Dream Log: Coal Mining and Vaguely Progressive Action

I dreamed that my Mom was alive and was driving me cross-country through the rural Midwest. COVID didn't exist For some reason I decided to get out of the car and walk although it was raining and cold and I had no money on my person. I wasn't upset with Mom, that wasn't the reason I got out of the car. Very soon, because of the poor weather and having no cash, I felt rather silly for having gotten out of the car. 

 

After walking for a mile or so I came to a group of buildings. One of them had a very large open entrance with people streaming in and out, and I went in. The place was bustling with people dressed like me: work jackets, jeans, boots. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that I might not belong there.

There was a large, open-air underground area inside the entrance which looked like a mostly-empty warehouse. Crowds of people were engaged in some sort of meeting here. A passageway framed in timber led further down. Curious, I walked down, and soon it became clear that I was in a coal mine. Coal was everywhere. I walked through a large cavern dug through coal. The other people were more and more covered in coal, the further down I went.

I tried to get back out but I was lost, and it took me a long time to find the way back to above ground. People were quite friendly to me, obviously assuming I was just one more miner, and I wanted to get away from there before anyone figured out that I wasn't. At one point, ahead of me, a group of people mounted horses and rode away, throwing long, ominous shadows.

When I got back outside and back to the road, I saw a group of buildings on the other side. I approached them, hoping they were with another organization, not with the mine. 

They were part of a progressive Catholic organization which was protesting against the mine and trying to get miners to quit. Some of its members were former miners from the other side of the road.

So what we were doing there -- I was a part of it just about as soon as I arrived -- was successful. But it was vague. We worked together in groups of three or four to a dozen people each, working together on theories. Sort of like postmodern literary theories, except that they dealt with mining instead of literature. As soon as each project was completed, a small paperback volume appeared, and we got paid several dozen dollars each. So there was a modest capitalist motivation alongside the progressive one. 

Energy Efficiency: Fossil Fuels vs Solar and Wind

In the process of powering things with fossil fuels, first geologists make guesses about where exactly oil, coal and gas deposits may be; then miners dig to where they hope the deposits are. Sometimes they have to dig several times before they find anything, because the geologists, after all, were just guessing. 

Once the fuel is found, it is transported, by ship, train, truck, or, in the case of oil and gas, pipeline, to refineries, where the raw material is made into usable products. Then coal, oil and gas are sent, again, by ship, train or truck, or, in the case of oil and gas, pipeline, to power stations, which burn them to generate electricity, which is sent to the grid, where utilities distribute it to businesses and homes. 

In addition, diesel oil and gasoline are sent, by pipeline, tanker ship, railroad or tanker truck, to gas stations and other users. Coal and kerosene are still burned by millions of people for heat and cooking in some of the poorer regions of the world.

The entire trip, from being in the ground to where it is burned for energy or heat, can be dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of miles. Just think for a moment about the distance from Saudi Arabia to the United States. 

Now compare this to solar or wind energy. In the simplest example, the journey is measured in feet, from where sunlight is converted to electricity by the rooftop solar panels on a house and then travels to the house's wiring and to its battery storage. The electricity may travel as much as several miles if there is some left over and it is fed into the grid. Or the distance may be dozens or, in rare cases, hundreds of miles, if the electricity is generated by solar and wind farms operated by utilities. But no ships, pipelines or trains are needed, and the only trucks involved are the ones carrying workers who build, install and maintain the electrical infrastructure. 

Building, operating and maintaining solar cells and wind turbines is a very simple and inexpensive thing compared to mining, refining and distributing fossil fuels. And solar and wind energy keep getting less and less expensive as more of it is generated, while fossil fuels keep getting more expensive. The point where electricity from solar or wind will be cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels? That point is several years ago, and the gap just keeps growing.

Plus with fossil fuels, there are those pesky little details of pollution and global warming. And also accidental fires and explosions.

An Open Letter to Time + Tide, the Australian Horological Publication

You've got a current headline which reads:

RECOMMENDED READING: Apple sold nearly 10 million more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry in 2019

Well, good luck with the Apple watch crowd. Because all of these recent articles about quartz watches and smart watches are losing us who like mechanical watches and used to like Time & Tide. We had 45 years to start liking quartz watches before the Apple Watch was invented -- didn't happen, did it? And yes, we do know that quartz watches are much more accurate and that smart watches do all sorts of amazing things. We just don't particularly care.

It also will do you no good with me to compare smart watches to electric cars, because I'm already completely on board with EV's. That's right: electric cars and mechanical watches for me, please. And solar and wind power and the death of the oil, coal and gas industry just as soon as possible!

And I'd dump mechanical watches too if they spewed poisonous gases the way internal-combustion vehicles do -- but they don't, do they?

I know, the Apple watch geeks will stare at us mechanical-watch geeks as if we were pods, as if we were simply inexplicable beings. News flash: most people already looked at us that way, and we already knew it, and we already didn't care. To us, the others were always the pods, and right now, anybody who tries to talk us into Apple watches over mechanical watches -- is of course a pod. There's not even the slightest question about it. And there's also not even the slightest question that some of the people who work at your magazine are one of us and not one of you, and they'll quit, and they and we will be just fine. In fact we'll be better because we'll be just a little bit more convinced of each other's genuineness once pods like you have been weeded out.

We had of course assumed that you, Time & Tide, were one of us, but we'll live. We'll live wearing mechanical watches, and sometimes even carrying mechanical pocket watches, and not being the slightest bit tired of having to pull them out of our pockets every time we want to know the imperfectly, mechanically-kept time.

We'll be just fine. Mechanical watches won't disappear. Quartz didn't make them disappear, smart watches and sleazy sell-outs like you, Time + Tide, won't make them disappear. Mechanical watches are already not about maximum profits any more than they're about the absolutely best-available precision time. Rats jumping ship will just make the love and dedication of those who remain shine more clearly. You're just pushing mechanicals further in the direction of art. Art hasn't disappeared.

Coal Power in the UK

The UK was the first nation to burn coal on a large scale, in the 18th century; and in 1882 it was the first to generate electricity with coal.

In 2015, the Government -- that's their equivalent of what we Americans would call the Presidential administration -- announced that coal-powered generation of electricity would cease in the UK by 2025. They may accomplish that ahead of schedule: there were 14 remaining coal-fired power station in the UK at the time of the 2015 announcement. Right now, 4 are left in operation. In April 2017, the UK went for 24 hours period without generating any electricity from coal. In May 2019 they for a week week without coal power.[8]. In 2020 so far they went for one continuous period of over a month without any electricity generated by coal.

In 2014, 30% of the UK's electricity was generated with coal. In 2019 it was 2%.

By comparison, coal accounted for 39% of the country's electricity produced by utilities in 2014, 33% in 2015, 30.4% in 2016, 30.0% in 2017, 27.4% in 2018, and 23.5% in 2019. In 1990, the US had 4 times as much wind energy, and 50 times as much solar energy as any other single nation. Now China is ahead of us in both categories and other countries, most certainly including the UK, are gaining on us very fast. Many countries are going through developments very similar to those in the UK. Not the US, though. And especially not when Republicans control the White House and Congress.

My fellow Murrkins: learn what's going on in other countries. Ask our leaders why the US can't out-do them. And don't take any wooden nickles.