Coal is still a valuable asset with many beneficial uses

November 19, 2024

Over recent years the amount of coal used in the US for producing electricity has dropped dramatically. This same decline can be seen across the globe, with 100 countries that have either gone coal-free or have set 2040 as a phase-out date.

The environmental movement is responsible for most of this, prompted by the Paris Agreement in 2015, where 75 nations focused on doing away with coal use by 2050. The environmental faction tells the story that burning coal is a major factor in what they say is the dangerous over-abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere.

To correct this problem, we must stop using fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to produce electricity, power vehicles or other uses. Even if it is true that we have too much CO2 in the atmosphere — and more than a few scientists argue that position isn’t true — this perspective ignores that fossil fuels contribute to our lives in other ways that are quite useful in addition to producing the power on which we rely so heavily.

And let’s not ignore the idea of many scientists that the level of CO2 in our atmosphere not only should not be reduced, but should be doubled to promote the growth of plant life. Plants and trees consume CO2 and release oxygen, which is critical to human life, into the atmosphere.

On this topic, Mining Digital tells us that “The demise of steam coal — also known as thermal coal — has been well documented, as investors shy away from the fossil fuel that fired the Industrial Revolution and has been an energy mainstay pretty much ever since, save for the past decade or so. Yet one corner of the coal market is thriving: metallurgical coal, otherwise known as coking coal, and vital for making steel.”

Coal is a critical part of steel, and steel is a huge factor in so many things, such as in buildings, as reinforcing rods in concrete, in bridges, tools, ships, trains, cars, bicycles, machines, electrical appliances, furniture, and weapons.

Oil is also used in many things, like plastics, fertilizers, petrochemicals crayons, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, tires, ammonia, lubricants, coolants and paints.

So, you see, these fossil fuels have other uses as well as their contribution to electricity production and propelling vehicles and other devices of various descriptions. But the Biden/Harris administration, with its myopic view of reality and the manic anti-fossil fuel attitude of the left, wants to destroy fossil fuels, and especially coal, which has been, and can still be, so valuable to our region.

While coal use is still declining, and coal-fired power plants are fewer and fewer, the rate of that decline has slowed recently, as power demand is rising for datacenters and manufacturing entities.

And a forecast from S&P Global Commodity Insights points to this as a lifeline for coal power. “But tech companies are building power-hungry datacenters to support new artificial intelligence applications. Additional demand from new datacenters will double in just a year, to 47,448 GWh (Gigawatt hours) between 2024 and 2025, and rise more than eightfold by 2030 to 199,982 GWh.”

President-elect Donald Trump named former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is thought that the EPA will ease regulations affecting fossil fuel-fired power plants.

Trump said of Zeldin, who served in the House from 2015 to 2023, that he will ensure “fair and swift” deregulatory decisions. The result of this will be a boon to American businesses and still maintain the highest environmental standards.

Zeldin said in a recent statement that, “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

E&E News offered this idea of what will happen. “Some of the most stringent rules enacted by the Biden administration will likely end up in the dust bin, such as the agency’s regulations to reduce climate pollution from power plants, according to analysts. Other standards may survive in a weakened form, like the administration’s rules to lower methane emissions.”

“I think the power plant rule is pretty easy for them to revoke,” said Jeff Holmstead, who served as EPA’s air chief under President George W. Bush. “There’s really no one in industry who supports that rule. People just think that EPA was entirely unrealistic.”

Fortunately for those businesses and individuals who support the continued use of coal, not only for power production, but also for the other uses it has, the onset of the Trump/Vance administration is a breath of fresh air. 

Reversing the Biden administration’s mindless restrictions on coal, oil and other fossil fuels will allow the US to regain its position as energy independent, bring back to our country the sale of coal and gas that was sent to other countries by Biden’s orders, and bring down the needlessly high prices for gasoline and diesel fuel.

These changes will not restore the thriving coal industry of a few decades ago, but will allow its use for energy production as well as other positive purposes that have recently come to light.

