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Coal Lobbyists Are Taking a Hatchet to the Natural Gas Industry
After my year in the White House Press Corps, I vowed never to return, and took a really long shower, hoping to scrub every last spec of prejudice, self interest, and institutionalized dishonesty off of my battered carcass. But sometimes I see some maneuvering that is so unprincipled, crooked, and against the national interest that I am unable to restrain my fingers from the keyboard. For shorthand, let’s call them lies.
I’m talking about the absolutely merciless hatchet job the coal producers are inflicting on the natural gas industry. Coal today accounts for 50% of America’s 3.7 trillion kilowatts in annual power production. That’s a lot of vested interest. Chesapeake Energy’s (CHK) Aubrey McClendon says correctly that if we just shut down aging conventional power plants that are over 35 years old, and replace them with modern gas fired plants, the US would achieve one third of its ambitious 2020 carbon reduction goals. The share of relatively clean burning natural gas of the national power load would pop up from the current 23% to 50%. Even the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope says this is the fastest and cheapest way to make a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.
So what do we get? The press has recently been flooded with exaggerated or untrue reports of widespread well poisonings and forest destruction caused by the fracting processes that was used to recently discover a new 100 year supply of ultra cheap CH4. While the coal industry has had 200 years to build a formidable lobby in Washington, the gas industry is a neophyte, their only public champions being McClendon and T. Boone Pickens.
But memories in Washington are long, and Obama & Co. recall all too clearly that this was the pair that financed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that torpedoed Democrat John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. What goes around, comes around.
Whose hands are dripping with blood here? Peabody Energy (BTU), which ripped 200 million short tons of the black stuff out of the ground in 2008, followed by Rio Tinto (RTP) at 140 million tons, and Arch Coal (ARCH) with 134 million tons, poured millions of dollars into Washington to lavishly finance lobbyists. Their mission is to render toothless Cap & Trade legislation, block subsidies for natural gas which both parties seem to agree on, dilute environmental legislation, and promote the myth that the whole global warming thing is nothing more than a leftist hoax, thus keeping hands off King Coal.
Senators and congressmen from the top three coal producing states have been the eager facilitators: Wyoming at 467 million short tons in 2008 (Thanks Dick Cheney!), West Virginia at 157 million tons, and Pennsylvania at 65 million tons. That dinosaur of a union, the United Mine Workers, is another guilty party. You might even blame Warren Buffet’s Burlington Northern (BNR), which earns 70% of its revenues from shipping coal across the country for export to China. This is the wellspring for the money that is financing all those conservative initiatives, energy related, or not.
This will be unhappy news for the 23,000 the American Lung Association expects coal emissions to kill this year. How many will clean burning natural gas bump off? None. Can’t the coal industry be happy selling everything they rip out of the ground to China? If you are lacking an ounce conscience and are willing to turn a blind eye to where your trading profits come from, then use the current sell off in all hard assets to pick up BTU, RTP, and ACI. China’s demand for our coal remains insatiable, and domestic demand isn’t about to go up in smoke overnight either. You can always donate your profits to the Sierra Club. After all, I recommended Russia, why not King Coal.
There! I’ve had my say. Now I’m going to go have another long shower.
For more iconoclastic and out of consensus analysis, you can always visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com , where the conventional wisdom is mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, or listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio at http://www.madhedgefundtrader.biz/ .
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My point is that we don't know if this is a cycle, and if it is then how many year cycle is it. Obviously we don't know the answer. The data if it goes back 600,000 yrs how does it being in ice for that long affect it and how reliable is the science that tells us how old it is. There are a lot of variables and science is continually advancing but not perfect as you said and in some cases not reliable. Regardless of whether it is true or even partially true the responsible thing to do would be to reduce the carbon emissions. I don't believe cap and trade is the answer, just another derivitive. Thanks for the info.
Don't eat the fish....
http://water.usgs.gov/wid/FS_216-95/FS_216-95.html
american workers need jobs, why not reduce the environmental footprint that we humans leave behind us, cleaner air, water and soils for our children? Clean up the pollution we leave and inflict on those who come after us?
