Energy Secretary Chu Endorses "Clean Coal" 464
DesScorp writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Energy Secretary Steven Chu is endorsing 'clean coal' technology and research, and is taking a pragmatic approach to coal as an energy supply. '"It absolutely is worthwhile to invest in carbon capture and storage because we are not in a vacuum," Mr. Chu told reporters Tuesday following an appearance at an Energy Information Administration conference. "Even if the United States or Europe turns its back on coal, India and China will not," he said. Mr. Chu added that "quite frankly I doubt if the United States will turn its back on coal. We are generating over 50% of our electrical energy from coal."' The United States has the world's largest reserves of coal. Secretary Chu has reversed his positions on coal and nuclear power, previously opposing them, and once calling coal 'My worst nightmare.'"
"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Insightful)
Oxymoron of the century.
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(Score:0, Troll)
The president of North American Coal has mod points today. Fine, let's put you downstream from the mine, and then you can tell me how "clean" your coal is.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Clean coal is clearly an oxymoron - There's no such thing as clean coal.
Just like there's no such thing as clean nuclear (gotta do something with that waste), clean wind (service roads are a bitch and transporting energy requires infrastructure), clean sun (break-even on solar panels just sucks, but ovens and water-heaters are OK), etc...
We've got tons of coal that's (relatively) easy to mine and (if not clean) not nearly as bad as it used to be and its environmental impact isn't all that much worse than a
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Informative)
Just like there's no such thing as clean nuclear (gotta do something with that waste)
Actually, the French [wikipedia.org] have been recycling [wikipedia.org] their spent nuclear fuel for years.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Informative)
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For permanant storage there is also things like Synrock - but anyone that suggests the entire waste problem has been solved is either lying to sell something or has been fooled. The answer is that instead of pretending that it all happens by magic and is
nuclear power (Score:3, Informative)
Just like there's no such thing as clean nuclear (gotta do something with that waste)
Actually, the French [wikipedia.org] have been recycling [wikipedia.org] their spent nuclear fuel for years.
And "France Acknowledges Massive Radioactive Pollution at La Hague [naturalscience.com]".
Or "PRESS RELEASE" [ieer.org]
"Vice-President Cheney Wrong About French Nuclear Repository Program, Independent Institute Asserts"
"French Public's Opposition to Nuclear Waste Repositories as Deep as that in the United States"
Then there's the matter of whether nuclear power is profitable.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? By weight, 90% of the spent fuel is natural uranium, which can be used as fuel in fast reactors or other commercial purposes. 5% of the weight is high-level radioactive waste, which decays to safe levels in a few decades. The rest is trans-uranics, which can be recycled to use in new fuel.
The only reason why we have a "waste problem" in the US is because the government won't allow separating the dangerous-part-which-decays-quickly from the very-long-half-life-but-reusable-as-fuel parts. The reason why we can't do this separation is because we don't want to encourage rogue nations like Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:5, Informative)
We've got tons of coal that's (relatively) easy to mine and (if not clean) not nearly as bad as it used to be and its environmental impact isn't all that much worse than a lot of the "green" sources.
Bullshit. [wikipedia.org]
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps if you understood what's "dirty" about coal power, the term "clean coal" would make more sense.
=Smidge=
Energy breakeven on photovoltaic is apples/oranges (Score:3, Interesting)
Just like there's no such thing as ... clean sun (break-even on solar panels just sucks,...
Photovoltaic cells actually reach energy breakeven (more energy out than it took to build them) after only a couple years (depending on technology). Claims that it took more than the life of the panel proved bogus.
But that's not the point.
The purpose of the panels (and their supporting systems of mounts, batteries, inverters, ..) is to deliver high-quality electric energy to a location. As such the proper comparison
Re:"Clean Coal" (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, is that [nytimes.com] really true [nytimes.com]?
Coal mining is a major environmental catastrophe, always has been, always will be. Blowing the tops off mountains to get at it, and parking the burn waste right on the edge of rivers, it's hard for it not to be.
Now, if Mr. Chu can turn around those practices, I'll applaud him. But nothing I've heard so far leads me to believe they'll address things beyond cap-and-trade.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama's definition of Clean Coal = raise taxes on regular coal, and claim that selling carbon credits to non-producing third world countries somehow reduces overall pollution.
