Envirowacko Harry Reid Says “Coal Makes Us Sick”

Is there anything more amusing than watching dittheads work themselves up into a frothing, impotent rage when confronted with Reality’s liberal bias? Most recently they’ve started rolling around, slobbering all over themselves over this video of Harry Reid pointing out that “Coal makes us sick:”

How dare he say that Oil and Coal makes us sick?!?! the dittohead blogs responded in their predictably uneducated fashion (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here. (Oh yeah, and , here)), calling him names, arguing that the oil industry provides for us like a benevolent loving guardian, and basically ignoring the real question, Do fossil fuels make us sick?

Let’s Review:

Continuous contact with motor oil causes skin cancer. Diesel Truck drivers are 50% more likely to get lung cancer, while auto mechanics are more likely to die from a wide variety of cancer-related diseases. 12,000 Coal Miners died of black lung disease between 1992 and 2002. According to the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, Vehicle exhaust emissions:

…irritate the eyes and respiratory tract, and are a risk to health by breathing in. Petrol or gas (LPG) fuelled engine fumes contain up to 10% carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas. Prolonged exposure to diesel fumes, especially blue or black smoke, could lead to coughing, chestiness and breathlessness, and there is evidence that long term exposure may increase the risk of lung cancer.

Run a car in a closed space, like a garage, and you will asphixiate very quickly. One gallon of motor oil can ruin a million gallons of freshwater if dumped into the public water system “- a year’s supply of water for 50 people.” At the Coast Guard base where I work, a small amount of jet fuel, which is kerosene-based, leaked into the ground at one site, it will take years of phytoremediation to make the field usable again.

In Ecuador cancer rates were found to be 150 percent higher in an oil-drilling area than in other parts of Ecuador. Lukemia rates in those same areas where three times the norm.

Coal Fired power plants shorten nearly 24,000 lives a year, including 2,800 from lung cancer. Fish populations across the globe are increasingly becoming contaminated with mercury, dumped into the environment by these plants. With levels rising, the American Geological Institute has issued fish advisories warning the public about the health risks posed by eating certain fish.

Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada
Credit: Sierra Club

All of these issues, dittoheads taking a strong stand against any government support of alternative energies, and then there’s this:

The Department of Energy is currently seeking $648 million for “clean coal” projects in its 2009 budget request, “representing the largest budget request for coal RD&D in over 25 years.”

And then there’s that whole Global Warming thing, of which fossil fuels is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, which dittoheads don’t believe despite all of the following organizations and scientific bodies making statements asserting their acceptance of the Theory:

In ditthead land, you can go skinny-dipping in oil-lakes, put high-octane in the cat’s dish, and user Mercury as a seasoning. : P

Envirowacko Harry Reid Says “Coal Makes Us Sick”

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