Anybody else hear that NPR report on "clean gas from coal?"

[phantom power]

It was yesterday morning (tuesday).

Is everybody hypnotized by the adjective "clean?" :banghead:

[formercia]

1. Coal gasification has been around for decades

South Africa under sanctions became very good at it and even exported byproducts such as synthetic waxes. All the Federal Government has to do is look in the WWII Nazi archives and Coal Gasification is laid out in detail.

[phantom power]

2. This was a new chemical process.

All driven by a super-top-secret catalyst. Supposedly generates gas from coal twice as cheap as any previous process.

The process doesn't really matter. I'm just tired of the "clean natural gas from coal will save us" meme. It's bullshit. CO2 is not clean. Burning fossil carbon it isn't going to save anybody. It will kill us all, and it doesn't matter what fancy thermodynamic path it takes before it gets to the end-user.

[HereSince1628]

4. Don't worry engineers are working on "dimming the sun"

Really. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not.

Something about a big sun shield in space...I always thought they'd go for more con-trails. :shrug:

Cheney is probably thinking nuclear autumn.

[NNadir]

6. Actually solar dimming was covered in the recent NOVA.

According to the show, the sun actually has dimmed, in the sense that aerosols (pollutants) have been blocking significant solar energy.

The effect is described as having resulted in the Ethiopian famine of the 1980's, another victory for air pollution.

According to the premise of the show, this effect has ameliorated global climate change, and that actually the situation is much worse than previously realized.

I watched it with my whole family, including my 11 year old son and my 7 year old son. My eleven year old had to leave the room. He really couldn't stand it; the implications were so terrible. I don't blame him. This is the world we're giving him. We will go down in history as the most horrid generation ever.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

[HereSince1628]

7. Back in the 1970's one of the first global climate models predicted

cooling from a combination of microscopic industrial dust, and volcanoes. When global warming came on the scene the earlier model wasn't forgotten but albedo effects were poorly known. Since then many researchers have been looking into the importance of increasing albedo from clouds on global warming.

The thing I heard on Wisconsin Public Radio in the past couple of days is that engineers are seeking funds for planning and building a hugh(!) space project that would literally cut off some sunlight before it reaches the atmosphere.

[phantom power]

8. It's sad to burden children with a nighmare future.

When I was your son's age (circa 1980), I remember coming to grips with visions of a nuclear holocaust, leaving behind a billion corpses and a ruined planet. I suppose it started with Sagan's Cosmos series, but that later movie "The Day After" (1983) was influential too.

These days the visions are back. Now it's climate change. For that matter, nuclear holocaust is putting the band back together for a reunion tour.

It's time for somebody to make an environmental version of "The Day After." The recent "Day After Tomorrow" got in the ballpark, but it failed to really face the horror of the aftermath. The 1983 nuclear version had the courage to end with the ugliness and hopelessness of the consequences.

That movie traumatized a lot of people, including me, but it worked. People "got it" in a way that maybe nothing else could have accomplished.

We need... "The Day After The Day After Tomorrow." A movie that has the moral courage to end with death and starvation. And then put up a subtitle that says "This is a best-case scenario. The reality would in all probability be worse." The time has come again to embrace the horror.

[NNadir]

10. Yeah, it sucked.

It used to be a good idea to watch NOVA with one's children. To be honest, I didn't know we'd be watching a horror film, as there was no parental guidance.

In the old days of course, it wasn't necessary for NOVA to come with parental warnings.

But to be honest, I'm glad he saw it. I can't change the world, and increasingly, I can't protect him from it.

I did take the opportunity to discuss with him a career in nuclear engineering. He's 11, and just brought home his first report card with straight A's. He might have the right stuff. He's dyslexic, but he's a bright boy with a good heart and I love him very much.

I can't really bear it.

[megatherium]

11. I just saw Soylent Green for the first time the other day.

I think that might qualify as an environmental The Day After.

PLOT SPOILER (in case you're not aware that "Soylent Green is ------!"): Two creepy things in the movie: the world's temperature has gone up, the characters complain there is no longer any winter. And part of the plot involves a copy of the Soylent Corporation Oceanographic Survey of 2011 -- you find out later in the movie the Survey documented a die-off of the world's plankton, which the world's population had became reliant on for food. This creeped me out, having recently seen the news story about the increasing acidity of the oceans.

I think End of Suburbia and Soylent Green would make a fun double feature.

on update: comment about increasing acidity of oceans.

[Sequoia]

29. And I read "Fahrenheit 451" again since my Jr. High days.

Some of the sci-fi stuff in that has come true. Burning/ban books, sports, sports, sports to fill our minds so we don't think; interactive tv, ear phones, and firemen setting fires.

