Blowing Smoke

Going green isn't going to accomplish anything, it's just going to make things worse for the American economy. I live and work in a coal producing state, and without the mining of coal millions of jobs will be lost. My parents live on a reclaimed strip mine, which once was a mountain that was inhabitable. It's one of the most beautiful places around, they grow a garden, have fruit trees, have cattle that graze on the grass that was hydroseeded after mining. Theres not any drawbacks from mining coal, just lack of common sense from politicians, and enviromentalists who think anything we do is wrong when they don't change thier habits and expect the majority of us to!

Please allow me to clarify my last comment. CLEAN COAL HASN'T BEEN INVENTED YET!
Clean Coal is an Idea... and a Goal. It's still in development, and it hasn't been invented Yet!! That's like saying the Multiple Scerosis Association has a cure for MS, when in Reality they are working on developing a cure which could be any number of years away.

HOAX! CLEAN COAL IS A HOAX! "Joe Lucas, a vice president for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, says that the technology does exist, although it's still in early development stages. "With the current research being done, we think we can get the technology up and running within 10 to 15 years." Clean Coal is a HOAX!
Coal has always been known as an Extremely Dirty agent! We need to get rid of coal and concentrate on Wind, Solar, and Geothermal means of energy! Bye, Bye Fossil Fuels!!

All this enviorment *** better in there hybrid cars will be left in the dark when all the coal plants are shut down. They don't like the best alturnative nucluar power so lets hope the wind doesn't quit.

The mining of coal needs to be regulated but the real dirty coal is right onthe surface and not being used just because its very dirty. But, good engineering can be used to liquify and distill this into very clean fuel at little cost-its just a matter of good engineering that has never been used on a lowbrow substance like this stuff.

Your bodies are 28% carbon. Plants contain a higher percentages of carbon. every creature that moves processes carbon for energy and emits carbon. Carbon is an outstanding filter material. Carbon filters and reflects radiation. Carbon does absorb radiation, but releases it.

Lab experiments in in 2007 and 2008 took a very serious look at the radiation absorbtion. Until then Science was throwing personal guesses as to how much heat was being retained by carbon. The results didn't exactly please either side of global warming. The findings were that carbon absorbs a much narrower band of infared radiation. The Pro global warming crowd wasn't happy because heat absorbtion was less than 1/100th their estimates, but also about 10 times greater than the anti global warming crowd claimed.

All major temperture monitoring agencies agree that we have been cooling for the last 9 years now. According to them, the world cooled by .5 & .7 degrees C. One year wiped out all gains in the last 100 years. This huge temperature drop precisely coincides with solar cycle 23's activities. The new cycle has been identified, but is really slow to begin. Expect us to have another severe temperature drop for the next 6 - 12 months. Carbon may finally be dropping some in the next 6 months because worldwide layoffs have begun so expect carbon output to drop.

Coal needs to be cleaned of the extraneous heavy metals such as mercury and lead. Sulfur has been successfully removed since the 80's. Take heart in these 2 items. If you burn all 2 miles of the earths crust (contains an estimated .07% carbon content, you can never exceed .1% carbon in our atmosphere. Compare this to Venus and Mars which contain 97% and 96% CO2 (33% Carbon). Venus is murderously hot and mars is frosty cold. Both planets temperatures have risen at the same rate of earth from 1990 to 2000 (last published data). Their carbon percent has not changed while our increased. It's about time to stop thinking inside the little earth box and consider our entire solar system.

It seems coal can be cleaned by making it a liiquid hydrocarbon and refining the liquid. This is not being done at this but could be done at a very low cost. It could be a very clean fuel if good engineering was used to do the job.

Adventure tourism please visit Ky. and WVa. while they still have mountains. John Denver song Almost Heaven West Virginia has been retitled almost level West Virginia. In order to try to compete with Western Coal with large seams laying close to the surface on level land the coal corporations want to blow the tiops off mountains and push the debris into valleys and cover fresh water streams. You may be able to cover flat land with a little top soil and place some grass seed on it and call it reclamation. They had to put mountains back on the original contour to comply with the 1977 Surface Mining Act. You can't destroy a forest, a mountain, a valley and a fresh water stream and just strike it off level and spray some weed seed on it and call it reclamation. Many species depend on forest here and can;t thrive on flat land. Decicious forest take hundreds of years to even come close to their original state. We deep mined here for a hundred years without destroying the mountains. The stripping or MTR allowed by executive order is the most destructive environmental disaster in modern history but sinse it is appalachia nobody gives a damn. George Bush's midnight regulation changes to EPA allowing the streams to be covered is a crime against humanity. The destruction of fresh water streams, forest, wildlife is a criminal act now allowed by law. George Bush's war on Appalachia will be as much a part of his legacy as the illegal war in Iraq. The physical destruction here is greater and will take much longer to heal. In fact once a pristine valley is covered with 1000 feet of debris or overburden it is gone forever. You may be able to grow a rain forest back in time. How do you restore a mountain, a forest valley, the animals, the fresh water streams when you blow the mountain up and bury a valley with it. Forest animals depend on trees, they will not return?

There is such thing as clean coal technology. BIxby Energy Systems has a process to convert coal to a high quality natural gas with no carbon emissions. This technology is here and working. You will soon be hearing about them, stay tuned.

Climate iis changing but what do we really know about why? Climate has changed naturally before man's existence. Temperature has gone up and down. The planet has a very complex buffer system that smoothes out changes in matter and energy whether caused by animal life or natural causes. We should strive to use renewal resources and where we use a virgin resource we should recycle to minimize depletion.
With a severe depression threatening we should delay implementing any environmental programs that will delay economic recovery. In the meantime we should continue research to develop hard data and procedures.

