Coal is the major cause of increasing -  and effectively permanent - global average temperature rises.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, writing in 2009:

"If the countries of the world continue burning coal the way they do today, it will be impossible to achieve the reductions in carbon emissions needed to have a reasonable chance of preventing the worst consequences of global warming." -

"Coal is the biggest source of climate changing carbon dioxide emissions. There is also far more of it left and available to mine than there is of oil or gas. Analysis by the EU-based Carbontracker and by the IPCC show that if we are to stabilise climate even at two degrees warmer than now, 80% of all the fossil fuel resources on the balance sheets of companies must stay in the ground. "- Jeanette Fitzsimmons writing in the NZ Herald 'Element' magazine November 25 2013

Coal is carbon dioxide solidified and permanently removed from the atmosphere of the 'greenhouse planet' of millions of years ago. As a result, todays planet is no longer a greenhouse. But we are digging up the dangerous waste, burning it, and returning it to the atmosphere. The planet will return to a greenhouse state - hot, some parts extremely wet, inland continental areas like Death Valley in a heatwave.

Fixable? Sure. All it takes is rampaging tree, fern and moss growth, swamps, earthquakes, bogs, and burial. Burial of the growth under silt. Then wait. Wait millions of years for the carbon trapped in the peat and fallen trees in muddy bogs to be compressed to a solid form again. Coal.

Leave it in the ground. Forever.



http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/global-warming-faq.html
Accessed 25/11/13