I can’t help but notice how X-mas is looking more and more like an Oktoberfest!

.

What are words for?

Do you want to discuss the issue or just play word games?

You think because you work for a coal plant that you understand the “technological economy”?

hhahahaha.
remind us what sort of educational pedigree you have again?

I worked for a utility and spent 20 years at a coal-fired power plant. In fact, I was part of the startup team.

Second synfuel is not the same thing as syn gas or syncrude. Synfuel is turning coal into a liquid fuel, usually diesel, sometimes utilizing syngas. The South Africans, and SASOL, utilize a process with syngas to actually make large quantities of synfuel. In WWII the germans made lots of aviation fuel using a DCL process where you break apart some carbon-carbon bonds and insert Hydrogen, but keep the general structure of the coal in tact. Synfuel is a real possibility if economic and national security reasons merit it, but unless you capture the CO2 in production and capture the tailpipe emissions from whatever is using the synfuel, CO2 emissions would go up. What man on dog santorum was doing was not synfuel, it was a corrupt bargain.

I, too know quite a bit about coal and I agree it’s a big mistake to simply put a moratorium on new, coal-fired power plants! Of course, this is the typical knee-jerk response from “progressives” and those who really don’t understand how our modern technological economy really functions.

The real solution to the clean coal issue is simply to recognize that CO2 is NOT the villain here. It is not a pollutant and isn’t causing catastrophic global climate change!

There’s gold in them thar halls of congress. Gold that starts out as coal and ends up, after being sprayed with diesel or some other substance, as a synthetic fuel tax break. Unfortunately for those exploiting this provision of the tax code, recent increases in oil prices threaten to trigger an end to the tax break bonanza. However, GOP senator Rick Santorum slipped a provision into the hurricane relief bill to ensure the tax breaks would continue ….

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/02/spray_and_pay.html

Lets allocate Research Dollars to this syn-gas method, and see if it works without releasing CO2.

We should not be reluctant to do RESEARCH on all sorts of Promising Energy Solutions.

But we should not be building Lots of new coal plants until we can actually DEMONSTRATE an Economically Viable Clean Coal Technology.

As I recall, Lots of Taxpayer money was WASTED on a Coasl/Syn-fuel Boondoggle involving Former Pennsylvania Sen. Santorem which involved hosing down piles of coal with kerosine …a total waste of money.

In traditional coal plants you pulverize the coal and shoot jet into a giant vortex where it burns in the presence of air, that heat is then transfered to a working fluid, usually steam, which drives a turbine.

In clean coal plants you would probably turn the coal into a syngas (CO and H2) in a limited O2 environment at high T and P. You would then shift the CO with H2O into CO2 and H2, then separate the CO2 and the H2, sending the H2 off to be combusted into pure clean water which directly drives a turbine. The added benefit of this type of plant is that it is much easier to reduce traditional pollutants such as Hg, SO2, NOx, etc.

JFK’s ‘We Choose to go to the Moon…’ speech- 9/12/62
Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon- 7/20/69

Obama’s ‘We Choose renewable energy…’ speech- ??

Pipe dreams have a way of becoming reality when they are given serious attention and government support.
Clean Coal is like endlessly re-engineering the Redstone Rocket… it’ll get better and better but it’ll never get you to the moon.

Those two statements contradict each other. Why do you say renewables are possible when people have been pursuing it for the last 50 years (see Redstone Rocket), yet clean coal is not possible and basically no one has touched that?

JFK’s ‘We Choose to go to the Moon…’ speech- 9/12/62
Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon- 7/20/69

Obama’s ‘We Choose renewable energy…’ speech- ??

Pipe dreams have a way of becoming reality when they are given serious attention and government support.
Clean Coal is like endlessly re-engineering the Redstone Rocket… it’ll get better and better but it’ll never get you to the moon.

impeachcheney: The problem with you and the people who pay you is that you continue to believe that the American people are stupid and will believe anything you say.

Umm how do you know who I work for, it happens to not be anyone related to the energy industry. I post under this name at a lot of sites, and have posted recently on Lord Yglesias blog. I registered here a few months ago, and consider my self a liberal, and not a progressive, but hey thanks. I happen to care deeply about the climate change issue, but I feel as though progressives and others with no knowledge of how electrical distribution grids work and how electrical generation systems are actually designed and engineered are inhibiting real change by focusing on silly pipe dreams like Wind and Solar. Asking Al Gore what to do about climate change is like asking George Steinbrenner how to build a baseball team.

My point is that if you block the development of all coal plants because you associate coal with emissions you also block development of new clean coal plants. Every emission standard that congress has imposed on the coal industry they have met, although at a price. Of course they are going to lobby against new emissions standards, it will cost them $$, but it is congress you should be getting mad at, not the coal industry.

Instead of blocking all new coal power plants why not create an incentive system to replace dirty coal plants with clean coal plants?

Why not implement some cap and trade system with a gradual reduction in emissions allocated to the market so that dirty coal plants become economically infeasible, and there is a financial driver for clean coal technology.

Why do progressives constantly slander clean coal technology and say that it is impossible and a lie? Do they say the same things about the solar industry which basically a pipe dream for the last 50 years? Nope.

So far , no one has been able to demonstrate an Economically Viable way to do this CO2 Sequestration.

The reason COAL has Predomonated as an energy souce, is because the TRUE COST of Burning Coal has not been figured into the Price.

On a level playing field, alternative Green Energy sources like Wind, Solar, Geothermal, and the Ocean and River Current Capturing devices (see post #10) would be Competitive with Coal.

C02 Needs to be Taxed. Cap and trade is one way.

We’re messing with the Climate…Serious business!