"Jerry" wrote in message
...

"Derek Geldard" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:10:44 +0100, "Jerry"
wrote:


"Derek Geldard" wrote in message
...
snip

Here we go again ...


snip


unsnip

"Mining is an extractive industry (when the coal's gone it's gone) and
had been in trouble with mines closing since before the start of the
20th century. Maybe it's just as well that the railways had stopped
burning coal for their motive power and the iron and steel industry
had stopped using coal and the textile industry had folded with it's
big consumption of coal to feed the steam engines in the mills."

Yes, here we go again, more fantasist ******** from the defenders of
Thatcherism.

You find this fantastic?
snip

"Mining is an extractive industry (when the coal's gone it's gone)"

The question is about the reserves, not the fact that something is
(obviously) finite, the facts remains that the UK is sitting on several
hundred years of coal supplies and the reason that pits closed in the
Thatcher/Major period of government was for *political* reasons and *not*
economic reasons - as was the case in immediate - preceding -
Wilson/Callaghan (or even the previous Heath) period of government. The
question now is not how to use coal (technology moves on), for we still do
use/import coal, but how we are going to (safely) extract it and extract
it we will have to do at some point in the not to distant future if we are
going to stay a *independently* energy secure nation.
--
Wikipedia: the Internet equivalent of
Hyde Park and 'speakers corner'...


But we are not "independently energy-secure" now, are we ? We are beholden
to the Ruskies and Frogs for just about all our gas. We get our oil from the
middle east. Whilst we do still generate most of our own electricity, we
couldn't even do that, without importing the combustibles for our power
station furnaces, or the uranium to process for our nuclear generation
capability. Even some of our electricity comes here courtesy of the Frogs
via the cables under the Channel. Far from being independant, if all of
these raw materials were denied us, we would rapidly go dark, and become
very cold ...

Even if we were to manage to reopen the mines, or dig new ones, I'm pretty
sure that their contribution to our ability to restore energy independence
in this country, would not be anything even close to what would be required.

Arfa