NO way CO2 emissions can decline...

Demand for coal is going through the roof....this is from the Toronto Globe & Mail...

If you want to make money and don't mind spitting up black phlegm and destroying the planet, buy coal. While the energy markets and the media are obsessed with rising oil prices, the developing world is quietly gearing up for a coal development and consumption spree of astounding proportions. The energy markets of tomorrow are not about oil and hydrogen and wind turbines spinning lazily on ridges. They're about coal, which is cheap and plentiful but also the worst news for the environment that you could imagine in the post-Al Gore world.

The investor case for coal is hard to beat. The price increases have trailed demand. Demand is about to soar and the price will catch up. Data compiled by Bloomberg shows that U.S. coal prices are equal to $1.98 (U.S.) per million British thermal units (Btus) of energy, compared with $12.51 for fuel oil and $6.91 for natural gas. Oil prices have almost tripled since 2002. Coal prices on the American East Coast have gone up only about 70 per cent in the same period. Coal is so cheap that the shipping costs across the Atlantic can be more expensive than the commodity itself.

Coal was not supposed to figure large in the energy markets of the future. It is the dirtiest fuel. Burning coal spews out vast amounts of dust, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide, creating air pollution and filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. The energy fantasists like Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore called for a moratorium on the construction of coal-fired electricity-generating plants. Renewable energy, conservation and perhaps a new fleet of nuclear reactors were supposed to make coal a grubby relic of the 19th and 20th centuries, and good riddance.

Forget it. What the greenies forgot was that rising oil and natural gas prices would not so much encourage conservation as encourage rich and poor countries alike to embrace the last cheap hydrocarbon - coal. The U.S. Department of Energy predicts the construction of more than 1,000 coal plants in the next five years, most in China, India and other parts of the developing world. China alone opens a new coal plant every week.

In the United States, more than 150 coal plants are planned or being built, many in the Midwest. The Ontario government is dreading their construction because the province is on the receiving end of the airborne crud from the Ohio Valley. Mix sulphur dioxide with water and you get acid rain. Acid rain was supposed to have been cured. But that's a myth. It's alive and well and killing lakes near you. You just don't hear about it because the media is obsessed with global warming.

The latest edition of the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook, published last week, predicted that coal demand will rise by 73 per cent between 2005 and 2030, with China and India accounting for 80 per cent of the increase. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change says China built enough coal plants in the last year alone to meet the energy needs of India and Britain combined.