Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel. Mercury levels have skyrocketed since man began burning coal. Let's see the source for your claim that most mercury falling from the sky is "natural". I call BS. This is political corporate propaganda at the very height of hypocrisy. The Globe should be embarrassed to print this garbage.

Anti-science op ed. EPA scientists are wrong about mercury toxicity, eh? They're wrong about Hg fate and transport, eh? Stick to politics and leave the science to the scientists.

Mr Sununu, I can't believe you can be that ignorant.

So let me get this straight - we should ignore the scientific evidence of mercury pollution shortened lifespans of miners and long term environmental damage in order to "save jobs"? Please. Let us think carefully about redirecting some of the ridiculous military budget to fund alternative energy and job retraining programs. Our national security and the health of our people will benefit most by resolving the energy production issues not by continuing to search out the dirtiest energy source possible.

I usually look forward to John Sununu's columns for an intelligent conservative viewpoint, but here he reveals himself to be just another Republican anti-science ignoramus. "The vast majority of mercury is natural"? Mr. Sununu, NO ONE in the scientific community makes that argument. The elevated mercury deposition in remote places just means that mercury is a global pollutant transported over long distances - this is something that we understand well. The more intelligent argument against mercury emission controls in the US is that they account for only a few percent of global mercury emissions affecting the fish that we eat - most of these emissions are in China and India. I was very disappointed to see you show such disdain for science.

Great piece, John. You have hit home when the comments here are personal attacks, and lack any serious refutation of your point. The Obama administration has a radical agenda when it comes to coal, oil and natural gas. Through regulatory fiat, it is imposing its agenda on consumers of the critical energy sources. Never mind the jobs, look at how electric bills will skyrocket when the ability to burn coal becomes too expensive. Obama has stated that his energy policy is "all of the above", but it actually is AGAINST domestic production of oil and coal. The consumer will suffer for it.

John Sununu suddenly cares about workers. Extraordinary.

John, Once again you have shown the world why you couldn't hold elective office. You are so completely out of touch with New Hampshire that the only way you can make a living is to write whatever Romney pays you to write. Unless you want to run for town dogcatcher or Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, your only hope is that Good Old Boy Mitt gives you a job somewhere.

Of course Sununu would take an angle that derides govnment regulation of business. He should consider for a moment that the biggest problems coal miners have are related to a criminal disregard for safety by coal companies. Ask the families of the men who died at the Upper Big Bend mine in West Virginia whether they think coal mining is over regulated.

What a sad commentary. The environmental issues around the use of coal are clear, both in terms of the health and safety of coal miners and the pollution of the air we breathe. I've spent some time in China. Mr. Sununu should spend some time in Shanghai or Beijing, outside, in the non-fresh air, reading the frightening statistics on China's problems with coal. He couldn't read for very long, though, because his eyes would smart and breathing become difficult. But wait...I forgot. The only really important issue here is the profits of those who will be willing to help fund Republican SuperPACs. It used to be that good conservative thinkers were concerned with the long term effects of policies. Teddy Roosevelt, for example, could see that the loss of the natural environment should not be sacrificed to the immediate profits and that the economy would suffer by great and unfettered concentrations of wealth. In fact, we should recycle old coal mines into mushroom farms, in the dark, fed by rightwing fertilizer.

This column shows no awareness of the threat posed by accelerating global warming caused by the use of fossil fuels and in particular coal. In fact numerous scientific studies demonstrate both continuing rising temperatures as well as rising temperatures in oceans and acidification of oceans. So should we keep burning up all the carbon stored over hundreds of millions of years to conduct a one-time experiment on the future health of our one and only planet just satisfy the coal industry? A real plan to curb global warming (and it's high time for Republicans to treat this as a real issue rather than as new material for a culture war) would reduce carbon emissions while also providing training, pensions, and health care for miners as well as redevelopment funding for their communities. In the case of a carbon tax, for example, a surcharge could be devoted to aid coal miners as we move as fast as possible away from using this carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

So basically your argument is that jobs, any jobs, are more important than clean air? How about blaming congress for passing the clean air act rather than blame the Obama administration for being brave enough to give the law some teeth. Maybe what Kentucky and West Virginia need isn't the same dirty coal jobs that poison their lungs, or mountaintop removal mining that fills entire watersheds with toxic spoils and poisons their streams and rivers. Maybe we should be working to develop new, better jobs. Or maybe we can just jumble together some pseudo-science, some doubt about the future, and some half-truths and blame Obama. You choose.

Wouldn't it be more efficient if every week Sununu simply wrote: if Obama and the Dems are fer it, I'm agin it?

