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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Australia can reasonably claim to be managing their reef well while they still support their coal industry so heavily.

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Our politicians support coal because political "donations" are legal. Fully fund political parties out of general revenue and fully fund ICAC and we'll be in a better position.

Coal is dying faster than the Great Barrier Reef. The fat bastards in charge of coal have more money to fight it.

What good would Australia moving away from coal do anyone? If Aus stopped all coal activities, absolutely nothing changes about climate change.

Lower supply means higher prices which increases the attractiveness of renewable energy?

It would mean fewer stories like this one, for one thing.

How does burning less coal do "absolutely nothing about climate change"? If you state something like that you have to at least give a convincing argument.

fruityrudy is arguing in other comment replies that the Australian coal is "only 3%" of CO2 emissions so he probably thinks that's so close to zero it's basically zero and negligible..

I wonder how he'd feel about a 3% pay cut.

Climate change is not directly proportional to co2 in the atmosphere. To reverse it requires large reductions. China, India, US. Australia’s production and usage is a rounding error at the moment.

Economics 101 is killing coal, nothing else.

Digging rock out of the ground, lugging it across the world in massive quantities and then burning it is an expensive activity. There are cheaper alternatives, the most obvious one is natural gas, and that's similar to comparing terminal lung cancer to terminal stomach cancer. Terminal being the key word.

Forget about climate change, health issues (have you been to a country where your eyes hurt?), pro-unionism/anti-unionism and whatever else you like or dislike, coal is not economically viable. Just ask British coal miners. Oh wait, you can't thanks to Margret Thatcher (love her or hate her, she did invent soft-serve ice cream. Seriously). She saw it coming 40 years ago.

Coal is an energy source, absolutely. It works. It's just economically stupid compared to cheaper alternatives.

Just like farriers, blacksmiths, priests and who-knows-what professions are useless, coal miners are too.

Economics 101. And you don't even need to mention climate change. Coal is dead dead dead. Get used to it.

What has coal got to do with reefs?

Direct pollution at coal loading sites. Indirect pollution from coal waste, run-off and AGW effects

This coal is shipped abroad so they build deep water ports near the reefs [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/01/-sp-grea...

One of the largest coal ports (Abbott Point Port) is right in the middle of the coast bordered by the reef, which is currently approved for expansion.

Coal ship grounding on Great Barrier Reef blamed on fatigue

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/14/coal-shi...

From what I understand: Coal produces lots of CO2. CO2 is part of the global warming. Global warming also raises the temperature in the Great Barrier Reef. The GBR cannot handle the sudden temperature increase and dies off.

Or it is the massive tourism with all the boats and people touching and contaminating the reef.

Also CO2 absorbs into the oceans and makes them more acidic. This prevents corals from growing properly.

https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/scientists-iden...

If it's as responsibly managed as Australia claims, I guess a sizable part of the reef is off limits to tourists, so it should be easy to find out if there is significantly more damage in areas where diving is allowed?

Typically there is less damage in the areas where tourists dive. As the reef experiences more bleaching events and dies, the tourism operators cherry pick the parts that aren't bleached.

The reef has pretty well had it due to climate change. It's only a matter of time, so better management of local effects such as runoff from land will delay the death, not avoid it. [1]

Apart from the climate change denying Federal Government [2], the opposition is being driven by tourist operators, who are afraid that people will write the reef off as not worth seeing [3]. Maybe they should be running a huge "Last Chance to See" campaign?

[1] https://ecos.csiro.au/coral-reefs-need-cooler-water/

[2] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/barnaby-joyce-sets-u...

[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-22/great-barrier-reef-to...

How does [2] evidence “climate denying”. They just want to protect rural jobs.

Australia is not a leader. They represent a tiny fraction of CO2 emissions and it doesn’t make sense to tank the economy if the big emitters like China don’t actually take action.

And how do you convince china, being on average way poorer than australia - to abolish coal, when rich australia is not?

And as far as I know, china is big on reneawbles. Australia is not, despite having top conditions for it.

Australia is a much bigger emitter than China on a per-capita basis and is much wealthier. I don't see how we can convince China that they should cut emissions if places like Australia and the USA won't.

Yes, coal is one of the biggest CO2 problems globally, and it has been for decades. Unfortunately, globally we are increasing its usage, well, because more people still need electricity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions#/me...

If Australia stopped all coal activities what would change about the reef?

Coal exports represent 3% of global CO2 emissions.

You just have a decrease in GDP for nothing in return.

That’s what many are saying about climate change.

“If we reduce our emissions, nothing changes”.

That’s basically the comment many Americans make in the Wall Street Journal almost daily.

Well for Americans it actually matters at 15%. And China at 28%.

But for Australia it’s a joke.

> Coal exports represent 3% of global CO2 emissions.

3% is HUGE.

Not really. Plus that’s exports - so it’s other countries buying it.

On the global scale, being able to tackle 3% of emissions would be massive news. only 3% is a lot.

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