Coal is the enemy of the human race: James Hansen edition

The most important time-critical action needed to avert climate disasters concerns coal. Consider:

one-quarter of fossil fuel CO2 emission remains in the air for more than 500 years,
conventional oil and gas reserves are sufficient to take atmospheric CO2 at least to the vicinity of the “dangerous” level, and it is impractical to capture their CO2 emission as it is mostly from small sources (vehicles),
coal reserves are far greater than oil and gas reserves, and most coal use is at power plants, where it is feasible to capture and permanently sequester the CO2 underground (CCS = carbon capture and sequestration).

Clear implication: the only practical way to keep CO2 below or close to the

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