Shutdown of US coal power facilities saved over 26k lives, study finds | Hacker News Reader

Shutdown of US coal power facilities saved over 26k lives, study finds

theguardian.com

94 pointsvanusa52 comments

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

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

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...

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?

I did comment that this may be in reference to the latest bushfires, but thinking about it, our coal industry specifically did not contribute the primary driving force behind them. That may be more incumbent on the global aspect of climate change.

So I suppose you're referring to the more direct aspects which have affected people and wildlife over the many years, rather than the elephant in the room.

The coal industry is a driving force behind climate change which was the primary cause of the bush fires. Of course its not the entire issue so the fires would have still happened but how much lesser would they have been. I don't know but the answer seems to be between somewhat lesser and much lesser.

The coal industry globally, yes. The coal industry locally, not so much. I interpreted the way you said it to not be pointing at the fires, otherwise you might have said it straight up when, it's the elephant in the room. The other reason I interpreted it that way, is when you single out the Australian government as continuing to support it when other countries are losing their appetite.

The more direct impacts come in polluted waterways, coal mining operations and any other deforestation that resulted from our local coal industry.

Which reminds me, perhaps the most effective way to affect climate change would be to stop exports of coal and shut down mining entirely.

Assuming that browner coal from other locations isn't too cheap, for overseas power plants.

Or alternately we could increase tariffs on coal exports. We can discourage coal use globally and have a lot of money to pump into renewable energy and it's a lot more palatable to the electorate.

"Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter, – accounting for 35 per cent of all coal exported" https://www.australianmining.com.au/features/where-does-aust...

If Australia stopped coal exports, we could have a significant impact on the viability of coal as a fuel source. If we're serious about climate change we could halt coal exports immediately, which would spike the cost of coal and lead to the closure of coal plants already on thin margins. Sounds drastic but maybe not if you consider how little time we have to correct course.

We'd need take care of the coal workers. Potentially continue their salaries for a year, then phase it out gradually. There's only $35k workers in the coal industry. Average $100k salary = $3.5 Billion per year. Doable.

I don't know what to do with the coal mines and their investors. I'm inclined to say screw them. Let them go bankrupt. But this might hurt investor confidence in Australia ...

I suppose I was thinking more about coal burning at the time, and only remembered later (in my other child comment) that we also export a substantial amount of coal. Yet I did not realise that was the scale of our coal exports.

As far as I know there were far larger fires in the 1974–1975 fire season but in those days there was no talk of climate change being a driving factor. In that season 45,000,000 hectares burned in Northern Territory, 29,000,000 in Western Australia, 17,000,000 in Southern Australia and 7,500,000 in Queensland. Going even further back to the 'Black Thursday bushfires' in 1851 saw 5,000,000 ha. burn which caused the death of 1 million sheep - there are no numbers on the death toll among wild animals. The source for these data is a report titled 'National Inquiry on Bushfire Mitigation and Management', Appendix D 'Fire history in Australia' on page 339-344 [1].

The current fire season has seen about 6,300,000 ha. burn. A difference between the current season and previous seasons is that these latest fires have affected densely populated areas, including holiday destinations. Another important difference - at least in the amount of attention these fires get - is that there were no celebrities driving the cause in 1974-1975, let alone in 1851.

Your statement that The coal industry is a driving force behind climate change which was the primary cause of the bush fires is not supported by the previously mentioned report which abstract goes as follows: Bushfires are an inherent part of the Australian environment. We cannot prevent them, but we can minimise the risks they pose to life, property and infrastructure, production systems, and the environment. Australia has a large and very capable force of volunteer and career firefighters, advanced firefighting technologies, and significant firefighting resources. But the geographical scale of our country, the large and expanding rural–urban interface, and the potential for rapid bushfire development and spread under adverse weather conditions mean that individual Australians cannot rely solely on fire agencies to protect their lives and property from bushfires. Bushfires have a fundamental and irreplaceable role in sustaining many of Australia’s natural ecosystems and ecological processes and are a valuable tool for achieving land management objectives.However, if they are too frequent or too infrequent, too severe or too mild, or mistimed, they can erode ecosystem health and biodiversity and compromise other land management goals. We have been learning to live with fire since the first Australians arrived on our continent. We need to continue, and enrich, that learning process in contemporary circumstances and be able to adapt our planning and responses to change.This report seeks to help all Australians meet these challenges.