Burning coal is a slow death, they pollute more long term than Nukes.
How do we know if its true or not? How far back does detailed weather data go back? 100 yrs. How do we know that this is not a 100, 500, 1000 yr. or more cycle. I do know that what we are doing now probably isn't good for the earth, and definitely is irresponsible if we are looking to the future.
If we could spend a fraction of the money we spend creating wars to secure more oil for the future and use it to diversify our energy sources then we just might have a chance.
There are three main data sets that support the science.
Recent direct measurments: CO2 concentrations directly measured on mountain in Hawaii since 1958, and temperature records that go back couple hundred years.
Tree ring data: using regression analysis (alpha and beta in investing) between the measured temperature record and annual tree growth, one can estimate the temperature back a couple of thousand years.
Ice core data: Ice cores drilled in Antarctica have trapped bubbles from the time ice formed. Two mile columns of ice go back up to 600,000 years. Melt the ice and measure the composition of the atmosphere. Measure the density of various pollens and one can infer the what was growing at the time and what the climate was like.
This is fossil data. It's not perfect, but it's real. If you want to study the distant past (humans or dinosaurs) fossils are all you have. This temperature data is the basis for the "natural variation" claims that somehow "disprove" anthropogenic climate change by some writers above. It is also the basis for real climate studies that have linked orbital parameters to the cycle of ice ages.
How do you prove the calibration accuracy of ANY of these three datasets? None overlap, so you can't
We know now that the so-called "tree-ring data" comes from just THREE (or is it ONE?) trees, while all the other trees in that dataset were thrown out because they didn't agree with the foregone conclusions.
To the extent that we have measured CO2 in fossil air, we find that the CO2 rise doesn't occur until AFTER the fossil warming has taken place.
"When the facts prove to me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do YOU do?" (J.M.Keynes)
Three trees? Is that a joke? Or have you been drinking the kool-aid at the denier websites?
You seem to be taking the position that none of this evidence means anything because it is not some theoretically perfect data that does not exist.
Do you believe in dinosaurs? Can you learn anything from the fossile record?
For about $500 billion the US could construct about 100 nuclear power plants that would completely replace all the coal fired plants in the US. If we reprocess fuel like Japan and France, the waste problem goes away. (France's cumulative nuclear waste from 40 years of nuclear power lie in 3 pools in one building. Advanced reactor designs could even use the waste as fuel. Thorium based reactors could provide the US with 10,000 years of electricity. We could even use the excess heat from the reactors to turn coal into gasoline in a cleaner Fischer-Trope process. There's more oil equivalent in the US coal deposits than the whole of the Middle East combined, and then some. That and exploration along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts would make the US energy independent. A better use of the stimulus cash than the transfer payments and pet projects its being used on now.
For about $500 billion the US could construct about 100 nuclear power plants that would completely replace all the coal fired plants in the US. If we reprocess fuel like Japan and France, the waste problem goes away. (France's cumulative nuclear waste from 40 years of nuclear power lie in 3 pools in one building. Advanced reactor designs could even use the waste as fuel. Thorium based reactors could provide the US with 10,000 years of electricity. We could even use the excess heat from the reactors to turn coal into gasoline in a cleaner Fischer-Trope process. There's more oil equivalent in the US coal deposits than the whole of the Middle East combined, and then some. That and exploration along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts would make the US energy independent. A better use of the stimulus cash than the transfer payments and pet projects its being used on now.
Nuclear will have to be part of the answer. In this age of terrorism though security is a serious issue. Don't want to see anyone fly a jet into a nuclear reactor.
k duck, i'll bite - evolutionary bio guy u of chicago 88
1. No "real" scientist would ever call something as thin as climate change a given or proved. Now if you are fighting for tenure or a big ass grant - well then, bob's (Al's) your uncle and off the races you go.
2. Orbital mechanics - we are in a 9 body system and the equations have no single solution (they are unsolvable - hence the need for mid course spacecraft corrections) i.e. the earth's distance to the sun is not fixed and we have only captured solid position data in the last say 20 years. Oh - did I mention the sun's output varies and so does the daily energy flow via the solar wind, CME's etc..??
