Clean coal: "A terrible idea whose time has come," WIRED's Mann says

[NickB79]

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/clean-coal---a-terrible-idea-whose-time-has-come---wired-s-mann-says-143148359.html

And while the Obama administration has put restrictions on coal in the U.S. "the economic case for coal in India and China are so powerful you simply can't replace it," Mann says, noting natural gas prices are five times higher in Asia vs. North America.

Coal currently produces more than 40% of the world's electricity and more coal-fired plants are coming: almost 1,200 new coal facilities in 59 countries are proposed for construction and the IEA estimates China will double its number of coal-fired power plants from around 2,000 currently by 2040, Mann reports.

China is "going to go for the coal, that's their plan," Mann says. "So the best we can do...the best they can do is find some way to clean up the pollution that coal will cause."

At this point, the best way to "clean up" coal is a process known as CCS -- carbon capture and storage.

So it's come to this now, eh?

[pscot]

1. Headed down hill, brakes gone,

pedal to the metal. No worries, eh?

[GliderGuider]

2. Our "Thelma and Louise" moment approaches...

A
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
h
h
h
h
h
h
h
h
h
h

[NickB79]

3. Brakes gone and the wheels on fire

Weeee!!!!

[CRH]

9. Too fast to live, ...

too young to die, bye bye. (Eagles)

[b.real]

4. Re:Clean Coal

I'm probably as liberal or maybe even more-so than many of you. If you don't care about the people who rely on this industry to put food on their families table, I don't think you're a liberal at all.

I live in a coal state, and I can tell you first hand that what's going on isn't right and it's not what the people here need. At this point NG prices give the coal industry enough problems let alone putting more restrictions on power plants. We're doing a good job right now tackling pollution we've reduced almost 90% since the 70's.

This place is full of poverty and ignorance and the more we democrats push this anti-coal stance the more voters we force over to the Republican side. At least the Republicans are pretending to care on a National level, they always use coal for a good PR opportunity.

I mean the national democrats are even losing the support of Unions like the UMWA on this issue. Bill Maher has it wrong on coal too. He suggested the miners go to Home Depot and get job. What a great idea! I'm sure they've never thought of that! Even though there's no Home Depots around here within 3 hours I'm sure that's the solution we've been looking for. I mean Home Depot $8/hr vs Coal Mine $30-40/hr you do the math there. A family can't make it on $8 an hour.

If we liberals are going to push this stance we need a REAL solution to replace the jobs we're killing.

[NickB79]

5. b.real? Bull.shit is more accurate

If you are really so clueless about the harm climate change wrought by coal will be, there is little left to discuss.

You are concerned about poverty in your state. I and virtually everyone on this board are concerned about the very sustainability of the entire planet.

We take your advice and burn coal for short term gains, and we literally put millions, if not billions, of lives at risk over the 21st century.

[Nihil]

6. Ha! I wondered when the first "April Fool" post would turn up! Nice one (whoever you are)! (n/t)

[hatrack]

7. Mechanization killed coal jobs; mountaintop removal killed coal jobs . . ..

A national economic shift to natural gas killed coal jobs.

Rivers filled with toxic coal ash waste, and rivers filled with mercury-rich fish killed public support for coal and coal jobs.

Please, tell me more about the "good job" "you're" doing on tackling pollution.

[b.real]

8. Re:Clean Coal

I don't play a good Republican BUT I can tell you that ONE volcanic eruption would release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than we could reduce if we stopped burning coal now.

Furthermore, places that don't burn coal for power generation have up to 40% more tacked onto their power bills.

Also NG has no EPA restrictions thanks to exemptions made for hydraulic fracturing (Bush Cheney) and it's much worse for the environment than coal. There's people that can light their water source on fire that live near these NG wells.

Btw there's a good bumper sticker around here that says, "If you don't like using coal don't use electricity."
I'm no friend of coal I'm just a simple union thug but I'm smart enough to know these coal conglomerates do NO ONE any favors but it's the only industry around here and THE REST of the world uses it so we should try to make it as clean as possible.

Some of you Global Warming folks remind me of Tea Party members..

[hatrack]

11. "ONE volcanic eruption would release more carbon dioxide . . . "

Thank you - that phrase makes things absolutely clear, and saves me time.

[hatrack]

13. Oh, and not that you'll read this or anything, but since you mentioned volcanoes . . .

Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO2 emissions in 2010 (Friedlingstein et al., 2010), release an amount of CO2 that dwarfs the annual CO2 emissions of all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2011).

The published estimates of the global CO2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial (on land) and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 0.13 gigaton to 0.44 gigaton per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998). The preferred global estimates of the authors of these studies range from about 0.15 to 0.26 gigaton per year. The 35-gigaton projected anthropogenic CO2 emission for 2010 is about 80 to 270 times larger than the respective maximum and minimum annual global volcanic CO2 emission estimates. It is 135 times larger than the highest preferred global volcanic CO2 estimate of 0.26 gigaton per year (Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998).

In recent times, about 70 volcanoes are normally active each year on the Earth’s subaerial terrain. One of these is Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii, which has an annual baseline CO2 output of about 0.0031 gigatons per year [Gerlach et al., 2002]. It would take a huge addition of volcanoes to the subaerial landscape—the equivalent of an extra 11,200 Kīlauea volcanoes—to scale up the global volcanic CO2 emission rate to the anthropogenic CO2 emission rate. Similarly, scaling up the volcanic rate to the current anthropogenic rate by adding more submarine volcanoes would require an addition of about 360 more mid-ocean ridge systems to the sea floor, based on mid-ocean ridge CO2 estimates of Marty and Tolstikhin (1998).

There continues to be efforts to reduce uncertainties and improve estimates of present-day global volcanic CO2 emissions, but there is little doubt among volcanic gas scientists that the anthropogenic CO2 emissions dwarf global volcanic CO2 emissions.

For additional information about this subject, please read the American Geophysical Union's Eos article "Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide" written by USGS scientist Terrence M. Gerlach.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php

[pscot]

12. I understand what you're saying

and it's a Hobson's choice. Coal is a big part of local economies, and in China and India coal is the dominant factor; the default energy source. The problem is, it's killing the planet. The issue isn't liberal or conservative. The issue is the survival of civilization; survival of the human species. Weigh that against the immediate need for jobs in the coal belt and you tell me what the answer is. Clean coal is a PR stunt and sequestration isn't working anywhere. We've run out of time to figure this out. If we keep burning coal, everybody dies. And soon. The future is here and it sucks. The biosphere dies. All the critters die. This is hard. It's hard to believe; hard to even think about. Hard for people to take in. But refusing to deal with it because your livelihood depends on coal is like refusing to get off the Titanic because you'll lose your job.

[progressoid]

10. "clean coal"

Candidate Obama was a big fan of that too.