Romney’s Views on Coal: Bad for Americans’ Health, the Enviroment and the Climate

Let’s look at a recent Romney campaign ad to get a sense for his views:

Romney believes that coal is good! He ignores the environmental and social impacts of coal extraction and the global warming impacts of burning coal.

This trailer for the Burinng the Future, Coal in America movie shows the terrible consequences of coal mining on West Virginia people and mountain tops.

Coal is a major public health issue.

Coal for power is the largest CO2 emission source in the US.

You probably have heard the  Clean Coal oxymoron. Don’t be fooled, Dirty Coal is bad for America. Please vote responsibly for your self , your family and  all future generations.

Understanding the Science of CO2’s Role in Climate Change: 2 – Electromagnetic Radiation and Earth’s Climate

This post, the 2nd (1^st post here) in the series on Understanding the Science of CO₂‘s Role in Climate Change, discusses several electromagnetic radiation topics:  1) electromagnetic spectrum basics, 2) essential climate related electromagnetic radiation physics, and 3) the Sun  and Earth’s electromagnetic radiation spectra.

I present the basic formulas and 3 R based charts that I have developed to help readers get a sense for the underlying physics and to provide a basic  foundation for understanding the climate related properties of greenhouse gases and the energy balance models presented in upcoming posts.I have also included an Excel workbook with these basics formulas.

CO2: Emissions & Changes in Atmospheric Levels

In previous posts, I have shown the 1750-2008 global CO2 emission trends and the atmospheric CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. In this post, I compare annual CO2 emissions with annual changes in atmospheric CO2.  The resulting chart shows the portion of CO2 emissions that remains in the atmosphere and the portion that is soaked up by the land & ocean.  Links to the R script and source data files are provided.