Free Republic

China's economy is finally getting some good news: Its big factories are staging a recovery as a power crunch that held back production starts to ease because of a big jump in coal supply. A government survey of manufacturing activity increased to 50.1 in November from 49.2 in October, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday. It was the first reading above 50 — indicating expansion rather than contraction — in three months. It was also the first time since March that the index increased over the prior month. Beijing on Tuesday attributed the...

Full Title: When going green is dirty: Colorado's indoor cannabis farms produce 30% more greenhouse emissions than the state's coal mining industry due to electricity use and natural gas consumption, study reveals Growing cannabis indoors requires a lot of energy for lights and climate controls Many states forbid outdoor farming or require operations to be near retail outlets In Colorado, indoor pot farming's carbon footprint is over 30 percent bigger than coal mining Depending on where you are, growing an ounce of weed indoors has the same carbon footprint as burning 7 to 16 gallons of gasoline

The fact that it’s being proposed by Republicans doesn’t make it any more economically palatable. Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule — Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way,” Barack Obama declared after Democrats’ disastrous losses in the 2010 midterm elections. That shellacking finally killed off the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. From it was born the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Obama administration’s war on coal, in turn a contributory factor to Donald Trump’s election and Republicans’...

A judge has ordered federal regulators to quickly evaluate how many power plant and coal mining jobs are lost because of air pollution regulations. U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in Wheeling made the ruling after reviewing a response from outgoing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy. McCarthy had responded to the judge’s previous order in a lawsuit brought against her by Murray Energy Corp. that the EPA must start doing an analysis that it hadn’t done in decades. […] The judge said the EPA is required by law to analyze the economic impact on a continuing basis when...

At virtually the last possible moment, the Obama administration on Monday rolled out new regulations making it even more difficult and more costly to mine coal in the U.S., a final shot against the already beleaguered coal industry as the president leaves office. The Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule will go into effect 30 after its official release and publication in the federal register, meaning it likely will be implemented Jan. 19 — one day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Mr. Trump has vowed to undo much of his predecessor’s environmental regulations, including rules that target coal mining. The...

The downward slide continued for Colorado's coal industry in 2015, highlighted by production at Routt County's Twentymile Mine, which was down 38 percent. Statewide, production in Colorado was down 18.5 percent, with 18.7 million tons, the lowest amount of coal mined in 23 years. ... Colorado Mining Association President Stuart Sanderson said the drop in production is a result of lower demand, but it was not caused by natural market forces. What we are seeing is the direct result of government regulations that are designed to drive coal out of the energy mix," Sanderson said. He called Colorado's 2010 Clean...

Obama on federal coal mining is a throwback to Carter administration failings. resident Obama's plot to use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to kill federal coal mining with a thousand paper cuts is not the first time he has used NEPA to try to end energy development. Disturbingly, his scheme is a throwback to President Carter and a decade-long moratorium that ended only when President Reagan took office. Meanwhile millions of Americans, vast regions and the nation's economy will suffer. In 2009, the Obama administration settled a "sweetheart lawsuit" by environmental groups by agreeing to a NEPA study on...

Environmental organizations that offered more than 150,000 comments calling on the U.S. Forest Service to reject an agreement to allow additional mining in the North Fork area said the response demonstrated strong public opposition. More like "stuffing the ballot box," said an industry spokesman who noted that the environmental opposition would undermine a bargain fashioned over five years of talks. The Forest Service proposes reinstating the North Fork coal-mining exception to the Colorado Roadless Rule. The exception would allow Arch Coal to extend the West Elk Mine near Somerset below the roadless area. The roadless exemption would allow construction of...

Craig community leaders hosted a meeting Thursday at Moffat County High School to provide a brief update on the situation at Colowyo Coal Mine, answer questions and facilitate public comment on the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s environmental assessment. Ray Beck, Craig mayor, opened the gathering by telling the audience about the economic significance of Colowyo mine’s 220 jobs to Craig and Northwest Colorado. “This is not the time to slow down,” Beck said, emphasizing the importance of community feedback on the development of the mine’s new environmental assessment. When the OMSRE’s recommendation to approve mining plans for...

The community of Craig is holding its collective breath today, waiting on the feds to decide by midnight whether they will bother to challenge a court decision that threatens to shutter the Colowyo Mine. The Interior Department has gobbled up the entire period allotted to them to decide whether to appeal. We can only hope they have used this time wisely to decide in favor of the 200 plus workers whose jobs are on the line. And the lines in the proverbial sands have been clearly drawn. On one side is the radical environmental group WildEarth Guardians, who brought the...

