Blowing Smoke

This article is hooey. It provides as much information about clean coal as a presidential ad campaign does about tax policy.

Where are the numbers, the scientific evidence, actual information about the state of clean coal technology? This article is utterly useless in that respect. All this article states is the climate change lobby's opinion about clean coal. Hmmmm, I wonder why it's so negative.....

This is another of those scare the hell out of people articles that has no basis in fact,scientific or otherwise. There is no way to measure weight of carbon dioxide gas in the volume that is supposedly being emitted. Input volume of the coal being burned would only weigh 17.4 milloin tons annually if 476,712.33 tons were burned every day. That is 4767 railroad cars of 100 tons each. After burning to produce energy output cannot exceed input so your claim is BLOWING SMOKE.

lAs with all of our industries in the USA, steel, coke, carbon and carbon plants, make coal on the hits list. And we wonder why our country is hurting while China is bursting at the seams. While coal MIIGHT be harmful to the Universe, let's make sure the US leads in brining about a meaningful solution that will add blue collar jobs in the US.

Ok people i think you win, I work in a coal mine but I'm willing to give up my way of life to make you happy. Now lets see if you are willing to give up your way of life because you think we are killing the planet. I think we should go ahead and close down all the coal mines and coal fired power plants, good luck with finding work, I will be looking with you, and i hope you have bike or maybe a horse to get around because this country will be shut down. Thank you for taking us back to the dark ages.

" clean " coal is just a marketing ploy to attempt to make coal mining more attractive to the general public.

As the supply of oil dwindles, OPEC will have less of an influence on the world energy supply and demand. Alternative energy solutions are being discovered which will ultimately replace oil consumption. Now is a great opportunity for investors to start accumulating positions in the shares of companies that appear to be at the forefront of this revolution. Tim Delano, editor, www.AlternativeEnergyStock.com

The technology does exist. There may be no demonstration project in the USA today, but there are projects out there in places like Japan. "The burning of coal for electricity emits more than one third of global warming pollution," while this may be true it is only so because China does nothing to clean up the emissions from their power plants. The USA has a 250 year coal reserve and coal provides about 50% of all electricity in the US (so that's about 1,831,000 MwH/yr). Coal is the most reliable (and did I mention cheapest) form of energy available to the United States.

And as a side note, anyone who says that the technology doesn't exist is a pessimist (in addition to being wrong). Did air planes exist before the Wright brother's invented them? It is the American way that when faced with adversity we invent our way out of it.

daniel stone is too chicken to state that there's no clean coal, just as there's no good devil. is there a good cigarette? alcohol? heroin? cop? politician? american?

Coal can never be clean if for no other reason than the means by which it is obtained. 40% of coal coming from West Virginia comes from Mountain Removal operations. Mountain Removal devastates communities, poisons wells and sickens the people who live near it.

We don't live where they mine coal. They mine coal where we live.

Anyone advocating for "clean coal" is, by definition, advocating for the destruction of my home and my way of life. I, for one, won't tolerate it.

What the commenter fails to acknowledge is that renewables on a large scale work as advertised. Wind is unreliable and doesn't generate what is claimed, solar only works during the day. Furthermore, these technologies rape the landscape for meager returns. Talk to anyone who lives within the area of a wind energy project and isn't getting paid to find out how it has affected their lives.

Loss of habitat, bird kills, noise, quality of life, property devaluation. Why don't we ever hear people in favor of these technologies talking about the negative impacts? Oh yeah - they will say that there aren't any.

If these people want renewable

hey danbarfield, there seems to be a lot of information that you are aware of that you say this author is not. I am interested in hearing both sides of the story in order to have an informed opinion. tell us more about these things.
how do scrubbers work? how effective are they? what is low sulphur coal? can coal be used today in an environmentally friendly way?? if yes, how so??

Once again I'm hearing about that dreded Global Warming. Leave science to the scientists. There is no proof that carbon dioxide brings unnatural warming. Last I heard we are in a Global cooling cycle now. Simple observance of weather tells the story. When its warmer than normal more water evaporates, forms clouds blocking the sun, and it rains. When its cooler than normal less water evaporates, forming fewer clouds and the sun warms the land. Self regulating isn't it?

How do we know "global warming" exists? These are the same scientists that predicted an "ice age" in the 70's, and said "acid rain" would destroy our forests, kill all fish, and make it impossible to be outside without burning our flesh. Meanwhile, they cannot tell me what the weather will do tomorrow with a better than 50% accuracy rate. Why don't we stop trying to scare everybody and admit we have no idea what will happen? We have an insatiable desire to explain where we came from, and where we are going! Live in the present and do the best you can!

Have you ever heard of FutureGen? It is a coal fired plant that WILL store the pollutants underground. Trouble is that it isn't online. Texas and Illinois were the finalsts to get FutureGen. Illinois won out. Then the Department of Energy decided it was just too expensive. I wonder what their decision would have been if Texas won the bid? This is just an example of the U.S. mentality. I graduated from high school in 1970. The first year for Earth Day. I've heard this same kind of talk for 38 years and nothing has changed. I worked in the coal mines for 30 years and I want clean energy and water just like everybody else. We can have clean coal technology if we stop talking and both sides face reality. It is here now. Keep the politics out of it!

We can't save any children from the effects of climate change unless we also save the trees. The day we lose the last of our trees is the day we die as a species. This is dead serious, we cannot afford to make a mistake by listening naively to some big corporations' media campaign. We WISH clean coal were true; we WISH global warning is not: but the cold, hard facts are that WISHING does not make things so. There is no clean coal plant operating in the world because the technology does not exist. IF the industry wants government funds for research and development, fine, do it. If they want to build more coal plants, no, not yet. Existing coal plants need to be continually modified and upgraded to be less dirty as soon as the modifications are available.

Obviously the writer/s of this article haven't worked in the Energy field? There is technology to make coal a clean source of energy for the 21st century! Check on the process of Plasma Gasification to liquefy to solid material into feedstock for use in a Fischer-Tropsch reactor with synthesis gas derived by the use of a SMR (steam-methane reactor) and brought together and under the conditions of an Endothermic reaction,... produces the wax base for the primary production of several industrial grade fuels. This process was perfected in Colorado by RENTECH ENERGY TECHNOLOGY. Check it out...This is a fact.

Hardwick is part of the jihad against domestic coal use, advancinig the mistaken belief that somehow we can replace coal, which generates half of all US electricity, with wind and solar, which today generates together less than 5%. He's entirely wrong about technological development. Saying CCS (carbon capture and storage) doesn't now exist at commercial scale, so therefore we shouldn't pursue this myth, is like expecting Michael Phellps to have won 8 gold medals without first learning how to swim. He's entirely wrong in his implicit assumption that somehow we'll solve global warming if the US stops the use of its most abundant form of fossil enerrgy -- obviously forgetting the China and India, whose emissions already surpass our own, will somehow stop burning affordable coal just to assuage the feelings of green extremists like him. The reason it's called "global" emissions is becuase the entire world, not just the US, burns lots of coal. So let's make it cleaner to use, not pretend we can achieve something by banning its use. Get real.