What is happening in the aftermath of the 2024 election

November 12, 2024

“A relatively trouble-free presidential election was good news for those working to restore faith in the system,” the Associated Press (AP) reported last week. “Less encouraging was a flood of misinformation that sought to undermine trust in voting and sow chaos, something experts say is likely to get worse in the years ahead.”

So far, not many problems have been reported, but the AP did note that “The most significant test for officials on Election Day was a series of bomb threats reported in five battleground states, some of which forced polling places to be evacuated temporarily.”

Early voting saw more than 84 million people who voted either in person or by mail. Together with votes from polling places, former President Donald Trump won the popular vote with 74,783,561 votes and the Electoral College with 312 votes. Vice President Kamala Harris received 71,187,165 votes and 226 Electoral College votes, as the AP reported Sunday. 

Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 704,468 votes, and Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. received 681,096, even though he had withdrawn from the contest, and despite his efforts was left on the ballot in some states.

Now that this much-anticipated election of the next President, members of Congress and various state and local races is over, people might expect things to settle down.

But no, there is still a very lively atmosphere in the country. Of course, Trump followers are pretty happy with the results. They are now concerned with the transfer of power and seeing who Trump will put in the important positions of the new administration.

But those on the other side are having serious problems dealing with what happened. A lot of comments were focused on Donald Trump and all of the reasons why he shouldn’t have won, rather than on why Harris didn’t win.

Some serious and sensible observers, however, have focused on problems with the Harris campaign, generally giving her accolades, but also mentioning things she didn’t do that would have helped her, and things she did that didn’t help.

In a column in The Washington Post contributing columnist Matt Bai said this: “But you must admit that Harris, like Hillary Clinton then, was not a perfect candidate with a clear message. I think the most stunning numbers in some of the state exit polling are those that show Trump winning significant shares of union voters, Black voters and Latino voters. To me, that sort of confirms my instinct that it was risky, if not negligent, for Harris to run a campaign that was almost entirely about how awful her opponent is.”

And comedian Bill Maher, a self-described liberal who often says some very wise things, called the Democratic party “losers” and suggested that they “look in the mirror” following the election. “We had an election,” he said during a “Real Time” monologue on HBO Friday night. “I did not vote for the winner, we’ll see what the winners do now. They won, now they have reality they have to deal with. We’ll see what they do.”

But not everyone is so calm and sensible. We find the common idea of some celebrities threatening to move out of the country, while others refuse to perform in red states. There have also been videos made by disenchanted Harris followers screaming at the top of their lungs about their plight.

They are predicting that there will be no more elections, and that Trump will go after his political enemies, just as the DOJ and the left has done to him. 

“I think that we also have to deal with the issue of race and gender. There was a lot of gender bias in this,” said Al Sharpton. “There was a lot of race bias in this and I think that we thought a lot of voters were more progressive in those areas than they were.”

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin was "profoundly disturbed by the results." She feels for the working class, the elderly and her own daughter, claiming she "now has less rights than I have." She worries that Trump will establish "internment camps." And she also said that "sexism and misogyny" were how Trump won the Latino vote in a Texas county that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

Other Harris supporters made these comments: “I might wake up a slave.” “I’m in Texas and I am so afraid.” “If you’re a black man and you voted for Trump … I hope that cop beats you so good.” “Trying not to worry too much but I’ve been up since 3 crying and panicking.” “I feel like i’ll [sic] be going 6ft under.” “I’m panicking [for real.] We need a proper evacuation plan.”

Fortunately for us all, we did not elect a candidate because of their race or gender, or because they refused press conferences and answering questions in a serious manner. And we did not fail to elect a candidate because of their personality, the baseless and silly references to Hitler and fascism, and because they are a lawfare victim. 

Instead, we elected a candidate based on policies proven far better than what the American people and the nation have suffered under for the last four years.

Is our election system secure enough to produce the true result?