The cleaner the coal... (Score:5, Interesting)
The dirtier the fly ash.
Radioactive too! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=coal+radioactive+emissions [google.ca]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A bunch of people are dying in the USA right now because of some Chinese drywall imported from 2001-2008 [chinesedry...center.com], because a bunch of the gypsum was replaced with fly ash. Humid conditions cause it to break down prematurely and release its sulfur dioxide.
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The radiation hazard is negiligable. The amount of radioactive material per ton of coal is nearly 0. It's only a significant source of radioactive material when you burn a couple billion tons of it a year. Burn a couple billion tons of any solid and it will be a significant source of radioactive material. Coal does have more radioactive material per ton than most solids, but it's still a tiny amount per ton.
You get pretty much the same amount of radioactive material in blocks using fly ash as you would
This is what happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
...ideology meets reality.
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ideology is all well and good... but the whole concept of a "progressive" president having an energy secretary that claims to oppose nuclear power as well as coal, is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.
Renewable energy is all well and good, but the fact is that at the moment, it's not going to provide us with all the energy that we need. So while we should be adapting our infrastructure to support more renewable resources (solar, I am looking at you), we cannot afford to forget that it is nuclear power that promises us the quickest (and cleanest) way to combat our oil dependency. Furthermore, as far as I am concerned, burning any petroleum-derived products for electricity generation borders on the criminal, because while we have plenty of other ways to spin the turbines when the oil runs out, we're going to be deeply screwed when it comes to producing something we've come to take for granted in the modern age - plastics.
Corn (Score:2)
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We can always produce plastics from other substances, too... like castor oil [autobloggreen.com].
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We can always produce plastics from other substances, too... like castor oil [autobloggreen.com].
Certainly we can. But at what cost, and on what kind of scale?
The fact that you can do something in the lab, doesn't make it feasible for global adoption.
Chu is not Anti-Nuke (Score:5, Informative)
Chu is not anti-nuke. I don't know where you got that idea, but Secretary Chu has long been a proponent of nuclear power. From a 2005 interview with UC Berkeley's Bonnie Azab Powell:
Question: Should fission-based nuclear power plants be made a bigger part of the energy-producing portfolio?
Chu: Absolutely. Right now about 20 percent of our power comes from nuclear; there have been no new nuclear plants built since the early '70s. The real rational fears against nuclear power are about the long-term waste problem and [nuclear] proliferation. The technology of separating [used fuel from still-viable fuel] and putting the good stuff back in to the reactor can also be used to make bomb material.
And then there's the waste problem: with future nuclear power plants, we've got to recycle the waste. Why? Because if you take all the waste we have now from our civilian and military nuclear operations, we'd fill up Yucca Mountain. ... So we need three or four Yucca Mountains. Well, we don't have three or four Yucca Mountains. The other thing is that storing the fuel at Yucca Mountain is supposed to be safe for 10,000 years. But the current best estimates - and these are really estimates, the Lab's in fact - is that the metal casings [containing the waste] will probably fail on a scale of 5,000 years, plus or minus 2. That's still a long time, and then after that the idea was that the very dense rock, very far away from the water table will contain it, so that by the time it finally leaks down to the water table and gets out the radioactivity will have mostly decayed.
Suppose instead that we can reduce the lifetime of the radioactive waste by a factor of 1,000. So it goes from a couple-hundred-thousand-year problem to a thousand-year problem. At a thousand years, even though that's still a long time, it's in the realm that we can monitor - we don't need Yucca Mountain.
Question: And all of a sudden the risk-benefit equation looks pretty good for nuclear.
Chu: Right now, compared to conventional coal, it looks good - what are the lesser of two evils? But if we can reduce the volume and the lifetime of the waste, that would tip it very much against conventional coal.
