Prodded By Industry Lobbying, Self-Proclaimed Global Warming Opponents Now Pushing Coal
Prodded By Industry Lobbying, Self-Proclaimed Global Warming Opponents Now Pushing Coal
Global carbon dioxide emissions are now exceeding even the most “extreme” predictions, and 2007 is already the hottest year ever recorded. Yet even as congressional leaders draft legislation to reduce greenhouse gases, “a powerful roster of Democrats and Republicans is pushing to subsidize coal as the king of alternative fuels.”
Prodded by “intense lobbying from the coal industry,” lawmakers from coal states are proposing that taxpayers spend billions of dollars to subsidize the coal industry’s production of liquid diesel fuel.
This is a dangerously backwards idea. Coal-to-liquid fuels “produce almost twice the volume of greenhouse gases as ordinary diesel,” and the production process of such fuels “creates almost a ton of carbon dioxide for every barrel of liquid fuel.” The New York Times offers this infographic:
Congressional supporters of coal-to-liquids argue that “coal-based fuels are more American than gasoline.” But the only responsible way to achieve American energy independence is to create policies that also reduce global warming, and that can be done with low-carbon, American-grown alternative fuels.
A profile in courage on this issue is Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who this month killed a coal-to-liquids proposal despite coming from a coal state. As Gristmill’s Dave Roberts noted, Tester realizes “that blundering ahead with coal before addressing its emissions is tantamount to collective suicide, and he’s not willing to sign on with that for the sake of a big-money industry in his state.”
UPDATE: Climate Progress has much more.
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33 Responses to “Prodded By Industry Lobbying, Self-Proclaimed Global Warming Opponents Now Pushing Coal”
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This country has gone mad….
May 29th, 2007 at 8:32 pmKudos to Tester.
Any politician - GOP or Dem - that supports coal-to-liquid fuels should first be tarred and feathered then kicked out of Congress into a tar pit where they belong.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:34 pmYes they want to strip mine the entire US to get the coal and destroy the environment in the process.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:38 pmCoal-liquided and feathered.
Thanks for the chart!
May 29th, 2007 at 8:39 pm“Got Coal?”
May 29th, 2007 at 8:40 pmthe chart you posted here is great. thanks for helping to expose this “cure” that is worse than the “disease”
May 29th, 2007 at 8:44 pmrepublicans AND democrats? Everytime democrat involved in this needs to be whacked with a 2×4.
Hard.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:49 pmNew Scam Alert!
…”green” coal…
May 29th, 2007 at 8:57 pmInsanity
May 29th, 2007 at 8:58 pmWow. Nine comments on a post relating to global warming and there are no troll droppings. Usually, this is exactly what brings them out of the woodwork (or out from under the refrigerator) in hordes.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:13 pmLet me guess…it’s all about clean coal technologies? Sure it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions…but you have to clear cut mountains and forrests to get it and you leave behind hundreds of square miles of inhabitable tar pits. Yeah, real environmentally friendly.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:29 pm#10 I am surprised too, given the troll feeding frenzy on some of the other threads today.
The world is doomed. Seriously. There is absolutely no way the fossil fuel industry will cooperate to reduce greenhouse gases, and they virtually own the government.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:29 pmCoal, the energy source of the future.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:33 pmWait, what?
Wait, on the chart, one of the “energy sources” is Electricity. Huh? And how would burning natural gas reduce CO2? I don’t get that chart.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:35 pmah yes, coal. A perfectly backwards idea. Yet another stone on the pathway back to the stone age. These people are braindead.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:38 pm#14 - I saw that ‘electricity’ there. One would need to know where this ‘electricity’ is coming from. If it were from a dirty coal plant it would be horrible. If it were from solar it would be great.
And while I’m not a tin hat type, the trolls really do come out in force on almost every global warming topic. They parade all of the standard arguments of obfuscation and apathy. Of course, the end result of what they suggest is continued profits for Exxon and company. … I’m just saying. :)
May 29th, 2007 at 10:42 pmElectricity = hydro power?
May 29th, 2007 at 11:17 pmAlexjandro - You could FORCE everyone to drive Prius’s and there would still be the dreaded Global Warming. Why? Because more pollution is emitted from power plants than auto emissions. Let’s emulate my least favourite European country, France, and build more nuclear power plants.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:20 pm#14 As far as natural gas — what the chart means is that for the same number of Btus produced with natural gas as compared to petroleum, carbon emissions are 29% less. Unfortunately natural gas production is having a devastating effect on air quality and wildlife habitat, etc. throughout the Rockies.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:40 pmHehe. clean coal. Oxymoron.
By the way, tranny, so you are all for being subservient to OPEC? You would rather listen to those dirty arabs than actually break our oil habit? By “our”. I mean the US’s, not whatever country you are from.
