Comments losinghand has made

Look at the whole lifecycle of coal

Even so-called "Clean" Coal just looks at one stage of the lifecycle of coal - the burning of it. Yes, it may be possible to sequester the emissions from coal, but as this article points out, that doesn't stop the toxic waste from being created - it just diverts it to a new waste stream. A waste stream akin to the nuclear.

But we need to recognize the damage coal causes on every step of it's use - from strip mining and mountain-top removal to the transportation (over 70% of US rail traffic is coal) to the burning and storage issues. The real costs of coal are externalized - and not factored in when people talk "cheap" coal. Respiratory illness, asthma, flooding, deforestation, valley-fill, toxic extraction processes and explosives, toxic slurries, sludge dams, the millions of gallons of water used daily between refinement and burning, flooding and erosion, mine collapses, C02 burned in transport - none of this is "clean" - with or without IGCC.

-MattOn Coal-bashing is hot new trend in Congress, science circles, and business world posted 2 years, 8 months ago 12 Responses