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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Horrible comic and completely misses the point.

Trump was voted in by coal miners. Coal Miners whose jobs have been slipping away and towns devastated by the "Heroin Epidemic"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/white-death...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-h...

Continuing to ignore rural America will only make them more angry and continue to vote in assholes like Trump. Clinton lost precisely in the rural states that mattered: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, etc. etc.

As long as liberal Americans are unable to understand that coal miners are literally losing their jobs and dying in their hometowns, then the discussion will not move forward.

The numbers aren't pretty for rural America. It's a legitimate problem, and those citizens are blaming the EPA.

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What are you even talking about?

1. I completely understand that coal miners are literally losing their jobs.

2. I understand that Trump was voted in by coal miners.

3. I didn't mention Clinton, like, at all.

Clinton was the only hope at defeating Trump. I cast my vote multiple times against Trump (in the primaries AND in the final election). I am personally outraged that Trump won this election.

In any case, Clinton's failure to rally rural America to her side cost her the election. She tried of course. In any case, you gotta offer something to the Coal Miners.

They're not stupid ya know. They know that pro-environmental policy is hurting their jobs and they voted somebody in to push back against the EPA. Seems like a legit strategy to me.

Trust me, I'm pretty mad that Trump won. However, your post seems to be a tangent from the point I was making in the grandparent post.

Coal and the environment had nothing to do with Trump's win.

Indeed. The electoral college overriding the popular vote was a bigger issue at hand.

> I understand that Trump was voted in by coal miners.

Yes, tens and tens of millions of Americans work in coal mines. No.

Yeah, I have the feeling that people view from Wyoming to West Virginia as one giant smoking pit crawling with Uruk Hai Trump voters.

47% of votes went to Trump. I don't think 47% of American voters are coal miners. Focusing on them seems exaggerated.

Unfortunately, the popular vote doesn't matter.

Clinton lost Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, the entire damn south (aside from New Mexico), etc. etc.

If Clinton had slightly better showing with manufacturing-based southerners or the energy sector, she would have won.

Since when does the south or west virginia go for democrats?

Clinton lost because she wasn't able to get out her base in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

If Trump lost Texas you wouldn't be talking about how he failed to reach voters in Washington.

He has been a climate change denier for a long time now. I think he genuinely believes -and surrounds himself with people that believe- that climate change is a disputed fact.

Show me a photo of water side cities or homes that have changed at all in the past 100 years. Google can show you dozens whose waterlines have not changed at all.

Climate change is about changing temperatures. Not necessarily about changing water-lines.

We've got over 150 years of solid temperature measurements. We can reach into historical measurements of varying accuracy as well (such as that Japanese ritual where they measured an ice bridge for the past 600 years for religious reasons).

The average temperature of the world has rose by approximately 1.5 degrees Celsius since the 1850s. Do you agree or disagree with this fact?

http://imgur.com/p46gi7L

Around man-made structures you'll not appreciate it because the trend is the opposite, we usually gain land to the sea with construction. Shoreline of San Francisco in 1900 probably reached far beyond the actual point in the developed areas.

Water lines are not necessarily indicative and we didn't have satellite pictures or detailed measurements 100 years ago but you can definitely see the sea rise affecting some areas in the world, like islands in the Pacific Ocean or the extensions of salt water marshes. In satellite pictures is posible to appreciate the change the shape of the shores in some points of the globe, if you have a good resolution capture, comparing pictures of just a decade ago.

Here's the kicker. You don't even need to see pictures. We have constant detailed measurements of sea levels (better than water lines) taken all around the planet going back to several decades.

If you want to check them, NASA has a great page for it. http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/ (and yes, they have pictures too).

And if you think NASA is somehow biased, you can check pretty much any other environmental agency or space agency in the world.

These jobs are not coming back, period.

But the social issues do merit addressing

> These jobs are not coming back, period.

Yeah, but that's not a winning message to the Coal Miners. Trump's fake promises won them over.

These jobs might actually come back, but the cost for upgrading coal plants to use modern techniques like chemical looping make it a bit unviable at the moment (or maybe not I'm not sure). If we ever got a carbon tax in place, then the market could sort itself out in that regard.

There is some argument here that the coal jobs being proposed are related to "clean coal tech" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal_technology). Given that most of our energy comes from coal in this country, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that those jobs could be created in this sector.

Judging from the research, the approach for sequestering is quite expensive. In addition, pumping CO2 into subsurface layers of the earth only increases the risks of leaks.

Basically, this is probably where the industry is headed and some states are probably going to go full board with this approach while others will pursue renewables.

I will say, despite the issues I've seen regarding climate change denial - it is promising to hear the use of "clean coal" tech, as much as I cringe hearing it. Seems to imply that there is at least some level of concern for the environment - rather than none at all.

You're right. Its a legitimate problem and there should be schemes / policy to address that but going backwards is not the solution.

We rather give coal-miners theirs old jobs back rather than protect the future generations.

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