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
that's great
now how much electricity and power was used by that "off-grid" home DAILY that you aren't taking into account.
you know, the power to run the pumps that supplied the water to it from the municipal water system.
the power to produce the food that the people inside consumed.
the power to do such simple things as create the paper they write on.
stop with the "off-grid" bullshit.
it's not real.
it's not accurate
and it's total bullshit.
the day someone really goes "off-grid" is the day they go back to doing EVERYTHING themselves and are totally self-sustaining without ANY outside interference.
producing your own needs for electricity is great
but its a VERY SMALL amount of the world's total energy consumption.
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What's going to happen when the reality of America's dependence fossil fuels meets the reality of climate change?
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's going to happen when the reality of America's dependence fossil fuels meets the reality of climate change?
We'll fully commit ourselves to nuclear and finally have the ammo we need to silence the anti-nuclear crowd?
Re:This is what happens when... (Score:4, Funny)
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I like how that article argues that nuclear plants are bad when it comes to greenhouse gases because you have to mine uranium, even though you have to mine coal as well. The difference of course is that afterward we burn the coal.
Then they say nuclear isn't sustainable because it's "seeing its role in the world's energy mix diminish". That's a prime example of begging the question, and they even spend the next seven paragraphs backing up this "argument".
Then there's this gem: "The nuclear industry argues th
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What's going to happen when the reality of America's dependence fossil fuels meets the reality of climate change?
The answer is obvious, unless I'm missing something. Rich countries will cope with climate change and poor countries will suffer.
I am not a global warming denier, but I've come to the conclusion that we aren't going to stop it. You'll never get developing countries on board, and the one resource more plentiful than fossil fuel is undeveloped countries.
So what do we do? Try to estimate the burn rate, model what happens when all the CO2 goes into the air, and prepare our infrastructure for whatever comes out
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I guess we (rich countries) could also try to suck CO2 out of the air, but I haven't yet seen a proven method.
Trees?
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Change? Change? (Score:2, Funny)
Bwahahaha.. where's your change now!
Re:Change? Change? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude... we had change from pro-coal to anti-coal. Now we have change back to pro-coal from anti-coal.
Maybe my math sucks, but that's 200% of the change we expected.
Why you hatin'?
What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand that there is no such thing as truly clean coal, but what is so bad about trying to produce cleaner coal for electricity generation?
Yes I do support nuclear, but we are pretty efficient at digging up and combusting coal. Why not work harder to scrub it better and deliver more electricity for the plug in hybrids?
Global warming (Score:5, Interesting)
In one formula, CO2. Coal is the fuel that produces more CO2 per joule than any other energy source.
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Re:Global warming (Score:5, Insightful)
See Carbon sequestration
I think the problem with carbon sequestration is that most of the schemes don't pass a sense check. Perhaps if someone were to present a detailed proposal about how it works, I might buy it. However, all of the proposals I've read don't make any sense.
Examples:
Bury the CO2 - Why won't it leak back up to the surface?
Bury Plant Matter - Why not burn the plants instead of coal?
Convert CO2 into some other chemical, and bury that - The laws of thermodynamics would like to have a word with you.
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And can you point to anywhere in the world where they're actually doing that to a substantial degree? I know there's a few plants in China that are doing trapping some for use in soft drinks, but nobody is doing in on the scale that's necessary to make it clean. And even then the savings are mainly the amount that would be released creating the gas.
Other forms of power plant are doing so, but I'm not aware of any large scale trials, let alone actual use, of this particular technology. And I'd go so far to s
Re:Global warming (Score:4, Interesting)
In one formula, CO2. Coal is the fuel that produces more CO2 per joule than any other energy source.
I guess you missed the part where he said we need to invest in carbon capture and pointed out that even if we abandon coal (not likely but let's assume so for the sake of the argument) that the Chinese and Indians won't? Seems to me that if we can make carbon capture work we can sell it to them and get some exports going once again. What's not to like?
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You're assuming that we Indians would want the carbon capture technology. Al Gore is not a huge box office draw in India.
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You're assuming that we Indians would want the carbon capture technology. Al Gore is not a huge box office draw in India.
He will be when you have massive famines and can't feed your population. Most of the studies I've read suggest that India won't make out very well if we encounter runaway global warming.....
Re:Global warming (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the problems is mining of coal. That isn't as clean or safe as it could (or should) be. The mass strip mine operations have given way to mountaintop removal which gets really ugly if the mining company can't (or won't) control runoff from the site. That's a very good way for people's water supply to turn orange if they use local wellwater for anything.
