Senator Obama will do or say anything to get elected. Then he will do what he is told by the people who controll him. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Howard Dean.

We have two choices a tired old man, with a wing nut VP or a man who has spent his life running for office. He is not held accountable because he voted on very little. His missed votes are second only to McCain. We are being "Oke Doked" folks and it is too late to change the outcome. Since we are all going to have to work forever to provide basics while fat cats get fatter it really doesn't matter much any more does it?

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Our relentlessly growing human population needs an endless supply of coal, oil and natural gas from a planet with limited supplies and a vulnerable ecology. So, onward and outward in search of new planets to conquer and devour????

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Coal is almost pure carbon, except for the 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 that are coal's impurities. Coal smoke and cinders are commercially
viable ORE for the above elements.
Chinese industrial grade coal is sometimes stolen by peasants for cooking. The
result is that the whole family dies of arsenic poisoning because Chinese
industrial grade coal contains large amounts of arsenic. Coal varies a lot.
You have to analyze it not only mine by mine but even lump by lump.
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.
See also: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html

Coal is a $100 Billion per year industry in the US alone. That is why stopping
coal is going to be difficult.

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Environmental policy = energy policy
Energy policy = environmental policy
because 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.

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:
http://www.sciam.com/
article.cfm?articleID=
00037A5D-A938-150E-
A93883414B7F0000&
sc=I100322
....................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:
http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2003/prPennStateKump.htm
"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:

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/modules.php?op=
modload&name=News&
file=article&sid=672

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/modules.php?op=
modload&name=News&
file=article&sid=1535

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/article2509.html

http://astrobio.net/news/
modules.php?op=modload
&name=News&file=article
&sid=2429&mode=thread
&order=0&thold=0

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:
http://www.marklynas.org/
2007/4/23/six-steps-to-hell-
summary-of-six-degrees-as-
published-in-the-guardian

"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 financial connection to the nuclear power industry.

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"Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear Energy" by Gwyneth
Cravens, 2007 Finally a truthful book about nuclear power. Gwyneth Cravens
is a former anti-nuclear activist.

Page 211: In 2005, the production cost of electricity from:

nuclear power on average cost 1.72 cents per kilowatt-hour 1.00 times nuclear's
price

from coal-fired plants 2.21 cents per kilowatt-hour 1.28 times nuclear's price

from natural gas 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour 4.36 times nuclear's price

from oil 8.09 cents per kilowatt-hour 4.7 times nuclear's price

Wind fits in here.

solar in a sunny place 22 to 40 cents per kilowatt-hour 12.79 to 23.26 times
nuclear's price

American nuclear power reactors operated in 2005 around the clock
at about 90 percent capacity

geothermal plants operated at 75 percent capacity

coal-fired plants operated at about 73 percent capacity

hydroelectric plants at 29 percent capacity

natural gas from 16 to 38 percent capacity

wind at 27 percent capacity

solar at 19 percent capacity

[Batteries not included but required for wind and solar. Why did wind and solar
operate so far below capacity? Simple: Wind power never works when the
wind isn't blowing. Solar only works at maximum during the noon hour.]

Page 13 has a chart of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production.
Nuclear power produces less greenhouse gas [CO2] than any other source,
including coal, natural gas, hydro, solar and wind. Building wind turbines and
towers also involve industrial processes such as concrete and steel making.

Nuclear power plants produce a total of 30 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour, the
lowest.

Wind turbines produce a total of 58 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour.

Solar power produces between 100 and 280 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour.

Hydro power produces 240 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour.

Natural gas produces between 439 and 688 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour.

Coal plants produce the most, between 966 and 1306 grams of CO2 per kilowatt
hour, the highest.

Remember the total is the sum of direct emissions from burning fuel and indirect
emissions from the life cycle, which means the industrial processes required to
build it. Again, nuclear comes in the lowest. Nuclear would produce even less
CO2 per kilowatt hour if the safety were lowered to the same level as other
sources of electricity. Switching from coal to nuclear is a 97% reduction in
electricity's 40% of our CO2 output.

