Gregory Wrightstone
Coal wiping has become a marketing strategy for the natural gas industry, which has embraced the pseudoscientific view that coal burning is dangerous.
In the process, natural gas proponents gave credence to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) faulty regulatory system, which incorrectly classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant and blamed health effects on low-level pollution without scientific evidence. Additionally, the myth persists that coal, oil and gas are environmental scourges.
Perhaps the most enthusiastic user of this foolish strategy is Toby Rice, CEO of Pittsburgh-based EQT, who two years ago launched a global plan to replace coal with liquefied natural gas. In June, the head of the country's largest natural gas producer pitched his product as a “decarbonization power” at the RealClearEnergy conference (see video link above for his part), saying:
“What we want to do at EQT… is get people focused on real practical solutions that allow us to provide the world with energy security and address concerns about global emissions. The path is very simple: move the world from coal to natural gas.
Although natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal when burned, the basic premise of Rice's speech was based on a popular myth: carbon dioxide2 Emissions will overheat the planet. Organizations we lead, CO2 The coalition has overwhelming evidence from leading scientists that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are not dangerous but are beneficial to plant growth and crop production.
we need more carbon dioxide2 not lower than. Coal miners might say replacing their product with natural gas is a threat to greenery.
Now, the natural gas industry's Marcellus Shale Alliance is further demonizing coal, claiming Pennsylvanians have realized as much as $1 trillion in health benefits by replacing coal-fired power generation with gas-fired power plants and reducing emissions of nitrogen and sulfur compounds. .
We have no objection to the emissions data. However, the link to improved health is based on the EPA's methodology, which for decades has resisted providing evidence of such a link.
Steve Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and author of “Pollution Panic: Why and How,” said the EPA has long spread data manipulation and lies about the health effects of particulate matter , particulate matter may be a vehicle for chemicals to enter people's lungs.
“The bottom line is that the claim that particulate matter causes death is the most blatant scientific fraud of our time,” said Milloy, an attorney with master's degrees in health sciences and biostatistics. “Despite 30 years of fear-mongering about millions of deaths, the EPA – and no one else – has ever shown a single body.”
Milloy has been at loggerheads with the EPA since the 1990s over claims that particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller (PM2.5) is life-threatening. He said environmental extremists at the EPA designated PM2.5 as a dangerous pollutant in order to shut down the coal industry.
Milloy said that while the EPA maintains that PM2.5 causes 8 million deaths each year, it ignores a conflicting epidemiological study by California researchers and the results of its own experiments that failed to detect Symptoms develop in human subjects intentionally exposed to high concentrations of particulate matter.
In 1995, the agency's own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee rejected the EPA's findings on the health effects of PM2.5 and was unable to provide raw data to test the claims. The EPA also declined to provide data to congressional investigators.
The lack of support for EPA regulation of PM2.5 is not surprising. A 2023 study by Dr. Indur Goklany found that despite increases in industrialization and particulate emissions in five Asian countries: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and China, mortality and disease rates increased over a 27-year period. improve.
The natural gas industry has joined in demonizing coal to gain acceptance from the “green” lobby and the politicians who pander to it. However, natural gas producers are simply feeding coal miners to the crocodiles they hope will escape. It's a fool's game, as evidenced by the frequent targeting of natural gas operations by environmental extremists.
A better approach would be for gas and coal interests to come together to defend their respective industries and the tremendous benefits hydrocarbons have brought to the world since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when coal first fueled steam engines. An alliance of drillers and miners can help defeat the evil anti-science ideology that seeks to destroy their livelihoods and the civilization they created.
This review was first published on Real Clear Energy on July 22, 2024.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; CO Executive Director2 Union, Arlington, Virginia; Author An Inconvenient Truth: The Science Al Gore Doesn't Want You to Know and Very Handy Warming: How Moderate Warming and More CO2 Can Benefit Humanity.
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