3a. earth is a wonderfully self regulating system. Some examples - remember pv = nrt, yippie you do. So if you increase temp of atmosphere what are you going to get - hint pressures have not risen - so guess what, volume goes up. Now if you increase the volume of a sphere (oblate spheriod I know) you get bingo - more surface area and what does surface area to space give you - a bigger radiative surface. And it varies all the time. Neeeto temp goes up, area goes up temp goes down - damn that's cool
3b. We get massive melt in polar regions - guess what, more plant life is uncovered and you get more co2 uptake by the plants that are now uncovered - nifty neeeto - who made this rock called earth
3c. Did natural selection in plants just stop..?? i.e. if more co2 is available ya think those plants may tend to select for those geneotypes that use co2 more effectively..?? I do.... well golly jee, ya think some assumptions have to be made yet about climate change and the inputs to the models..??
3d. I can pretty much guarantee you that biomass numbers are grossly underestimated. Just look at roofs and in gutters for missing biomass.... hmmm, wonder if those numbers have really big errors and how does that flow through the model..?? ro ro astro
and my favorite -
4. All the assumptions used in any climate change model have errors - those errors are not singular - they add together and kinda go logarithmic the more you have and the bigger the error - way to many assumptions and way to little "actual data" - sorry nobody was around to make measurements 100,000 years ago - that data is iffy at best and plant crap as a proxy - ohh that's good - remember natural selection - ya, they change over time so to pick something known today to proxy shit in the wayback machine is - well crap of dino proportions. Errors are way too big to make a call in either direction. More data is needed across a range of fields - and to be betting economies and major bucks on this fix when the errors and assumptions are off the scale is pretty much a crime. Oh did I mention - pretty much all astrophysics dorks will tell you the Sun is toast in a like 4 billion years so we are all fuk'd anyway. Why waste time and or money - party on baby..!!
Now answer for me -
What is normal average temperature of earth..??
Are we moving away from it..??
Are we moving to it..??
Would you be willing to bet the lives of all your future offspring that "global warming" is a fact..?? Literally - we would round them up and put a cap in their noggin if YOU were wrong..?? Come on - ya got to be sure now and stick to your principals - wanna take that bet with all the errors and assumptions in the data..??
Disclaimer - While I discount the recent and politically driven "climate change" phooey, I am a firm believer that as human populations increase it WILL become a problem. It is however actually a lot easier to change human population than it is to change the environment. For me healthcare (and a litany of horse shit government socialized crap) is/are the problem as we have reversed and overridden the natural selection process in humanity. That is a very bad thing to have messed with. I do like natural gas - it is in widespread use all over the country (globe) just not as much in the power gen sector as it should be. We need balance and a plan to change over time - well until the Sun goes red and really giant on us....
Now answer for me -
What is normal average temperature of earth..??
There is no normal temperature, it varies over the ice age cycles. During an interglacial such as when civilization arose (ie this interglacial) temperature is near the top of the range.
Are we moving away from it..??
Temperature is going up, we have not quite gone beyond the historical range. However, CO2 which correlates with temperature mainly through feedback effects (ie orbital parameters start interglacial warming, then CO2 releases magnify the temperature increase). Anyways, CO2 concentrations are higher than any time in the last 400,000 years and going much, much higher than ever observed in the last 400,000 nears. This is incontrovertable, measuring bubbles in ice core prove it.
Are we moving to it..??
The media often over simplify things. They often write as if the pre-industrial temperature is the optimal temperature for civilization. There is no way to prove that. Civilization (agriculture) arose during an interglacial. Humans will adapt (especially those that can afford it) to climate change. Those countries that are most dependent on agriculture, the developing world, will have the hardest time adapting. The speed of the climate change will influence our ability to adapt. Sea level impacts and agriculture will be the sectors mosts impacted.
I only advocate starting by cutting emissions by 10%, because the cost to the economy is uncertain. A low carbon tax or barely binding cap, will create an incentive to use energy differently and innovate. The ONLY reason society has not done anything to combat climate change is the perceived cost of doing something. Let's do a little and see what the cost really is.
