the myth of "clean" coal

I haven't been able to get this coal-clean coal myth off my mind after seeing the movie Burning the Future: Coal in America (an excellent short intro here) The environmental disaster as the coal is extracted is bad enough and the "clean coal" myth being sold adds insult to injury. I hear no leaders talking about the real direction we need to go....comsume less, conserve more. New technologies and renewable sources of energy are going to be absolutely essential, but we cannot continue our wasteful, unsustainable lifestyle and that is what is missing from the discussion. We are 5% of the world's population using 25% of the planet's resources.

Also needed in this discussion are the real costs of continuing to pursue coal, oil and nuclear for energy.
Thank you for saying it so eloquently Robert Kennedy Jr.

the myth of clean coal rages on......

the clean coal myth continues to ruin lives from the time the mountain tops are blown off the 2nd most diverse forest on planet earth until the coal is burned and the toxic waste is spread. merry christmas to some unlucky folks in

Firsthand account of the TVA coal ash dam failure

Just before Christmas, the true cost and danger of coal became apparent in the town of Harriman, Tennessee.
On the morning of December 22, the earthen dam at the Kingston Power Plant containing coal fly ash failed catastrophically, unleashing a six-foot wall of toxic water and mud.
By the time the flood subsided, more than a billion gallons of coal sludge had damaged 15 homes -- three beyond repair -- before pouring into the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers.
In comparison, the Exxon Valdez spilled a "mere" 11 million gallons of crude oil. And the coal fly ash spill in Harriman is three times larger than the October, 2000 coal sludge spill in Martin County, Kentucky, which the EPA called "the largest environmental disaster east of the Mississippi."
read more at iLoveMountains.org

Reality Check - There Is No Clean Coal

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'Reality' Coalition Launches Campaign Debunking 'Clean Coal' Myth

http://www.thisisreality.org/In reality, there is no such thing as clean coal. Join Reality. We're going to challenge the clean coal myth and make sure misleading articles, false statements and other hype don't go unanswered.

send President Obama an important message

As I listened to the state of the union the other night and heard "clean coal", nuclear energy, and more off shore drilling mentioned as good investments for our future I was appalled. The following letter provided me with a way to channel my voice in response to helplessness I was feeling after hearing those words.

My heart breaks every time I think about the people who have so resourcefully lived and thrived in the appalachian mountains by living with nature and the resources provided by the second most diverse forest on planet earth. Many of us looked from the outside and considered them poor, but they knew how to get what they needed and passed their knowledge on to each new generation. They are currently undergoing an assault on their lives with the barbaric extraction of coal by blowing the tops off of their beloved mountains. And that is before we even talk about the myth of burning "clean coal".

The enormous input into a nuclear energy producing plant and the resources, including fresh water, to generate energy are just laughable at this point in time. And that is even before we talk about what the hell to do with the toxic waste. And just for the record, I do not think spreading it all over a foreign county (oh, start with Iraq,) in the form of depleted (not) uranium, is an option. And of course that sunny picture follows barbaric extraction.
We are at a crossroads.

Here is my comment on this open letter to President Obama from the Post Carbon Institute. These folks are doing some of the finest work in this area and I would hope their voices would be listened to by the leaders and policy makers of the world and those of my country.

We must face the truth. Continuing to squander Earth's dwindling natural resources fighting over Earth's dwindling natural resources ensures no future for anyone's grandchildren. We must begin to act as if our grandchildren's lives depended on it. They do! If we continue to over consume, barbarically extract and squander the resources of Earth, we are ensuring our extinction. I am in, what I call, the legacy phase of my life and I am ashamed and profoundly sad about how we are collectively acting. I will do everything I can in my life and community to ensure my grandchildren can have a healthy, happy life on this beautiful planet. Please lead, there are many of us out here who want to help save the planet.

sign on to this important message post carbon institute....

Open Letter to President Obama
Posted Feb 1, 2010 by Asher Miller

February 1, 2010

Dear President Obama,

Your State of the Union speech last week laudably referenced clean tech and renewable energy several times. We ask that you follow your words with action, by leading the transition to a post-carbon economy and a healthier world.

You also spoke of our need to face hard truths.

Hard truth: Our continued, willful reliance on fossil fuels is making our planet uninhabitable. We are evicting ourselves from the only paradise we’ve ever known.

Hard truth: No combination of current and anticipated renewable sources can maintain our profligate energy usage as the global supply of fossil fuels heads for terminal decline.

For the recently released Searching for a Miracle, Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg conducted a “net energy” analysis of 18 different energy sources (including nuclear and “clean coal”). He concluded that the amount of energy available after accounting for the energy used in extraction and production of those sources is—at our current and anticipated rates of consumption—insufficient to get us “over the hump” to a post-carbon world.

