Clean Coal Technology

[mattkime]

>>makk- wrong

no, you're wrong.

[(vikm)]

cbelt3 wrote:

It's sort of like those uber vegans running around wearing nice leather boots.

Can you honestly say you've ever seen one do this? Ever? By definition, it's not possible.

[Wags]

cbelt3 wrote:
makk- wrong
Mac- also wrong

You have to include the manufacturing of those lovely solar panels (lots of toxic chems and rare earths) and windmills (steel mills, Aluminum mills, Yucko !)

Hence my point.

It's sort of like those uber vegans running around wearing nice leather boots. Sure, you consume less, but you don't consume nothing.

This is correct. Everything works within a system and is interlinked. I understand that my lifestyle, no matter how green I attempt to live it, is just not an option for the entirety of humanity. I don't feel particularly guilty about it, but I try to live reasonably in the context I find myself. There seems to be very little discussion about the root cause of all this, namely that the human population has exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth, at least if we all expect to live like the average citizen in a developed nation.

Paul Ehrlich (Wiki) and some of his colleagues recently did a study to make some rough estimate of an optimal world population that would be sustainable for a developed lifestyle and still allow for large cities and the high culture that goes with them. They came up with 2 billion. We're now closing in on 7 billion and at current rates will hit 12 billion or more soon after.

I'm not advocating for draconian population control methods, but the way we are going famine, war, and pestilence will continue to be the only horrible mitigating factor. Over the long run the answer is education and elevating women to equal status in society. Studies show that educated women with career opportunities, and who share power in society will do their own reasonable population control. That will take some time and none of us are likely to see it in our lifetimes.

Counter productive is the nutty fixation various religions have with human sexuality and birth control. Its foolish to think that this will all sort itself out without a major shift in our expectations. Its comforting for many to assume the US is doing fine and all we need to do is keep those pesky immigrants out of here. That would be a wrong, because we're already being degraded by the pollution coming from outside our borders. Take a look at the jet stream and see where it comes from.

[Spock]

maco wrote:
"Clean Coal Technology" is what is commonly referred to as an oxymoron.

Like Military Intelligence and Windows Genuine Advantage?

[Black Landlord]

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the environmental abomination unleashed when the tops are blown off of mountains to farm the coal.
Even if it burnt completely "clean" you have to get it out of the ground somehow.

[karsen]

Black Landlord wrote:
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the environmental abomination unleashed when the tops are blown off of mountains to farm the coal.
Even if it burnt completely "clean" you have to get it out of the ground somehow.

Here's a positive spin on that... Driving up and down mountains kills your gas mileage!

[Black Landlord]

karsen wrote:
[quote=Black Landlord]
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the environmental abomination unleashed when the tops are blown off of mountains to farm the coal.
Even if it burnt completely "clean" you have to get it out of the ground somehow.

Here's a positive spin on that... Driving up and down mountains kills your gas mileage!
Sorry to bring you back down- no picnic for drivers either:

Coal washing often results in thousands of gallons of contaminated water that looks like black sludge and contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The sludge, or slurry, is often contained behind earthen dams in huge sludge ponds. One of these ponds broke on February 26th, 1972 above the community of Buffalo Creek in southern West Virginia. Pittston Coal Company had been warned that the dam was dangerous, but they did nothing. Heavy rain caused the pond to fill up and it breached the dam, sending a wall of black water into the valley below. Over 132 million gallons of black wastewater raged through the valley. 125 people were killed, 1100 injured and 4000 were left homeless. Over 1000 cars and trucks were destroyed and the disaster did 50 million dollars in damage. The coal company called it an “act of God”.

http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php

[mikeylikesit]

Clean Coal sounds like something David Frum, creator of the term Death Tax might have invented for a moderate fee.

[Ted King]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-robe...48790.html

Joe Lucas, vice president of communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE):

"When I look at what a majority of Americans say is clean coal, the fact that we're using technology today to reduce the emission of hazardous air pollutants, and the fact that we will be able to over the next ten years to begin to bring technologies into the marketplace to capture and store carbon, that's what the American people believe that clean coal is."

IOW, "Clean Coal" has nothing to do with sequestering carbon dioxide (which is technologically just about nowhere) as far as the coal industry is concerned, but they don't mind people getting a different impression in their ads even as they claim people are not getting that impression.

[karsen]

Black Landlord wrote:
[quote=karsen]
[quote=Black Landlord]
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the environmental abomination unleashed when the tops are blown off of mountains to farm the coal.
Even if it burnt completely "clean" you have to get it out of the ground somehow.

Here's a positive spin on that... Driving up and down mountains kills your gas mileage!
Sorry to bring you back down- no picnic for drivers either:

Coal washing often results in thousands of gallons of contaminated water that looks like black sludge and contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The sludge, or slurry, is often contained behind earthen dams in huge sludge ponds. One of these ponds broke on February 26th, 1972 above the community of Buffalo Creek in southern West Virginia. Pittston Coal Company had been warned that the dam was dangerous, but they did nothing. Heavy rain caused the pond to fill up and it breached the dam, sending a wall of black water into the valley below. Over 132 million gallons of black wastewater raged through the valley. 125 people were killed, 1100 injured and 4000 were left homeless. Over 1000 cars and trucks were destroyed and the disaster did 50 million dollars in damage. The coal company called it an “act of God”.

http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php
It was a joke. See, no mountains = better gas mileage. It could be the marketing campaign of the coal industry.