Notable quotable

Straight-talk on coal from Brian Williams 5

"Coal. While you might have heard the phrase 'clean coal' during the presidential campaign, it's actually an oxymoron. Wishful thinking. Coal does not burn cleanly and it's hugely expensive to make it burn that way."

-- NBC anchor Brian Williams, leading into a segment on coal as part of the network's "Green Week"

Here's the video:

 

Kate Sheppard is Grist’s political reporter.

Advertisement
Advertisement
  1. Pompey Road Posted 12:57 pm
    21 Nov 2008

    Bush midnight regulations:

    Bush has laid upon us as a parting blow to the Mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia a new regulation allowing more Mountain Top Removal. Buried in a host of new regulations that will post date his term in office Bush has made clear how he feels about the Appalachian mountains. I only hope the new administration has the votes in congress to get these overturned before any more damage can be done.

    The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

  2. amazingdrx Posted 3:46 pm
    21 Nov 2008

    Great video!

    Thanks Kate, I mentioned this on my blog, but didn't put up the video.  

    I checked out the CCS operation mentioned in the story too.  Mega-costly experiment!  impractical for mass adopyion, but an interesting experiment worth the R&D.  

    It shows why this technology is not ready yet and may never be practical, especially when it has to compete with mass prodiced wind and rooftop solar cogeneration power production.

    Is mass delusional media finally trying to understand this new renewable/conservation, smart grid energy economy?  It's a good green trend.

    The link between green technology, green jobs, and economic stimulus and recovery is reaching the news rooms.  Have sites like Grist replaced Drudge on producer's PCs?  Maybe at least on their intern's and assistant's screens.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

  3. Pangolin's avatar

    Pangolin Posted 4:33 pm
    21 Nov 2008

    3 Trailoads Dry Ice

    per trainload of coal burned. Once you get that concept down tight CCS is easiloy understood to be an idiot idea.

    Put the Carbon Back

  4. KarenLOrr Posted 1:12 am
    22 Nov 2008

    Time to bury the 'clean coal' myth

    In the second of his Greenwash columns, Fred Pearce exposes how energy companies and governments are trying to rebrand coal as a clean fuel of the future despite the evidence
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/30/fossilf ...
    -------------------------------------------------
    Also see these two articles by Peter Montague

    ENERGY AT THE CROSSROADS

    Valcav Smil on carbon sequestration

    In sum, Smil believes that burying carbon dioxide in the ground is

    (1) A monumentally dumb idea because the first principle of good industrial design is to avoid production of undesirable outputs, rather than controlling them as an afterthought.

    (2) Fraught with uncertainties -- not the least of them being unknown costs that are surely larger than what is being forecast on the basis of almost no real-world experience;

    (3) Could not be accomplished in a single generation because capturing even 10% of human CO2 emissions would require creation of an industrial infrastructure as large as the present-day global petroleum industry, which took 100 years to build.

    (4) Unnecessary because merely eliminating the most obvious forms of waste from U.S. energy use -- making us as efficient as Europe -- would accomplish the same thing far more cheaply and far more rapidly (with considerable health benefits from reduced pollution, I might add).

    Excerpt from Peter Montague's ENERGY AT THE CROSSROADS
    Read the article in full here:
    http://www.precaution.org/lib/08/prn_smil.htm
    ---------------------------------

    SLOUCHING TOWARD GOLGOTHA

    To be cynically frank, the CCS plan has three big things going
    for it:

    * First, after the stuff is pumped underground, it will be out of
    sight and out of mind, no one will know for sure where it is, and
    there will be no way to get it back. Problem solved. If it starts to
    leak out a few miles away from the injection site and the leakage is
    somehow miraculously discovered, chances are that nothing can be done
    about it, so we might as well forget the whole thing. It's a done
    deal, so eat, drink, and be merry -- just as we've been doing for the
    past 30 years.

    * Second, with CCS as our "solution," no one important has to change
    anything they're now doing -- the coal, oil, automobile, railroad,
    mining and electric power corporations can continue on their present
    path undisturbed -- and no doubt they will reward Congress handsomely
    for being so "reasonable." Everyone knows that's how the system works.
    No one even bothers to deny it.

    ** Third, CCS cannot actually be tested; it will always require a leap
    of faith. Even though the goal is to keep CO2 buried in the ground
    forever, in human terms any test will have to end on some particular
    day in the not-too-distant future. On that day the test will be
    declared a "success" -- but leakage could start the following day. So,
    given the goal of long-term storage, no short-term test can ever prove
    conclusive. CCS will always rest on a foundation of faith; and, in the
    absence of conclusive tests, those with the greatest persuasive powers
    ($$) have the upper hand.

    Two weeks ago the Germans inaugurated the world's first coal-fired
    power plant designed to bury its CO2 in the ground as an experiment.
    As New Scientist magazine told us last March, "In Germany, only CCS
    can make sense of an energy policy that combines a large number of new
    coal-fired power stations with plans for a 40 per cent cut in CO2
    emissions by 2020." In other words, the Germans hitched their wagon to
    a CCS solution long before they designed the first experiment to see
    if it could work. With the future of the German economy dependent on
    the outcome, it seems unlikely that this first little experiment will
    be announced as a failure. Like us, the Germans are playing Russian
    roulette with the future of the planet.

    Excerpt from Peter Montague's SLOUCHING TOWARD GOLGOTHA
    Read it in it's entirety here:
    http://www.precaution.org/lib/08/its_time.080925.htm

  5. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 8:58 am
    22 Nov 2008

    Thanks for the info, Karen

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Add a Comment

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Hello, Visitor!    Why not register?

Advertisement