cramer:

Either way my point is, it seems for all intensive purposes, clean-coal doesn’t exist

Not right now, which is a different argument than saying it can’t.

Whistler:

There are no economically practical sequestration systems at this point that can be used for major coal burning plants.

Coming from a guy who’s pushing “tooth fairy” energy sources that’s rich.

I think you’re confused over who said that.

I personally don’t advocate using tooth fairies for anything. Personally I think forced servitude of tooth fairies has made a few people, like Al Gore rich, while the rest of us are left to pay the bill.

So, Fly thanks for some educated and reasonable sounding responses. You clearly know a lot of details regarding this stuff that I don’t. Hemp farms produce tons of pollutants? I’m curious to know more about that, please.

Don’t you think that solar, with improvements that you mention and maybe with some incentives to producers of the technology itself could relatively soon become affordable? Your 10-20 percent in 10 years number looks likely and reasonable to me. And with a combination of other things like wind, biomass, coal, tides, hydro etc. maybe we could get a lot cleaner. Can we agree on that? You say you live near strip mining. Is coal production on the current scale worth what you see, given the fact that there possibly/hopefully are alternatives?

Hotel, you can make yourself feel better about your opinions by outright disregarding mine, but your approach here has nothing to do with debate, argument or finding solutions to our problems. Why is industry protecting their own interests through lobbying etc. such a ridiculous notion? Isn’t that the nature of capitalism? How is it that I am ruining the ideas that I claim to support? What’s wrong with a bit less of certain things? Your hyperbole (is that the right word??) about the stone age and stuff doesn’t help prove your point. You actually think that’s what I want? Of course, you’re wrong. And please don’t tell me I’m too stupid to know what I think. Let’s keep the debate above that. My parents always told me you can have anything, but not everything. I think that applies here. What if we’re in a situation here where being a little more thoughtful about what we use and how we use it will benefit the greater good. Is that so severe? There are people starving in our country and around the world. We use a much higher percentage of energy than anyone else. Do you feel that as Americans we are entitled to more than other peoples? If you do, let’s end the debate there. I can’t work with that. If you don’t believe that and think a human is a human, then let’s talk about how we can consider the whole world in our actions.

Goon, I don’t follow your argument. I’m suggesting ways of saving money (I think). For example, if you heat your home to 72 all of those 6 months, how about just heating it to 70 and putting on a sweater. That certainly would save you money, and save the environment to a degree (so to speak).

Robert I don’t really enjoy the insulting tone of your responses. Not too civil if you ask me…

Just because something may be in the direction of totalitarianism or socialism doesn’t mean that it is. A good idea is a good idea whatever ideology someone might try to pin it to. As to your response about windmills, you’re right they aren’t a new idea but of course the new technologies in them are new just the same way a coal plant isn’t new but the scrubbers are. How are they not efficient? And just because we might have to pay for something doesn’t mean it may not be worth it. Money isn’t the only issue when dealing with all of this. And again, how is it that industry lobbies wouldn’t want something that threatens their financial dominance to be kept down? That’s capitalism.

cramer:

I know that 20 years is not nearly enough time to erase the effects of strip mining.

Then you know nothing.

You can tell in 20 years that the forest had been disturbed, but if it has been properly restored, I’m pretty sure unless you are doing detective work you wouldn’t know whether it had been strip-mined versus e.g. tree harvested, or lay fallowed and allowed to return to forest or whatever.

Don’t claim to be an expert on things that you are not.

Regarding the comparison of agriculture versus strip mining… surely you’re not going to try and assert that the total effect on land from agriculture is less than that of strip mining? Because I would have to laugh at you, if you tried.

Yes agriculture per hectare is clean compared to strip mining, but given that strip mining utilizing a tiny fraction of a percent of the land utilized by agriculture, it’s rather ballsy on your part to try and advance the argument that strip mining has a larger ecological impact than agriculture.

Put another way, “get real”.

