Coal is a fossil fuel and there is no such thing as "clean coal" as the oil companies ads would have you believe. It is filthy, expensive, non-renewable, spews multiple toxins like lead and mercury, not to even mention enormous amounts of CO2. It emits the major portion of the CO2 which is killing our air and the cause of global warming. The pollutants emitted by coal-fired power plants are the major cause of asthma in children which is debilitating and killing our children in record numbers. Coal is lethal!

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COAL companies have DUPED most Americans into thinking that Nuclear power
is dangerous. Nuclear is the safest. Nuclear has killed ZERO Americans.
Meanwhile, COAL kills 24000 Americans every year. Coal kills more like a
Million Chinese every year.

Coal is mostly carbon, but the complete list of impurities in coal includes every
element in the periodic table. The major impurities are, depending on where
you found it: URANIUM, ARSENIC, LEAD, MERCURY, Antimony, Cobalt,
Nickel, Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine, Silver, Beryllium, Iron, Sulfur,
Boron, Titanium, Cadmium, Magnesium, Calcium, Manganese, Vanadium,
Chlorine, Aluminum, Chromium, Molybdenum and Zinc. Coal smoke and
cinders are commercially viable ORE for the above elements. Chinese industrial
grade coal contains much more arsenic than American coal. Chinese industrial
grade coal is sometimes stolen by peasants for cooking. The result is that the
whole family dies of arsenic poisoning. Coal varies a lot. You have to analyze
it not only mine by mine but even lump by lump. Coal is a rock. It comes out
of the ground. What would you expect of a rock?
Reference:
OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE:
THE PATH OF SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
by Alex Gabbard
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Selections from the 19th Annual Conference
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
March 14,15,16, 1996
Nashville, Tennessee

Published by the
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
1996
Edited by Jack D. Arters, Ed.D.
Conference Director
The truth is, all natural rocks contain most natural elements. Coal is a rock.
The average concentration of uranium in coal is 1 or 2 parts per million. Illinois
coal contains up to 103 parts per million uranium. A 1000 million watt coal
fired power plant burns 4 million tons of coal each year. If you multiply 4
million tons by 1 part per million, you get 4 tons of uranium. Most of that is
U238. About .7% is U235. 4 tons = 8000 pounds. 8000 pounds times .7% =
56 pounds of U235. An average 1000 million watt coal fired power plant puts
out 56 to 112 pounds of U235 every year. There are only 2 places the uranium
can go: Up the stack or into the cinders.
Since a reactor full fuel load is around 11 tons of 2% U235 and 98% U238, and
one load lasts about 10 years, and what one coal fired power plant puts into the
air and cinders fully fuels a nuclear power plant.
Compare 4 Million tons per year with 1.1 tons per year. 1.1 divided by 4 Million
= 2.75 E -7 = .000000275 =.0000275%. Remember that only 2% of that is
U235. The nuclear power plant needs ~44 pounds of U235 per year. The coal
fired power plant burns coal by the trainload. The nuclear power plant consumes
U235 in such small quantities yearly that you could carry that much weight in a
briefcase. The full fuel load and the years between fueling varies from reactor to
reactor, but one truck can carry the weight of a full nuclear fuel load.
See also: Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review

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Global Warming can lead to Hydrogen Sulfide gas coming out of
the oceans. Hydrogen Sulfide gas will Kill all people. Homo
Sap will go EXTINCT unless drastic action is taken NOW.

October 2006 Scientific American

"EARTH SCIENCE
Impact from the Deep
Strangling heat and gases emanating from the earth and sea, not
asteroids, most likely caused several ancient mass extinctions.
Could the same killer-greenhouse conditions build once again?
By Peter D. Ward
downloaded from:

Scientific American

....................Most of the article omitted......................
But with atmospheric carbon climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm
and expected to accelerate to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900
ppm by the end of the next century, and conditions that bring
about the beginnings of ocean anoxia may be in place. How soon
after that could there be a new greenhouse extinction? That is
something our society should never find out."

Press Release
Pennsylvania State University
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, Nov. 3, 2003
downloaded from:
PennState

"In the end-Permian, as the levels of atmospheric oxygen fell and
the levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide rose, the upper
levels of the oceans could have become rich in hydrogen sulfide
catastrophically. This would kill most of the oceanic plants and
animals. The hydrogen sulfide dispersing in the atmosphere would
kill most terrestrial life."

www.astrobio.net is a NASA web zine. See:

Astrobiology 1

Astrobiology 2

Astrobiology 3

Astrobiology 4

These articles agree with the first 2. They all say 6 degrees C or
1000 parts per million CO2 is the extinction point.