Our 29 Post Carbon Institute Fellows—experts in the leading economic, energy, and environmental issues of the day—all agree that this "net energy" deficit is just one of many interrelated crises shaping the 21st century. Each crisis alone creates formidable challenges; in combination, their complexity admits no simple solution. But given their direness, inaction risks tragedy.

Mr. President, we respect you and your advisors and appreciate the enormity of the dilemmas you and all of us confront. When a great leader frames a great challenge, a resilient people will rise to meet the opportunity. And so we ask, Mr. President, that you tell the American people that we must:

1. Face reality. In a carbon-constrained world, true prosperity comes not from heedless growth, but from shared security, community, and liberty.

2. Prepare for the future. Conservation, with an emphasis on building a green economy and revitalizing struggling communities, offers cost-effective “found” energy, and the most immediate and long-term return on investment.

3. Lead the way. A substantial investment in renewable energy, with an emphasis on distributed solar and wind, offers the best hope for moving to a sustainable economy and environment.

Mr. President, lead us in creating a future worth inheriting. Post Carbon Institute and our Fellows will support you and your team in whatever capacity we can. We believe that the American people, and the world’s people, will support you as well.

With hope,

Asher Miller
Executive Director
Post Carbon Institute
707-823-8700 x109

Energy, Is It Clean OR Safe Just Because PR Guys Say So?

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Get clean coal clean! (NEW Air Freshener)

http://www.thisisreality.org/ In reality, there's no such thing as clean coal. Learn more. Join the campaign.

But not to be out done by the Clean Coal people, the Nuclear Power people have come up with the phrase "carbonless energy parks" to describe four unfinished nuclear plants left mothballed from the costly WPPSS fiasco. And they've enlisted 40th District Rep. Jeff Morris, D-Mount Vernon to the cause.

5 minutes in West Virginia

or can this planet be saved??? mountain top removal of the 2nd most diverse forest on our planet, largely responsible for some of the best news following the last ice age, will foreclose on a grim future for our descendants. along with the rainforest protection, what we do now will determine the future for those who come after......it matters and it's up to us ....ATTENTION CONGRESS !!!!!!!!

STOP MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL!!!!!!!




oh and attention President Obama and Michelle Obama too....

A President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia A mountaintop coal mining site at Kayford Mountain in West Virginia. (By Jeff Gentner -- Associated Press)

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Friday, July 3, 2009

Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?

A mountaintop coal mining site at Kayford Mountain in West
Virginia. (By Jeff Gentner -- Associated Press)

If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it.
Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the
equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains -- encompassing about a million acres -- buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas -- while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space
for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains -- with their impoverished and alienated population -- are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.

full post

also see The myth of clean coal
ok so 5 minutes was the just a start ....i love these mountain people !!

There Ain't No Clean Coal.

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Back when I was a boy, around Xmas time, children were threatened with lumps of coal. Parents used to say that if children weren't well behaved, Santa Claus wouldn't leave them anything but a lump of coal in their Xmas stockings.

COALergy "Smudge" Ad

- http://www.thisisreality.org/

In Reality, there is no such thing as clean coal. Learn more. Join the campaign.

Bill McKibben COAL, CLIMATE CHANGE & ACTIVISM

It was a great community gathering for Bill McKibbon's visit to Bellingham. We are faced with a devastating future as corporate profiteers propose using our area as a conduit for our coal, barbarically extracted from public lands and shipped to China to be released into Earth's atmosphere heavily contributing to climate change and putting all life on Earth at risk. Coal as a source of energy production should go the way of whale oil. I hope we will be able to stop this irresponsible squandering of our descendant's future.

Bill McKibben COAL, CLIMATE CHANGE & ACTIVISM

Climate Solutions

350.org

1SKY

Read about the gateway terminal at Re Sources

previous participation in world climate action

in solidarity......

while we are on the subject of coal I can't help thinking of the folks in Appalachia and today on Thom Hartmann's radio show Robert Kennedy Jr. was on talking about his new movie documenting the tragedy they are living with.

past posts about coal and Robert Kennedy Jr. on the myth of clean coal

some good news??

This article over at sustainablog was a welcome infusion of hope. After hearing President Obama speak of "clean coal" in the recent state of the union, I was feeling pretty depressed. I know we face a huge problem finding ways to produce energy as we deplete the current resources of planet Earth at breakneck speed. Coal is one of the worst means of producing energy and is used to produce 50% of all the electricity in our country. I think about the poor humans living in the 2nd most diverse forest on the planet whose lives are being destroyed at this very moment by greedy corporatists who are willing to blow the tops off of these beautiful mountain forests to get their hands on the coal seams below. It's heartbreaking. That alone should be enough to get us to reevaluate our energy use and move to the new way we will need to live so our descendents have the slightest chance for a future. We are squandering the resources our children and grandchildren will desperately need.

