Guest post by Alec Rawls
The graphics were changed in the last two days, but Conn Carroll at the Washington Examiner took a screenshot of Obama’s “All of the Above” energy policy page on Tuesday. “Notice anything missing?” he asks:
The updated graphics actually retain the same omission. They still omit the source of almost half of all U.S. electricity generation (coal), and only add the non-existent eco-unicorn called “clean coal”:
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.
To rid coal-burning emissions of this eco-villain the going cost is $761 per ton of sequestered carbon: “staggeringly, wildly, mind-blowingly higher than any other conceivable measure designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.” So still no coal in Obama’s plan. Our existing energy infrastructure is to be jettisoned, as Obama promised in 2008:
If somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
Obama’s EPA rules already block all new coal plant construction, so his graphics are just looking forward to his true objectives: all-but-coal for now, with oil and nuclear to disappear next.
That slick “clean coal” logo indicates that the coal omission was not a mistake
The Obamatons had the clean-coal stupidity all ready to go, indicating a conscious decision to leave it out. This is reinforced by the absence of the clean-coal logo, not just from their pick-a-topic selector, but also from their header logo. Another of Obama’s eco-pages still has the original header:
That page now includes a clean coal section but the Google cache from May 3rd shows that it was recently added. The people who put these pages together are so anti-coal that they couldn’t even bring themselves to include the utterly phony “clean coal” in their proclaimed “All of the Above” energy strategy. That shows a extraordinary level of zealotry.
Kinda fits with the longstanding “climate denier” smear (recently on display), where people who don’t buy CO2 alarmism are likened to those who deny the holocaust of the Jews during WWII. The alarmists are all projection all the time. Their supposed scientists at the IPCc are omitting virtually all of the evidence for a solar driver of climate from AR5, and here their political leaders are trying to disappear the primary energy source upon which modern society currently relies, yet it is supposedly the rest of us who are conspiring to cover stuff up.
The conniving mind cannot conceive of another mode of being.
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Tom asks: “Surely you are not saying that CO2 causes warming, now are you? If CO2 is unrelated why string the words together like that.”
Is this guy for real? Hey Tom: CO2 does cause warming. That why I “string the words together like that.”
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_freightrr.html
See the graphic Class I Gross Freight Revenue by Commodity: 2003
Hauling coal represents the largest revenue source for US railroads (21% of total).
I’d think the railroad unions would be a bit miffed at Mr. Obama’s proposals….
OK it is time for an actual definition of “Clean Coal”
Lets go directly to the EPA – Section 415 Clean Coal Technology Regulatory Incentives [42 U.S.C. 7651n]
Well that definition is pretty clear. What about Obama’s definition?
“Tom says:
May 11, 2012 at 7:49 am
@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 ”
All the driving was done on US interstate 5 with Cruise Control set at 65MPH except for occasional construction zones, the only difference was the fuel used since I drove the entire way.
@ur momisugly Alec ” Hey Tom: CO2 does cause warming. That why I “string the words together like that.”
OK then, so we have agreement that CO2 causes warming. So now the question is how much warming we want to have it cause, how quickly that happens, and what side effects come along with it.
That is quite an interesting conversation to have. First, however, I would like to check with our fellow commentators that we have agreement on that “Hey Tom: CO2 does cause warming….”
Are we all agreed to proceed?
@ur momisugly Bryan A – Hi there. I am not saying that you did not see a mileage difference, what I am saying is that the energy differential in the fuels is not enough to explain a 50% mileage differential. In any case hope it was a good drive.
Tom says to Alec:
“I take note that you are, as Smokey et al, insisting on trying to move away from the the issue at hand here.”
The “issue at hand” is whether coal power is, on balance, good or bad.
Since coal power is about the least expensive power, and since the U.S. has immense coal reserves, and since scrubbers eliminate harmful emissions [note that China does not use scrubbers], and since more than half of U.S. electricity comes from coal, and since CO2 is completely harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere [the earth is greening as a direct result of the added CO2], and since the *very* mild warming [a small fraction of a degree] from human-emitted CO2 is entirely beneficial, and for the great number of jobs created by coal, the conclusion is that coal power is, on balance, beneficial to the country.
I will leave it to Tom to try and gin up some coal evil.
Thank you for an excellent article. The green zealots are costing us a bundle. In Kentucky, home of Cap and Trade supporter, Congressman Ben Chandler, Kentucky Utilities has applied for $2.5 billion in price increases due to upgrade requirements. This is for starters. They are anticipating having to close 2 coal-fired power plants, replacing the electricity with ?????.
http://www.seebenspend.com/shutting%20down%20america.html
http://www.seebenspend.com/coal.html
http://www.seebenspend.com/coalmine%20new.html Pictures of a surface mine 30 years later.
Such a devious master plan! Once they force us all to buy electric cars and then kill the means of producing the electricity, our cars will the most “efficient” ever! We know what we need to do in Novemeber; the real question is … does he know what needs to happen to the EPA?
