Clean coal Companies

[pmcalk]

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

Clean coal is a lie.

Adding a small amount of control technology to address minor concerns does not make a product "clean".

There is nothing "clean" about mining, transportation nor burning of coal. This is nothing more than a concerted public relation effort.

I'm curious what you think about ConocoPhillip's E-GasTM technology, which transforms coal to natural gas to burn.  http://www.conocophillips.com/newsroom/news_releases/2008news/12-16-2008.htm.  Are these more false claims, or could their be some truth to this approach?  Obviously, you still have the problems of mining & transporting, but if true, couldn't gassification actually result in something that could be burned relatively cleanly?

[Gaspar]

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

Clean coal is a lie.

Adding a small amount of control technology to address minor concerns does not make a product "clean".

There is nothing "clean" about mining, transportation nor burning of coal. This is nothing more than a concerted public relation effort.

I'm curious what you think about ConocoPhillip's E-GasTM technology, which transforms coal to natural gas to burn.  http://www.conocophillips.com/newsroom/news_releases/2008news/12-16-2008.htm.  Are these more false claims, or could their be some truth to this approach?  Obviously, you still have the problems of mining & transporting, but if true, couldn't gassification actually result in something that could be burned relatively cleanly?

Most of us are environmentalists, the only difference is how we approach the phelosophy.  Some come at it from a "cause" based standpoint, adopting a cause and then latching on to any and all information that supports that cause regardless of it's source or validity.  A much smaller number come at it by examining the science first, and then accepting or rejecting positions based on valid math, physics, chemistry and statistics.

As for Gasification, I think it's in the math.  If you throw enough money at anything you can, through modern science, make it "clean," but is a $15 gallon of fuel economical?  How much energy must be exerted to produce the fuel? Or is this simply a marketing ploy like ethanol?

The great thing about marketing is that companies recognize that most of the public will never research the issues.  They can allways rely on the "cause" based environmentalist to push products without responsibility.   Most of the public  simply hunger for the sound-bites and talking points necessary to support causes, and then spread the buzz like a virus through the hive.  By the time it returns to the company, it has momentum, political, "junk" scientific, and public.

Ethanol was once viewed as the new "clean' alternative and its marketing sold vehicles, built plants, pushed science, and paid farmers, until understanding of the process and economics behind it began to trickle down from the intelligent people, who do the math, to the general public, and finally to the cause driven environmentalists.  

The jury is out on gasification as an efficient fuel source.  So far it looks to offer a poor economic model.  As for coal in general we have achieved a 70% decrease in pollution, and that could increase to 90% in the next decade.

But all of these arguments go back to CO2.  Organic production of energy produces CO2.  It does so in nature when an animal converts fuel to energy, and it does so in our cars and factories when machines convert fuel to energy.  Simply part of the cycle.  

We can focus on silly graphs of the last 100 years and build industries on panic or we can pay attention to real science and come to the humbling conclusion that Yes CO2 is rising, happens every 100,000 years, directly related to the cycles of solar energy hitting the earth and the fluctuations of temperature that results.  Within those long, large fluctuations are quick, extreme cavitations caused by solar storms that douse the Earth in massive amounts of energy.  We are just coming to the end of one of those.  The junk scientists are not stupid, they realize this and have begun to push their language away from the term "warming" to preserve their cause.  So now we have a new term, "Climate Change."  Since the climate will always change this term is eternal and meaningless, therefore, as a "cause" it will prevail, until the real science trickles down.






I am a tree-hugger.  I grow them, nurture them, admire them, and build things of beauty out of them.  I am not so kind to broccoli.

[cannon_fodder]

Pretty colors.  He wins.

[sauerkraut]

The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor and that stuff is always totally ignored. Why? because they can't blame it on man.[B)]

[Gaspar]

quote:Originally posted by sauerkraut

The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor and that stuff is always totally ignored. Why? because they can't blame it on man.[B)]

Yes they can.  I "make water" all the time.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

quote:Originally posted by sauerkraut

The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor and that stuff is always totally ignored. Why? because they can't blame it on man.[B)]

Yes they can.  I "make water" all the time.

You'll just have to change your diet from hydrocarbons to something else. You probably make methane and CO2 also.  You are just socially unacceptable to the green world.

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by Gaspar

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

Clean coal is a lie.

Adding a small amount of control technology to address minor concerns does not make a product "clean".

