'm willing to bet that the algae will be just fine if they could survive the Paleozoic and Mesozoic era where temperatures were very easily 10 degrees celsius higher in the past than it is today ... 

There's almost no chance of your proposed wasteland scenario happening for at least 200 million years or we could even sit out for the whole billion years where earth will be done for as far as being a habitable zone either way ... (before the increasing output in solar energy from the sun becomes a threat, most of the CO2 will have been consumed by organic life which then die in anaerobic environments where more dead organic life accumulates thus forming these sedimentary rocks such as limestones in less than 20 million years) 

I'd be surprised if we ever able to break the 1000 ppm barrier by ourselves ... (CO2 usually a retention tme of ~10 years in the atmosphere and of the 10 gigatons of CO2 produced by humans yearly, half of it gets consumed by the natural carbon cycle so in less than a 100 years we'd be able to return to pre-industrialization levels)

Coal is finite but it is FAR more accessible than the likes of solar energy where you have to pay for expensive PV panels that usually have an MTBF of ~20 years so while you're just breaking even with solar energy, it costs almost nothing to burn coal ... 

Coal is far more valuable than solar because of accessibility, energy density and is not intermittent which makes it a nearly ideal storage of energy since nature has optimized that aspect of coal over over millions of years whereas you have to pay for expensive batteries to store the solar energy ... (I just listed 3 advantages in favour of coal compared to solar for you) 

The only renewable energy that can even compete with coal is hydropower (we've dammed every river we could get) and wind energy ... 

I would love wind energy to take over, but there are quite a bit of flaws with wind energy right now. The maintenance cost is so expensive it's ridiculous. Engineers need to come up with a more solid way to build turbines. The upfront cost is expensive too as well.