I posted this yesterday on Tips and Notes about the coal-fired S.S. Badger steamship:
http://www.wasterecyclingnews.com/article/20120510/NEWS08/120519999/ship-ready-to-sail-on-lake-michigan-but-will-coal-ash-problems-make
Regarding demon coal causing a tipping point: “A disaster waiting to happen,” the Sierra Club’s Wisconsin chapter called it on its website. “If the S.S. Badger does not get cleaned up, the effects will be horrendous and could devastate Lake Michigan forever.”
The S.S. Badger website
http://www.ssbadger.com/content.aspx?Page=History
notes that this is the last of many coal-fired steamships in the US. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated its propulsion system as a mechanical engineering landmark. If Lake Michigan did not tip over from hundreds of S.S. Badger’s predecessors, the threat of perpetual devastation from continuing operation of one last steamship is meaningless.
@Tom
Wonderful drive from Santa Rosa up to Seattle and back…Thanks
Perhaps a viable alternative to Coal and Gas might be Thorium
http://energyfromthorium.com/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/11/is-thorium-the-biggest-energy-breakthrough-since-fire-possibly/
Some Pros & Cons
http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/liquid-fluoride-thorium-power-pros-cons/
“The pro-thorium lobby claim a single tonne of thorium burned in a molten salt reactor (MSR) – typically a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) – which has liquid rather than solid fuel, can produce one gigawatt of energy. A traditional pressurised water reactor (PWR) would need to burn 250 tonnes of uranium to produce the same amount of energy.”
If the claims can be proven, it sounds like a promising alternative
Bryan A says:
May 11, 2012 at 2:31 pm
“If the claims can be proven, it sounds like a promising alternative”
Why ask for proof when a consensus will will suffice?
polistra,
Obama is a weak politician who is handled by both pragmatists and ideologues. He usually sides with the ideologues. He himself is so intensely driven by ideology that his actions and uncontrolled statements appear to be those of an idiot (or an academic).
I am afraid that the Progressives (renamed marxists) are determined to play this thing to the end, regardless how ridiculous or futile it may seem. They have complete confidence in the stupidity of the masses and the apathy, fatalism or corruptibility of the rest.
After next January, they may no longer govern the US, but they don’t need to govern the US to win. They simply have to break it. There is a lot of time between the election and the inauguration to do irreparable damage. What if they refuse to leave?
@ur momisugly Alec – did we loose you?
OK then, so we have agreement that CO2 causes warming. So now the question is how much warming we want to have it cause, how quickly that happens, and what side effects come along with it.
That is quite an interesting conversation to have. First, however, I would like to check with our fellow commentators that we have agreement on that “Hey Tom: CO2 does cause warming….”
Are we all agreed to proceed?
Tom: you’re pretty out of touch if you think that agreement that CO2 causes some warming is a novel basis for conversation. It has been the basis for every conversation on this website since it began.
There are many reasons to oppose CO2 alarmism. I have focused on the fact that the evidence points overwhelmingly to solar activity having a BIGGER effect on temperature CO2, which means that the real danger has always been cooling, not warming. The grand maximum of solar activity that began in the 1920’s was bound to end sometime, at which point the warming would stop (if solar and CO2 effects are similar in size) or reverse (if CO2 effects are smaller).
Mother nature decided to spring the natural experiment on us with the end of solar cycle 23, where the sun dropped into a profound funk, where it is likely to remain at least for another solar cycle or two, and possibly much longer. Preliminary results from that experiment are already in. The planet has not warmed significantly for 15 years, falsifying the “consensus” theory that CO2 is a dominant driver of climate and taking the possibility of dangerous global warming off the table completely. Well, it was already off the table completely, but the sun’s natural experiment confirms it.
That leaves only the beneficial effects of CO2, which are vast. To be unplugging the modern world in a battle against CO2 is insane.
@Alec – given that there are frequent claims here that CO2 does not cause warming, and any who say it does is subject to personal attacks/smears you are being quite brave.
But wait – you are not being personally attacked. How odd, it is as if there was a double standard in effect here. That cannot be because protectors of science like Smokey would clearly not let that stand…
In any case what you are arguing for is to use CO2 warming properties to engage in planetary wide Geo Engineering. I thought that was considered bat-sh!t crazy?
Did you crack some law of the universe that provides you unique insight as to the exact level of CO2 to use to do this in combination with the other GHGs?
Any chance you scribbled that formula down?
That’s only part of it. During the campaign debates he was reminded of the revenue increases resulting from cap gains tax reductions, and revenue losses resulting from c.g. tax increases, and he said he wasn’t focused on revenue, but on “fairness”. Parsed, the country and government can go bust as long as the rich are hit even harder, and it’s all good.
When analysing his actions, never attribute to simple stupidity what is more parsimoniously explained by pure maleficence.
It is the alarmists who rely on an “exact formula,” if you want to call it that. Only by insisting that CO2 accounts for virtually all of 20th century warming are they able to calculate that the very small radiative forcing effect of CO2 must be getting multiplied up several times by water vapor feedback effects to get the observed amount of warming. That is how the alarmists arrive at their picture of a dangerously unstable world where small impacts on temperature are to be avoided at all costs because they threaten to send the environment spiraling out of control.
But if solar activity explains any substantial amount of 20th century warming, those high-feedback possibilities are off the table, which is why the IPCC systematically excludes the evidence for a solar driver of climate from its reports. I document that omission here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/
Tom, you are just so damned ignorant about the most basic issues. You actually think that people get attacked on this blog for acknowledging that CO2 has some warming effect. Why don’t you make some effort to understand the subject before jumping in with a lot of opinionation?
(To be clear: it is possible for CO2 not to have any warming effect, if negative feedbacks just happen to completely offset CO2’s small radiative forcing, but nobody is going to attack anybody for not holding to that special case.)
Tom says:
May 11, 2012 at 4:35 pm
“But wait – you are not being personally attacked. How odd, it is as if there was a double standard in effect here. That cannot be because protectors of science like Smokey would clearly not let that stand…”
That “double standard” seems to be a fixation of yours. This is getting tiresome. Are you paid by the comment? I’d like to complain to your superior (would that be an Über-Troll?) about the quality of your snark.
Works like this: even if the inane CO2→warming theory were correct, it would be better to increase it in order to prevent the highly probable global cooling disaster coming down the pike. If it’s not correct, increasing CO2 to boost agricultural output and plant robustness and water-use efficiency is by far the best policy.
So there is no point whatsoever in reducing CO2 output and levels — unless the hypothetical contra-factual water vapour/cloud positive feedbacks are suddenly discovered to be correct after all. Which is a very, very poor bet.
Tom, one quick question if I may_ Where do you see ‘unlimited’ amounts of CO2? The rest of us see a tiny % added on to a tiny %.
@ur momisugly Alec – shall we put aside the “it is the sun” argument for a moment? There is so much to learn here before you take me to school on that.
You are asserting that CO2 causes warming, and warming is good, therefore we should purposely continue releasing massive amounts of it. That is planetary wide Geo-Engineering.
May we agree that is what your are indeed arguing for?
If not – exactly how are you not arguing for planetary wide Geo-Engineering?
Once that is understood we will address exactly how you are going to fine-grain manage the Geo-Engineering process, since clearly it would be massively irresponsible to just have a go at it without being able to precisely control the outcome, yes?
Bryan A says:
May 11, 2012 at 2:31 pm
“The pro-thorium lobby claim a single tonne of thorium burned in a molten salt reactor (MSR) – typically a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) – which has liquid rather than solid fuel, can produce one gigawatt of energy. A traditional pressurised water reactor (PWR) would need to burn 250 tonnes of uranium to produce the same amount of energy.”
It looks like this quote goes back to the Grauniad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium
who reprinted it from Eifion Rees for the Ecologist (I am in no mood to try to find the article there); and it looks like Eifion has only a slight knowledge of physical units. Not that the Grauniad would have noticed. One must say that Der Spiegel is somewhat better in that regard.
You need to “burn” 250 tonnes of Uranium to produce “one Gigawatt”? That sounds not even wrong. the closest I can find on the web is
“200 tonnes of uranium mined per gigawatt-year of electric power generation”
http://enochthered.wordpress.com/category/uranium/
Gigawatt-year, that makes more sense… given that you only burn the 235.
As usual, the “nuclear experts” of the anti nuke movement…
Eifion Rees
Eifion Rees writes a lot about environmental matters, but he has also covered men’s interest and public sector issues. He has been working in an office as a sub-editor on a weekly magazine for two years, and felt it was time for a change, …
http://arabic.ufollow.com/sources/the.ecologist/all/
Okay, men’s interests, I see… It’s so amusing to track down this stuff…
Tom says:
May 11, 2012 at 5:18 pm
“Once that is understood we will address exactly how you are going to fine-grain manage the Geo-Engineering process, since clearly it would be massively irresponsible to just have a go at it without being able to precisely control the outcome, yes?”
The greenhouse effect of CO2 is logarithmic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm
So don’t pee your pants.
@ur momisugly Otter – Alec is arguing that CO2 is clean, it is natural, and healthful and should not be restricted in any way. In other words more is better.
Alec indicates there is no CO2 PPM limit in his amazing – and proprietary as of this point – unified law of ideal CO2 levels that take into perfect account all the climate drivers formula.
And surely there is a calculation behind all of this otherwise he is advocating something which is uncertain in outcome except that we’ll up the warming without understanding how much or how that will impact Earth’s systems.
And that would just be dumb, yes?