Clean Coal technology does exist in North America today - at a plant in western ND where CO2 is piped to an oilfield in Canada to be used in enhanced oil recovery. Carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS) is more expensive. Utilities have been unable to justify the cost not knowing what a new cap and trade or carbon scheme might look like-(which will cost the consumer greatly). While governments have been willing to invest in wind and solar, they recently cancelled funds for the FutureGen plant in Illinios, the first zero emissions coal plant. With Barak Obama's push for infrastructure and jobs they might want to revisit that. China is building their own version of FutureGen today and will likely sell the production rights back to us while we sit on the sidelines. People that would lead you to believe that wind or solar is the bridge to the future might want to consider that coal produces at least 50% of US electricity and is 3x less expensive. How do you replace that much baseload (85%+ efficient) power with wind that is at best 35% efficient and which in some parts of the US has no return at all. Others would lead you to believe that NG is the answer but they do not remember the price spikes when utilities converted some baseload power to NG some 10 years ago and that environmental groups are fighting oil and gas drilling all over the western US and Alaska. Nuclear would be an excellent option if we could shed our "nimby" attitudes.
Newsweek might be better served to discuss this with someone from a non-biased scientific perspective before they commit the average consumer to much higher utility bills.

www.AlternativeEnergyStock.com

Coal and oil are the fuels of the American economy. Speculative greed on Wall Street artificially gouged the American consumer with uncontrolled inflation. He does not have the confidence to make major purchases. Maintaining your current SUV is less expensive than the $10,000 surcharge for an unproven tiny hybrid that will save only $2000 over the lifetime of the vehicle. Thank you for the tax cut, I will no longer be able to share the wealth any longer. Unemployment sucks.

Mr. Hardwick isn't telling you ALL the facts,just things he wants you to hear. He's not willing to even give the technolgy a chance to grow into a viable technology. There are other processes being developed as well. Nuke power is the best near term solution.Wind is OK as long as there is wind,solar as long as there arent any clouds. We need power 24/7. Oh yes, most wind turbines are made in Europe and India. No jobs here for that. Only about 10% of wind turbines are made here. Biofuels will greatly increase prices for anything that uses or eats grain. How about $9 for your Whopper or $30 for a box of corn flakes? Doesn't sound very good. Not everyone is an overpaid CEO. I'll take my chance on "all of the above" concept.

My son just returned from a business trip to the Netherlands last week. He was told that they pipe the CO2 from their power plants into green houses. The plants need CO2 to grow and in return they turn O2 back into the atmosphere. The plants grown under the high levels of CO2 grow 3 times as fast as those in normal atmospheric conditions. Also, they are now working on growing algae (pond scum) to milk for oil. They can milk the algae cells every for days without destroying the cells. They can grow in any water including polluted water and they consume very high levels of CO2 in their oil production.

There is technology available, only no one wants to fund the pilot plants and the further research necessary to perfect and use it. Why would we want to remove or store the CO2. It is the basis for growing more food to feed the planet and biodiesel to fuel our vehicles.

Its interesting that Mr. Hardwickisn't offering any real alternatives. They don't even want to give the new technology a fair chance even get up and running. Wind power is nice but if the wind doesn't blow-guess what. No watts.Bio fuels divert agricultural supplies and bread or other grain items go sky high. Wait until you pay $20 for a loaf of bread or $30 for your next box of corn flakes.Cost of electric goes up 300% Not very practical. Windmills have a lifespan of 15 yrs and are extremely expensive to maintain. Most wind turbines are built in Europe and other countries. Only about 10% of wind turbines are produced in the US. They don't tell you that. The Alliance isn't going to give you the facts. Nuke power is our best near term solution and continue finding alternatives. That's the responsible thing to do. By the way. Acid rain is a myth. If that were the cae there wouldn't be any trees around or downwind of coal fired power plants. Guess what,the trees are doing just fine.

We may have the technology to sequester Co2. I recently viewed a program on the Science Channel that showed a process of using Co2 to grow algae. Algae is then converted into fuel, alchohol and residue that can be used as a solid fuel. Very large ponds are required to grow algae, but, I do not see anyone coming up with any alteratives. I would also think that a chemical exists the would collect Co2 in a scrubber for the same use or for sequestering purposes. On another note, the mine fires in China produce in one year as much pollution as the entire USA does in one year. Lets help them put out these fires and buy the whole planet some time. Either way we have no choice, we must stop global emmisions. KJC '81 PSU

My son just returned from a business trip to the Netherlands last week. He was told that they pipe the CO2 from their power plants into green houses. The plants need CO2 to grow and in return they turn O2 back into the atmosphere. The plants grown under the high levels of CO2 grow 3 times as fast as those in normal atmospheric conditions. Also, they are now working on growing algae (pond scum) to milk for oil. They can milk the algae cells every for days without destroying the cells. They can grow in any water including polluted water and they consume very high levels of CO2 in their oil production.

There is technology available, only no one wants to fund the pilot plants and the further research necessary to perfect and use it. Why would we want to remove or store the CO2. It is the basis for growing more food to feed the planet and biodiesel to fuel our vehicles.

If the car companies had been making and the America people driving fuel efficent cars for the last ten years we would not be in the mess we are in now. The car companies told us that there would always be plenty of oil and the bigger the car the better and now the coal compainies are telling us that they can make coal burn "clean". How long can the American people be fooled? Read and learn people. It is going to matter in ten years what we do now. Think of the future not of yourselves for once.