[formercia]

5. Desequestering Carbon doesn't solve anything.

we have to use a small percentage of what we use now. That's the only truth that counts.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. It's all in the phrasing - "clean" gas, not clean coal, ha ha

Nothing about ripping coal out of the ground is clean. If it's deep mined, miners' lives are at high risk, and their long-term health outlook is pretty dismal. If it's strip-mined, the result looks like the Megidoo Desert. And that's not even to mention the harder-to-see stuff, all the toxic runoff that pollutes streams and rivers for decades to come. I think the adjective "clean" is used anytime there's an improvement over the previous (horrible) state of affairs. But improved horrors tend to be horrors still.

[Kolesar]

17. Yes, there was no discussion of modern "mountain top removal" mining

And the coal advocates wish to mine at a much greater rate than the current high rate.

[JohnWxy]

9. unfortunately there is some Republican toadie-ism at the NPR.

Republican Toadies - Fascist Bugger Bait.:puke:

[BeFree]

12. It is rather odd, is it not?

That the same folks who support controlling a uranium atom using high-technology, don't think high technology controlling a co2 molecule is possible.

Why the sudden lack of faith in technology?

Granted, the digging up of coal is a monsterous problem, but again, is one that technology, properly applied, could minimize.

Why not support all beneficial applications of technology across the board?

[Dead_Parrot]

13. Because nuclear plants don't spit out plutonium via an exhaust pipe

Used nuclear fuel rods - along with the other radioactive bits of a reactor - are things you can contain, encase, reprocess and lock away. In theory, you can do that to some of the CO2 waste from a power plant, but I've yet to see anyone driving a Prius with a hose stuck on the exhaust, leading to a carbon dump.

How do you minimise a melting ice-cap?

[BeFree]

14. I've never seen a Prius...

...attached to a nuke plant, either.

We are talking about the production of grid power, yes? Like what nuke plants are used for, as is most coal.

The whole story with co2 is fairly new... and, as you say, in theory, co2 can be controlled.... now we are getting somewhere.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. Are we?

I took "gas" to mean gasoline, but it may be NG for power plants. Not that it makes any difference, it still produces CO2. And CO2 sequestration is really not an option: Unless you've found a way to stop frozen CO2 absorbing heat, CO2 gas takes up a hell of a lot more space than the coal or oil it came from.

As I said, you can do that with some of the CO2. The rest will be in the atmosphere for next x million years, fucking the planet.

Are we getting somewhere now?

[BeFree]

16. co2 sequestration is not an option?

Yet we can sequester radioactive materials?

That is my point, some say we can keep nuke pollution clean, but we can't keep coal pollution clean. That, my friend is a hypocrisy.

Clean coal technology can be developed, and has begun, but has hardly been applied, so we haven't.... 'they' say it costs too much.

[phantom power]

18. understanding the difference between a metal and a gas is hypocrisy?

I don't see what's hard about this. Spent nuclear fuel is a metal. And it's dense. It doesn't take up much space. And there is a lot less nuclear fuel than there is CO2, per joule of energy produced. So, yes, it's a hell of a lot easier to "sequester" our spent nuclear fuel than it is to sequester our CO2.

[BeFree]

19. Of course it is easier

That's why we are faced with billions and billions of dollars flowing into a possibly useless yuckie mountain?
:sarcasm:

On a volume scale, yes, nuke pollution is far less in volume. Not counting the air emissions from the plants, of course.

But why not argue for cleaning up what is dirtying the air? Why the sudden lack of faith in technology?

It seems the nuke twits here are blinded by their high tech-no-logic, and can't see their egges are all placed in the same basket of "radiation pollution gonna save us from something we could have controlled, but didn't, because we want nukes"?

[phantom power]

20. My faith in "technology", or lack of it, is beside the point.

The word "technology" is a weasel word. There are an infinite number of "technologies." I have "faith" in some of them, and I don't have faith in others.

Today, there are no credible technologies for sequestering the amount of CO2 required to stop the bleeding on climate change. I don't have any faith in these proposed technologies. That doesn't mean I "have no faith in technology," it means I have no faith in any currently proposed solutions.

I'm willing to entertain the hypothetical position that some day, somebody will figure out a CO2 sequestration technology that will work so well it seems magical, but (as has been pointed out frequently by other regulars here) our CO2 problems aren't hypothetical, and they aren't someday, they're here and now. If, next week or 20 years from now, somebody comes up with a real solution to that problem, I'll probably still not support it because using coal still means tearing down the Appalachians and leaving them a wasteland.