Coal-Fired Power On the Way Out?
by Earth Policy Institute on February 25, 2010

The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful movement opposing the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States. Initially led by environmental groups, both national and local, it has since been joined by prominent national political leaders and many state governors. The principal reason for opposing coal plants is that they are changing the earth’s climate. There is also the effect of mercury emissions on health and the 23,600 U.S. deaths each year from power plant air pollution.

full article

What's Fracking got to do with Whatcom County?

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Perhaps the controversy and contaminated groundwater that go with natural gas drilling that uses hydraulic fracturing (Fracking) seems like a problem for other people in other places. But it could be closer to home than you think.

Fracking (also often referred to as hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking) is a process in which a fluid is injected at high pressure into oil or methane gas deposits to fracture the rock above and release the liquid or gas below. The process and its aftermath has generated controversy because of harm to drinking water and health where it has been used, in Colorado and New Mexico ^[1], and more recently in expanded drilling plans in the Marcellus Shale in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other mid-Atlantic states.^[2]

Fracking -- which uses enormous amounts of drinkable water along with toxic chemicals and which also releases radioactive materials and other hazardous substances in shale deposits -- has raised significant environmental and health concerns.^[3] In New Mexico, for example, similar processes have leached toxic chemicals into the water table at 800 sites.^[4]

The industry lobbied the Bush Administration and Congress with its claims that the "fracking fluid" should be considered "proprietary" and exempt from disclosure under federal drinking water protection laws.^[5] Led by Halliburton and aided by the former CEO of Halliburton, then-Vice President Dick Cheney, the industry obtained this exception in the law along with favorable treatment by political appointees and regulators in the "Environmental Protection Agency." As a result of the "Halliburton loophole" to the law, drilling companies have not been required to divulge the cocktail of chemicals that are in the fracking fluids used at each of the proposed or continuing drill sites across the country.

from: SourceWatch

There's gas bearing shale right here in Whatcom County.

As the supply of fossil fuels decline and prices continue to climb, even small deposits of natural gas will draw interest. As the map shows, there have already been lots of gas well permits issued here in Whatcom county. Some are exploratory wells, many are water wells that hit gas.

Here's something that explains how trapped methane is release when coal mining fractures the rock, with the 1895 Blue Canyon mine disaster as an example.

Explosion Hazards From Methane Emissions Related to Geologic Features in Coal Mines
Department of Health and Human Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/pubs/pdfs/2008-123.pdf

... Shales and siltstones rich in organic matter often contain
significant quantities of methane gas [Darton 1915; Johnson and Flores 1998]
and may contribute unexpected emissions into active mine workings. As their
permeabilities are typically low, the large amounts of gas stored in these
strata may not be released until mining-induced fractures increase their
permeability. In studying the gas content of U.K. coalbeds, Creedy [1988]
concluded that the porosity and gas content of coal measure rocks were small.
Nevertheless, he did allow that well-developed joint or fracture systems play
a role in gas release from adjacent strata. It may be assumed that under some
conditions certain organic-rich rocks adjacent to mined coalbeds have the
potential to release methane gas at or near the working face in quantities
sufficient to create explosive conditions.

Examples of disasters related to adjacent source beds include
the disaster at the Blue Canyon Mine, Lake Whatcom, WA, on April 18, 1895.
During drilling and blasting of bottom rock, an explosion occurred from "[g]as
[that] was evident in quantity and under pressure in the strata" [Humphrey
1960]. ...

An article from 1895 about the mine explosion: http://www3.gendisasters.com/washington/6003/new-whatcom-wa-blue-canyon-coal-mine-explosion-apr-1895

Here's something more to think about:

April 11, 2011

Shale Gas Isn't Cleaner Than Coal, Cornell Researchers Say

By MIKE SORAGHAN of Greenwire

Cornell University researchers say that natural gas pried from shale formations is dirtier than coal in the short term, rather than cleaner, and "comparable" in the long term.

That finding -- fiercely disputed by the gas industry -- undermines the widely stated belief that gas is twice as "clean" as coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The gas industry has promoted that concept as a way for electric utilities to prepare for climate change regulations by switching from coal-fired plants to gas.

But if both gas and coal are considered plentiful and cheap, utilities would have little incentive to switch.

The lead author of the study, Robert Howarth, had previously stated the idea that shale gas production emits more greenhouse gases than coal production (ClimateWire, April 2, 2010). But now it is being published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. [ continue reading the article: HERE ]

Switching from coal to natural gas doesn't sound quite so good, does it. Not only does Fracking contaminate our drinking & irrigation water sources, it also releases huge quantities of methane (a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2)

We're showing the movie Gasland this Sunday. Come learn more:

DFA - Gasland Movie Night

Sunday - Apr 17, 2011, 3:00 PM PDT

Whatcom Educational Credit Union
5659 Barrett Road
Ferndale WA 98248

3:00pm - 3:30pm - Welcome guests and mingle
3:30pm - 5:15pm - Watch Gasland the Movie

RSVP: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/events/35113-gasland-movie-night

gentle mountain top removal?????

so what are the coal companies doing better....blowing the mountain tops off quieter or more gently....or have they ordered less rain to rush down their beautiful valley fills to ease on the flooding???? bet they'll get it right when they blow the last mountain top off and completely destroy the 2nd most diverse forest on the planet earth-2nd only to the tropical rain forests.

will we destroy planet earth before we change our ways?