[1] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&conte...

Climate change is almost certainly making some disasters more intense and more frequent but you're right to point out that it's not like all devastating natural disasters will stop if we reverse climate change.

We also have more people on this Earth and better measurements now so it's not surprising that more people are recorded as being affected.

So, climate change didn't start the brush fires but it probably did make them X% more intense, but we don't know what X is.

Do you agree or disagree with Prime Minister Morrison that the claim that the world is warming due fossil fuel use is false?

Even Scott has admitted that climate change is real. What he won't admit is that he is doing nothing about it.

Does does he admit that fossil fuels are causing climate change, or does he agree that the climate is changing but deny fossil fuels are causing it?

The latest statement I have heard from him is that Australia is doing its part in countering climate change but it will not change its plans on coal mining. I suppose that implies that it is human caused since otherwise there would be no way for the country to do anything.

Comparing area burnt from 50 years or more ago with today doesn't take into account the resources now available to fight fires. It could be that if current fire fighting assets were avialable in days gone by, far less an area may have been burnt.

It may be that if current fire fighting assets were available back in the day, substantially less an area may have been burnt, so comparing past areas burnt with current areas in not an entirely 1-1 comparison.

> 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.

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...

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

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.

> 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.

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.

FWIW I think the counterfactual is not asking what the impact is if Australia stopped emitting greenhouse gases directly, but what the impact would be if it stopped producing coal (for both domestic use and export).

Given Australia is a substantial producer and exporter of coal (responsible for around 7% of global production [1]), and that coal (+ natgas + oil) power generation are responsible for around 30% of global greenhouse gas production [2], and assuming that coal is responsible for between half and all of GHG emissions from power plants [3], you could ballpark that Australian-produced coal is responsible for an incremental 1-2% or so of global greehouse gas emissions (0.3 * 0.07 * [0.5~1]).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Australia [2]: https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/ [3]: https://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-coal/coal-electricity

As a pretty good estimate, roughly zero?

Do you have any proposed mechanism for how Australia’s coal production would lead to increased property losses, aside from the very marginal effect of Australia’s coal production on global warming multiplied by the very marginal effect of global warming on bushfires?

How do you reckon the impact of climate change is marginal?

I wonder if fire damage is linear though.

For example, 1% higher temperatures or 1% less moisture or 1% higher wind might produce more than 1% additional fire damage when one occurs.

There might be a reinforcement effect where a slight change in fire conditions produces much more damage when compounded over the range of the fire.

I'm not sure we know the variables well enough to know the exact amount though.

Thunderstorms and fire tornadoes say your theory is correct:

https://qz.com/1779572/how-australias-massive-bushfires-are-...

That is a completely relevant article, and anyone downvoting this is just willfully ignorant.

There could be an argument made that coal and oil have saved basically every tree in the world (and saved the whales).

The book "the rational optimist" discusses how coal curbed deforestation, and oil wells replaced whale oil.

Of course now other forms of energy are becoming practical.

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.

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...

"Nuclear power; the world's most expensive way to boil water".

Luckily, there are many cheaper power alternatives that don't involve the problem of having to bury nuclear waste for THOUSANDS of years.

You have it backwards. We need to patch in fast-to-build renewable and imperfect storage capacity while continuing to research nuclear fusion. Fission plants however are both uneconomical and slow to build - to the point that even the fastest builds of already safety reviewed designs would not complete until after our fate in climate change is largely irreversibly decided.

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

A lack of programs in place to aid unemployed coal miners is not an argument against shutting down coal mines.

How much did the Purdue family make by selling Oxycontin?

How many opioid overdoses were prevented by now employed natural gas miners. Its a ridiculous statement to begin with since opioid overdoses are almost entirely the fault of a few corporations overmarketing them.

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.

“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

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

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN

The cited github does not exist. 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.

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.

If we're going to start asking non sequitur questions, I might as well join in. How many unemployed coal miners could have used unemployment insurance until they migrated to a new city to find employment in a different sector and thereby support their families?

If your goal is to create more make-work programs, how about picking an industry that doesn't have massive negative externalities?

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-...

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com