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Can Coal Be Green?
wap writes "A coal-industry sponsored group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices thinks coal is green, and has been running television ads to make its point. The ad shows an eagle unable to fly because of smog, and then talks about how much cleaner coal is now and will be in the future, with a sub-title saying that this is because of EPA regulation. Coal burning is much cleaner now than it was due to new scrubbing technologies, but it still emits just as much carbon dioxide as ever. Carbon emissions can be reduced by increased efficiency through gasification, but the only way to stop coal from emitting carbon dioxide is carbon sequestration. Everyone agrees that sequestration is expensive, but not everyone agrees that it's even effective in the long term. Should we instead follow the suggestion of James Lovelock and go nuclear as has been discussed here before?"
This is an astroturfing-free zone, people. Move along, nothing to see here...
Hate me!
simply using less energy? Becoming a lot more energy efficient results in no decrease in the quality of life (actually, it improves quality of life), can be done using proven technologies, and creates jobs.
In different words: the answer is that we should neither build more nuclear plants nor more coal power plants because neither is necessary.
GlobalWarming.org is a site dedicated to educating people about what is really going on and who is pulling the strings.
Gee, lets skim through some of the headlines at GlobalWarming.org:
Kyoto protocol will cool the global economy
The uberhysteria over climate change
Why the United States should remove its signature from the Kyoto Protocol
The site is a one sided beast. To present it simply as an objective Educational site" is like saying Democrats.org or RNC.com are un-biased sites.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Coal *is* a clean renewable resource, it's just got a 100 million year cycle :-)
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
React the CO2 with alkali derived from silicates, producing carbonates. Not only are the resulting materials stable over extremely long periods of time, but the reaction is exothermic, so one can get (in principle) extra energy.
It's not practical yet, but the theory is there.
Coal is black. Hence the phrase, "black as coal".
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Jesus loves you, I think you suck
Coal can be Black or maybe Brown, but never Green..
But seriously, there is now a massive power struggle for power - all the different interest groups are jockeying for position to be the next big "green" fuel.
My own 2c (per kw/hour) is that the very simple obvious non-polluting green alternatives - wind, tide, wave, solar, etc - have quietly evolved to a stage where they could take over as the western worlds main source of energy. Why do we need to mess around with nuclear/coal/oil? All the supporting technologies have developed sufficiently that they are either already economical, or at worse should be soon with a little more work. If you just take wind alone, the latest batch of offshore wind farms are contracted to supply power to the UK grid at 0.03 pounds/kilowatt/hour - pretty competitive, and set to come down with scale. (British Wind Energy Association page) (American Wind Energy Association page)
The latest windmills do not present loading problems for the grid, probably kill less wildlife than other things (ie tall structures in general, glass windows, cars, oil rigs etc..) & do not really mess up the landscape for 99.99% of people.
The UK alone has many times its energy needs already available in potential off-shore sites. The USA and Australia have similar huge (and worryingly largely unsurveyed) potentials - off & on shore.
And then you can look at other sources - tide, wave, solar.. For instance, Australia is building 1 km high towers that can generate power by solar power.
Ok, back to coal - can it be green? Well if you can safely bury 100% (or close to) emmissions - dont forget all the other by-products (CO, SO2, mercury, lead.. ) and you mine it in a green manner, you would have something resembling a green source of power for a short while - until all the easily minable resources were gone, then renewables become cheaper anyway..
Nuclear? Oh sure its "cheap" - until you have to decommission the sites, and get rid of the waste safely - which has to be looked after for centuries.. Billions of pounds were wasted on Nuclear power generation in the UK to no avail - the money would have been much better spent on researching renewables, which have had a pittance by comparison.
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
are X Prize-style competitions in the area of renewable energy research. i know it's not as cool as rocket ships, but energy will be a much larger world-wide issue than space flight in the next 50 years.
I remember doing the maths once and figuring out that your typical coal power plant emits more radiation per megawatt than an equvalent Gas cooled reactor. Of course the reactor has more radiation locked inside it and in its fuel, but the coal plant is venting it into the air, of course, if the reactor goes wrong then more nasty radiation gets out.
