Asklemmy

43983 readers

1195 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

293

Why has the world started to mine coal again? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

286 comments fedilink hide all child comments

With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.

Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?

Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.

Now I'm more depressed than when I posted this

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Again? Did we stop?

It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned metallurgical coal yet. Even if you don't burn it for energy, the carbon in steel has to come from somewhere and that's usually coke, which is coal that has been further pyrolised into a fairly pure carbon producing a byproduct of coal tar.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How much of that carbon is emitted Vs embedded in the steel matrix? 50%?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'm not actually sure. I imagine it depends on how exactly it's mixed in.

The green alternative would be to go back to charcoal (or "biochar" if you want to sound fancy), but it might be a bit more expensive.

[–] pfjarschel 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So that's where the name coke comes from! TIL!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Coal is just Cola with the letters swapped around.