Comments on: The Dilemma Over Coal Generated Power

60 Minutes: Coal Power Plants Supply Power To Millions, But Cutting Carbon Dioxide Could Take A Long Time

[coalsales]

Since coal is the most abundent fuel the U.S. has and can be converted to gasoline, etc. Why does the federal government not use stimulus funds to convert the coal, create jobs and reduce dependence on imported oil, etc. This seems like a win-win and not just a one time shot, conversion would take place every day.
Let's use the fuel God/nature gave the USA wisely.

[louiville2]

'House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated'

Climate Depot Exclusive - Updated


Washington, DC -- UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

?The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,? Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. ?They are cowards.?

According to Monckton, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday. But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S. on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had ?chickened out? and there would be no joint appearance. Gore is scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment's fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The hearing will be held in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.

According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed 'celebrity' as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The "celebrity" witness turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats' "celebrity" with an unnamed "celebrity" of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.

[ Update: 1:55 PM EST: A GOP House source told Climate Depot that the Democrats on the Committee said ?absolutely not? to allowing Monckton to appear during today's Gore hearing. The GOP committee ?pushed at multiple levels? to bring Monckton in to testify but the Democrats ?refused,? according to the GOP source. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich was called in to testify after Monckton was rejected by the committee Democrats, according to the Congressional source.]

?The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,? Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening.

?Waxman knows there has been no 'global warming' for at least a decade. Waxman knows there has been seven and a half years' global cooling. Waxman knows that, in the words of the UK High Court judge who condemned Gore's mawkish movie as materially, seriously, serially inaccurate, 'the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view,'? Monckton explained. Monckton has previously testified before the House Committee in March. (See: Monckton: Have the courage to do nothing...US Congress told climate change is not real ) Monckton has also publicly challenged Gore to a debate. (See: Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming By Lord Monckton - March 19, 2007 )

A call to the Democratic office of the House Energy and Commerce Committee seeking comment was not immediately returned Thursday night.

[mikesarcbs]

Well, I should have read more comments. They have ideas I had forgotten and some I never heard before.
For example, Carbon Dioxide produces an effect like Greenhouse have to grow plants. They let the sunlight in but keep the heat from radiating out.
This means that the longer we wait to END, and I mean TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY END the use of coal, the closer we will be to the Methane Tipping Point. This is the ocean temperature at which the Gigatons of solid Methane at the bottom of the ocean begins to come out of solution. Since Methane is twenty (20) times more effective in producing the Greenhouse effect, the fate of human kind (and all life) will be sealed. In short, The End of the World becomes inevitable. There is no second chance after the Methane is released.
One Tipping Point was met in 2007, in that year the oceans were found to be saturated with Carbon Dioxide, that means that only vegetation can absorb CO2, the oceans do not absorb it, like they did for 150 years.
The next tipping point is when forest fires produce more CO2 than the surviving vegetation can absorb. Since forest and wildfires are growing in frequency, this tipping point will be reached in less than 20 years. The shipping channel, the Northwest Passage is expected to be open for business in less than 10 years. Greenland may lose all its glacier water in 30 years and the oceans will raise by how many feet? I forgot, was it 3 feet or 23 feet?
Those of you still alive to see it may note that once you read these words here.

[msbuddy]

We have all of these coal burning companies--why not take the approach to convert a% of the factories to methane, sequestration, etc::Use all of the know how we have::the big thing is to GET STARTED!!

[mikesarcbs]

Why is it we are learning that bank officials lied to investors and pushed loans on people that could not afford them and now taxpayers are stuck with bailing them out, while they are losing their jobs and homes? Did somebody lie, and got a big bonus paid by the taxpayer? Is the sky blue? Ops! The sky may not be blue but 600,000 workers lose their jobs each month, up from 500,000 a month. My point: Don't believe everything CEOs say is true.
For example, the EPA made a survey in 1991 and found that S. Dakota, Kansas and Texas have enough wind power to meet all the electric power needs of the nation.
An MIT professor is trying to test barge-mounted windmills that would be out sight from the nearest beach and deliver all the power needed by coastal cities..
A new version of barge-mounted windmills would use its own, free, electricity to convert water into oxygen and hydrogen and make it available to all nations to end their dependence on coal and oil. Service boats would bring the pure water and collect the free Hydrogen to power cars, trucks and electric power cells. Presently, power cells use expensive Hydrogen, this new source of Hydrogen would be worldwide and cheap.

