bluerock’s Recent Comments

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  No, he hasn't

  He hasn't succeeded in anything but blowing smoke, but he keeps bringing in outfits claiming they will build a liquid coal plant.

  It is fortunate that he only generically endorsed coal gasification with CCS, which -- although it's not real -- is at least theoretically consistent with his calls to address climate change. He has never dealt with the fact that you can't deal with climate change and promote liquid coal at the same time, no matter what. On Montana guv brings the one-liners posted 1 year, 2 months ago 4 Responses

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  Ethanol compared... to what?

  Obviously we need to reduce our fossil fuel consumption by starting with increased efficiency, because we'll get the most bang for the buck there. And, also obviously, we need to make biofuels as sustainably as possible, and there are a lot of issues there.

  But I find it strange that so many comments on these and other pages evaluate the impacts and energy balances of various kinds of ethanol and other biofuels compared to zero impact, instead of to the impact of the oil and petroleum derived fuels (or worse, the coal-derived fuels) they are replacing.

  Same thing with corn - I'm no lover of corn ethanol, but the idea that the real world trade off is between corn for fuel or corn to feed starving people in Africa is not reality-based. We use almost all of U.S. corn to make corn syrup for pop, and to feed to livestock (the byproduct of ethanol production from corn is livestock feed, btw). We subsidize exports of the rest to drive down prices for third world farmers.

  The question isn't whether we are going to replace fossil fuel with plants. We have to, because we can't keep putting stored carbon into the atmosphere, and we are running out of fossil fuels anyway. The question is how we can make fuel and materials and food from plants, sustainably. On Notable quotable posted 2 years ago 8 Responses

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  "Clean Coal"...

  is a coal industry oxymoron. It predates Frank Luntz, though. On Learn how to recognize the shills posted 2 years, 7 months ago 5 Responses

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  Gristmill to Schweitzer

  Thanks for this story.

  You may be interested in this: Liquid Coal: Too Expensive, Too Slow, Too Dirty

  http://www.worc.org/pdfs/Liquid_Coal_FS_4-06.pdfOn Quit with the coal boosting already posted 2 years, 7 months ago 11 Responses

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  It's too good to be true...

  ... and it isn't true.

  It's pie-in-the-sky (http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005511200303).

  NRDC does not support coal to liquids technology, it supports sequestering carbon in plants built to replace existing coal fired electric generating plants.

  The technology is not proven, is years down the road, and is way too capital intensive, even if you don't count the unknown, but very high, costs of capturing and sequestering carbon.

  There isn't enough water, or any other infrastructure, to support this industry in Eastern Montana.

  Biofuels plants are far cheaper, would come on line far sooner, be far cleaner, and to boot would be a much more dispersed and stable source of jobs and economic development than synfuels plants turning coal into liquids.

  Nobody bats 1,000.00, and that includes Governor Schweitzer.On Schweitzer and coal-to-fuel conversion posted 4 years ago 3 Responses