November 5, 2024

Today is election day. Voting is a sacred right and a critical duty of eligible voters. And although this is the day that Americans traditionally have gone to the polls to cast their ballots, tens of millions have already voted, either through early voting, or by mail-in ballots.

This election is a critical one. It will determine who our next president will be, how the two houses of Congress will be controlled, who the governors in many states will be and which party will control state legislatures, and many municipal and county leadership positions will be decided. It is a very important day.

The country is more politically and ideologically divided than it has been in many, many years. That divide will not be significantly changed by the election results.

And while most of us are hoping for a clean, secure election with few problems, the nature of the current election processes virtually guarantees that there will be some potentially serious problems of errors, ballot tampering and fraud.

Mailing ballots to voters, no matter how valid the reasons are for doing it, provides opportunities for problems. Delays in the postal system may cause deadlines to be missed. Ballots can be stolen on their way to and from voters. And drop boxes placed on streets for voters to return ballots after voting are targets for mischief.

Already in Washington state hundreds of ballots were recently destroyed by fire in one drop box. And, a drop box in Oregon was also set afire, although the loss of ballots there was small. Still, hundreds of voters’ choices were lost.

The Associated Press reported that “[s]ix states have banned ballot drop boxes since 2020: Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina and South Dakota, according to research by the Voting Rights Lab, which advocates for expanded voting access. Other states have restricted their use, including Ohio and Iowa, which now permits only one drop box per county, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.”

Other election problems have accompanied the introduction of computer voting devices, which can be, and have been, hacked when connected to the Internet. These devices also may have been programmed by the people that produced or installed them to make changes to election numbers as ballots are counted.

In the 2020 election, there were allegations supported by evidence that people who delivered ballots to voters who were in care facilities or who were cognitively impaired coached the voters on how to vote, or actually marked the ballots themselves and managed to get voter signatures on them before submitting them.

And 26 states and Washington, DC allow military personnel to vote by email or an online portal, and seven states allow voting via fax. Some states allow voters with disabilities to use some of those options to vote.

On the latter topic, National Public Radio warned late last year that “advice from cybersecurity experts is clear: Widespread internet voting at this point is a bad idea.”

Clearly, the variety of voting options available presents many opportunities for election tampering and fraud. Our elections are too important to allow the sorts of insecurities present in the current voting methods.

University of Michigan computer science and engineering professor J. Alex Halderman is considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on election security. He offers tips that can help us ensure that votes are recorded accurately and securely, among which are these: 
* Avoid voting methods that don’t have a paper trail.
* If you use a ballot-marking device at the polls, review your printout.
* Don’t vote online.
* Encourage your state to do a risk-limiting audit in future elections.

Digicert, a company that refers to itself as “The global leader in digital trust,” recommends three requirements of a trustworthy voting method:
* Fraud prevention: Ensuring every vote is legitimate.
* Privacy: Protecting voters' choices from prying eyes.
* Cost-effectiveness: Making elections affordable for everyone.

And Bloomberg online offered the following advice prior to the 2020 election: “Election voting is the cybersecurity industry’s most difficult challenge, and casting ballots on paper is the safest option against any digital disruptions, says CrowdStrike Holdings co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Alperovitch.”

“Voting is the hardest thing to secure when it comes to cybersecurity,” Alperovitch said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “The only way we know how to do it well and safely is by using paper.” He also said that in-person voting and ballots that are either mailed in or dropped off at collection sites are the best ways to ensure that a digital hack won’t happen.

Secure elections are a requirement. However, many of the aspects of our elections today are to make registering to vote easier and voting more convenient. 

But election security must not be weakened just to make it easier for people. Other things can be done to improve the election process without opening it up to tampering and fraud.

Every voter must have proved eligibility and produce a photo ID or other form of proof of identity, and have paper ballots that can be kept on file and referred to when needed. If these security measures cause problems, then we must just buckle up and deal with them.