May 30th, 2007 at 12:45 amWhat about sustainable renewable energy like wind and solar?
Ethanol is a scam by oil companies to make more money, you waste more energy growing crops, processing it into ethanol, shipping, and storing it that it’s a very great net energy loss.
Not to mention it costs more and gets worst miles per gallon, and also creates a smog that might potentially be worse than pollution we have now.
May 30th, 2007 at 2:32 amWho needs mountains anyhow?
May 30th, 2007 at 6:20 am#14 - Electricity doesn’t necessarily have to come from fossil fuels. It could come from lightning - you just need to know exactly when it’s going to strike the clock tower.
May 30th, 2007 at 6:25 amLet’s see: troop surge? coal as clean fuel alternative? loyalty to wolfowitz?
Yep. George is hitting the bottle again. Someone please take that key away from the White House liquor cabinet!
May 30th, 2007 at 6:32 amGee, liquified coal. Isn’t that the stuff running in our poisoned rivers?
Filling valleys in Appalachia with mine tailings sure inspires with coal company best wishes. They just want to HELP.
Instead of Wolfowitz, make the CEO of Exxon the mayor of Baghdad. And make some coal company president his pointman. The Commander-and-Thief can be their third — more than Blackwater gave Scott Helvensten.
Give them an ‘up-armored Humvee’ and a map of their route, two other things Blackwater failed to give to that Navy Seal and his crew.
May 30th, 2007 at 7:23 amI posted a link yesterday from the NYT about this issue. One of the supporters of this idea is Barack Obama!
May 30th, 2007 at 8:43 amBoy, it takes a lot of balls by the coal lobby to be pushing hard for coal, doesn’t it? You’d think they wouldn’t have a chance in hell of getting US taxpayers to hand over billions of dollars to subsidize coal. But of course, you’d be dead wrong! Yes, there are completely insane Repuplicans and Democrats just waiting to jump on this!
Looks like our intrepid leaders are on some sort of secret mission: how to pull off global suicide for planet earth.
May 30th, 2007 at 10:05 amLiquid Hydrogen´s position in the emissions chart is questionable.
May 30th, 2007 at 10:13 amCould it possibly be that production of liquid hydrogen is so energy
intensive that it ranks among the worst alternative fuels with respect to producing green house gases emissions?
Does anybody know?
Yayyyy! I missed the acid rain.
May 30th, 2007 at 11:36 amThere are two policy questions. One is about global warming. The other is energy security. When push comes to shove, energy security will trump global warming every time. Live just three days without electricity, running water, powered transport, or any of the goods made possible by these and you might begin to get it. ( For gosh sakes, 15% of our food energy derives directly from natural gas turned into ammonia fertilizer for corn. So part of your experiment must involve living on less food.)
Global warming may inundate all the low-lying areas of the world, destroying vast swaths of prime agricultural, commercial, and industrial property, and turning Wyoming into mosquito-infested swampland; but that will be nothing like the havoc that would ensue if all fossil fuel energy sources became unavailable without a replacement.
If you want a secure energy future, folks, it’s coal or nuclear that will carry the first 50% of the load. Pay your money and pick your choice. You gotta choose at least one. And if we wait thirty more years, we’ll have global warming’s curse without hope of the benefits of sustainable energy. We need to make tough choices now. There is no free lunch. Coal liquefaction is probably a sensible part of the energy security portfolio.
The good news is that sustainables, especially wind power, are currently attractive. Large investments here, can make room for an increased carbon footprint for other fuels.
May 30th, 2007 at 5:15 pmSo according to this graph buying Cellulosic Ethanol from Brazil would best help the environment but isn’t a path to energy independence. Inversely, producing liquid gas from coal is great for energy independence, but bad for carbon emissions. So it seems to me that we should be investing heavily into research on producing our own cellulosic ethanol (perhaps from switch grass) as well as finding better ways to capture and store carbon from coal gasification. With only a 4% increase in carbon emissions from coal gasification using current filtration techniques it doesn’t seem that we are too far off from finding a way towards energy independence AND reduced emissions.
June 4th, 2007 at 1:09 pmI addressed this in an article last week on energy legislation in Congress. There’s a whole lot more idiocy where this came from. See Gump Rules.
June 4th, 2007 at 1:22 pm–Chris
“Ethanol is more expensive than gasoline.” Not at the Citgo station near my house.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:51 amNuclear power? Yes, it can be safe and efficient, but only if we follow France’s model of complete government control. The safety issues are simply too important to leave to the cost-cutting Capitalist model. My father worked in this industry, and you would not believe the shortcuts taken by private contractors seeking profit over safety.
How about USE LESS!
No, that goes against everything Amerika stands for.