"Why would we invest billions of dollars making a limited, dirty fuel barely acceptable when, within a decade, we could entirely replace coal power with wind and solar -- an investment that would pay us dividends forever since no mining or drilling is required?"

Cause it's a multi-billion dollar industry employing tens of thousands of people with a political lobby the size of Texas. You can't just turn something like that off. You have to remove it slowly over time like they did with the cigarette industry. Change the minds of the people and they'll eventually quit smoking. I know, cause I did.

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I don't think that most Americans understand that the overhyped 'clean coal' is mostly about burying the by-products underground and hoping they don't escape. All they hear about is the buzz word and think that it really means something more than burying the problem and hoping it is forgotten.

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Clean coal is a lie! Everyone knows it but yet even on our state of South Carolina the electric companies want to build a new plant. The existing coal plant is polluting and emiting mercury poisoning which is killing our streams and polluting our fish with mercury which in turn is giving mercury poisoning to those who live near by and or eat the fish! The loss of life and life time impact is not yet totally known. There has to be a better way!

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...de-sulphured coal. While the sulphur is gone, the soot and the ash remain, none of which is clean. Just ask your lungs that have to deal with this crap, if it's "Clean".

BUT--there's another reason to look at "clean coal". Carbon capturing operations--WELL-REGULATED AND INSPECTED ones--with the occasional visit by investigative journalists getting a story (OR, MAYBE NOT), by pretending to be miners themselves--are indeed necessary.

You see--the most cursory examination of this planet's physical history, reveals that this (Earth) is the kind of planet that is known as a "snowball".

Yes. The various ice ages, during which (until bacterial activity overwhelmed the seas) no life could begin, much less flourish, due to the cold.

There is, however, one chance to avoid the inevitable collapse of this civilization, that the next Ice Age could bring: carbon capture.

I don't speak of America's corporate barons, pushing for carbon capture (the burial of all carbon emissions of their societies)--nobody in the world, most including America, believes anything that they say anymore.

No. Now I'm talking about those countries who are able to mount true carbon capture projects under their own government sponsorship.

(Wow, no WONDER our capitalists HATE 'SOCIALISM' (here defined as any government program except war)!!! They must think of it as highway robbery, never mind that it's OUR highways that THEY'RE robbing!)

Anyway. Here's how some of us envision Carbon Capture:

Carbon is taken and stored underground in huge caverns all over the world. (In Louisiana, the oil filling its salt caverns can stay there--that's pure carbon and we already put it away)

When the weather turns cold, cold, colder--that carbon can be SELECTIVELY RELEASED INTO OUR OCEANS. Carbon is best processed there, into warmth in the water--and best of all, avoids contaminating the air we breathe.

It can be stored in those caverns and then released as soon as the temperature begins to drop world-wide. Then the Carbon Release can slow until the temperature stabilizes; upon which time, it can then be halted UNTIL TEMPS GROW A COUPLE OF DEGREES COLDER WORLDWIDE--and then the Carbon Release can be resumed, as before.

Thus we can 'stabilize' our snowball, perhaps even indefinitely.

Carbon capture guarantees that it can keep this planet at its Intermediate (Warm) range that we were all born under. This will keep the planet from its foreordained fate--turning once again, into its periodic "snowball" stage; (thereby killing all life AND civilization).

Unless sabotaged by the aforementioned Big Business Interests--Carbon Capture can, thus, save; not only our lives, but also our civilization. Unless we all want to go back to the Cro-Magnon stage of existence--no? Thought not...

Every country can have its own Carbon Capture. The more power the people of any country have, the less likely that their Carbon Capture could be co-opted by their own dumb crooks. We in America used to have that power once--we may still, I don't know--but I do know that the emerging Constitutional Republics of Latin America and South Asia certainly DO have that power. If saving the world has to belong to others, rather than North America--then, so be it.

By the way--whatever happened to the MHD cars? How did "they" get rid of those? MHD came along around 2000. The biggest complaint seemed to come from oil-lovers, who said something on the order that "there aren't hydrogen filling stations, the way that we have gas stations". Considering that enough hydrogen to fill up our tanks now, would cost about a nickel, I can understand the Energy Czars of today pooh-pooing Hydrogen for cars.

What I can't understand is the American People letting them get away with it.

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We have Clean Air - a massive improvment on when I was a kid.

As regards removing CO2 - that is probably impossible as well as completely unnecessary.

But there is no point in even having the discussion with most on here about the fact that Global Warming ended 10 years ago - and due to a most dramatic reduction in solar activity - particularly sunpots - the planet is rapidly cooling.

Cut coal before you have found a better replacement and proven that it will work and you will freeze to death under a blanket of ice if you live in a cold climate.

The planet is getting considerably colder - but you don't want to know that because it conflicts with your eco-indoctrination.

Try getting really cold - its not nice and will make you dream of a warm coal fire.

Tony

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thanks to the new and improved, clean, green, hybrid coal industry. We are being bombed, blasted and bulldozed right into 3rd world America ! http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=138 Our air, land and water are a toxic moonscape.

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They also believe the planet is continuing to get warmer - and it is due to CO2 emissions.

Trying to argue with these people is equivalent to presenting the real history of the Story of Christ to Born Again Christians - check out the religious section of Zeitgeist - or read The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold.

But it's worse than that. Whilst people can believe any religious nonsense they want, The Global Warming Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold is far more dangerous to Life on this planet.

We are in effect planning to spend Billions trying to cool down the planet - when we should be investing Billions trying to fix the Real Problems - rather than the Imaginary Ones.