Similarly a study of a representative coal-fired plant in Ohio, DOE estimated that capturing 30 percent of a retrofitted plant’s CO2 emissions would increase its cost of electricity production by 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, while capturing 90 percent of the plant’s CO2 emissions would increase the cost of producing electricity by nearly 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. For comparative purposes, the DOE’s Energy Information Administration reports that the average retail price of electricity in the United States is 8.9 cents per kilowatt hour.

This is pure science fiction. Nobody has any idea what the cost of a yet-to-be-developed technology would be.

All we can really say is it would be less than the incremental costs (150-300% or so) of the currently available technology.

Whoop-de-do.

Of course I have no problems if coal gets replaced with another technology in e.g. 50 years or less.

At this point you are reduced to exactly what argument? That you speculatively think it won’t be economically practicable to make coal clean* burning? Seriously, I don’t think you can make the argument that stripping mining is even close to the leading cause of damage to our lands (agriculture already claims that title), so that’s about it.

Did I miss something? But if it is economically impracticable, then market forces will decide against it in favor of other technologies. Nothing to rant or rail against.

All that lefts (from your perspective) to be proven is that the economic costs of CO2 emissions outweigh the benefits of allow them to be emitted. I’m guessing we disagree a bit on that assessment too.

clean* = clean+CO2 sequestration

Whistler: We also live in one of the most reliably windy areas of the country. (Minnesota sucks and Montana blows).

I think you have your modality wrong there.

At least in the winter, South Dakota sucks and Canada blows. Those winds prevalently are north to south, not east to west.

I just don’t think wind technology is going to be viable unless we abandon propeller driven wind turbines in favor of vertical axis wind turbines…

There are no economically practical sequestration systems at this point that can be used for major coal burning plants.

Coming from a guy who’s pushing “tooth fairy” energy sources that’s rich.

Cramer:

I don’t exactly follow. Coal in the ground isn’t being emitted into our atmosphere.

And if you have a particulate capture system that include CO2-sequestration, neither is coal that is being burnt.

What’s not to follow?

cramer:

Above ground, millions of acres across 36 states have been dynamited, torn and churned into bits by strip mining in the last 150 years. More than 60 percent of all coal mined in the United States today, in fact, comes from strip mines.

There’s nothing clean about that.

Yeah it involves a lot of moving of dirt.

At least when they’re done with the strip mining, the dynamiting, the land being “torn and churned into bits”, they cover it back up and in 20 years you wouldn’t know they had ever run a strip mining operation there.

But by yoru apparent definition, agricultural (both literally and figuratively) is much less clean than coal mining. Many more hectares of land are “torn and churned into bits” each year by agriculture than by strip mining.

What’s your solution to that? Shoot all the humans?

And as far as sequestration is concerned it looks like the coal companies aren’t actually pursuing that because they don’t have to.

Is that even an argument?

They aren’t “pursuing that” because they aren’t technology research companies, they are “coal companies”.

Surely you really aren’t a complete idiot.

It has been determined that there’s an issue with CO2 emissions.

You mean how it’s a natural plant food that has greened up the planet?

cramer:

And “clean-coal” is an oxy-moron.

Which means that the words when combined are ironic…

which is not the same as saying that it doesn’t exist.

But will New York like it when it’s flooded over by the Atlantic?

You need to quit reading Algore comic books. Not even the UN’s IPCC says New York would get flooded over.

cramer, every single word you have posted here is anti-technology and anti-human. You want the human race to devolve back to the stoneage, simply because you want it. Coached oh, so carefully, yet, your point is that humans have to simply do with less. Less energy. Less food. Less technology.

You are the problem.

Hey, here is a lovely nugget from BBC, “‘Safe’ climate means ‘no to coal’” Exactly what Barri has said several times.

And why is coal still so “dirty”, cramer? Because leftarded morons like you refuse to allow the construction of new, high-efficiency emission capturing and scrubbing plants. Why are all you environazis so terrified of new technology?

These are the executive decisions that can hurt the economy fast and hard. Usually it takes the new budget to hit. Add this to decision to not drill our own oil and we’ve got a recipe for extended economic problems.

(We could raise minimum wage to $250,000/yr and cure the budget problem. The last hike helped quite a bit.)

