Where the major party presidential campaigns are spending their money on TV advertising can tell you a lot about where they're focusing their efforts.
And based on that, it's pretty clear that the race between President Trump and Joe Biden is coming down to just six swing states — Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. They are getting the lion's share of the TV advertising money from the campaigns and outside groups supporting them.
More than $700 million has been spent on TV ad bookings so far in 14 key states, with almost 85% of that money going to the big six, according to data collected by ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics through Friday, and analyzed by NPR.
The country's largest coal producing state is desperate to keep the struggling industry going. Wyoming is investing big to try to clean up coal's carbon emissions, even as many say it's too late.
The immediate problem with coal isn't the emissions or the waste produced, as much as its the fixed output of the plants that is of low value for much of the day - the plants cost more to run than they can make in electricity sales.
Coal is dying just like nuclear power - if it was the emissions that were killing the plants, then nuclear power would be winning. If you don't have a marketable product that you shouldn't be forcing consumers to buy it. The future is very low cost renewables, along with mid market natural gas turbines and especially peaking natural gas plants.
If coal can adapt to provide more mid market power than it has a brighter future - even without carbon sequestration. But getting coal to burn cleanly and reliability under mid market conditions is challenging - existing coal plant designs don't ramp well - and they pollute a lot more and suffer much higher breakdowns when they are forced to regularly change output. But if scientists can figure out how to make next generation plants ramp better than coal has a future at least in coal country, especially sited on existing facilities.
While touring fire-ravaged California, Donald Trump downplayed the role a warming planet could have in the devastation, suggesting temperatures will "start getting cooler" and that the recent conflagrations was a lack of proper forest management.
"I don't think science knows actually," he said when told that science didn't agree with his conclusions
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Joe Biden went on the attack, accusing Trump of ignoring a "central crisis" facing the nation.
"If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?" he asked. "If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater?"
Scientists say wildfires are all but inevitable, and the main drivers are plants and trees drying out due to climate change and more people living closer to areas that burn. And while forest thinning and controlled burns are solutions, they have proven challenging to implement on the scale needed to combat those threats.
ASCEND THE 145 WHITE MARBLE steps at the Lincoln memorial, step forward into the shrine room with the seated Great Emancipator, and then direct your gaze down at the floor. Unseen beneath the Tennessee pink marble floor lies a cavernous three-story, 43,800-square-foot basement with architecture that wouldn’t look out of place in a World War II bunker.