The other problem is the amount of energy it takes to store up CO2 somewhere. Realistically speaking we're going to need lots of dense (preferably mineral) carbon in the future for when carbon nanotubes (and similar carbon nanomaterials) take off, and burning coal sort of makes it harder to utilize all the raw carbon locked inside. Anthracite can be up to 98% pure carbon. Converting all that into CO2 + energy and then attempting to produce nanotubes from all that CO2 is sort of backwards. Better just to harvest all the raw carbon and throw the rest away.
Understandably that is a different application than energy production but coal will be one of the most attractive sources of carbon for nanotubes in my opinion (up there with graphite).
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If "clean coal" is not an oxymoron, I can't imagine what is. But given the sad fact that coal powers the world, and that change comes incrementally, some R&D on the subject seems like a good thing.
I'll go on the record as a supporter of clean coal, if it ever comes into being. And cold fusion, too. I'd even support perpetual motion.
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:5, Informative)
The "Clean Coal" phrase as Chu used it in the article is very different than the "Clean Coal" phrase used by my local utility trying to build a new plant. I would not mind Chu's "Clean Coal", but I do not want what the utilities are currently calling "Clean Coal".
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not work harder to scrub it better and deliver more electricity for the plug in hybrids?
I don't think scrubbing the exhaust of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate emissions is the controversial part, it's the carbon. At the end of the day, coal is nearly pure carbon. As you likely know, burning carbon produces carbon dioxide. This is very alarming to those who are concerned about global warming.
Unfortunately, the coal industry only has one solution for the global warming crowd. They suggest we bury the carbon dioxide underground. [wikipedia.org] This in itself is controversial, because nobody knows if it will work on such a massive scale.
Personally, I don't see how they will store it underground without it leaking to the surface. If you are going to store carbon, it's best to store it as coal, or in some sort of plant matter.
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:5, Insightful)
One the problem with "clean" coal is the radioactive waste. For the amount of energy produced, coal created more radioactive waste then nuclear. The difference is it is mixed in with tons and tons of chemically toxic ash, so there is no way of ever disposing of it safely. For nuclear energy the waste is conveniently concentrated and small enough it can be disposed of safely in stable rock.
Perhaps if we mixed the waste from our reactors with coal ash, people won't be so worried about it.
Re:What is so bad about "clean" coal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny you should mention that: linky [theoildrum.com]
Step 1: Mine coal
Step 2: After burning the coal, take the thorium from tailings
Step 3: Use liquid fluoride thorium nuclear reactors to provide energy for a few thousand years
Step 4: Profit...for everyone...
Not here yet. (Score:2)
There is definitely nothing wrong with funding more research. The fact is that we have tons of coal plants that aren't going away any time soon - it would be great if we could retrofit these plants. Furthermore, even if people lost their fear of nuclear power, we still couldn't build them fast enough to keep up with demand due to the longer planning and approval processes required. So even with wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear, we are going to have to build more coal plants to keep up with demand.
The pro
I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:2, Flamebait)
This is all political posturing at best motivated by some poll taken in a coal district. There's NO way this administration would ever actually do anything to support coal. Anyone connected to coal or coal mining who supports Obama would be about as foolish as a gay guy supporting Pat Buchanan.
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There's NO way this administration would ever actually do anything to support coal.
Nonsense. They follow the money, just like any other. What is there that's convinced you otherwise?
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There's NO way this administration would ever actually do anything to support coal
Care to make it interesting? They said that about wiretaps too (among other issues Obama's reversed himself on).
Fact is, there's no other energy technology available that can be widely implemented during Obama's administration, even if he's re-elected. You can't build nuclear plants that fast. Solar and wind aren't ready for wide-scale connection to the grid.
So guess what? You're back to good old coal, with a few twist
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't build nuclear plants that fast
Why can't we? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?
I read somewhere that there's only one steelworks in the world that's capable of forging the reactor containment walls and they have years of back orders on the books. Of course it didn't used to be that way but the various anti-nuclear movements drove down demand to the point that it wasn't profitable for other steelworks to retain the equipment to produce them. Other parts of the supply chain have been equally impacted.