The global warming is already 1.3 degree Farenheit. 11 degrees
Farenheit is about 6 degrees Celsius. The book "Six Degrees" by
Mark Lynas agrees. If the global warming is 6 degrees
centigrade, we humans go extinct. See:
Six Degrees

"Under a Green Sky" by Peter D. Ward, Ph.D., 2007.
Paleontologist discusses mass extinctions of the past and the one
we are doing to ourselves.

OIL SHALE, TAR SANDS AND COAL MUST BE LEFT IN
THE GROUND TO AVOID THE EXTINCTION OF US
HUMANS.
We have to convert to plug-in hybrid cars so that electricity made
by low-CO2 methods powers most of our driving. Nuclear power
produces the least CO2 of ANY source of electricity.
32 countries have nuclear power plants. Only 9 have the bomb.
The top 4 producers of CO2 all have nuclear power plants, coal
fired power plants and nuclear bombs. They are the USA, China,
India and Russia. Reducing CO2 production by 90% by 2050
requires drastic action in the USA, China, India and Russia.
Coal, oil shale and tar sands must be left untouched in the ground.

I have no connection to the nuclear power industry.

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Deaths per terrawatt year [twy] for energy industries, including
Chernobyl. terra=mega mega [There are zero sources of energy
that cause zero deaths, but not having the electricity causes the
most deaths.]

fuel......... ........fatalities... .....who......... .......deaths per twy
coal......... .........6400...... ......workers........... .........342
natural gas..... ..1200...... .....workers and public... ...85
hydro........ .......4000..... .......public............ ............883
nuclear........ .........31...... ......workers............ .............8

Nuclear power is proven to be the safest. Source: "The Revenge
of Gaia" by James Lovelock page 102. As you can see,
psychological problems are preventing the wider use of nuclear
power.

I have no connection with the nuclear power industry. I have
never had any connection with the nuclear power industry. I am
not being paid by anyone to post on Alternet. My sole motive is
to avoid death in the collapse of civilization and to avoid
extinction due to global warming.

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Wind Energy Potential according to NASA
Large images [On the original web site. If you look at the images, you see
that the best wind is at very INconvenient locations, like near Antarctica and in the
North Pacific ocean.]

"Wind energy has the potential to provide 10 to 15 percent of the world’s future
energy, according to Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. Once windmills are installed, wind can be converted to electricity
inexpensively. But not everyone likes wind farms. The giant collection of whirling
blades mars scenic views and can kill birds and bats, particularly if located in a
high-traffic flyway. To minimize these risks, one solution may be to place wind
farms in the ocean. Wind tends to blow stronger over the ocean than over land.
The ocean presents a smooth surface over which wind can glide without
interruption, while hills, mountains, and forests tend to slow or channel wind over
land.

But, as any sailor could tell you, wind over the ocean isn’t consistent. In some
places, the air is still, while in others, the wind blows fiercely. To identify potential
wind farm locations, NASA scientists Tim Liu, Wenqing Tang, and Xiaosu Xie, all
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mapped out average wind intensity over the
ocean between 2000 and 2007. They created their maps from data collected by
NASA’s Quick Scatterometer (QuickSCAT), which measures wind speed and
direction over the world’s oceans. The satellite sends pulses of microwave energy
through the atmosphere to the ocean surface and measures the energy that bounces
back from the wind-roughened surface. The energy of the microwave pulses
changes depending on wind speed and direction. The scientists averaged
QuikSCAT’s measured wind speeds by season, and then calculated the wind
power density, the amount of energy that could be derived from a wind turbine in a
given location. Their maps for the winter and summer seasons are shown here.

Wind strength is influenced by seasonal patterns, land-ocean interactions, land
topography, and ocean temperatures. All of these interactions are evident in this
pair of images. Areas of high wind power density, where winds are strongest, are
purple, while low power density regions are light blue and white.

The largest patterns shown in the images are seasonal patterns. In December,
January, and February, winter storms fuel strong winds in the mid-latitudes of the
Northern Hemisphere. In June, July, and August, winter reigns in the Southern
Hemisphere, and the pattern is reversed. The Asian monsoon also controls the
seasonal distribution of wind. In June, July, and August, strong winds gust across
the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. From December to February, the monsoon
winds blow over the East China Sea. Finally, the trade winds trace their way
across the tropics, stronger in the winter than in the summer."