Your natural selection assertions are interesting theories, but your attempting to negate a 100 years of science with a few assertions.
Sun will run out of fuel (actually burn only 10%) and turn into a red giant swallowing the earth in an estimated 10 billion years.
In the meantime, we do have data from ice cores drilled in Antarctica that go back 400,000 to 600,000 years (two different studies). Climate certainly does vary with orbital parameters; there's a ice age cycle every 110,000 to every 130,000 years, mostly ice ages with roughly 20,000 year interglacial periods.
There is also a solar cycle of 11 and 22 years. Every 11 years the magnetic pole of the sun reverses and then completes the cycle the next 11 years. Solar output and solar flares varies over this cycle.
All of these and more factors cause climate to vary. But which factors cause climate to vary as we've observed in the last 100 years. Answer: none of the natural factors only the human contribution.
Read about "detection and attribution" if you want to review the true science instead of pseudo conspiracy websites.
Your polar example with more plants there taking up CO2 ignores the change in the albedo effect (i.e. when there is no longer snow and ice there, reflectivity will go down, and more solar energy will be absorbed, heating the earth).
Too bad Al didn't get to be president. He could have told us the right temperature for the earth and done an Executive Order decreeing that we keep it there. Then we would be safe forever after. We need to listen to him because he is really really smart.
Adam,
Thread winner excellent post. Scarcity is a mindset and a policy problem. Reverse Jimma Carter's prohibition on reprocessing and we have now made a large dent in the waste problem. Reverse Obama's closure of Yucca mountain and scarcity is truly a mindset. Fossil fuels have their place as density of energy in especially oil when used in transport is difficult to replace. With sufficient energy in the form of nuclear we can really pursue these alternate solutions while not shivering in the dark..
Duck, even if it were real, it would be a net bonus to mankind, luddite...
It certainly will be beneficial to some countries, for example Canada and Russia, but net gain, no.
Can anyone who disputes climate change here give me one piece of evidence, that climate scientists have not already considered?
Just one?
I didn't think so.
If you try, make sure you look for the scientific response first; otherwise you're just spewing uninformed blather...
Oh, Ducky, ducky, ducky . . . .
I'm wondering if you even understand what you just wrote.
It's not a matter of what they considered, or didn't consider. The so-called scientific community that has supplied the support for the AGW political movement has surely considered a great many things, but they've also screwed the pooch beyond any shadow of doubt. You seem to assume that no scientist would ever lie or cheat. Sad to say, this is not and never has been the case. THAT's why the scientific community expects every result to be replicable by anyone else with the tools and knowhow to do so. These GW clowns did not do that. They concealed their "data" from everyone else, for years and years, on the flimsiest of reasons. That made us suspicious, right there. But now we have the smoking gun. Now we know that they've cherry-picked data, they've faked data, they've actively concealed data that didn't fit their preconceived models, and they've fiddled their models without mercy. And now it's no longer a case of skeptics posting opposing analyses for an argument, we now have Phil Jones admitting all this in public, and admitting that for 15 years now there HAS NOT BEEN ANY MEASURABLE WARMING.
So while they may have (in your mind at least) CONSIDERED everything, they still gave us fraudulent results.
I've spent my entire career in engineering, and specifically in engineering the measurement of one thing or another. I've ALWAYS been a GW skeptic, because I've known all along that the data they are building these models from has no credibility whatsoever. It never COULD have any credibility, because nobody knows how the vast majority of the thermometers which created the historical record were calibrated. The probable errors, even conservatively estimated, is three to ten TIMES the amount of "warming" they were(are) claiming. And that's just for the past 200 years or so. Prior to that, they're just guessing. Even the calibration of some of the satellites we've had up in the modern era has to be suspect. Ten years ago we had two different satellite data sets, but we cannot know whether they are any good, because the two satellites were never collecting data at the same time. We call this a "correlation test". If I had tried to get my customer to pay for two instruments that could not be shown to give the same results from testing the same object, he sure as Hell wouldn't write me a check. Well, that's what's wrong with the GW crowd. Their data stunk, they ran all sorts of tricks to try to make it look good enough to meet the customer's expectations, and we now know that they were lying all along. The customer (us) is now lining up the bouncers to have them thrown out into the (wet and snowy) street.
