A quote from our local Utility Vectren which I clipped and pasted from the local paper this morning. I feel it's relevant to this discussion about Global Warming. It's also effecting the Tri-State area.

"Warmer weather this year was the main reason utility profits declined, Vectren said. Temperatures for the first three months of 2016 were warmer than they were the previous year, which meant customers did not spend as much on heating."

As you can see the economics of global warming is not treating the coal burning power plants as well as in the past. Declining usage of coal is lowering their profits to the share holders. They lost money. I wonder if that is why people who own stock in the utilities often refuse to admit that Global Warming is real and that it's accelerating and cased by the excessive emissions of green house gases into the Earth's atmosphere. These gases are clearly being released by 7 billion human's who's activities cause these excessive green house gases. If you don't think this is correct then I recommend you get a calculator and the UESPA book of Emission Factors that documents the amount of CO2 and other pollutants that are release for so many BTU's of heat energy burned when using coal or oil. Even natural Gas (Cleanest Fossil Fuel around) burns and releases ton's of NOX and CO2 into the atmosphere. Remember from your Chemistry Class that when you burn coal (CH4 Chains) with O2 you end up with a lot of CO2 and heat energy. Methane burns much more efficiently that coal does but that also means that for each therm of Natural Gas Burned there is a lot of CO2 released. So even the cleanest fossil fuel is responsible for releasing CO2 into the Air and CO2 is one of the major green house gases. Now remember that we all basically burn natural gas in our home furnaces these days. In the past we have fewer people who burned coal or oil or propane to heat their homes. But these days we have a lot more people. Twice the number of people that we have 35 years ago. So the amount of fossil fuels burned has increased drastically over the past 100 years. The Earth is a small planet or Ball flying though space with a limited atmosphere surrounding it. All you have to do is take a look at some of the pictures of the Earth taken from the Space Station over the years. Back off a few light years and the Earth is just a tiny spec out there in space. While it's very significant to we who live here it's just a spec of dust to everything else in the Universe.