Even people who doesn't believe in global warming should agree since coal produce air-pollution which is literally killing millions every year.
I have heard this parroted many times but I am yet to see the actual evidence they base it on.
The story usually goes that some organization estimates xxx deaths per year but they never say what the deaths are caused by specifically or how they can directly relate that to coal and not anything or many other things combined.
Do they do autopsy's and find coal ash in people lungs or do they just come up with a number that suits the agenda of the people paying them to do the supposed study?
What are the deaths caused by ( cancer, heart problems etc) and how can they specifically relate these deaths to coal and not anything else?
Another way of looking at it is, if we miracle all the coal plants away, will we see a drop in the attrition rates of the same number of people attributed to coal caused deaths and will the population grow by a similar number seeing all these people are not being killed by coal now?
Sounds highly doubtful to me so it it does not add up on the cross check then the the sums have to be wrong to start with.
I'm not trying to do a green cult like defense and say coal is perfect because only an idiot would believe that BUT, what I am saying is if you are going to charge the guy for bank robbery you better have more than he was seen running down the road away from the bank when the cops arrived.
If you are going to put a blame number on it, I want to know what counting was done and how it was done to come up with figure.
If it's just a gut feeling by a bunch of people with a vested interest, declared or hidden, then it's just oing to be taken as more green washing to me.
If I said XXX people were killed by unreliable every year, the outcry would be to prove it and show how I arrived at my numbers.
Works both ways but I have heard the theroy but never seen the facts or calculations.
There are so many things that kill and make us sick now from preservatives in food, artificial sweeteners, magnetic field exposure, fumes given off by building materials and carpet, medicine side effects and so the list goes on endlessly.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone can say when I turn up my toes how much of it was caused by coal power plants, exposure to fuels and oils while playing with engines, radiation I have got standing in front of the microwave and the millions of different particles in the air besides or not coal ash.
While they Make a song and dance of coal emissions, the ramifications of Fukishima for one and the contamination of the environment and the deaths that will cause is supposed to be nothing at all.

Yeah right!

I'll take my chances with coal thanks.