Cheers!
Are you on Al Gore's payroll or something? Have you been paid to troll this thread or are you a "true believing" zealot intent on spreading da troooooooooooof!1!1!!eleventy.
Regardless of the recent revelations of chicanery and data manipulation, as well as the pre-existing and ongoing obfuscation of methodology, model, and source data, you guys in the AGW camp are going to go to the mattresses on this, eh?
There have been past periods of extreme warming and cooling, long before man's impact became even statistically significant; like the medieval warming period, for one. And, here's a novel thought-perhaps solar activity is the more dominant driver in this instance!
With all due respect this is less about science, and more about political sway and control; about one group's abiloity to regulate and dictate the actions of another. The "science" is far from settled. In actual science, matters are never settled nor determined by consensus. Indeed, labs all over this country routinely verify the existence and effect of gravitional forces.
You've been reading too many global warming is a hoax sites. You hit two of the top 10 propagated myths that "disprove" AGW in one short post: medieval warming and variation in solar activity.
Both are TRUE but disprove nothing. Check out realclimate.org for both sides of the argument for both issues to educate yourself beyond one-sided nonsense.
You can't then prove a negative hypothesis. The hypothesis is that global warming, now conveniently called "climate change" (as if the climate isn't changing all of the time anyway!) is changing for the worse due to human activities and at such a rate that it is dangerous to human and ecological existence. Since the current evidence has been shown to be a complete sham, the hypothesis remains false.
What does this even mean?
Can evolution ever be "proved"?
If all scientific evidence supports it is it proved? Even though someday, somewhere there may be one piece of evidence that can disprove it?
If you want to ignore the scientific evidence go ahead. If you want to think that a field of science is only true if it never includes humans that do wrong things, you're going to be waiting a long time.
Have medical scientists ever faked the data, cooked the books? So now you don't go to the doctor?
Ducky,
I don't know about the others, but I don't dispute climate change, just that humans are causing all of it. Humans pollute, yes. In fact, people are pigs, but that doesn't create a warming climate necessarily.
Climate change is part of history -warm to cold, cold to warm...
As for the so-called scientific experts, well, they just cooked their own goose with the whole climate-gate scandal. Who can believe that group of scientists any more?
My self preservation instincts have taught me to not listen to those that lie. Liars are like pedophiles -they cannnot be cured or trusted!
Ducky,
I don't know about the others, but I don't dispute climate change, just that humans are causing all of it. Humans pollute, yes. In fact, people are pigs, but that doesn't create a warming climate necessarily.
Climate change is part of history -warm to cold, cold to warm...
As for the so-called scientific experts, well, they just cooked their own goose with the whole climate-gate scandal. Who can believe that group of scientists any more?
My self preservation instincts have taught me to not listen to those that lie. Liars are like pedophiles -they cannnot be cured or trusted!
One group of scientists did some dumb and inexcusable things. However, the conclusions of 100 years of science does not depend on this group.
I'll address the natural variation below.
Coal and natural gas have their niche uses. They can fill a gap until another advanced energy supply is up and running. The renewable sources such as solar, geothermal, tidal, wind and biomass will never be able to supply the necessary kilowatts to sustain the general welfare. Man-made climate change is a fraudulent concept.
Nuclear energy is a boon for humankind. There are energy deficits all throughout the world. Without reliable energy streams a nation cannot raise its general welfare. Israel runs on 7000 MW per capita; Norway 18,000 MW. Colder climates need more energy; Haiti 250 MW. No explanation needed. The potential of nuclear desalination plants is also profound. A literal Ganeden down here on terra firma is predicated on the supply of reliable energy sources. There is enormous energy able to be unlocked in a single atom. The universe is full of energy. Scarcity is a mindset.
Wahh, my tulips are coming up early, no frost this year wahhh...