For the record, I am for development of clean coal technologies, short term, and for workable renewable energy pursuits for the long term.

This type of response, however, is both unintelligent, harmful and typical of the Cons who live in an upside down world, where they have to play the race card, just to lash out.

You though obviously think you’re superior to them and condescendingly in a position to determine what they need to be saved from.

Usual liberal bigotry to assume that the Indians need to be saved. As someone part Micmac, fuck off. Go peddle your politics somewhere else.

This type of Trollish commentary is exactly what is at the core of Potato-head.

Birds see them, don’t run into them. FOTW, you hit a point I keep making. All the nasty from burning coal is usable. And we have the technological capacity to use it. And yet the environazis fight tooth and nail to stop all technological advances. Wonder why?

Your “opinions” are complete and utter shit. Now, spin&twirl; and tell us some more of your anti-human, anti-technology bullshit. Its comical as hell.

It has been determined that there’s an issue with CO2 emissions. And “clean-coal” is an oxy-moron.

Ok, so you’re right about the oxy-moron thing. Whatever. Either way my point is, it seems for all intensive purposes, clean-coal doesn’t exist.

LOL “weren’t being intellectually honest”.

Instead, you insist that 50 and 60 year old coal plants meet a standard that is impossible,

I think this really is a case of religion here with Luddite one of tennents. Coal is haram, solar is halal. It doesn’t matter that current solar tech produces more nasties and less energy and costs more.
(I’m really getting a flashback to The Last Centurion book.)

Carrick, I’m not a fan of the retrofit for the older plants based on cost/benefits. At least hitting a standard that’s attempting to be forced here. Any thoughts?

Yeah, but the Suns only good for another four billion years from now then what?

Once again if you guys want to introduce your hare-brained ideas on the market go ahead.

Just don’t force us to pay for it.

I like coal fired electricity, although nuclear would be better.

Oh yeah, the idiots oppose that as well.

Fly, do you have proof that solar “produces” more nasties than coal?

Where did you get that? PVs are so limited they couldn’t compete with the poundage of pollution produced by hemp farms. The energy requirements are huge ($ and pollution) to melt the silica 1600C. Acid etching, doping etc produces waste boron, arsenic, phosphorous, etc salts.

I agree that it’s not a totally clean process to make solar, but that it’s dirtier than coal? Sounds very unlikely. And why does it cost more? That could easily be changed by feed-in tariffs.

1) We’re discussing cleaner coal. None of us like burning that stuff and spewing it all into the air. We do argue how much is acceptable. You argue None.
2) The cost is due to the new (comparatively) new technology, huge energy expense to process, poisons produced and discarded and short useful lifetimes.
3) Feed-in tariffs just glom the high cost onto something else. It in no way makes it cheaper to make someone else pay for it. The money paid still has to be paid regardless of the Ponzi scheme.

Solar technology is set to take off. Once we drop the silica wafer substrate and move to a polymer costs drop dramatically (along with the nastiest pollutants.) Combine this with some developing battery technology and you have a system that could reasonably supply 10-20% of our electrical needs in a decade or so.

Carrick, I live in an area where they’ve done strip mining. I hate the process but it bounces back to a grassy wooded field within 5 years. They do the same thing to every field around here to drop in a housing development. Moonscapes but they get better fast. Well, not the housing developments.

For the record, I am for development of clean coal technologies, short term, and for workable renewable energy pursuits for the long term.

For the record, H, even if you’re telling the truth(which would be a first, IMO), your support in any way is totally unnecessary. All that is necessary for us to have the best energy at the best price is to get the hell out of the way, and let market forces do what they do better than any centralized bureaucracy can ever do. If real Americans want “clean coal”, or anything else, they will buy it. Nothing else needs to be done.

“Mature forest takes in a tiny fraction of the CO2 that a young forest does, so cutting down and replanting trees in mass will “sequester” far more CO2 than leaving mature forest to die naturally, in which case it is emitting CO2 and methane in vast amounts.”

Are we really going to argue about whether a young forest is better to have than a mature one? It always comes back to you guys looking at things narrowly. Maybe you’re right about CO2, concerning those forests, I don’t know. But again, there’s so much more to the situation than that one issue.