What can we do here and now? We can deploy wind power. We can deploy nuclear power. We can deploy solar power, although it's economics aren't very favorable unless you have a lot of disposable income. (Well, maybe thermal solar)

[Dead_Parrot]

23. It's actually possible to store nuclear waste...

The cost getting the CO2 out of the atmosphere - again, using current tech - would be over $200 trillion, If we actually had the resources to do it. Since we don't, you are free to whine about "billions about billions" for nuclear disposal. It's like shitting on your floor because you don't want to pay to have plumbing installed: you ether pay to have the waste disposed of, or it just lies around fucking the air up.

CO2 sequestration is like having a toilet bowl fitted when you have no sewerage: It's going to get very full, very quickly, and then your back to shitting on the floor anyway.

[Dead_Parrot]

22. No, it's just reality

We can, indeed, "sequest" radioactive waste. "Clean coal" normally means just scrubbing the other toxic shit out of the exhaust gasses - we do not have anywhere near the capacity to store the 17 billion tons of CO2 we produce each year. The cost of scrubbing a years worth of CO2, BTW, is ~1.2 trillion dollars. Sounds expensive to me.

[BeFree]

24. $1.2 trillion?

You do have a link, right?

[Dead_Parrot]

25. Try here

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/capture/

You'll need a calculator. You'll also notice I've arbitarilly halved the cost per ton, on the grounds everything's cheaper in bulk - We can put it back up and call it $2.5 trillion/year, if you like.

[BeFree]

26. Good link!

Here something from your link that is quite informational and tells the story quite clearly:

"The program is pursuing evolutionary improvements in existing CO2 capture systems and also exploring revolutionary new capture and sequestration concepts. The most likely options currently identifiable for CO2 separation and capture include:........<snip>

Opportunities for significant cost reductions exist since very little R&D has been devoted to CO2 capture and separation technologies."

How 'bout that? I wonder what R&D budgets are for nukes, and how they compare to the R&D for co2 capture? We got a problem with co2 - everyone agrees - lets support technology that fixes THAT problem. That's all I'm saying.

[Dead_Parrot]

27. So you would agree...

That we can't do it now, and that it's not really being researched, and it's going to need lots of time and money throwing at it?

How much time do you think we have, exactly? 5 years? 10? 20? Take a guess.

Let me just get this straight: Rather than fix the problem we've got now, with technology we've got now, you'd rather sit around watching the icecaps melt and the seas dying for another 10 years while we try to invent something else.

[BeFree]

30. Good twist of something I never said

But truly wrong.

The idea that nuke plants will fix the problem is absurd.

The fix point, if we ever get there, is one where we don't commit pollution.

Reduce, reduce, reduce, is the answer. We are so far out on the limb that we need to go back and not crawl out further, as nukes would take us.

All in all, no refutation of my o.p. has occurred... instead you have shown that the premise was correct. Thanks.

[Dead_Parrot]

31. Interesting take on things...

Good twist of something I never said

Umm, I never said you did. I just asked if you agreed with it (which you didn't answer, but what the hell).

But truly wrong.

I look forward to a sound rebuttal...

The idea that nuke plants will fix the problem is absurd.

I agree, the problem that gigatons of CO2 are spewed out by coal plants will not be solved with nuke plants. the idea that anything will fix the gigatons of CO2 spewed out by coal plants produced is absurd. Glad you're coming around to my way of thinking.

Reduce, reduce, reduce, is the answer. We are so far out on the limb that we need to go back and not crawl out further, as nukes would take us.

I think all the denizens of E/E will agree we need to conserve energy: but we will still need to produce some electricity, unless you've found a way to make your internet connection work on sheer will-power. Quite how the way in which the energy is produced stops you fitting CF bulbs is puzzling, though.

All in all, no refutation of my o.p. has occurred...

That's weird, the thread I'm looking at has an OP by Phantom Power. If you're getting confused and referring to your post #12, my "faith" in technology only extends to to point where I can see it working. I can see nuclear power plants, I can't see carbon sequestration.

instead you have shown that the premise was correct.

You're right. The same folks who support controlling a uranium atom using high-technology, really don't think high technology controlling a CO2 molecule is possible. There's a good reason for that, we all think it's bollocks.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

[NNadir]

32. Can you point to a plan to sequester even 1% of the world's carbon dioxide

A plant under construction anywhere or planned any where on such a scale?

Do you have even a remote clue of how much carbon dioxide 1% would be?

No you don't.

Let me help you: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls

25 billion tons in a single year.

And what do you want to talk about? 75,000 metric tons over a fifty year period - 75,000 metric tons that has nothing to anyone.

Suppose that you could produce such a system - and you can't because no such system exists - show then how much it might ameliorate global climate change.

You come back every six months complaining about nuclear materials, but can't produce 1 dead body from storage of 100% the inventory of spent fuel in the United States.