There is nothing "clean" about mining, transportation nor burning of coal. This is nothing more than a concerted public relation effort.

I'm curious what you think about ConocoPhillip's E-GasTM technology, which transforms coal to natural gas to burn.  http://www.conocophillips.com/newsroom/news_releases/2008news/12-16-2008.htm.  Are these more false claims, or could their be some truth to this approach?  Obviously, you still have the problems of mining & transporting, but if true, couldn't gassification actually result in something that could be burned relatively cleanly?

Most of us are environmentalists, the only difference is how we approach the phelosophy.  Some come at it from a "cause" based standpoint, adopting a cause and then latching on to any and all information that supports that cause regardless of it's source or validity.  A much smaller number come at it by examining the science first, and then accepting or rejecting positions based on valid math, physics, chemistry and statistics.

As for Gasification, I think it's in the math.  If you throw enough money at anything you can, through modern science, make it "clean," but is a $15 gallon of fuel economical?  How much energy must be exerted to produce the fuel? Or is this simply a marketing ploy like ethanol?

The great thing about marketing is that companies recognize that most of the public will never research the issues.  They can allways rely on the "cause" based environmentalist to push products without responsibility.   Most of the public  simply hunger for the sound-bites and talking points necessary to support causes, and then spread the buzz like a virus through the hive.  By the time it returns to the company, it has momentum, political, "junk" scientific, and public.

Ethanol was once viewed as the new "clean' alternative and its marketing sold vehicles, built plants, pushed science, and paid farmers, until understanding of the process and economics behind it began to trickle down from the intelligent people, who do the math, to the general public, and finally to the cause driven environmentalists.  

The jury is out on gasification as an efficient fuel source.  So far it looks to offer a poor economic model.  As for coal in general we have achieved a 70% decrease in pollution, and that could increase to 90% in the next decade.

But all of these arguments go back to CO2.  Organic production of energy produces CO2.  It does so in nature when an animal converts fuel to energy, and it does so in our cars and factories when machines convert fuel to energy.  Simply part of the cycle.  

We can focus on silly graphs of the last 100 years and build industries on panic or we can pay attention to real science and come to the humbling conclusion that Yes CO2 is rising, happens every 100,000 years, directly related to the cycles of solar energy hitting the earth and the fluctuations of temperature that results.  Within those long, large fluctuations are quick, extreme cavitations caused by solar storms that douse the Earth in massive amounts of energy.  We are just coming to the end of one of those.  The junk scientists are not stupid, they realize this and have begun to push their language away from the term "warming" to preserve their cause.  So now we have a new term, "Climate Change."  Since the climate will always change this term is eternal and meaningless, therefore, as a "cause" it will prevail, until the real science trickles down.






I am a tree-hugger.  I grow them, nurture them, admire them, and build things of beauty out of them.  I am not so kind to broccoli.

Your graph isn't germane to the discussion of the effects of climate change on us humans and our environment.

We humans have not been on this planet for very long. Moreover, we humans have depended on agriculture to feed ourselves for even less time. What the earth was like before humans were around (or when we were few in number confined to a small area of the planet) is not necessarily a planet conducive to our survival.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by nathanm

Your graph isn't germane to the discussion of the effects of climate change on us humans and our environment.

I have to agree. Showing graphs of global climate change before humans were even on earth doesn't do even one little thing to prove humans are responsible for Global Warming/Climate Change.  Get rid of the charts. In fact, erase all such data from the records everywhere.  The only acceptable data will be that which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that humans are the exclusive cause of Global Warming, or Cooling, or whatever it is this week.

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow


I have to agree. Showing graphs of global climate change before humans were even on earth doesn't do even one little thing to prove humans are responsible for Global Warming/Climate Change.  Get rid of the charts. In fact, erase all such data from the records everywhere.  The only acceptable data will be that which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that humans are the exclusive cause of Global Warming, or Cooling, or whatever it is this week.

I think you missed my point. Whether the earth's climate is changing because of us or not isn't really that important. Fact is that it is. We need to work to maintain the climate in a state that allows us to survive.

IIRC, the atmospheric CO2 peaks in those graphs (prior to the current one we're riding, of course) were due to mass extinction events.

And equating our respiration to digging up massive amounts of carbon from the ground and burning is inaccurate. The carbon cycle consists of the carbon in active circulation in our ecosystem. We've been adding to that ever since we started digging up coal several hundred years ago.