Hotel, how can you put words into my mouth like that? Against all technology, period? I think technological advances are at the heart of what will lead us out of our environmental mess through conservation and through more efficient energy sources. And so agriculture is worse (bigger) than mining. What’s your point? We only have to deal with the biggest problems? I’ve read that coal account for “roughly 20 percent of GHG emissions”. Are you trying to say that this is an insignificant issue that environazis like me shouldn’t be ranting and raving about? Hotel, suggesting that I’m a Stalinist isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t really even want to get into that. Pointless.

Fly, do you have proof that solar “produces” more nasties than coal? I agree that it’s not a totally clean process to make solar, but that it’s dirtier than coal? Sounds very unlikely. And why does it cost more? That could easily be changed by feed-in tariffs.

Carrick, when we’re choosing between “topographic restructuring” and miner’s lives should we really be in that position in the first place? That’s proof to me that you’re defending an outdated practice. Not that it can or should be eliminated right now, but why can’t we work on phasing it out? And since we’re still working on developing technologies that make coal plants “clean”, again why not put that time and money into something truly revolutionary? Do you think that Americans, humans in general are incapable of brilliant technological advances? And I’m not talking about improving on old practices. I’m talking about true revolutions.

You guys talk about fairy tales. Please stop holding our country and our world back with your inability to look forward. Surely there were plenty of folks who thought that flying was a fairy tale or that going to the moon was a hopeless waste of time. I could try to think of better examples but you get my point.

Finally, could it be that you guys are trying so desperately to hold on to your coal plants because you live in areas that are economically dependent on them? I understand that but it doesn’t mean the industry isn’t still harming the rest of the world. Obama’s legislation is attempting to make it easier to shift the economy from industries that are becoming outdated (suck it up, it’s true) to those that are on the cutting edge (yes, riskier in the short term). It’s called investment. It’s called thinking ahead. I don’t want narrow mindedness to be what brings the demise of my grandchildren’s world.

That’s not how debate works; by not backing up your opinions with any facts or logic, you fail to make your initial argument.

What utter bullshit from Robert. When I provided facts Robert ignores them. An example of this was when he accused Jon Stewart of being a self hating jew because he changed his name, but when I provided a quote from Stewart in an interview of him stating he changed his name because it was “too hollywood” (a Lenny Bruce joke), he said Stewart was lying and that Robert knows the real truth, that Stewart is a jew hater.

You give Robert facts to consider and it goes in his brain and shit comes out……….of his mouth.

He is not an honest debater.

Cramer said: First of all, we wouldn’t need so much more energy production if our society was able to realize how wasteful we are with our consumption. Just turn off your lights when you’re not home etc. Pretty simple.

Do you realize what this type of thinking will do to the states like ND, Minnesota, SD that are under show 6 months of the year. People are going to go bankrupt trying to heat their homes. These envionazis don’t have a fucken clue what they are doing to the people in the heart land.

Rob, you say it’s not scarce nor necessarily dirty. You think coal is just sitting on top of the ground ready to be scooped up? To get at all this coal you talk about will certainly be a dirty business. And please, guys look into “clean-coal”. It’s not a viable option, if clean is what we’re going for.

So tell me more about high energy requirements and poisonous waste with solar. As I understand it, solar is expensive because of the lack of political and commercial support, that being due to big, dirty industry squashing it. And when I say cost, I of course am not strictly speaking about money. Cost has so much more to do with than money.

Rob, I believe we have centuries of petroleum, millennia of coal.

cramer:

And even if they did implement that technology, the increase in prices of your cheap coal would be drastic.

Again “they” won’t develop that technology, anymore than “they” developed the scrubbers used now. “They” use them.

And secondly… “the increase in prices of your cheap coal would be drastic.”

You know this because ________? (fill in URL link).

I don’t exactly follow. Coal in the ground isn’t being emitted into our atmosphere.

So I just did a quick bit of online research. From the Wash. Post-

Above ground, millions of acres across 36 states have been dynamited, torn and churned into bits by strip mining in the last 150 years. More than 60 percent of all coal mined in the United States today, in fact, comes from strip mines.