The Trillion dollars that would be WASTED on coal sequestration could replace hundreds of coal powered electric power plants with ocean based, barge mounted electric power windmills..Problem Solved.
Coal Sequestration is a dumb nightmare. There was another attempt using some ocean species that would digest and keep the CO2 but, predictably, when it died it returned all the CO2 plus more -generated when it rot. Forget about coal, let's get busy building windmills.

By the way, a few years ago the biggest power company in Texas canceled construction of all future coal power plants, including two already in construction, and switched entirely to windmills for the future. If it is profitable in Texas, only a dumb banker would ignore that. Ops!

[pake3]

Several years ago, Japan wanted to conduct a sequestration experiment in the deep ocean near Hawaiian water. It created great controversy. Carbon dioxide is a "poison"! It would have killed any life form in the area and would have made miles of ocean seabed unsustainable for any life, forever.

Now, Jim Rogers wants to do the same thing in your state.

If you doubt that CO2 is a poison, go to

http://science.howstuffworks.com/lake-nyos.htm/printable

and read of what happened at Lake Lyos on Aug. 21, 1986. You can ask any miner of the hazzard of CO2...

[Arno_Arrak]

There is no substitute for coal. Electricity from coal costs 3 cents per kwh, from wind it is 15 cents per kwh, and from solar it is 30 cents per kwh. China and India are going for coal which is plentiful and they are the biggest polluters in the world. If we make electricity from coal more expensive by various legal maneuvers that Hansen and his crowd are pushing the Congress to adopt we are simply shooting ourselves in the foot. And all that for nothing because satellite temperature measurements prove that carbon dioxide is not even the cause of global warming. If that is news to you i9t is because no paper that questions the role of carbon dioxide in global warming can be published in any scientific journal today. I know, because I have tried to publish in Science, Nature, and PNAS - no takers. At the same time they publish scientifically worthless or trivial papers from the the well-funded Hansen global warming machine. When I say well-funded I mean that the United States is pending over one billion dollars on climate change studies in fiscal year 2009, of which 400 million dollars goes to Hansen's group at NASA. If you want the real truth on global warming check me out on ICECAP. It will shock you.

[demotwit_n]

Nuclear is a solid choice for many parts of the US (ie: those w/adequate surplus water for cooling), BUT only if it is built w/a newer reactor technology, like fast-neutron. Otherwise it is ecologically insane w/the traditional reactor technology.

A traditional nuclear reactor (ie: all current commercially operating nuclear plants in the US) puts out approximately 100 tons/yr/GigaWatt of highly radioactive waste that takes 25,000 yrs, in storage, to reach safe levels required to exit storage. The reason for this that traditional technology LEAVES 95% of the original fuel energy in the waste. Mathematically this means that, given the 77KTons of Yucca storage, a SINGLE old-technology 1GigaWatt reactor would fill Yucca to its 77KTon capacity after 770 years, AND after another 24,230 years the oldest accumulated tonnage could be released safely from Yucca. Ecologically insane.
(cont)

[demotwit_n]

(cont)

Fast-neutron, on the other hand, puts out approximately 1 ton/yr/GigaWatt of much-lower radioactive waste that takes 250 yrs, in storage, to reach the safe level required to exit storage. The reason for this is that fast-neutron EXTRACTS 99% of the energy from the fuel. Mathematically this means that the US could construct 300 - 1GigaWatt fast-neutron reactors, which after 250 years would fill Yucca to its 77KTon capacity, AND every year after that the oldest accumulated tonnage could be released safely from Yucca. This is ecologically sustainable

A forward thinking federal government could launch a real ?Manhattan Project?, and help fund the 1st plant?

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf

PS - Fast-neutron can also recycle all of the current old-technology nuke waste, extracting 94% of the original energy and turn what was toxic waste into safe-in-250 years waste?

[ludvig1-2009]

Pump CO2 into the ground, like I saw on 60 Minutes to me makes no sense. It will just leak back out. Burning anything, whether it's coal or natural gas, you still have a chemical equation where CO2 comes out in the end. You burn methane for example and you have CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 +2H20. The only real answer, which no one likes, except in Europe and Japan is Nuclear energy which has a nuclear rather than a chemical reaction. Where instead of CO2 being released you have gold and other such elements being created when the Uranium fissions and changes to other elements. I'm not opposed to windmills and solar power, but they can't take the place of the really really big energy producers.