Anyway, with appropriate scrubbing coal can be greener, but I don't really see it as being an option for the future. Then again, Oil and gas are fossil fuels which have many uses outside of power generation and we should be working to preserve those, so given the shoice between a coal fired station and an Oil/Gas station it's probably a better long term idea to go for the coal. I don't think coal has so many uses in comparison, except maybe as raw materials for Superman cornering the Diamond cartels.
Junk Science (djunk si-ens)
n.:
1. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena which results in a conclusion that contradicts the writer's beliefs.
2. A system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method and concerned with the physical world and its phenomena, yet persists in presenting facts that the writer dislikes.
Example: "If it limits my ability to squander resources, it's obviously junk science."
Sorry, that term is just annoying. The only place it's ever used is in anti-global-warming-theory screeds. A recent global warming trend is a demonstrable, verifiable fact. Sure, we can dispute the causes. But let's argue on the merit of the research, not engage in school-yard name-calling.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
I have heard that you can make biodiesel, and it burns cleaner than diesel. I'm sure that rather than burning coal, we could use biodiesel instead. Of course this would mean plant conversions. Not sure what else. Coal is a limited thing and once it is gone its gone. Biodiesel well from dictionary.com http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=biodi esel&action=Search+OMD
I don't see why it couldn't be used instead. Give some farmers something to grow.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Sorry, but no. "Junk science" would be "science" shoehorned to fit a particular pre-determined point of view. The global warming research has in almost all cases not been of this nature. You might disagree with the conclusions and you certainly might not like them, but please don't insult the scientists involved because their results don't make you happy. If you want to pick apart their arguments carefully with your own data and models, you're welcomed to present these results at any number of conferences or in quite a few peer-reviewed journals. (And please don't try to fall back on the "I'll be censored" nonsense. If you could convincingly shoot down global warming, there are dozens of journals, starting with Science and Nature, that would trip overthemselves to print it. It'd be a coup to publish such a paper.)
On the other hand, if you want to talk about "junk science", you could look at the numerous cases where Washington has instructed scientists to change their conclusions to fit the administration's views. There are plenty of examples from the current administration, although I suspect that you could find some in almost any presidency. (The USSR was also quite fond of this sort of thing.)
Climate research is certainly tricky business and no one in the field pretends to have a total handle on how things work. However, we can say some things with pretty good confidence. That global warming is happening and that humans are responsible is one of them. Even the Bush administration, a group dead-set against dealing with the problem, has admitted this much. What we should do about it, exactly, is an entirely different question.
A coal-industry sponsored group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices
Shouldn't their name be 'Americans for Coal Power'?
Never support a group that needs a mask.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Coal is a very versatile resource. It can be cracked and liquified for home delevery and it's even more abundant that crude oil albeit harder to gather. But advances in robotics should, if corporations really cared about their workes, make mineing it safer and more efficent. As for the emmisions, why cant we just pump is back where we got it in the first place. Or perhaps some form of plant reactor could be created to resolidify it through natural processes and then the plants( a form of alge imagine) could be used a fertlizer. I could go on and on... It just seem sucudial to polute the air we breath fot the sake of the bottom line.
Head down the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and ask the people who live there. Coal mining has done substantial damage to the environment, and to people's lives.
Coal mining today is not about underground mines - it is about strip mines and mountain top removal. Instead of digging holes underground you blast the top few hundred feet off of a mountain and dig straight down. Of course the blast debris - thousands of tons of it - has to go somewhere. Usually into the neighbouring valley, destroying homes and watersheds.
The Industry says that today's coal burns cleaner. Do they tell you how?
That's because the coal is washed before being trucked to users. Where do you think the solvent laden waste water goes? Into large holding ponds, dozens of which are known to be on the brink of collapsing.
One such pond broke in 2002. The Martin County slurry spill, at over 300 million gallons, was the largest disaster of its kind ever in the southeastern United States. The spill released nearly 30 times more liquid than the Exxon Valdez.
You also need to factor in the coal company's history of just abandoning mines, leaving them for local and state governments to clean up. And the ongoing damage and injuries caused by coal trucks hauling grossly overwieght loads - by ten or twenty tons - on narrow highways.
There's more to being clean than measuring smokestack emmisions.
Three Squirrels
This research was put forward by Yang Xuexiang, a professor of geological sciences at Changchun University of Technology in China. His research showed that the ozone layer was affected by certain energetic particles striking the earth's atmosphere and breaking up the ozone layer.
