Thu
Jan 8 2009
05:52 pm
NYT: "Clean Coal" questioned again thanx to Kingston spill
By: rickydontlose

This excellent video (link...) is on the New York Times home page today. Includes clips of McCain AND Obama campaigns playing up "clean coal" as the answer and local boy Steve Smith from SACE de-bunking eloquently.

R. Neal's picture

Obama needs to back off that

Submitted by R. Neal on Thu, 2009/01/08 - 6:28pm.

Obama needs to back off that "clean coal" nonsense pronto.

That said, there's a lot of coal down there, and we are going to burn it, or gasify it, or liquefy it, or convert it to hydrogen, or something.

We just need to figure out the best and safest way to do that going forward without destroying the environment.

The current methods clearly don't work.

captaincoalna's picture

;)

Submitted by captaincoalna (not verified) on Thu, 2009/01/08 - 7:54pm.

"Obama needs to back off that "clean coal" nonsense pronto."

Yep.
He never should have stated it in the first place. He knew it wasn't true when he said it.

My position remains the same. Oil, coal, gas...
The earth knows what it's doing. Those things are under ground for a reason. I believe we would be wise to leave them there as there's plenty of stuff topside we can use that poses no hazard.

It pains me to know that third world countries are so far ahead of us in the clean energy dept.

LINK

WhitesCreek's picture

Aw, Kona...

Submitted by WhitesCreek on Thu, 2009/01/08 - 8:42pm.

Oil, coal, gas...
The earth knows what it's doing. Those things are under ground for a reason.

That's beautiful (Sniff...sniff)

Anonymously Nine's picture

Therein is the problem

Submitted by Anonymously Nine (not verified) on Fri, 2009/01/09 - 10:22am.

We just need to figure out the best and safest way to do that going forward without destroying the environment.

That is what this country needs. Period.

We the ratepayers get to pay for a $300 million dollar cleanup because high level executives at TVA wanted bonuses and chose not to spend $2.6 million dollars to shore up the walls of the failed holding pond.

So how is that negative return on investment?

Why shouldn't all those TVA bonuses be rescinded? Why shouldn't these TVA people lost their jobs? There is no reason for TVA to change if there are no consequences. That may be the root cause of the cultural problems in TVA. Is TVA ever held accountable?

I also agree the Federal government should participate in paying for this. The ratepayers had nothing to do with the cause of this. Some ratepayers warned about this for years but they were dismissed as tree huggers and environnuts. More importantly TVA engineers warned about this repeatedly. TVA chose to ignore their own experts. So this executive pay bonus system needs to be looked at.

Is there a built in system at TVA that creates negligence?

rickydontlose's picture

There is no "away."

Submitted by rickydontlose on Fri, 2009/01/09 - 4:01pm.

If this sludge spill reminds us of anything it's that when you say "there's alot of coal down there and we're going to burn it," you're really saying "there's alot of arsenic, greenhouse gas, etc... down there and we're going to unleash it." Even in our so-called high tech society, natural history leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that you can't throw it away, bury it away or burn it away. There is no "away." Once we truly institutionalize this maxim, we will have new institutions with new cultures to replace the old ones that are TVA, and billions will be redirected out of the old paradigm of fossil fuel development and into renewables development and conservation. In fact I recall that somewhere in TVA's original mission was the task of environmental preservation (can anyone verify?).

Anonymously Nine's picture

Nukes, but not TVA

Submitted by Anonymously Nine (not verified) on Fri, 2009/01/09 - 4:09pm.

How about the new nuke designs built by someone other than TVA. Wind farms where they work with the new non-noise pollution non-bird Cuisinart designs. The new tidal designs that don't mangle fish stocks. And a government grant to find a solar solution with a yield that works.

And until that is on the grid we use what we have and do it cleaner. And the government picks up some of the tab for its negligence. If the .gov can bail out AIG it should pick up some of this tab. AIG is in London England. TVA is in America.

Hamster power won't cut it. Power means jobs. We have enough problems without losing jobs.

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