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
It wasn't just the enviros on this one.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I generally agree that environmentalists have screwed the planet pretty good on nuclear power, but I think charging them with the crime of driving some steelworks out of business might be a bit off.
I think the deal is really more that steelworks that could make really thick plates just aren't used that much anymore, and I'd bet principally because the world's warships don't use thick steel plates. While, granted, I would feel a lot safer behind a very thick armor belt as found in an Iowa class battleship, than in a different ship, current naval protection doctrine eschews passive protection in favor of active protection. Instead of armouring ships, you build loads of anti-missile system, electronic warfare, and you also try to avoid detection.
But once Navy's made that switch, they didn't need the uber thick plates, and really, they were the only really big customers. Other people that use armor of some kind, such as tanks, tend to layer it up with different things - like composites.
Without the military driving the creation of foot thick plates, who really needs to do it? I really do try and think, just why I would a foot thick steel plate...
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations environmentalists -- you ripped the heart out of the only energy source that could have weaned us off carbon in our lifetimes. Seems a bit shortsighted in retrospect, doesn't it?
Yes, it's the environmentalists that got us into this mess. Back then, they were saying that nuclear will kill us all. The debate was over.
Now they are making the same arguments about carbon while adding "but THIS time, we are right!"
Re:I'll believe it when I see it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Would it have anything to do with the fact that the enviro-nazis and NIMBY bastards successfully stymied the construction of new plants back in the 70s and 80s and in so doing left zero incentive for American industry to retain the plant and equipment to build reactors?"
Nope. It's the cost thingy. It costs big bucks to build a nuclear plant. As a result the power is expensive. So you have to be sure you will need the energy and the price will be competitive in decades to come. And there still is that annoying waste issue.
It's cheaper to pay people to use less energy (efficiency), build coal plants or add wind or solar in small increments.
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I find it hard to believe that a capital intensive project like a nuclear power plant would have been economically viable in the 70s but isn't now. Of course this is assuming nuclear plants in the 70s were economically viable, and weren't subsidized.
To be economically viable basically means cheaper than base load coal, since both stations produce inflexible base load supply. Short run marginal cost is a far larger component in long run marginal costs for coal plants than nuclear plants.
So in a world of fall
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My other point is it isn't worth blaming people that really had no power to influence matters no matter how loud and annoying you may have found them. The reality is two well informed nuclear power advocates, Carter and Thatcher, had to shoot the dead horse that civilian nuclear power had become in eac
There's more to coal than just burning it (Score:4, Insightful)
Will "clean coal" provide health care for the miners? Will it eliminate those nasty, dangerous sludge ponds that occasionally break through their retaining walls? For some reason I doubt it.
Re:There's more to coal than just burning it (Score:4, Insightful)
You could say the same about almost any energy capture technology we have right now. Dams destroy river ecosystems. Solar panel production requires nasty chemicals, and their disposal is even worse. Wind farms kill birds. The list could go on.
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There's more to solar [icneer.org] than photovoltaic. In fact, that form will be a niche market for a long time.
The bird thing is pure BS. Besides the turbines can be placed far offshore.
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Industrial Solar Thermal as very little environmental impact..very little.
Modern Nuclear power generators such as IFRs produce very little waste. The waste it does create has a half life of 90 years. Meaning in about 200 years it's back to background radiation levels.
So we do have an answer available now.
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Will "clean coal" provide health care for the miners?
Probably more than abandoning coal and thus eliminating the mining jobs.
Will it eliminate those nasty, dangerous sludge ponds that occasionally break through their retaining walls?
There's probably an engineering solution to that, and I doubt that stopping the maintenance of the existing ponds (when the plants are closed) will make them stop bursting.
