Straight-talk on coal from Brian Williams 5

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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.

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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

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3. 

   Pangolin Posted 4:33 pm
   21 Nov 2008

   3 Trailoads Dry Iceper trainload of coal burned. Once you get that concept down tight CCS is easiloy understood to be an idiot idea.
   
   Put the Carbon Back

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4. 

   KarenLOrr Posted 1:12 am
   22 Nov 2008

   Time to bury the 'clean coal' mythIn 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

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5. 

   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

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