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Comment by mrottenkolber | Hacker News Reader

Why do you assume I am defending coal?

It's irrational confidence like yours that nuclear power is in any way safe, and therefore a good replacement. Coal doesn't need a replacement, we need to start using energy responsibly. That means not using energy when we don't have it. A nuclear plant is not an acceptable way to generate energy.

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Arguing against nuclear is de facto arguing for coal. Current options for renewable baseload power generation are limited. This will with any luck change sometime in the future, but in the present less nuclear means more coal.

Using less power is not a realistic proposal. You should not expect that to be taken seriously.

Actually, thanks partly to more-efficient tech and mostly to the economy, America's energy usage has been lower in the past few years.

Do you have a source for that? Wolfram Alpha shows a slight dip corresponding with the recession, and the data cuts off at 2010, but the overall trend seems pretty damming: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+power+usage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Co... shows residential and commercial electricity usage declining in 2000 but doesn't seem to have later data.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/... says homes are down to using less energy in 2013 than anytime since the early 2000's. Here's a graph of energy use over time http://nation.time.com/2013/10/24/interactive-see-how-americ...

We think you're defending coal because you say things like "Coal doesn't need a replacement [...] a nuclear plant is not an acceptable way to generate energy" despite the fact that the coal plants are way more polluting and radioactive.

"Coal doesn't need a replacement, we need to start using energy responsibly." That means: stop using coal, and don't replace it with anything. Just stop using so much power.

Tricky to do that without a lot of people dying. Also, if you honestly think that, then what are you doing wasting joules chatting idly on the internet?

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