Climate Blogs Exposed: Public Health, Chinese Rail Investment and Hope--10/31

There is no doubt amongst the scientific community that climate change is human-caused, but lately we’ve heard a lot of talk from both presidential campaigns about coal energy. This week the Physicians for Social Responsibility posted a survey on their blog asking people what information would be most useful for them to know about coal. Take the survey today!

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) recognizes global warming as one of the most serious public health emergencies of our time. It threatens the health, even the survival, of human beings around the world.

Electricity generation accounts for 40 percent of our nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions -- and 80 percent of that comes from burning coal. That means coal-fired power plants generate almost one-third of our total CO2 emissions! Yet despite the deadly threat from these global warming gases, energy companies propose to build more than 100 more coal-fired power plants across the U.S.

All this talk about coal has turned China green and American environmentalists green…with envy that is! News was released this week that China is planning on investing US $280 billion in a new rail system to act as a stimulus to their struggling economy. I hope members of the US Congress are paying attention and taking close notes. Climate Progress reports:

The Beijing News quoted a rail official as saying that, while the network needed extending, the massive investment was also intended to help lift the nation’s economy as it suffers amid the global woes.

“New rail investment will become a shining light in efforts to push forward economic growth,” railway ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said.

Over the summer I wrote a post on Exxon Mobil’s record breaking second-quarter profits of $11.6 billion. Well if you thought that was an outrageous amount of money, Exxon just released their 3Q profits and set a new record at over $14 billion! Common Dreams reports:

Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, smashed its own record for the highest quarterly earnings by a US firm by delivering a profit of $14.83bn.

Like Shell and BP, Exxon benefited from the high price of crude oil. Its profits amounted to $162m a day or $113,000 a minute, despite disruption caused to offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico by two hurricanes - Gustav and Ike.

But don’t feel powerless in response to this news from Exxon. Although big oil is wants us to think that it is impossible to eliminate fossil fuels from our society, a report developed by Greenpeace in conjunction with scientists from around the world was released this week showing that the world can eliminate fossil fuels by 2090 while sustaining economic growth. Dave Roberts from Grist reports:

We often hear about how the world "can't" reduce emissions as much as it needs to, that we "have to" keep using coal because it's abundant, that renewables "can't" replace fossil fuels because of intermittency and cost, and that shifting to a clean energy economy would be "too expensive."

As I've said here many times, this use of categoricals is meant to shut down debate. And it's not true -- the word is not "can't," it's "won't."

What did we miss? Let us know in the comments below and have a Happy Halloween!