It comes down to efficiency. Have you worked on large engines? As in an engine the size of a two story house? I have. a cargo ship engine weighs up to 2200 tons, it runs on bunker fuel, a heavy oil fuel that has 2,000 times more sulfur in it than diesel, they carry a fuel capacity of 1.5 - 2 million gallons. And cargo ships emit about 1/3 the amount of black carbon than a cruise ship, which uses about 150 tons of heavy oil fuel a day. Onto coal. The average power plant runs at 37% efficiency. To run a single light bulb for 1 year it would take 800 pounds of coal. Burning 800 pounds of coal will emit 3 pounds of SO2 main cause of acid rain), 1.67 pounds of SOx (acid rain again), 122 pounds of coal ash (which this mix with water and store in sludge pits), 1670 pounds of CO2 (twice its weight before burned and there's a lot of light bulbs in the world so you do the math). It releases some other nasty stuff but not enough of it to matter much. This was all very easy to find. You should have looked into it before calling it a "ridiculous story"