I'm not a big fan of coal plants, mind you - but I don't buy into your arguments. Issues with employee benefits and waste management are completely separate issues and will affect any power-production industry. Solar panel and turbine production involves all sorts of
Clean Coal (Score:5, Funny)
Jumbo Shrimp
Military Intelligence
Civil Disobedience
Evaporated Milk
Fresh Cheese
Political Science
Reality TV
White Chocolate
Clean Coal
Re:Clean Coal (Score:5, Funny)
Jumbo Shrimp
Military Intelligence
Civil Disobedience
Evaporated Milk
Fresh Cheese
Political Science
Reality TV
White Chocolate
Clean Coal
Slashdot Editor
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Cleaner than 30 years ago (Score:3, Informative)
By today's standards, anything they build will be cleaner than the 25+ year old plants. Cut some of the nuclear lawsuit shit and maybe we'd have options other than coal.
Bad dreams (Score:2)
It turns out that coal lobbyists were his worst nightmare.
Chu who? (Score:4, Funny)
Pfft... call me when one of the big-wigs endorses it, not their secretary.
Reality hits (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, well. Some truth about energy! Amazing. Lets take this a bit further and say that if certain groups haven't scared the hell out of people about nuclear, we wouldn't have so many coal plants in the US. We could be selling the coal to other countries. :)
Clean coal doesn't seem that great. (Score:4, Informative)
From reading the Economist, I've the impression that clean coal isn't actually that great. Check out these two articles:
The illusion of clean coal [economist.com]
Trouble in store [economist.com]
Despite all this enthusiasm, however, there is not a single big power plant using CCS anywhere in the world. Utilities refuse to build any, since the technology is expensive and unproven. Advocates insist that the price will come down with time and experience, but it is hard to say by how much, or who should bear the extra cost in the meantime. Green pressure groups worry that captured carbon will eventually leak. In short, the world's leaders are counting on a fix for climate change that is at best uncertain and at worst unworkable.
Aside, the WSJ isn't really giving us any new information, is it? Obama was advocating CCS during the election, so is it really surprising that his secretary is now advocating it?
So basically he says... (Score:2)
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Jesus tapdancing christ (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop burning coal. This isn't the industrial revolution. It's 2009 for pete's sake. Breeder reactors. Pull your superstitions out of your brain and your heads out of your asses. B-R-E-E-D-E-R R-E-A-C-T-O-R-S!
In short, he's saying... (Score:2)
In short, he's saying that we can't just drop coal and switch over to alternate sources at the drop of the hat, and we can't make other countries do so, so investing in carbon sequestering technologies is necessary. It seems like a perfectly reasonable position. I don't support coal, and greatly support wind, solar, and nuclear (in that order), but I can't reasonably expect our entire power infrastructure to switch over in years, much less decades.
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Wouldn't it have been better... (Score:2)
Wouldn't it have just been better to have been right in the first place?
Dead end (Score:2)
Clean coal is a dead end for two reasons:
Firstly in order to capture and sequester the CO2 you make the energy much more costly, approaching wind power and surpassing nuclear by quite a bit.
Secondly, the period of time the CO2 needs to be sequestered securely in order to avoid having a large impact on the climate is on the order of magnitude of ten thousand years, which is longer than properly reprocessed nuclear fuel. Also, the fly-ash remains toxic indefinitely.
So basically you have to ask yourself if cle
One question from Germany... (Score:3, Funny)
... is the full name of that guy perhaps Mr. Chu Thulu?
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Insightful)
A major political figure completely reversing his stance a subject and is able to provide straightforward and logical explanations for the change? Maybe I'm used to the previous administrations policy of "what we say goes, no matter what" but, yeah, this does kind of surprise me.
Say what you will about clean coal, but he is right about one thing. China is going to keep burning coal until there's no coal left to burn or something cheaper is found. Why not research the hell out of the subject and sell it to them in 10 years when they realize that they're killing their population with pollution? And if they somehow work out a way to have truly clean coal (burning coal with no particulates and no release of CO2) then why shouldn't we use it here at home?
Personally, I like nuclear, solar, and wind for our energy needs. But I think we should be researching every possibility, including clean coal and biofuels. Having a diverse set of energy sources means that when when resource becomes scarce we can more easily shift our focus and continue on.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Informative)
Who's reversing his position? Everyone talked up so-called clean coal during the election.
I agree however; even if we don't use the technology, we can make money selling it to other people.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course they did. They wanted to get the electoral votes in swing states like OH and PA.