McCain: ‘I Do’ Support An End To Mountain-Top Removal, But Coal Companies Also ‘Doing A Much Better Job’»

In a townhall meeting yesterday in Orlando, Sen. John McCain
(R-AZ) was asked if he supported an end to the economically and ecologically
destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. His reply:

I do.

Mountaintop removal is decimating Appalachia — 25 percent of Wise County’s historic mountain ranges have been destroyed forever.

McCain couldn’t let well enough alone. He then incoherently continued, “I’ve seen a
dramatic improvement in the behavior of the coal companies. They are doing a
much better job.”

Watch it:


full post

a previous post: Thursday, August 28, 2008
the myth of "clean" coal

t boone alert ....again

For some mysterious reason, as I prepared to listen to Thom Hartmann today, a segment of a David Bender show where he had t boone pickens on as his guest, started playing. I was horrified to hear David Bender singing the praises of t boone pickens. Wow!

Not one important question was asked of him. Not a single mention of hydraulic fracture drilling or the mystery chemicals used in the barbaric practice or how the big natural gas boys are planning more drilling all over the country and they don’t think it’s any of our damn business what chemicals they are using.

He says t boone has a new clean energy plan for America. No more of that “nasty foreign oil.” This man is using barbaric techniques to extract our natural gas from the earth to profit enormously selling it back to us. And he can't seem to buy up enough water in Texas. He is being adulated as our great new innovator-in-chief as the extracting of natural gas is poisoning our precious drinking water.

David went on and on about how the t boone man had been sooooo patriotic to spend $58,000,000 of his own money to help America. He couldn’t promote him enough!!! Yikes! Hey t boone…. Stop doing America your favors….

A real hero would be someone who was indeed trying to move us to solar and wind AND most importantly helping us power down, as if our lives depended on it, and preparing us to share the dwindling resources of planet earth, NOT POISONING OUR WATER! I hope our leaders and representatives don’t drink the kool aide, but I fear they will. And the marketing (lobbyists) is the slickest, most bankrolled the world has seen. Wheeee…get out your grandchildren and great….great….great….great.…great….great grandchildren’s credit cards cuz seven generations is being reinvented by some very greedy people.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies?
by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - November 13, 2008 1:00 pm EST

In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyo., and pulled up a load of brown oily
water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed
to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level
safe for people.
The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.
Sublette County is the home of one of the nation's largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing [2], which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study [3] (PDF) by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.


Cathy Behr (Credit: Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

.........In mid-August, the Colorado debate intensified when news broke that Cathy Behr, an emergency room nurse in Durango, Colo., had almost died after treating a wildcatter who had been splashed in a fracking fluid spill at a BP natural gas rig. Behr stripped the man and stuffed his clothes into plastic bags while the hospital sounded alarms and locked down the ER. The worker was released. But a few days later Behr lay in critical condition facing multiple organ failure.

Her doctors searched for details that could save their patient. The substance was a drill stimulation fluid called ZetaFlow, but the only information the rig workers provided was a vague Material Safety Data Sheet, a form required by OSHA. Doctors wanted to know precisely what chemicals make up ZetaFlow and in what concentration. But the MSDS listed that information as proprietary. Behr’s doctor learned, weeks later, after Behr had begun to recuperate, what ZetaFlow was made of, but he was sworn to secrecy by the chemical’s manufacturer and couldn’t even share the information with his patient.

News of Behr’s case spread to New York and Pennsylvania, amplifying the cry for disclosure of drilling fluids. The energy industry braced for a fight.

........Thanks in large part to hydraulic fracturing, natural gas drilling has vastly expanded across the United States. In 2007, there were 449,000 gas wells in 32 states, thirty percent more than in 2000. By 2012 the nation could be drilling 32,000 new wells a year, including some in the watershed that provides drinking water to New York City and Philadelphia [4], some five percent of the nation's population.

The rush to drill comes in part because newly identified gas reserves offer the nation an opportunity to wean itself from oil.

Natural gas, as T. Boone Pickens said recently, is "cleaner, cheaper… abundant, and ours." Burning gas, used primarily to heat homes and make electricity, emits 23 percent less carbon dioxide than burning oil. Gas is the country's second-largest domestic energy resource, after coal.
full article

earlier t boone alert