As long as personal anecdotes are now proof, my ground is frozen 6 feet deep, 2 feet deeper than normal and this proves what? Nothing!
What is proof is Dr Jones admitting he hid data as a normal part of his work at CRU East Anglia, lying liberals wil l always lie for control.. The IPCC admitting its story on the Himalayan glaciers melting was a college students fanatasy and oh yeah, that ocean level rise thing we screwed up on that too..
First comment and my last read of MHFT.
Personal anecdotes are not proof. Educate yourself before you start spouting off.
Google "Detection and attribution" and you will learn something about how scientists actually detect the changing climate signal and then attribute climate change to human causes. If you've never read the detection and attribution literature or even heard of the term, you don't know what you are talking about.
Sir:
Please seperate CO2 fueled anthropogenic man made gloabal warming form deaths by coal airborne pollutants.
Anthropogenic global warming may turn out to be a huge hoax, but there is some truth to the idea that poorly controlled burning of coal can lead to problems. What is needed are better ways to manage the use of coal.
Please cut the BS.
www.energysolution.us
What about wind power? I know, everyone is always like "what if the wind doesn't blow? Then you won't have any power." That's why we should be building in places like Southeastern Wyoming where the wind has been blowing nonstop since the friggin late Pleistocene. And even if you built them in a place where the wind stops blowing, just make sure they're are near a hydroelectric dam. The energy output from the dam can be moderated in accordance with the local wind speed to produce the desired power output.
Nuclear would be good if we could finally agree on a place to store the waste, and Natural gas would be good except for the chemicals pumped into the groundwater during hydraulic fracturing. Wind's only weakness that I can see is it's intermittency. Of the 3 problems above, I believe intermittency is the mildest and easiest to overcome.
Wind is good, no doubt. But it's virtually impossible for wind to serve anywhere near as much load as coal, gas or nuclear. Wind should be a part of the strategy, but it can't be the solution.
Nothing's impossible, you say? Ok, true enough. But things do become economically impossible. There are not enough resources available to build the number of turbines that would be necessary to serve that kind of load (even if it were somehow possible to get past the enviros to site all of those wind farms). It's analogous to the Australians, who have recenlty given up on any future nuclear plants -- not because of the usual nuclear fears, but because their water shortage is so acute, it becomes economically impracticable to devote water to the nukes.
OK, I agree coal needs to be phased out. It does pollute the air, water, ect. Maybe natural gas is part of the solution; decentralized power sources like windmills, rooftop solar, and passive solar can almost completly eliminate pollutions from power generation and transportation if you get a plug in electric car. Plus, it eliminates your dependency on public utilites and allows complete self sufficency with power source that would remain if our whole gov't falls and public utilities become undependable with it.
I do have to say though, as a resident of Southern Colorado, the whole fracking methods do release gas into public water supplies. I know this because YOU CAN LIGHT MY TAP WATER ON FIRE. One of the guys that is trying to fight for some protection from this got on the news: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHCkvN_MLxs . We are also not coal lobbyists, we just miss being able to drink, wash dishes, bathe, ect. without hauling in a cyctern.
Another brainwashed fool. That will be the last posting of any sort I read from madhedgefundtrader. Sigh.
Mad Hedge Fund Trader is ridiculous. Talk about somebody who can't handle free speech.
Every try to leave a critical comment on his site.
Come on MHFT, why so anti-criticism.
Stand up and take it like a man instead of name dropping every 5 seconds.
Anyone who "knows" global warming is or is not true is full of scheisse. What we DO know is a danger as the result of burning coal and what I'm more concerned with is the waste created from coal ash. This crap piles up in artificial resevoirs meant to hold the ash, but the EPA keeps no tabs on these toxic pools. Somewhere, sometime soon, this will be a real tragedy.
Step 1: Massively ramp up spending on the infrastructure necessary to allow for natural gas vehicles (first on the fleet level, then for individual consumers). By displacing petroleum demand, you placate the enviros. But moreover, you reduce dependence on oil-producing nations. (Yes, yes, more comes from Canada than anywhere else. But the "anywhere else" still represents an uncomfortable segement.)