There’s nothing clean about that. And as far as sequestration is concerned it looks like the coal companies aren’t actually pursuing that because they don’t have to. Free market is the answer? I don’t think so. And even if they did implement that technology, the increase in prices of your cheap coal would be drastic.

Whistler:

Wonder if those cake mixer blades chop up birds better than the propellers?

Neither are particularly that effective.

Birds, it turns out, run into trees and kill themselves all of the time. Like DINO, they are just that stupid.

If you want to protect the bird population, cut down those trees (and build artificial habitats for them, to replace the ones that we destroyed… Ha ha! I had already thought of that!)

Tater? I owe you a drink! Thank you.

You describe clean coal technology. Sure, they’re highly efficient compared to regular coal. But compared to other options out there? Not at all.

The four billion year thing is a horrible comparison. Is there even a point there? I’m talking about a time-line that concerns our grandchildren and such.

Of course CO2 is natural. That doesn’t mean that it needs to be emitted as quickly and in as large of quantities as it currently is. Sure, plants like it. But will New York like it when it’s flooded over by the Atlantic? Not that I’m saying that’s a sure thing in our future, but it’s certainly a possibility. Do we want to take chances with something like that?

Here’s some facts on coal-

CO2 emissions from U.S. coal-based electricity are greater than emissions from all the cars and trucks in America.
“GHG Emissions and Sinks 1990-2006,” US EPA 2008

The coal industry is spending millions advertising “clean” coal, but not a single “clean” coal power plant exists in the U.S. today.
“Big Coal Campaigning to Keep Its Industry on Candidates’ Minds,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 20, 2008 (link); IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme CO2 Capture and Storage Database (link); Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Program at MIT, CO2 Capture and Storage Project Database (link)

An investment in wind power produces nearly four times as many jobs as the same investment in coal power. And an investment in solar PV power produces almost twice as many jobs, and building retrofits, more than seven times as many jobs as coal power.
Based on analysis of the new energy economy released by Earth Policy Institute, Nov. 2008

“While you might have heard the phrase ‘clean’ coal during the presidential campaign, it’s actually an oxymoron.”
Brian Williams, NBC News, Nov 18, 2008 (link)

There are roughly 600 coal plants producing electricity in the U.S. Not one of them captures and stores its global warming pollution.
“Electricity Facts,” US DOE 2008 (link); IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme CO2 Capture and Storage Database (link); Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Program at MIT, CO2 Capture and Storage Project Database (link)

Physicists are always getting tripped up with double negatives, double negatives.

Wow, thanks for the insult.

Yes, I’m an environut. And that means I spend a lot of time hiking. I know that 20 years is not nearly enough time to erase the effects of strip mining. We’re talking mountaintop removal here. Totally different from agriculture (which concerning conventional corporate practices, I think could be done much better). When the land is removed on this scale, the streams are clogged with sediment and pollutants, affecting the ecology and people living downstream. And again, 20 years is not long at all. A forest isn’t mature for much longer than that. And that’s after logging. This is much, much more severe than that. To even try and defend strip mining to me seems ludicrous. It’s one thing to say that that’s the price we have to pay for this energy. But to say strip mining is no big deal…..

So maybe I should have said “implementing” the sequestration technologies. You defend coal by saying that those technologies work. But they don’t work if they aren’t there and thus coal is still excessively polluting. And I already tried to explain why I think they aren’t implementing it.

Still used the huge nasty turbines though.

Still used the huge nasty propellers though.

By the way if you want to see the statistics on wind generation availability here’s some from a local coop network.

http://www.minnkota.com/Pages/InfinityMonthly.htm

Coal industry – Coal is cheap

GAO – “An IPCC assessment of several studies concluded that retrofitting a CO2 capture system to existing coal-fired power plants would increase the incremental cost of producing electricity from about 150 to 290 percent. Similarly, based on a study of a representative coal-fired plant in Ohio, DOE estimated that capturing 30 percent of a retrofitted plant’s CO2 emissions would increase its cost of electricity production by 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, while capturing 90 percent of the plant’s CO2 emissions would increase the cost of producing electricity by nearly 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. For comparative purposes, the DOE’s Energy Information Administration reports that the average retail price of electricity in the United States is 8.9 cents per kilowatt hour.”