What Global Warming? Such as it was is over

Space and Science Research Center

Extract

"Fact: All history reveals that time after time this planet of ours has experienced periods of warming and periods of cooling. A century of slight global warming, about half a degree, ended in 1998.

Fact: In this century a global cooling has set in. In 2008 most of the northern hemisphere, except for Western Europe, is coming out of what most scientists say has been the harshest winter in decades.

Malta, Israel, China and India's New Delhi have been subjected to record low temperatures. In Afghanistan, more than 900 people and 316,000 head of cattle died as a result of bitter cold weather according to Reuters.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon 13 top scientists including one Nobel Prize winner, pointed to the fact that while CO2 levels have continued to rise, global temperatures have fallen, dramatically contradicting the claim that CO2 levels cause global warming. They wrote that the UN Climate change Panel "must be called to account and cease its deceptive practices - Policies based on False science must be ended."

Meteorologist Anthony Watts says that the total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough, he says, to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years.

In a news conference held in Orlando, Florida John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, issued a landmark declaration on climate change.

“In an opinion echoed by many scientists around the world, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC), today declares that the world’s climate warming of the past decades has now come to an end. A new climate era has already started that is bringing predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future. In some years this new climate will create dangerously cold weather with significant ill-effects world wide. Global warming is over – a new cold climate has begun.”



Fact: Lack of Sunspot activity portends the onset of global cooling. The sunspot number should stand close to 100; instead it's zero

The level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 years," said Ian Wilson, lead author of a study appearing in the June issue of PASA, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

The result is a strong, rapid pulse of global cooling, said Wilson. "On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by 1 - 2 C.”

"A 2 C drop would be twice as large as all the warming the earth has experienced since the start of the industrial era, and would be significant enough to impact global agriculture output."

Got it? Global warming, such as it was, is over. Done with. Kaput."

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Investing any more Energy in this old DEAD Technology is a waste of valuable Time and Money.
It also avoids the real issue,
The true wants and needs of The Citizenry

Full speed ahead!
Decentralize the Power Industry
Generate power in your own Back Yard and
Put dirty old King Coal out of Business.
In fact: if when we renovated old buildings and built all new buildings with new Higher Energy Standards, there would be no need to build anymore new
Coal Power Plants.
That’s the Facts, Jack.
Stop The Transmission loses.
How much Energy is lost in Transmission?
&
How much are you charged for that Transmission?
A very costly, unhealthy and inefficient system is still being pushed.
Old King Coal is a very dirty old Polluter.
Higher Efficiency and The Local Generation of Green Power is the answer.
King Coal wants to continue ripping you off, Poisoning you and
The Environment
When you add up all the consequences of King Coal’s Pollution,
All the
Environmental and Health Damages
There is only one answer.
It cost too much!

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Higher Efficiency Standards and Local Green Energy Production
Every Dollar we put into higher efficiency, and energy savings, produces Green jobs now and continues to pay back with many more years of energy savings.

Take what ever phony Federal Reserve Dollars you have left and
Buy your Families FREEDOM.
The Shit is hitting the fan.
Stand aside and watch it slide!

Go Local
Go GREEN
GO ORGANIC
Join
The Micro-Democracy Revolution

Survive and Prosper!

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Consider the Connection to:
Alternative Energy
Coal has too many NEGATIVE issues.
Please Google, or AIM Search:
CTC123GREEN
Great post(s) Every One
Thank you for all you do for the environment

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Clean coal and "over time". There is, never was, and never will be any such thing as clean coal. Over time my ass. Time is what we have precious little of. Even if we immediately stop polluting NOW, we're still going to suffer from what we've already done. Our very lives depend on doing what's right, right now. It appears more evident with each passing day that the coal crooks have no conscience and no intentions of ceasing their assualt on Nature and the human race.

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Today I am researching concentrated solar thermal energy, and this link about the heated molten salt concentrator, the technology I responded to another poster about, crossed my way.

This technology is already proven. Two such powerplants were built and the first generated ten megawatts of power in its test run. It stands to compete with coal for cost with none of the pollution issues. So why listen to Big Coal's greenwash?

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the money needed to fund is constantly usurped by coal & nuclear, and they are still dicking us with false information. Coal & nuclear just aren't safe, period.

After reading all the comments I have a few items to mention based on internet research...

From the info I could find transmission loss is less than 5%, but this cuts into the bottom line of consolidated centralized energy suppliers so they will propagandize us into believing it's really more in order to maintain monopoly positions. Since a renewable energy source is virtually free & unlimited why worry about an insignificant loss of less than 5%? (and that number will go down as the technology improves)

In 1972, a company along the gulf coast started storing excess energy produced in the form of compressed air held in underground caverns(old oil wells, caves, etc). If wind & solar have bad days this reserve acts like a big storage battery to provide needed electricity generation.

I also found a map of geothermal resources. It showed there is enough reachable geothermal energy under EVERY state to provide heating & cooling for every home in each state. Compressed air can also fuel the new 'air cars' like those out in France, India, & Australia this year. You can safely breathe the exhaust emissions from these vehicles because it's clean air.

Industrial hemp can fuel all our autos & more if we can just overturn the ignorant scare tactic laws passed against it in the 1930's because of competing special interests in the chemical, cotton, & wood industries. During WWII growing hemp was considered a patriotic duty for national security. Why not now also?

About a decade ago there was a tidal project initiated in San Francisco that would provide the energy needs of 600,000 people in the Bay area. Funding couldn't be found because it was blocked by other energy providers...WTF?

Do I really want GM to fail...no; do I want them to bring the EV1 back into production...hell yes!

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