I won't bother to repeat the arguments that have already been well put by others. But I'll add that every day I see ads on TV by the coal industry about "Clean Coal" and why we should support them. But when there is an effort to call them on this and make coal even a little bit cleaner they bring out their attack dogs. The carbon dioxide sequestration that Sununu argues about is the industry's approach. Will it work? Probably not. If not, then find another way, or leave the coal in the ground. To the extent that we must, for the time being, rely on fossil fuels we are better off using those from other countries while keeping our own in the ground. Ideally we will never need them. But they will keep going up in value as the others are consumed. (We could call it the "strategic coal reserve".)

Every lake and pond in the northeast is poisoned with mercury fallout, preventing fish like trout from re-producing and rendering all native fresh water game fish unsafe to eat. This is one result of backward policies promoteds by fools like Sununu.

Read the AP article about our climate crisis in today's Globe, Mr. Sununu. We can't lower the carbon in our atmosphere to the acceptable level of 350 parts per million set by leading climate scientists, such as Jim Hansen of NASA, from the current 392 ppm without a much broader and longer-term vision as well as programs to help those people most directly harmed in the short term, such as coal miners. We need leaders who help us all see beyond today, because the the weather weirding we're experiencing now has the potential to become a climate catastrophe within our lifetimes.

"The Obama administration has a radical agenda when it comes to coal, oil and natural gas." ...which is why drilling has quadrupled during the Obama administration, oil production has risen every year after a decade of yearly declines, gas production has skyrocketed, and refined petroleum products have become our NUMBER ONE export. Coal is dirty, dangerous to mine, polluting to burn, carbon intensive, and the most hazardous energy source we have overall. To the extent we can replace it with oil, gas, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, etc. we should, and that is what Obama is doing. I understand you've been instructed to spread the lie that Obama has a radical energy policy, but anyone who pays even the slightest bit of attention sees what you write as nonsense.

restore -climate change is not real.

Sununu: "But with coal currently meeting 45 percent of the country's electricity demand, this represents a wholesale reordering of America's power industry". Yes,a wholesale reoredering is exactly what is needed as our energy policies and choices are unsustainable. This country can no longer afford the environmental/human costs of the unrestrained harvesting of fossil fuels. That era is over. It's not difficult to punch holes in Mr. Sununu's arguments, but who has that kind of time? He is very selective with his data. "...both US CO2 emissions and global temps have been flat since 1998". This sentence means nothing. In the long term, what matters is how much heat is gained or lost by the entire planet....and the planet is gaining as much heat from the sun as usual but losing less heat every year as greenhouse gas levels rise. How do we know? Because the oceans are getting warmer. Water stores an immense amount of heat compared with air. It takes more than 1000 times as much energy to heat a cubic meter of water by 1 degree Centigrade as it does the same volume of air. Since the 1960s, over 90% of the excess heat due to higher greenhouse gas levels has gone into the oceans, and just 3% into warming the atmosphere. Globally, this means that if the oceans soak up a bit more heat energy than normal, surface air temperatures can fall even though the total heat content of the planet is rising. Conversely, if the oceans soak up less heat than usual, surface temperatures will rise rapidly. The Globe did report back On Nov 3, 2011 that according to the DOE, the global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record. The extra pollution in China and the U.S. account for more than half the increase in emissions in 2010. While it is true that natural sources of mercury emissions are greater than anthropogenic sources, take into consideration that these include "re-emissions", which are emissions from previously deposited mercury originating from both human produced and natural sources. Anyway, Mercury is highly toxic. Its a good idea not to add to the load. Interestingly in 2007, Sen. Sununu was a co-sponsor of the Clean Air Planning Act of 2007 which sought to address air quality and climate change by establishing a schedule to reduce harmful emissions from power plants—in particular, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides—as well as decrease carbon dioxide emissions through a cap-and-trade system. The legislation, which was never enacted, also addressed mercury pollution, calling for a 90% reduction in emissions of the chemical by 2015. So I'm left wondering what has changed? Why was "industrial policy on this scale" not inefficient and immoral then John?

I don't understand why a decline in future construction of coal-fired plants will lead to the layoff of 200,000 coal workers. Those workers are currently supplying coal for existing plants that aren't likely to go away anytime soon, and Sununu admits that 15 more plants are under construction. The math doesn't work. There may be fewer new miners, but that not what Sununu is trying to intimate. And, of course, like a good Republican, Sununu ignores the environmental and health consequences of burning "dirty" fuels.

I was interested in why Mr. Sununu picked 1998 as the base year when stating that global temperatures have been flat. Why did he use a 13 year period to assess temperature changes? Well, a look at the global worldwide temperature chart shows why. 1998 was an outlier year that was probably the hottest on record. Using this year as a baseline is an obvious attempt to deceive, not enlighten. Temperatures should be averaged over 5 year periods to get a good sense of which way the climate is moving. This clearly shows that global temperatures have risen dramatically over the decades.