Your mistake is in thinking that it had anything to do with energy policy.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Insightful)
In a nutshell. Just because you're pro-green, doesn't mean you're completely out of touch with reality. We use coal for a HUGE amount (it's the largest single source) of our national energy production, and it'll be decades before that can change in any meaningful way, so it only makes sense to see if you can make a virtue of necessity.
The thing I liked about Obama was that he wasn't batshit crazy. This is a perfectly sensible move, something he promised to look into during his campaign, and something worthy of study at the least. I am at a loss to explain all the crazy that's leaking out in this thread.
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No matter what you do with the coal it's CO2-positive. Even if you capture the CO2 in algae and make biofuel out of it and burn it again you are still releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Part of the reason why the atmosphere is how it is (which is to say, how we like it) is that the CO2 is "sequestered", AKA buried. Possibly the best thing we could do at this point is grow a bunch of algae and bamboo and bury them.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Informative)
But if we have to burn the coal (and right now we do), why not see if there is some way we can lessen the environmental impact?
We have a way already, it was developed at Sandia national labs on the behalf of the USDOE, and you can read a bit about how to deal with the carbon [nrel.gov] here. We capture 80% of the CO2 and then at least get to use it again. And a percentage of the algae becomes fertilizer. Of course, that assumes that such an approach fits into our national agenda [about.com] — only time will tell. Is it as good as a complete "clean coal" solution? That very much depends on who you ask.
As for new coal-fired power plants, they are an aberration and should be avoided at all costs. If we must build new power plants which are not inherently sustainable, let us build plants to reprocess nuclear waste, and plants to run on the resulting fuel. Yes, the technology could be used to produce weapons-grade materials. No, this is not relevant, because we already have more of that than we could possibly need.
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nobody is talking about making the earth too hot for all life.
we're talking about melting the ice caps flooding massively populated areas, destroying our economy, and generally ruining the usefulness of the ecosystem to HUMANS.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"The thing I liked about Obama was that he wasn't batshit crazy."
Endorsement of our democracy, really. You never know what's possible.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I did not get the information their ad.
The quote is from Obama, interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
FactCheck.org addressed the McCain-Palin ad(s).
They did not address the direct Obama quotes at all.
FactCheck.org directed you to Obama's energy policy on his web site, but did not address his words to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Maybe you should get your own facts straight and actually read what FactCheck.org stated and shows.
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Informative)
"As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America."
--Barak Obama, Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention. August 28, 2008. [nytimes.com]
Seriously man. Seriously. You cite the Drudge version of the Chronicle piece just like a conservative tool. Here's the whole quote:
"So, if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can. It's just that, it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I've said, with a respect to coal -- I haven't been some coal booster -- what I have said is, that, for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying, if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. You know, that I think is the right approach." Barak Obama, SF Chronicle Interview, Jan 17, 2008 (emphasis mine)
How about you think for yourself just a tiny little bit, eh?
Re:Peak Oil (Score:5, Interesting)
In or out of context, message is the same.
And, I am thoroughly against the idiotic "Cap and Trade" gimmick. It is a farce, in the extreme.
Oh, and for the record, in response to your "...conservative tool..." rant:
I support neither of the two major parties.
They are both are **only** interested in getting and staying in and expanding their power.
They **are not** interested in doing what would benefit the country and citizenry as a whole. They could really care less as they drive the country into the ground with massive amounts of debt, which will result in hyper-inflation and tax burdens that make the current taxes look like change you carry around in your pockets.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As are all Libertarians. They believe that all costs should be externalized. Dump toxic waste into public waterways. If someone doesn't like it, then they should have bought the waterway. If it somehow leaks onto private property, that shouldn't be illegal, but if the person who is harmed wants to stop it, it will take suing them because everything will be legal. After all, we wouldn't want the government
Re: (Score:3)
Uh, no, the quotation is spot in, in or out of context.
And, just for the record:
I do not support either of the major parties, they both suck in my book.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That of course, would require that China give a damn about their population.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You fucking idiots are so fucking funny.
Coal technology is already clean [...]
About 525 million gallons of ash slurry [discovery.com] clean, yeah.
Re:Nuke, baby, nuke (Score:4, Funny)