President Trump Job Approval Rating at 35%

So what's the point? Bring back steam engines? I really don't know much about coal so I have to repeat myself... what's the point? For what exactly would we need coal when there's about a zillion clean alternatives that create even more jobs?

Yeah... but Nixon did not have a decades-long history of that kind of behaviour. For him it was a political tool. For Trump it's how his brain actually works.

He's right about that, but only because, up until the post-industrial era (ie, now) automation has freed up resources for other productive endeavors.

No, this is such a ridiculous way to look at the question. These people have skills, skills many of them spent a long time learning, that are now no longer useful, so capitalism has discarded them.
To be frank I'm completely in favor of freely available education, even unto postgraduate studies, but at the same time you shouldn't need an education to make a living. Everyone deserves to be able to make a living, period.

Are you seriously suggesting it doesn't take skills to mine coal?

You go try doing it for a day with no training and see how well you do. Of course that's not a viable challenge as you wouldn't even be allowed to work without some level of training for simple safety reasons.

1) we have huge coal reserves which are readily available for mining and transport.

2) Coal is a power source that can be extracted and transported to any electrical generating plant in effectively the world. While wind power is a nice idea, from what I understand you can't store or stockpile wind energy. And you can't transport the power wind generates from Texas to Maine (examples only).

3) We already have the power generating infrastructure set up to use fossil fuels of which coal is a primary one.

4) "Clean alternatives" have their own drawbacks. Like it or not wind turbines massacre wild birds by the thousands. I assume you know that birds are somewhat important in our ecosystems.

5) "clean alternatives" create "even more jobs" only because they are largely specialized fields requiring a great deal of individual workers (wind turbines by way of example again). There is no reason to believe that production of clean energy sources will become much more automated as the technology matures.

his speech, this morning, was, pathetic. plus he has just decided against a transparent White House, and expelled much of the press.

actually

Smithsonian estimates an even lower bottom end

Audubon Society (you know, the birdwatching people?)

So yeah, hardly an avian holocaust.

Yes. And wind turbines are providing what? Less than 1% of American electricity?

What happens when we have enough turbines to supply 5, 10, 0r 20% of our electricity. ?

Most job skills don't translate well into other fields.

But otherwise you're right. I don't believe in this "one job for life" thing either.

This is true. Until recently I didn't know just how automated though... turns out peak coal employment in the US was in the early 50's (some say 1923; the two peaks were quite similar), at over 860,000 jobs. Now? Less than a 10th of that. The vast majority of the collapse was back in 1958-1960, a loss of over 450,000 jobs. The 2nd-biggest loss period was the Reagan years. While the Obama administration saw some losses in Kentucky, coal mining employment in WV actually increased, and while the percentage loss of coal mining jobs was relatively high, the actual number of jobs lost was quite modest, ~35,000 and basically continued the historical decline since 1980.

That only works if you are knowledgeable about foreign policy. No one but the most diehard redhats will ever say that Trump is anything resembling the foreign policy expert that Nixon was.

Why are you so hung up on wind turbines? Personally I'm not a big fan (but better than murdering the climate by burning coal or oil). I'm mainly concerned what they do to whole landscapes. Look, in Austria we have a single state that's energy independent. This is how about a third (!) of it looks:



Really, flying into Vienna from the south or east at night is completely hypnotic. Thousands upon thousands of these turbines below blinking red in complete unison, stretching for miles and miles. And that's just to power one tiny and extremely flat state. Totally unworkable anywhere else here because there be mountains and tourists who don't want to see wind parks.

The clever thing would be figuring out how we can solve the problem of ever increasing energy demand without destroying too much in the process. There actually are such solutions. I personally liked the Desertec project which died a political death unfortunately. The plan was to cover parts of the Sahara desert with solar panels and deliver the energy to Europe by means of new and shiny smart grids.

This is how much we would have to cover so the whole bloody world doesn't need another source of energy:



Now that is a project worth fighting for. Yes it's destructive too. But in contrast to what we're doing currently it's ridiculously eco friendly. Whatcha think how many jobs this could create? Hundreds of thousands building the panels. Probably millions building the required smart grids. And that's over many decades. But of course... it requires an international effort. In a politically unstable region. Too much for us to handle so let's burn coal and wait for the next nuclear power plant to blow up

Nuclear power plants cannot "blow up". At least in terms of a nuclear explosion. Physically impossible.

I am numb. It was unreal. He stood at his podium and extoled the joys, yes the joys, of bringing back all that "safe" and "beautiful" coal. at that point, Wall Street rallied a little with his cheering crowds. As soon as his speech was over, Wall Street tanked again, giving back its gains.

No, I think too many of you live in a magical fantasy world where pumping thousands of tons of gaseous garbage into the sky is fine, because it just vanishes into The Phantom Zone via a porthole opened by Jesus.

Seriously?

You have such great disdain for Christians that you think they are that blind?

Not all.
Just enough in the right places to screw things up.

It's not about Christians per se. We also have our own set of tards and we call them that. There are those who believe Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and they are just as fervent .about it as any Christian fundamentalist. And yes, we believe the Republicans are hell bent upon destroying the planet because they want a reset. They want a world in which they rule. Before 911, we had Timothy Mcvey, the Unibomber, and the guy who set a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics. They didn't go away.

Damn, that would've been a cool ass idea. Looks like the Sub-Sahara could use some freedom

There's an area in Northern California along the route I travel to visit family that sees a wind farm kinda similar to that. It doesn't bug me any....I'm sure people bitched about electricity cables and phone lines a hundred years ago too. But you're right that if there's a more efficient way to do something, we ought to fight for that. Coal is finite. So too is nuclear energy.

And it's not like the land in that red square is being used for much else anyway right now. They wouldn't be sacrificing pristine forests or rich soiled farmland or historic cities. If the infrastructure to transport the power from the solar panels to the rest of the power-consuming world could be built & maintained cheap enough it would be a great idea IMO. They just made a solar farm right here on Fort Gordon in what was a sandy area of scrub oak and pines (no big sacrifice to the wildlife/ecosystem in other words) to supplement the local existing grid.

How is nuclear energy finite?

Uranium doesn't regenerate itself, the last I checked.

What about fast breeder reactors?

For that matter the world is in no danger of running low on uranium anytime in the foreseeable future either

Just thought some of you may be amused by this week's cover of Der Spiegel: