If Obama is going to kill coal, he has to hide the body

bsk says:
May 11, 2012 at 12:28 am
Your post ignores that Obama, both as a Senator and as President, was a huge supporter of coal and clean coal in particular so the coal in southern IL (his home state) could be exploited.
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Obama is not against MINING of coal he is only against evil American Capitalists using the coal.
Plans are already under way to ship all that coal from the USA to China, just as Canada will be shipping their oil to China and Australia ships their coal and raw materials to China.
China is wining the war of world dominance with out firing a shot.
REFERENCES:
YALE: As Coal Use Declines in U.S., Coal Companies Focus on China
China beats out America for Canadian oil
New York Times: At ports in Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Colombia and South Africa, ships are lining up to load coal for furnaces in China… The United States now ships coal to China via Canada, but coal companies are scouting for new loading ports in Washington State
China and Patents:
China Takes Lead in Race for Clean Nuclear Power
When Innovation, Too, Is Made in China: AS a national strategy, China is trying to build an economy that relies on innovation.. document “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020).”
National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020) translation
Who’s that knocking at ORNL’s front door? Yep, it’s China (again and again) Chinese scientist visit Oak Ridge more than three times as often as the nearest “competitor” India.
Security Watch: Oak Ridge National Laboratory Hacked… Once again, there is reason to believe the attack comes from China.
Stealing Technology
Top Federal Lab [Oak Ridge] Hacked in Spear-Phishing Attack

China-Based Hacking of 760 Companies Shows Cyber Cold War
…The networks of at least 760 companies, research universities, Internet service providers and government agencies were hit over the last decade by the same elite group of China-based cyber spies….
Stealing Everything’
“They are stealing everything that isn’t bolted down, and it’s getting exponentially worse,” said Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
China has made industrial espionage an integral part of its economic policy, stealing company secrets to help it leapfrog over U.S. and other foreign competitors to further its goal of becoming the world’s largest economy, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a report released last month.

I will let the rest of you do the dot connecting.
You might find these older articles “enlightening” too.
The Federal Election Commission… imposed a record-setting $719,000 in fines against participants in the 1996 Democratic Party fund-raising scandals involving contributions from China, Korea and other foreign sources.
Campaign Finance Special Report: list of links to Clinton/Gore/China finance connection investigations
CNN MONEY: Clinton pushes open trade: President uses WEF address to tout open trade policies, China’s inclusion in WTO
Manufacturing & Technology News: China’s Entry Into The WTO 10 Years Later Is Not What President Clinton Promised: …Most all of the predictions from those pushing the deal at the time have proven to be wrong, according to an analysis done by Robert Lighthizer, former deputy United States Trade Representative…

The Economist: Chinese politics and the WTO, No change, Hopes of sparking political change have come to nothing so far
The Clinton Presidency: A Foreign Policy for the Global Age
As the first president who has understood the connections of the global economy and its connection to our prosperity, President Clinton has led the United States toward its greatest expansion in world trade in history…. Completed the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations and created the WTO to reduce tariffs, settle trade disputes and enforce rules… Completed the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations and created the WTO to reduce tariffs, settle trade disputes and enforce rules.

Lord I really hate politicians.

John says:
May 11, 2012 at 12:47 am
Elections are coming, so you guys know what to do.
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It is really tough to win an election when all the dead voters are Econuts too and both candidates are bought and paid for anyway.

In California, the fuel economy of motor vehicles isn’t driven by the automotive industry but by the fuel itself and the legislative demands for cleaner burning fuels. I recently took a trip to Washington State from California. I filled up when I left home. 210 miles later I filled up again and added 10 gallons Califormia Formula. 227 miles later I filled up again and another 11 gallons was added this time in Oregon. 317 miles later I filled up again 10.1 gallons on the Oregon gas…………….. California gas got 21 mpg in my 2008 Charger and Oregon gas got 31 mpg,
around a 50% increase in fuel economy

bsk on May 11, 2012 at 12:28 am said
“Your post ignores that Obama, both as a Senator and as President, was a huge supporter of coal and clean coal in particular so the coal in southern IL (his home state) could be exploited.”
My apologies, bsk, but Illinois is not Obama’s ‘home state’. It’s his ‘adopted’ state. His home state is Hawaii or some such. The question stands as to why the chosen one made Illinois his chosen one. Illinois: unarguably one of the most, if not the most, corrupt states in the Union. A state that’s sent 4 governors to prison. And he didn’t just choose Illinois, he chose Chicago, the epicenter of Illinois corruption. Why? He got his state senate seat from his own political mentor, Alice Palmer. He threw her under the bus, taking her to court on voter fraud, and got her seat unopposed

Tom says:
May 11, 2012 at 7:08 am

Alec says “Of course what the CO2 alarmists call “dirty coal” is perfectly clean. The only difference is that it produces CO2—that most healthful gas, the beginning of the food chain for all life on earth—which remains alarmingly close to the minimum levels needed to sustain life.”

So if this is a science site, why is there not a rounding rebuke to such a silly statement as the above?

Because people like you are not capable of delivering one? Remember, Tom: Theoretically, you’re a commenter too, not only a troll.

@Bryan A – a 50% change in fuel economy is simply not possible due to fuel formation alone as the formulations are not wildly different. Something else had to have also changed.
http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/gasoline/faq.htm

eyesonu says: @ur momisugly May 11, 2012 at 3:53 am
Ronald Reagan mark 2 may happen. Take a very close look at Virgil Goode….
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I am afraid that all Ron Paul or Virgil Goode will do is split off the independent vote and insure Obama’s victory. A very dangerous situation because he will have nothing to lose if he ticks off the voters. We only get to vote for the hand picked puppets shoved at us. That has been clear for years.
It is amazing how Democrats see Clinton as a “Saint” and Republicans see Reagan as a “Saint” when both helped get us into the current economic mess. Reagan’s policies allowing leveraged buyouts also helped bring the USA to her knees.
(Mods, I am including quotes so I do not have to rebut _Jim’s snark later)
The Takeovers & Leveraged Buyout “gold rush” started with former US Secretary of the Treasury William Simon in 1982 Reagan through his laissez faire attitude did nothing to stop it.

…The three regulatory factors were the Reagan administration’s relatively laissez-faire policies on antitrust and securities laws, which allowed mergers the government would have challenged in earlier years; the 1982 Supreme Court decision striking down state antitakeover laws (which were resurrected with great effectiveness in the late eighties); and deregulation of many industries, which prompted restructurings and mergers. The main economic factor was the development of the original-issue high-yield debt instrument. The so-called “junk bond” innovation, pioneered by Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham, provided many hostile bidders and LBO firms with the enormous amounts of capital needed to finance multi-billion-dollar deals….
Corporate takeovers became a prominent feature of the American business landscape during the seventies and eighties… public tender offer – …allows bidders to seek control directly from shareholders—by going “over the heads” of target management—the tender offer is the most powerful weapon available to the hostile bidder….
Hostile tender offers have been around for decades, but they were rare and generally involved small target firms until the midseventies. Then came the highly controversial multibillion-dollar hostile takeovers of very recognizable public companies. By the late eighties there were dozens of multi-billion-dollar takeovers and their cousins, leveraged buyouts (LBOs).
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/TakeoversandLeveragedBuyouts.html

Of mergers and acquisitions each costing $1 million or more, there were just 10 in 1970; in 1980, there were 94; in 1986, there were 346. A third of such deals in the 1980’s were hostile. The 1980’s also saw a wave of giant leveraged buyouts. Mergers, acquisitions and L.B.O.’s, which had accounted for less than 5 percent of the profits of Wall Street brokerage houses in 1978, ballooned into an estimated 50 percent of profits by 1988…
THROUGH ALL THIS, THE HISTORIC RELATIONSHIP between product and paper has been turned upside down. Investment bankers no longer think of themselves as working for the corporations with which they do business. These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers…. In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America….
THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun, as each corporate player seeks to improve its standard of living at the expense of another’s.
Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages.
January 29, 1989 http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/magazine/leveraged-buyouts-american-pays-the-price.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all New York Times

In the 1980s during the great takeover boom and hollowing out of the industrial heartland, many states adopted amendments to their corporate codes that codified directors’ fiduciary duties, so-called “constituency statutes”. In general, these provisions made it clear that a director need not “maximize shareholder value.” Rather, in complying with their fiduciary obligations, directors may take all sorts of things into consideration – the impact of their decisions on various constituencies, including employees, the community, the environment, the color of the sky, whatever…
When these statutes were first passed, they were heralded as way to protect jobs, etc….
My problem with these statutes is that they strike me as a bit of a head fake. While they certainly give boards the power they need to protect local communities, etc should they so desire, they don’t actually require directors to protect those constituencies. In effect, such statutes, simply give directors another fiduciary lever to pull when negotiating with a potential acquirer.
I’ve said this before, but you know a board might be very concerned about the impact of a potential acquisition on employees and the community when the bid is $69. At $75, the board’s concerns about the impact on the community might start to fall away. Why not move the HQ to Paris? It’s so much nicer there than Cambridge. At $85? Employees … we have employees?!
There’s no requirement that a board share the incremental price increase with those stakeholders who will lose out when a transaction is ultimately done….. http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/mergers/state_takeover_laws/