Meanwhile you insist that perfection exists, but you cannot produce a single case of such a system. Not one.

Actually it happens that the worst people are the people who let the TERRIBLE continue by attempting that the perfect is the enemy of the good.

I've seen you around, and I know that you will remain confident in your rectitude in spite of the obvious implications here. This reminds me of one of the more famous remarks of Himmler:

Of all who talk so, none have watched it, none have stood through it. Most of you know what it signifies, when 100 corpses lie together, when 500 lie there or when 1000 lie there. To have seen this through, and even so -- disregarding exceptions of human weakness -- to remain decent, that has made us hard. This is a glorious page of our history, never written and never to be written.»

You talk of it, and you pretend that the bodies aren't there, but they are. Three million people could starve in Mali from climate change induced famine, and you wouldn't bat an eyelash. Further you will insist that you are "remaining decent." And in your decency, you substitute a theory for a reality. We could sequester carbon dioxide you breezily contend, but you have no idea - or care really - that it will ever be done. Nor do you give a shit about the land destroyed permanently to produce that carbon dioxide.

You make me sick.

[Dead_Parrot]

33. Of course he can't

It's complete bollocks.

[BeFree]

34. So very wrong.

You don't even deserve a reply. Sad.

[BeFree]

35. My thoughts

The nuke-nazis can't see past the blinding light of their dream of multi-billion dollar power systems, and see the dead of Chernobyl or even the reason why nukes are so closely managed. Gawd help us all when another nuke mismanagement decision wipes out another whole region.

I have campaigned for cleaning up air pollution for many years now. But the reality is that until people beyond me, indeed, well beyond this little forum, concede that their extravagant lifestyles have brought havoc upon this little blue ball spinning in the vast blackness of space, and then turn away from more, more, more, the havoc will continue. I personally have turned away from more, more, more. I invite you to join me. We could eliminate, by half, the amount of damage being done by turning away from more, more, more.

Nukes are a technology once considered impossible, as was a man on the moon. Technology pushed those impossibilities and if man can use technology in such ways, it can also be done to end the GH gas emissions. That's all I'm saying.

But the blinding light of bigger power blinds some of the so-called technologists here. Sad.

[Dead_Parrot]

36. Ahh, the dead of Chernobyl....

Shall we compare them to 120,000 dead coal miners over the last 20 years? How about 14,000,000 dead from inhalation from fossil exhaust? should we discuss changes in rainfall killing millions more?

"I have campaigned for cleaning up air pollution for many years now."

And yet, strangely, you feel the coal-burning power stations should be given even more years to kill one person every 45 seconds, while they chase your wet dream of a coal-powered future.

You're pathetic.

[BeFree]

37. Wrong again

And, please, quit attributing words to me.

If I was president, I'd shut down coal plants, tommorrow. They would not open back up until they had cut their emmissions by 75%, at least. I would keep nukes online, however.

I am saying that there exists a possibility to cut coal plant emissions. That's all.

The personal attacks and word twisting are too hitleresque for my tastes... at least, if you won't read my words, read your's and you will see what I mean.

[Dead_Parrot]

38. Well, considering

You referred to me as a "nuke twit... blinded by {my} high tech-no-logic" and a "Nuke Nazi" who couldn't "see the dead of Chernobyl" I hope you'll forgive me if I misunderstood your position on nuclear power. Can't think what got into me.

And name calling? Heaven forbid! Why, no-one would take offence at being called a Nazi, would they!?

[BeFree]

39. If the shoe fits, wear it

The name calling was not my invention, but it dirties me as well. I accept some responsibility for the bad manners here, but shoot, sticks and stones and bad air days can hurt me, but words can never harm me. However, it does get attention, eh?

[Dead_Parrot]

40. It's no excuse...

...for calling people "nuke twits" because they try to explain the problems of carbon sequestration to you. If you ask questions and find you don't like the answers, tough shit: Comparing people to Hitler doesn't actually change the laws of physics, it just makes you look dumb.

[NNadir]

41. Weak dodge.

You have no answer.

Like all nuclear opponents you simply make stuff up, and in fact, it costs lives. As global climate change proceeds, it may cost billions of lives.

[ramapo]

21. It was depressing

Coal mining is an environmental disaster of unprecedented size. Miles and miles are decimated by the process. All kinds of toxic waste is left behind along with a landscape that has been utterly destroyed.

I don't care if the process is 100% "clean". It is still as dirty as it can get.

In addition, this would continue to fuel our reckless and selfish lifestyles that have grown completely dependant on the automobile at the expense of conservation and more efficient transportation and living systems.

[Sequoia]

28. No such thing of course.