
Shutdown of US coal power facilities saved over 26k lives, study finds - vanusa
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/06/coal-power-pollution-gas-saved-lives-study
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stevenwoo
It also increased the crop yields of farms downstream from the closed plants a
signficant amount, this is in the linked study and not in the news article. It
would be interesting to compare the full results of decreased resource use for
farming, also the replacement natural gas/ wind/dam versus the former coal
power pollution.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5.epdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5.epdf)

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toomuchtodo
Can farms currently downstream of operating coal plants sue for damages?

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stevenwoo
They could sue but winning seems unlikely - it's killing people/shortening
lives and we in the USA and Australia are trying to extend the lifespan of
coal plants.

Different study but shows correlation with low levels of fine particulate
pollution with premature death.
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2755672)

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Polylactic_acid
The rest of the world is rapidly removing coal while the delusional
politicians of Australia are still trying to ramp up the production of it. How
many properties and wildlife would have been saved if Australia had shut down
its coal production?

~~~
ceejayoz
> How many properties and wildlife would have been saved if Australia had shut
> down its coal production?

Zero. Australia's position on coal is absurdly outdated, but even a complete
cessation of greenhouse emissions by Australia would've only been a drop in
the global bucket at about 1%. They'd still be having these fires even if the
entire country ran on unicorn farts since the 1800s.

~~~
danielharan
Australia exports more like 7% of total fossil fuels by CO2, according to
this: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia-
co2...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia-co2-exports-
third-highest-worldwide/11420654)

~~~
ceejayoz
7% of fossil fuel and 7% of overall emissions aren’t the same thing, though.

~~~
danielharan
It's 7% of emissions caused by fossil fuels, not 7% of the fuels: coal is the
worst of them.

Australia's emissions are smaller, however they enable much larger emissions
elsewhere. Without that coal, India and China would be accelerating their
transition to renewables.

~~~
ceejayoz
> It's 7% of emissions caused by fossil fuels

Which is still not the same thing as 7% of global greenhouse emissions. Plenty
of non-fossil fuel sources for emissions, like burning trees, cows making
methane, etc.

Even if Australia _were_ responsible for 7% of global greenhouse emissions,
ceasing wouldn't be enough.

~~~
danielharan
By that logic, no country's emissions matter, even China.

Meanwhile, if you want to convince other countries to reduce their emissions,
it's much easier when you're part of the solution.

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nategri
While we're still perfecting the renewable situation we need to shut down all
this coal bullshit ASAP and patch in nuclear. I guess people would rather be
_definitely_ killed by particulates and climate change rather than _almost
never_ killed by radiation---just because it sounds scarier. Madness.

~~~
m463
I support nuclear too, but the fact is - nuclear is a political hot potato and
encumbered by enormous financial uncertainty.

If you wanted to spend $1B on energy, spending it on nuclear would be a
crapshoot, while spending it on solar or solar + batteries would lead to
implementation relatively quickly.

It's unfortunate given this table:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Tables_of_energ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Tables_of_energy_content)

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cmpolis
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jmpman
How many opioid overdoses happened among the unemployed coal miners and their
families?

~~~
adventured
As a direct result, likely not very many compared to 26,000 lives saved. The
lives saved figure will continue to increase considerably over time.

There are a total of ~50,000 coal mining jobs left in the US. In 2005 there
were around ~75,000 coal mining jobs in the US. So a similar number of lives
have been saved - by the estimate - than jobs lost (and obviously a small
fraction of job losses will have led directly to opioid deaths).

Presently US wages are rising the fastest - at about 2x the rate - for the
bottom half of workers versus the top; US wages are hitting new all-time
adjusted highs; and the U6 unemployment rate is somewhere around a real 50-60
year low, matching the floor in year 2000. Further, there has been a massive
boom in natural gas and oil in the US over that time, including in eg the
Appalachian coal region (natural gas) which was hit hard in spots by the coal
industry erosion.

~~~
jmpman
“In total during this period, the shutdown of coal-fired units saved an
estimated 26,610 (5%–95% confidence intervals (CI), 2,725–49,680) lives.” -
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5)

Notice that the cited data, do not include any health statistics.

[https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN](https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN)

The cited github does not exist.
[https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition](https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition)

Searching for user jaburney in github also comes up empty.

It’s hard to validate her health claims, but let’s say that her low end number
of 2725 is valid. At 25,000 coal miners, and let’s say 25,000 coal plant
operators (250 plants * 100 employees per plant) for a total of 50,000
employees impacted. If each of those employees is in a 4 person family, then
200,000 people could have been impacted. If just 3% of those people died due
to addiction, the numbers are equal.

Please don’t interpret my compassion for the unemployed coal miners, coal
plant operators, and train engineers as a dismissal of global warming. The
transition to carbon neutral power needs to happen, but in the process there
will be people left behind, including people who are significantly
economically impacted, leading to divorce, addiction, homelessness etc.

My comment obviously touched a nerve as many people don’t want to consider the
real impact to the workers. And no, they’re not just going to take another bus
across town to another plant. They’re not going to relocate. They’re not going
to learn to code. They’re going to suffer.

When people question global warming, maybe they’re asking - Are you sure,
because people are going to die in the transition?

Maybe more people are dying due to unemployment than are being saved due to
lower pollution? Maybe the people who were counted as dying due to pollution
were 95 and didn’t make it to 96? While, the 22 year old addict lost over 50
years of their life.

Regardless, these people dying is a fact everyone should be conscious is
happening. You vote to close coal power plants, you’re voting to kill these
people. There are real consequences.

~~~
philipkglass
I contacted the author about the missing github repository. It's is available
now. The initial push failed because some data files are too large for github.
She's presently separated the data files from the plain code in the repo and
put the data on dropbox.

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elfexec
Study funded by whom? When I see "study finds" in a news piece, I get
skeptical.

You could also do a "study" showing that millions of lives were saved in the
US due to coal since 30% of US electricity comes from coal? How many hospitals
were powered by coal-powered electricity?

India has tons of coal and 300 million people without electricity.

You could do a study showing that hundreds of thousands of lives are lost in
inda due to lack of coal use.

Africa has 600 million people without electricity.

You could do a study showing that millions of lives are lost in india due to
lack of coal use.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world-
without-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world-without-
power/)

I'd love to see the cherrypicked data and biased methodology of this study.