Step 2: Allow the oldest coal-fired plants to be decommissioned. Replace them with the option that requires the least government subsidy to meet the same load: clean coal, nuclear, wind, solar, etc. Nuclear seems like the best bet, but that's still a mighty big subsidy.
Step 3: Accept the fact that we will burn some coal for a long time to come. Allow the newer coal-fired plants to continue doing their work. Allow for minimal amounts of smart regulation to minimize their effect on the environment, but recognize that it is not cost-effective to over-regulate them. It's a tradeoff. You might not like it, but you might like the alternatives even less.
Face it, all energy sources have a problem either from being mined or from an emissions viewpoint. As for "King Coal"..it is probably the worst of all. Mining it is filthy, you have to whittle down a mountain, make an open pit, essentially destroy an aquifer, synthetic gas from it is big $$$, burning it is from an emissions point loaded with CO2 and sulfur, the waste slag is loaded with RCRA metals. Until we can get a handle on fusion, the only alternative is fission. So let's cut the red tape, tell the enviro-wackos to take a hike and build the damn things.......
At least you can spell, punctuate, write a complete sentence, and construct a readable paragraph. That's more than 95% of Americans can do these days.
23,000 die..big deal over 100,000 die from mistakes at hospitals
its a big deal when its YOU!
Ask any coal miner how healthy their job is.
Unlike office workers, they come home with soot on their faces and in their hair. Of course it gets in their lungs.
You can smell and see it in the air.
But its all good for us.
There death, and there is unneccessary death.
When the unneccessary death is willful and knowing ..i call it murder and many of us are accessories to the crime
While I do believe in keeping polution to a minimum, you can't live in our society the way we do and not create some pollution. Should we all just kill ourselves and get it over with? Don't worry about the rotting corpses, b/c I'm sure all the wolves that are over-running our mountains and forests will clean that up. Thus we save the planet from the human polluters and we save the elk from being wiped out by the wolves! Nice, a twofer. (Sorry, out here in the wild west we have a bit of a wolf controversy)
As for the coal miners, well, they should kind of know the risks before starting the work shouldn't they? As for me being an accessory to the coal crime- NOT. Don't use coal where I live, so you can stuff your guilt trip "merehuman". Oh, but I do use fire wood -geez I forgot. Not only am I polluting everyone's air, but I'm also taking away the food from the bark beetles. I guess I have committed a crime! Off to Gitmo for me.
I don't believe in keeping pollution to a minimum, that would be too expensive. I believe we should reduce pollution as long as the benefits of reducing each unit is greater than the cost of reducing each unit and no further.
Avoiding health impacts and avoiding damages caused to other companies from pollution are the benefits of reducing it.
Yeah, but trying to reform the health care/hospital/insurance cabal makes you a lousy communist, so we'll try working on these 23K for a bit.
I looked for a reference for the 23,000 deaths from coal emissions, but I only found one referernce to a 2004 study "Commissioned by environmental groups and undertaken by a consultant often used by the Environmental Protection Agency, the study concluded that 22,000 of those deaths are preventable with currently available technology."
This was from a news article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/
But, the one link in the story was a dead link. So, where did the 23,000 deaths come from? How do we know it is accurate. BTW, I would expect coal producing states to be lobbying for coal. Dragging Cheney into the post was beyond stupid.
Here's a link with scientific references
http://www.catf.us/publications/reports/Power_Plant_Emissions.pdf
I used to think your contributions were interesting. No more clickies from me. You jumped the shark this time, Fonz.
MHFT = (Frank Abagnale Jr.+Doogie Howser)/2
Tyler, I really am having a difficult time understanding your selection of contributors to ZH. If your strategy is to make you look good, it is working. If it is because you think it is making your site better, you are mistaken.
+ 1000000
Oh, so "both parties" agree on subsidies for natural gas, that must be a really great idea then. How dastardly of those coal lobbyists to be fighting the transfer of public funds to natural gas producers!
Of course they are working to kill it. It appears every industry in the united states is devoted to the idea that what ever the best solution we have, don't do it.