(Why is it that when someone publishes something you don't like, it's "junk science", but when you like the result he's "showed" it? (As opposed to "suggesting"?)
Is this" the guy? If so, do you know anything about ozone or atmospheres? If so, why do you believe him? He says:
Yang argues the northern hemisphere is where the use of freon is concentrated and so if the freon theory was correct, the ozone hole should have appeared above the north pole instead of the south pole, Xinhua says. He says that most planets, including the earth, may lose part of their mass when they move toward the sun. This lays the foundation for the evolution of atmospheres on planets. For instance, he says, planets near the sun, such as Mercury, have very thin atmospheres, while planets far from the sun have much thicker atmospheres.
He apparently didn't check his data on the planets, since Venus has a thicker atmosphere than Earth does. (And Jupiter and Saturn have thicker atmospheres than Uranus and Neptune.) Come to think of it, without any magnetic field, Venus should really be screwed by his logic, shouldn't it?
His claim that the north pole should have more ozone depletion tells me that he hasn't even read the literature on CFCs and polar stratospheric clouds. The latter are aid in the chemistry of ozone destruction, and occur in the south pole. (Circulation patterns are different, leading to different weather patterns.)
Come to it, if his theory is valid, he should be able to correlate solar activity to the ozone hole's growth and decay. I can tell you right now that it doesn't track, so he's got an uphill battle there.
If you're going to accuse the climate researchers of "junk science" it really behooves you to be damn sure the alternatives you're putting forward are reasonable.
Why nuclear? The U.S. could get more than 95% of its electricity demand from wind turbines on less than 3% of its farmland. The law of averages over the continent's grid smooths out the inherent unreliability of localized wind power, and the rest of the shaping can be taken care of with existing hydropower. There is no need for coal or nuclear.
From the blurb:
The ad shows an eagle unable to fly because of smog, and then talks about how much cleaner coal is now and will be in the future, with a sub-title saying that this is because of EPA regulation
The great irony is that the coal industry fought tooth and nail to oppose these very regulations. They never would never be able to make these claims if it weren't for "those damn liberal treehuggers".
- Coal was, is, and will be the nastiest large-scale source of energy we've got.
- The USA has no short-term alternatives to coal to supply electric power.
- Oxygen-blown IGCC systems are a way (possibly THE way) to drastically reduce the amount of nasty stuff released by coal combustion.
- The molten ash is quenched and removed as a foamy, glassy substance.
- Sulfur (as H2S) and about 30% of the carbon of the coal (as CO2) is removed by cold gas scrubbing, which allows that fraction of the carbon to be sequestered at minimal cost.
- Mercury emissions are reduced by about 50% without other measures. (AFAIK nobody has proposed activated-carbon scrubbing of the fuel gas to remove mercury; if it works under reducing conditions, it should be even more effective to scrub a small volume of fuel gas than a huge volume of combustion gas.)
- Repowering a steam plant via IGCC nearly triples the output and raises the thermal efficiency by about 20%.
- We better stabilize CO2 or we are going to seriously mess up the environment. We already have examples of difficulties; downwind of major cities the concentration hits 600 ppm, and nasty species like ragweed are "fertilized" much better than more desirable species. Now imagine the whole world being like that...
- Of course we can regulate it away. The CO2-free alternatives are there, all we have to do is make the emitter of each kg of CO2 pay enough to pay for its removal and the problem will solve itself.
- The people who make their money from coal are going to fight such measures tooth and nail, and they have the money to obstruct and delay for decades. And don't forget setting up web sites to propagandize!
That's a partial list, but it should give food for thought.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
When farms are being abandoned because farm products are in surplus, destroying a mountain to make another field is waste several times over.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
"This is what happened in California back in y2k... the company that owned the plants"
You must be talking about the regulated utilities. What you fail to understand is that, based on legislation passed, the regulated utilities were forced to sell off generation in order to create an energy market. In addition, the utilities were barred from entering into long term contracts. In addition, the utilities were forced (for a long time) to accept Cogeneration contracts, which far exceed the costs of conventional generation.
The problems in California were caused by high consumption, not passing costs on to consumers (to curb demand), no long term contracts for stability, and bad legislation which created a market that was capitalized on (assisted by the above conditions).