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Yucca Mountain contains an enormous supply of nuclear fuel that
should not be wasted. We don't recycle nuclear fuel because
spent fuel is valuable and people steal it. The place it went that it
wasn't supposed to go to is Israel. This happened in a small town
near Pittsburgh, PA circa 1970. A company called Numec was in
the business of reprocessing nuclear fuel. I almost took a job
there, designing a nuclear battery for a heart pacemaker. [The
army offered me more money to work on nuclear weapons
effects.] [A nuclear battery would have the advantage of lasting
many times as long as any other battery, eliminating many
surgeries to replace batteries.] Numec did NOT have a reactor.
Numec "lost" a quantity of reactor grade uranium. It wound up in
Israel. The Israelis have fueled both their nuclear power plants
and their nuclear weapons by stealing nuclear "waste." See:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/
x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreport
s/buriedlegacy/s_87948.html
It could work for any other country, such as Iran or the United
States. It is only when you don't have access to nuclear "waste"
that you have to do the difficult process of enriching uranium,
unless you have a Canadian "CANDU" reactor or a British
Magnox reactor, both of which run on unenriched uranium.
Numec is no longer in business. The reprocessing of nuclear fuel
in the US stopped. That was the only politically possible solution
at that time, given that private corporations did the reprocessing.
My solution would be to reprocess the fuel at a Government
Owned Government Operated [GOGO] facility. At a GOGO
plant, bureaucracy and the multiplicity of ethnicity and religion
would disable the transportation of uranium to Israel or to any
unauthorized place. Nothing heavier than a secret would get out.

I have no financial stake in the nuclear power industry, and I
never have. Nobody is paying me to say this.

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The only viable sustainable energy source for a sustainable industrial society. If we learn to manage our population within the ecological constaints.

And I hope those poor folks a few billion years from now forgive us for cooling the interior of the planet down a couple of hundred million years sooner than "natural".

Now if we could only harness the political and financial will and herd all the "more humans are alays better" crowd to the sterilization centers.


That last clause is meant as an argumentum ad extremio - or whatever the Latin phrase is.

I prefer trying to educate them to the error of their ways and help them understand that if their god exists it doesn't want them breeding the planet into a slum.

Now, should I move to Hawaii, Yellowstone, or Iceland?

If Sarah Palin only realized the real gold Alaska is sitting on isn't oil!

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I studied this technolgy a bit 8 years ago when I was in graduate school and the pilot plants were pumping the CO2 into marginal oil wells to make them profitable again.

Just goes to show the inherent BS in any of these fossil fuel technologies.

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(the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts it'll[CO2] stay in the ground for centuries.


It had better, because if it doesn't it is just a useless, expensive boondoggle.

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Is it possible to ban AsteroidMiner for useless hogging of resources with his cut and paste repetition?

Or perhaps you might start charging him standard advertising rates?

Sincerely,

A Concerned Reader

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Excellent contribution. GT combined with solar offer the most sustainable solutions to domestic energy consumption.

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Clean coal has an inherent regulatory problem. It's economically much easier for a utility to leak the carbon dioxide out than to put it down a hole.

"It just happened." Carbon dioxide gas can imperceptibly leak out of a smokestack, out of a truck or out of a hole in the ground. All it takes is a turn of the wrench. In our town, industries currently get rid of their metals-contaminated industrial water by putting it in a tanker and driving all over town, letting it leak out

No one has the slightest idea how to force a monopoly utility to keep accurate records, through Democrat and Republican administrations alike, and to not make money-producing mistakes.

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To say all of the candidates support clean coal is untrue. Both corporate party candidates do indeed support clean coal and I appreciate your drawing attention to this problem. However, the Green Party, and their presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, understand that clean coal is an oxymoron. I urge to research all candidates and bring to light those candidates that agree with your argument.

One resource you didn't mention was efficiency and conservation, which will take us a lot further than any one alternative source.

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