So tell me more about high energy requirements and poisonous waste with solar.

I think they do have problems in the manufacturer of solar cells.

The big problem of course is that the sun isn’t available when we need electricity. It’s real hard to store enough electricity.

Now if you guys living in la-la land were proposing solar power satellites that’d be an option. However that seems to be a no-no as well.

Cue the left wing idiots who proclaim that there will be “no tax increase” on those “making less than 250 thousand a year”.

cramer:

You can say that all you want, but until you counter my opinions, I’ve won the debate.

You haven’t won anything.

I gave up trying to discuss anything with you when it became obvious you weren’t being intellectually dishonest.

If it makes you feel better, you bled first, making you the victor.

Happy now?

I regret saying anything about winning or losing. That’s not the point of all of this. I’m not right, nor are any of you. To think otherwise is simplistic. Can we agree on that?

To say that everything I say is bullshit is bullshit. I could say the same thing about any of you and if you were on some liberal blog it’d be the other way around. So where does that leave us? I don’t know. It’s confusing. As much as I think you guys are as crazy and stupid as you think I am, that just doesn’t make sense. We’re all caring, thoughtful people. Maybe we can learn from each other? Come to the middle somehow?

I appreciate your levelness and facts, Fly. But overall, I give up. This isn’t worth the energy. I believe in what I say and so do you. Bring it.

We need cheap power. The idiots that oppose that are going to blame blackouts and skyrocketing prices on the people who have been warning us for years.

These guys that promote wishful power sources should invest their own money so that they see what a dead end deal it is.

relatively scarce resources

I reject the notion that coal is “scarce.”

And, as Carrick notes above, it doesn’t have to be “dirty” either.

You think coal is just sitting on top of the ground ready to be scooped up? To get at all this coal you talk about will certainly be a dirty business.

Hey, I live in North Dakota. Home of some of the biggest coal deposits in the nation.

I know all about mining. They mine coal all around where I live. I see it. I live with it. I’m fine with it.

Don’t patronize me. I know what i’m talking about.

At what point do the lefties realize that they are the true destroyers of the environment with their deranged nonsensical ideas about nature and industry?

Oh that’s right, they don’t. Their beloved Communist Party rendered good parts of East Germany and Russia into utter environmental disasters and they STILL are going on about Three Mile Island when nuclear power is mentioned, STILL holding up pictures of coal mine operations as if cities will be covered in coal somehow just by using it at a power station nowhere near the city, etc.

The same people you should note are still going on about our stopping Japan with two low-yield atomic bombs instead of incurring more than one hundred times as many casualties in a protracted conventional assault was actually worse, claiming that stopping Ba’athist Iraq under Saddam Hussein with UNI approval of the action was a war crime, and the like… while encouraging abortion before AND after successful birth during ANY phase, IGNORING Islamic Supremacists hanging gay teens in Iran and cutting off the heads of kidnapped civilian workers in Afghanistan, and the massive starving and executions of innocents by the Soviets during collectivization and the death toll of the Khmer Rouge…

The left has absolutely zero moral ground whatsoever. None. People who equate driving a gas powered car to work with raping the planet are so obviously deranged they not only do not deserve to be taken seriously, they should be excoriated at every opportunity.

Just to let you know Hannah, your continued delusional behavior of evading the subject, attacking self-created strawmen, attempting to argue over well established definitions and common knowledge in defiance of reality, and continued self-absorption have earned you entry on my block script.

When the other people I read here tell me you’ve grown up, I’ll consider removing you and reading your posts again. Until then, it’s a waste of time.

Carrick’s reference to Kung Pow is dead on regarding yours and certain others’ behavior of getting out-argued but claiming victory because you lost.

You can say that all you want, but until you counter my opinions, I’ve won the debate.

The only person who can change your opinions is you. I can present you with fact, but your opinion is yours.