http://barefootandprogressive.blogspot.com/2008/08/peabody-black-is-new-green.html

As Mark Twain said, “I want to be in Kentucky when the end of the world comes, because its always 20 years behind”

vinylspear Says:

rodeored Says:

(why not just switch everything else to DC ?)

Thomas (rat bastard) Edison tried this. Too much line loss and inefficient.

Yeah, thank for making me go look it up.

Edison would much later admit that the biggest mistake he ever made was in trying to develop direct current, rather than the vastly superior alternating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

Wiconsin = Wisconsin

I recently worked on the new construction of a coal fired powerhouse in Wiconsin. Part of the agreement to allow it’s permitting was that a scrubber system as well as other enviromental updates to existing facilities was to be installed after completion of the new power generation system (boiler,turbine, etc.)

Well…here’s how it really went. We finished the construction new plant and of course were laid off. We expected to shortly be re-employed on the construction of the promised new scrubber and updates. Now we find out these projects aren’t going to happen. The company totally reneged on it’s agreement sighting that it was cheaper to pay the fines than to build the facilities!

It’s all about (obsene) profit folks. The coal and power generation industries will do all they can to protect their golden geese. Coal use is cheap and there is nothing complicated about power generation using coal. Coal fires a boiler producing steam which turns a turbine generator…that simple. I’d like to know the profit ratio per ton of coal to megawatts of electricity sold. I’ll bet it’s a number that would make any business person blush.

(why not just switch everything else to DC ?)

Thomas (rat bastard) Edison tried this. Too much line loss and inefficient.
Nikolai Tesla and his power transmission theories (which were blatantly stolen by Edison) had it figured out early in the game.
Converting DC to alternating current is not difficult or expensive.
Tesla was a genius, Edison was a thief.

However….. The Navajo nation is constructing a coal burning power plant with the rationale that the economic benefits for the tribe outweigh the environmental impacts on the region.

This is an area of the United States that has atmospheric visibilities of over 100 miles (except around Holbrook)

If anyone on this board has ever been out on the reservation, they would understand that this is a slow death sentence for an area that is famous for its geographic beauty.

Coal is dirty, and the cost to keep it clean makes it a foolish waste of money.

I can’t claim to know for sure, but my hunch is its all going to be mute anyway because of the Bussard Fusion Reactor. They’ve been working on it in the Department of Defense for 12 years where they kept it under the radar of the Energy Department by keeping the budget so low no one thought they could do anything, and by not publishing anything. Well by God, they did do something, they figured out the physics and over this past summer (2008) they built an advanced prototype, which, word has it, is running like a top. (That means it works!!!!!!!) Now they are about to publish something.

No meltdowns, unlimited fuel, no toxic waste, and very very inexpensive. It produces DC electricity directly from the reactor, without the turbines or generators that make up 80% of the cost of a fission nuclear plant. It just needs to be converted to AC. (why not just switch everything else to DC ?)

They are being real careful about making sure everything is peer reviewed, but they should come out with their report in the next couple months. Then they will need five years to work out the engineering for a full sized prototype, and then production will start.

I’m sure the oil people are aware of this, they are just trying to get one last splurg before this report comes out.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/12/1136887.aspx

A little Freudian slip there. Boyce meant green in environmental sense, but what he really meant was money.

http://progressiveworldreview.com

Then let Gregory Boyce eat soot!

.

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.

Chorus:
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

Repeat Chorus:

Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
Repeat Chorus:

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin’
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

Repeat Chorus:

The republicans are against alternative energy and always will be:

Republicans Block Federal Aid to Wind and Solar

Tom Friedman of the New York Times reports:

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”

If the wind and solar credits expire, said Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0323/p01s01-sten.html

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2008/06/23/obama-bad-for-the-environment-and-your-wallet/