And why do you pick on coal with regard to CO2? Petroleum, natural gas, wood, and our breath all emit CO2. And the evidence keeps mounting that CO2 does NOT cause global warming. That CO2 causes global warming was never more than a premise anyway.

You alude to the hidden agendas of the coal companies. What about Gore’s agenda. He is one of the single biggest polluters on the planet. Every time you send him a donation, you are paying for the wasted energy in his mansions and his jets. He is a hypocrite. He makes the coal execs look like straight shooters.

Ultimately our energy problems will be solved by scientists and engineers, while you all just sit and complain and try to act significant.

The IPCC is saying that the technology is already in commercial use where taxation on emissions forces industry to act, i.e. in Norway. Its ready to go on to the next stage, i.e. building a number of full scale plants in the US. The industry and the Bush Administration didn’t bother to come up with a single one: they cancelled the only one they had, i.e. FutureGen in Illinois. But this means there is something wrong with the politics, not the technology. Gore is way off base here.

Instead of calling on the public and the US government to force industry to use this technology, Gore is campaigning to try to make people believe there isn’t any technology ready to be implemented. This is not his finest hour. He didn’t win his Nobel Prize this way.

. . . . Anybody flown over the Great Smoky Mountains recently?”

I would like to know where I can find good clear high-res photos of mountaintop removal results….. I would like to publish lots of them on a website to show people what it looks like. A lot of people aren’t even aware of what the coal companies are doing. And the idiotic Republicans spent most of their campaigns talking about “clean coal”. People don’t know what it does to the environment, and this ad sure isn’t going to help with that. I guess it’s up to us to get the message out.
BTW, there is a great website about MTR here:
http://www.ilovemountains.org/

If anyone has a good source of pictures of MTR please let me know! shelly at civilianism dot com thanks

Say , has anyone noticed that the Nuclear Industry hasn’t been running an equivalent PR campaign? I wonder why that is?

December 4th, 2008 at 10:44 am
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I think it’s because they’re completely dependent on subsidies and in the present economic and political climate they don’t see investing in a PR campaign as a positive ROI.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:49 am”<<

It’s because the nuclear industry doesn’t have to convince anyone. Obama talks about clean coal and has taken a lot of money from coal companies. I think this ad is for him.

He is already on board with nuclear energy, so nuclear energy doesn’t have to advertise to him. Al Gore is also tentatively in favor of limited use of nuclear power. People are going to have to get used to the idea of nuclear power or we are goners.

read the Joe Romm critiques posted above to learn why…

I didn’t like the open door to the arid land either…

It sort of insinuated Mtn Top blown off, dead, and lifeless, but they leave that up to the viewing eyeball to figure it all out

Needs lots of work and surprised Al said “go”

December 4th, 2008 at 11:33 am
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Sure, there are some techniques for reducing atmospheric carbon, either in-use or on the drawing board. We can inject CO2 into depleted oil fields and aquifers, for example. Or seed the oceans with iron to stimulate algae growth. Or store it in the soil as biochar. These could all help, though they’re also prone to some side effects such as out of control algae blooms and ocean acidification.

But they’re also expensive – you get far more bang for your buck paying an Indonesian village to protect its surrounding rainforest than you do from seeding the oceans and sequestering carbon.

December 4th, 2008 at 11:46 am
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Deciduous forests like the ones we have in North America are very different. They will come back pretty quickly after a forest fire or clear-cutting.

Rainforests don’t behave the same way. They’re a much more complex ecosystem. A recent survey of regenerating forests in Brazil found that at least 25% of rainforest species don’t come back once the forest is destroyed – and many of these are low-lying surface dewellers. If we’re just talking birds and canopy trees, it’s as many as 60% that don’t regenerate.

Yes, reforestation efforts can work, with a lot of time and investment, and there are some efforts going on in places like Rwanda and Brazil with limited success, but the consensus of scientists is that we get a much better return on investment by preventing deforestation than attempting reforestation.

Yes, but that biomass is also interdependent on the other forms of life for its own survival. It’s not going to help reduce CO2 if one type of plant takes over an area of reclaimed forest, depletes all the soil nutrients, and then starves itself to death. Or if all the pollinators leave or die out because the fruit they were dependent on is no longer growing. It may not matter to us what plant is using all that CO2, but it does matter to the sustainability of the plants themselves.

Does this actually happen? The only equivalent I’ve seen is in North American forests, where recovery after a burn begins immediately and a new profusion of species develops. I’ve never heard of a monoculture occurring that wasn’t introduced by humans.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s405835.htm

Irony, here in my town, rural NJ, we have a manufacturer of co2 for the soft drink industry, distributes to the whole east coast. Next door to the propane company on the rail road siding. cannot buy anthracite coal period for home consumption unless willing to buy 26 ton minimum or a 5 year supply, which would be a cleaner burn then wood would be, when the ash is sent to the landfill which is properly treated waste water filtered.
I average 20 miles a week driving.

The coral formations are caught in a vicious positive feedback loop. The coral is a carbon sink, and the more atmospheric carbon the more coral is lost to acidic poisoning, which leads to more atmospheric carbon…..

I’ll give you the Bush Solution. The first domino is to bomb Iran before That One takes over, which will lead to a retaliation against Israel, then Russian involvement, someone will set off a nuclear bomb and the resulting dust cloud will shade and cool the earth.

A hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out carbon sequestration.

DNFP Says:
With the pure bloodlust-hatred so many harbor for Gore, why doesn’t he find a better spokesperson?

Hire a PR firm and let’s start making real progress toward teaching people about reality.

Gore’s name always shifts focus away from the problem and onto him, which, no matter how hard we try, will NEVER change.

The haters will hate any spokesperson……Gore is perfect for this.

hussein toasterhead Says
December 4th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I’m pretty sure this technology already exists. In fact, it’s been in use for at least 3.4 billion years already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis
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Yeah, yeah, yeah — thanks, guys.

Okay, but do we have enough of them left? Since we’ve been mowing them down at breakneck speed in the quest of gaining land for cheap beef so that we may all enjoy our Whoppers, we may still have to find some way of artificially replicating the process on a massive scale. Maybe not in my lifetime, but hopefully before the planet chokes.

December 4th, 2008 at 10:59 am
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What? We recycle our radioactive waste, too, you know! Where do you think all those depleted uranium bullets we’re using in Iraq come from?

December 4th, 2008 at 11:01 am
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Yes, but that biomass is also interdependent on the other forms of life for its own survival. It’s not going to help reduce CO2 if one type of plant takes over an area of reclaimed forest, depletes all the soil nutrients, and then starves itself to death. Or if all the pollinators leave or die out because the fruit they were dependent on is no longer growing. It may not matter to us what plant is using all that CO2, but it does matter to the sustainability of the plants themselves.

Make that reduces…