BRISTOL, Va. -- Alpha Natural Resources announced this afternoon that it's idling the mining and processing operations at Rockspring Development Camp Creek underground mine in Wayne County, West Virginia, which will mean the loss of 439 jobs. Employees were notified today about the idling "based on the mine operator's current assessment of market conditions,"according to a news release issued by Alpha Natural Resources. Last week, three other Alpha-affiliated mine operators announced reductions in work force "due to sustained weak market conditions and government regulations that have challenged the entire central Appalachian coal industry. A total of 71 employees were affected...

Coal is a small part of Colorado’s economy as a whole, but nearly half of the statewide industry is based in far northwest Colorado, where it helps boost average household income higher than the average for the state as a whole. ... While coal mining directly accounts for 4.6 percent of the region’s total employees, at 1,545 jobs, it makes up more than 17 percent of the region’s total economic output, says the report, by Broomfield economist Gary Horvath. Another 571 people are directly employed in the region’s electrical power generation industry, which is supplied by locally generated coal, and...

Sen. Jay Rockefeller and West Virginia were an odd mix at first—a Harvard-educated native New Yorker from one of the nation’s richest families arriving in one of the poorest states. Through a half century of public service, he made it work. And as he heads into retirement as the last member of the Rockefeller family dynasty in political office—and the only Democrat—the five-term U.S. senator leaves a blueprint for fighting to fix real-life problems for burdened families and to protect the nation’s coal miners. […] Rockefeller was the state’s junior senator for 25 years, yet carved his own path of...

Sen.-elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) pledged on “Fox News Sunday” to be “extremely aggressive” in trying to rollback some regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency. “Extremely aggressive,” she said when asked how aggressive she would be in the Senate in trying to rollback some of the EPA regulations. “That is my promise to West Virginia. We have lost over the last two years, 5,000 jobs. Those are just coal jobs. “We had several thousand other miners who are what are called a warn notice, meaning they're potentially going to be losing their jobs. That doesn't even count the transportation job,...

The Obama administration is surging forward with a first-of-its-kind EPA rule for new power plants, in what Republicans and industry groups say will inflate electricity prices and possibly kill off coal, the preeminent U.S. energy source. The EPA announced the rule Tuesday, with a goal to curb carbon dioxide emissions by imposing strict regulations on new coal-fired plants, including a limit that caps plant emissions to not more than 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of energy generated. "Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put...

The Obama administration pressured analysts to change an environmental review to reflect fewer job losses from a proposed regulation, the contractors who worked on the review testified Friday. The dispute revolves around proposed changes to a rule regulating coal mining near streams and other waterways. The experts contracted to analyze the impact of the rule initially found that it would cost 7,000 coal jobs. But the contractors claim they were subsequently pressured to not only keep the findings under wraps but "revisit" the study in order to show less of an impact on jobs. Steve Gardner, president of Kentucky consulting...

“The challenge with coal is that although it’s very cheap, it’s also dirty. And it can create the kinds of air pollution that not only is contributing to climate change but is also creating asthma for kids nearby,” Those words were uttered by President Obama today at a Facebook Town Hall meeting. Honest to God. It is true that coal emitting plants may contribute to those who have asthma suffering an bout, but how do you make the leap to "creating asthma"? Let us put aside the absurdity of the statement and suppose it were an accurate statement. It seems...

From FoxNews Shep Smith show on Tuesday. Interview by Jonathan Hunt with Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com

The Labor Party is the party of the left side of politics in Australia, similar in nearly every aspect to the U.S. Democrats. The Queensland State Labor Government has just made a $70 Billion deal for 6 new coal mines, the deal with the Mining magnate developer, the State, and China Power Inc. The deal will see 44 million tons of coal being shipped to China each year. This same State Labor Government agrees with the Federal Labor Government that CO2 emissions are the so called cause of Climate Change/Global Warming. At a Federal level, they propose to cut emissions...

Regulations: The Clean Water Act is being rewritten to give a government bureaucracy the power to regulate every body of water from the Mississippi River to a rain-flooded field. The first casualty may be American coal. With all the concern for the harm that cap-and-trade and regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant might do to the American economy and free markets, the Environmental Protection Agency is doing quite enough damage with an existing law on the books — the Clean Water Act. Congress plans to revise it to make it an even more powerful bludgeon against industry, energy producers and...