Burning a forest does not have the same effect, nor does our respiration, as that carbon, while temporarily stuck in a tree or our body, would in a relatively short time frame find itself back in the atmosphere. Shortly after that it'll be part of another tree or person or whatever.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by nathanm

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow


I have to agree. Showing graphs of global climate change before humans were even on earth doesn't do even one little thing to prove humans are responsible for Global Warming/Climate Change.  Get rid of the charts. In fact, erase all such data from the records everywhere.  The only acceptable data will be that which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that humans are the exclusive cause of Global Warming, or Cooling, or whatever it is this week.

I think you missed my point. Whether the earth's climate is changing because of us or not isn't really that important. Fact is that it is. We need to work to maintain the climate in a state that allows us to survive.

IIRC, the atmospheric CO2 peaks in those graphs (prior to the current one we're riding, of course) were due to mass extinction events.

And equating our respiration to digging up massive amounts of carbon from the ground and burning is inaccurate. The carbon cycle consists of the carbon in active circulation in our ecosystem. We've been adding to that ever since we started digging up coal several hundred years ago.

Burning a forest does not have the same effect, nor does our respiration, as that carbon, while temporarily stuck in a tree or our body, would in a relatively short time frame find itself back in the atmosphere. Shortly after that it'll be part of another tree or person or whatever.

I was joking about breathing etc with Gaspar.

The rest is slightly different. I believe we should not waste resources and should be good stewards of the earth.  I also believe that the climate change is affected a LOT less by human action than the popular group. We are not totally blameless but I don't believe that we are capable of maintaining the climate in a state that allows us to survive if we are not the major contributing factor.  Most Global Change folks believe that we only have to give up a little bit to save the earth.  If we are not the cause, we may give up a LOT with no effect.  I believe you are intelligent enough that I don't need to think up some example. We probably still disagree about how much effect humans can have.

Another potential policy that really gets me is that developing country pollution contributes less to Climate Change than in developed countries. It must be so or developed countries (USA, Europe, Russia) would be required to help developing countries (India, China? they have lots of money thanks to us) with their pollution control rather than allow them to pollute to develop. Buying Carbon credits is crap. Either control your emissions or stop, world wide. Carbon credits is just a way for the Algores of the world to cash in on climate change, not a way to fix the problem.  That's assuming we can control the climate at all.

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow

Carbon credits is just a way for the Algores of the world to cash in on climate change, not a way to fix the problem.

No, it's a way to incentivize emissions improvements without government just up and paying for it.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by nathanm

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow

Carbon credits is just a way for the Algores of the world to cash in on climate change, not a way to fix the problem.

No, it's a way to incentivize emissions improvements without government just up and paying for it.

Incentivize?  I think you listened to W too much and you are making up words. I understand what you intend.  I don't think I agree.

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow

quote:Originally posted by nathanm

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow

Carbon credits is just a way for the Algores of the world to cash in on climate change, not a way to fix the problem.

No, it's a way to incentivize emissions improvements without government just up and paying for it.

Incentivize?  I think you listened to W too much and you are making up words. I understand what you intend.  I don't think I agree.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/incentivize

Thanks for your concern.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by nathanm
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/incentivize

Thanks for your concern.

You're welcome. I don't agree with the popular trend to make adjectives out of adverbs out of nouns etc just by adding the seemingly correct endings.  I especially dislike verbification.

You got what you paid for in the free dictionary.  If I can find the time to waste, I'll look for it in a more recognized dictionary.  As someone said (maybe you), a web site can be found to support almost anything.

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow

quote:Originally posted by nathanm
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/incentivize

Thanks for your concern.

You're welcome. I don't agree with the popular trend to make adjectives out of adverbs out of nouns etc just by adding the seemingly correct endings.  I especially dislike verbification.

You got what you paid for in the free dictionary.  If I can find the time to waste, I'll look for it in a more recognized dictionary.  As someone said (maybe you), a web site can be found to support almost anything.

M-W not good enough for you?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incentivize

You can disagree with where language is going, I often do, but you can't really change it. Even the Oxford folks accept incentivize now.

I could have said 'incent,' but that died out soon after people started saying it in the early 80s, although it's still in a few dictionaries. Or I suppose I could have said 'create incentives for,' which probably would be your preference.