==================article continues at the URL above=========

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As long as you keep messing around with wind, solar, geothermal and wave
power, the coal industry is safe. There is no way wind, solar, geothermal and
wave power can replace coal, and they know it. The coal fire has to keep on
burning in case the wind dies or the sun goes down. If you quit being afraid of
nuclear, the coal industry is doomed. Every time you argue in favor of wind,
solar, geothermal and wave power, or against nuclear, King Coal is happy.
ONLY nuclear power can put coal out of business. Nuclear power HAS put coal
out of business in France. France uses 30 year old American technology. So
here is the deal: Keep being afraid of all things nuclear and die either when [not
if] civilization collapses or when H2S comes out of the ocean and Homo
"Sapiens" goes extinct. OR: Get over your paranoia and kick the coal habit and
live. Which do you choose? I put quotation marks around "Sapiens" because it
is not clear that most of us have enough brains to avoid extinction when it is
clearly predicted and the safe path has been pointed out. Nuclear is the safe path.

PS: Nuclear is the cheapest and safest source of electricity. Nuclear life cycle
CO2 output is the lowest per kilowatt hour because it takes a huge number of
windmills or solar collectors or wave machines or whatever to produce the same
power as a nuclear power plant. All of those windmills or whatever have
manufacturing processes that make CO2. Hydro power requires an enormous
amount of concrete. The first step in making concrete is heating limestone to
drive off the CO2. That is one of the sources of CO2 from hydro power. The
price for electricity for the various sources of power include the total life cycle
costs. The cost to build the reactor is not much different from the cost to build a
coal fired power plant and the money comes from the same source. Whoever
would pay for the reactor is the same person who would pay for the coal burner.

Nuclear is the cheapest and the only full time replacement for coal.
Nuclear power would be much cheaper than it is if nuclear were allowed to be as
unsafe as the other sources of power. Nuclear power plants are self-insured.
Tax money is NOT involved and would not be mentioned if it were not for the
civil disturbances caused by coal company shills, alias protesters. The nuclear
industry needs and deserves protection from people who are obviously either
mentally ill or very misinformed. When tax money is mentioned with respect to
nuclear power, the money is the extra money that is wasted because of pointless
protests.

There is NO SUCH THING as nuclear waste. There is fuel that is being wasted
for political reasons and because the coal industry has driven Americans paranoid.
The coal industry's reason for doing so is the $100 Billion per year cash flow
they receive as long as you are afraid of all things nuclear. If you remain afraid
of all things nuclear and prevent the conversion from coal to nuclear everybody
dies. The cure is for everybody to go to college and get a 4 year degree in a
hard science [physics or chemistry] or engineering, or for Americans to start
acting like the French people with respect to nuclear power.

I have never worked for the nuclear power industry.

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Finding truth on the web:

Reference: "Web Dragons" by Witten, Gori and Numerico 2007.

The search engines do not understand the web pages they find for you. They are
just machines. They have no idea of whether or not the web pages they find tell
the truth. In the US, we have "freedom of speech," which means that nobody has
to prove that anything is true before publishing it. We also have a coal industry
that has a gross income of $100 BILLION per year. That $100 BILLION per year
could be easily sunk by the nuclear industry unless you can be persuaded that
nuclear power is dangerous. [The truth is that a coal fired power plant puts 100
times as much radiation into your environment as the nuclear power plant. The
truth is also that natural background radiation is 10 times what you get from a coal
fired power plant.] Do the coal companies have an incentive to lead you astray?
Yes. Is $100 BILLION per year enough incentive? Yes. Can the coal industry
afford to hire doctors, economists, environmentalists, website designers, computer
scientists, psychologists, advertising agencies, and lots of other people on $100
BILLION per year? Of course. Can the coal industry afford to set up hundreds
of web pages on hundreds of computers in hundreds of locations and "game" the
search engines on $100 BILLION per year? Yes. And they do.

How hard is it to find the truth on the web? Very hard. Most web sites have a
monetary reason for existing. People who know the truth and are willing to tell
you the truth don't have much economic reason to do so. It is hard to make money
by telling the truth. Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence
or overestimating the gullibility of the average person. So how are you going to
find out the truth for sure? There is only one way. You have to become a
scientist. You will have to spend a minimum of 4 years in college to get the
minimum degree, the B.S. You should really spend more like 15 years and get a
post doctoral degree.

THERE ARE ZERO HUMAN AUTHORITIES.
Scientists do not vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature
owns it. We find out what Nature's vote is by doing Scientific [public and
replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable] experiments are the
only source of truth. [To be public, it has to be visible to other people in the
room. What goes on inside one person's head isn't public unless it can be seen on
an X-ray or with another instrument.]
Science is a simple faith in Scientific experiments and a simple absolute lack of
faith in everything else. Do not trust any human, not even yourself. Trust only
the experiments that you personally perform. Otherwise, you will be misled.

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