RESULTS
Statistics (courtesy of Bridgewater) showed in 1990, Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP. http://www.fame.org/HTM/greg%20Pickup%201%2010%2003%20report.htm
Industries with over 50% foreign ownership, is listed by Source Watch http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Foreign_ownership_of_U.S._corporations
Even out ports, roads and bridges are bing sold off. The Department of Homeland Security says 80% of our ports are operated by Foreigners and they are buying US bridges and toll roads. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-22-ports-flap_x.htm and http://carnegieendowment.org/2006/04/03/congressman-kolbe-speaks-on-dubai-ports-world/3blj and http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-15-u.s.-highways_x.htm
Most recently it is our farmland http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-10/being-like-soros-in-buying-farm-land-lets-investors-reap-16-annual-gains.html
As I said I loathe politicians.

Robert Clemenzi says:
May 11, 2012 at 6:17 am
What about hydroelectric? Low carbon footprint and all that.
Shouldn’t that icon also be there?
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NO, it hurts the little fishies. (EPA again) The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by Congress in 1968 (Public Law 90-542; 16 U.S.C. 1271 et seq.) to preserve.. rivers so the Econuts already have that covered. Hydroelectric is EVIL because as I said it could hurt the little fishies. Beaver dams are OK though.

A billion dollars for 1/10,000 of a degree?
I did some number crunching on this issue since in Alberta, Canada, they still want to spend about a billion dollars on one carbon capture project. At the present time, humans emit about 90 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every DAY. I DO NOT believe this to be the case, however let us assume there will be the IPCC average number of 3.000 degrees C increase in temperature due to our emissions if we do nothing. So if a billion dollars is spent to capture 1 million tons a YEAR, this amounts to a fraction of 1 in 32,850. So if nothing is done, let us assume the temperature will presumably go up 3.0000 degrees C, but if a billion dollars is spent, the temperature would go up by 2.9999 degrees. Or to put in another way, if we take the temperature of 10,000 cities now and then again in 100 years from now, 9,999 cities will have the same temperature and one city will be 1 degree C colder if a billion dollars is spent.
P.S. At one time, we had four different projects on the go. During the last election, the Wildrose party was willing to scrap all four and pay the penalty required. But they lost and are now the opposition party. The ruling party won and they do not seem to be for carbon capture either but seem obligated to honor previous commitments. At present, the Project Pioneer did pull out but the other three are still on the go. One of the others asked for public input and I submitted the above along with the stagnation in temperature for RSS over the last 15+ years.

Tom says:
May 11, 2012 at 7:08 am
Alec says “Of course what the CO2 alarmists call “dirty coal” is perfectly clean. The only difference is that it produces CO2—that most healthful gas, the beginning of the food chain for all life on earth—which remains alarmingly close to the minimum levels needed to sustain life.”
….
So if this is a science site, why is there not a rounding rebuke to such a silly statement as the above? Shouldn’t independent and truth seeking thinking correct such an inherently wrong statement?
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Yes and as you will notice Juice nailed it at May 11, 2012 at 6:25 am
I will add the major safety hazards of mining coal. I had a friend with an MS in Geology who quit because of the company’s disregard for physical safety procedures but that was in the late 1970’s.
I will add that black lung disease, is still a problem despite the US government eradication program of 1969. http://www.umwa.org/?q=content/black-lung
More people die from coal than die from nuclear which is why I am pro-thorium. In looking at the death rates per watt produced for nuclear, oil and coal, nuclear wins hands down. …for every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced….

@ur momisugly Alec – with all due respect, that makes utterly no sense.
Alec said “Does Tom, who also takes exception to this sentence, dispute that CO2 is clean?”
What does clean mean? Naturally occurring? If one takes that definition then wholesale burning of coal on the scale we are doing is clearly not naturally occurring. So that must be rejected….
Does “clean” mean then perhaps “natural” in the environment? Well by that logic since our atmosphere naturally contains krypton so therefore and unlimited amount of additional neon is a good thing? Wait one moment, too much krypton will kill you so clearly that logic does not hold.
So natural must mean then that it is required for life, therefore more is inherently better. Ah yes, that is why we submerge our crops in water since they all grow with an unlimited amount of water. My goodness, that sounds silly, so that cannot be the logic at work here.
So what is the logic and science behind the statement Alec?