(1) The long history of political corruption with the coal industry.

(2) Water pollution from mine wastes, the bury-ing of streams in mountain top removal, and the impact on wells and underground streams.

(3) The fact that burning coal still generates fine particulate pollution of the air, mercury poisoning, acid rain, etc.

(4) The reality that those areas of the country that are dependant on coal are cursed by boom and bust cycles, by chronic poverty, disease, and every social malady yet discovered.

(5) The impact of coal mininig on the health of forests.

(6) Surface and underground mining of coal remains one of the most dangerous occupations on earth - if collapses and explosions don't get you, then work place diseases will.  

We have two camps when it comes to coal. One camp wants to reform it. One camp wants to abolish it. I think coal is the enemy of humanity. I think trying to reform it, is sort of like mandating during slavery that a master could only whip a slave with ten licks of the strap, under the supervision of a doctor. Progress in some eyes, but not others.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

It is practical right now.  No new technology needs to be developed to utilize it.

Replace coal with wind power.  Period.

As solar comes down in cost and conservation takes hold, wind machines can be dismantled and recycled.  50 years down the road.

Meanwhile this lets us hand off a climate back in balance to future generations.  The resulting economic boom from this shift would solve the huge economic and financial problems that war over oil and nuclear power and soaring energy prices have caused.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

But maybe we could put in Concentrated Solar Power in the south west.    It brings in power during the day and when the sun is hottest and air conditioning needs are greatest.    Put in a DC transmission line between New Mexico and Kansas and we would connect the Wind production states and the CSP production states.

The Southeast might still need to put up some nukes, not having wind and not good for CSP.
Its connecting  all that wind with consumers that's a major hard part.    

It should be done.    The United States consumption of electricity is 10 percent of human made carbon dioxide release.    

Wind is great, but it always needs backup.

-David Ahlport

The best thing that could happen to CO2 is to split it into its two components, the carbon to be used as carbon and the oxygen to be released into the air, where it could start balancing out the effluvia which we produce as a by-product of just living, and slowing down or even stopping Global Warming.

The principle that everything must produce a profitable bottom line needs to be revised to include an estimate of the money that could be 'saved' on the asset side of the ledger.  Wind, land-based solar, nuclear, water, and fire-based power sources which need constant attention during their respective lifespans could all be replaced by electricity beamed down from space-based solar power station, expensive to install but very cheap to operate.

Des Emery

Solar thermal is more expensive than wind.  It needs further research and development.  wind is ready now.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

But am I being too bubble-headed and starry-eyed a Trekky to suspect that there must be another, better way to get at all that heat beneath the crust of this planet, only it hain't been discovered yet?  Go 'head, hit me with your best shot, I got nothin' to lose.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

In that case, we should acknowledge that combustion is part of the history of this planet, its atmosphere and its biota, long before there was any anthropogenic aetiology for an (excessive) atmospheric greenhouse effect.  And unfortunately, that would tend to play into the hands of the global-warming denialists.

Please explain, therefore, what you have in mind.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102560.html

Bjarne Lundager, managing director of the Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group, warned against removing the subsidies too quickly
[...]
He noted that [...] on paper wind energy appeared more costly compared with coal energy

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/103061.html

said Rosa Andersen, an advisor for the Danish Wind Industry Association [...] `But [...] Denmark only installed six new wind turbines all of last year, and that's embarrassing.'

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102966.html

Vestas [...] found itself in trouble last week. The world's largest maker of wind turbines slid 3.5 percent after Indian-based Suzlon, a major competitor, released disappointing quarterly data. Particularly hard hit was Suzlon's component division, which bodes ill for Vestas.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102943.html

Stalled plans to build new high-efficiency wind turbines could get a jump start thanks to a government plan to pay residents for decreased property values

Property owner resistance over plans to replace the country's 5000 existing wind turbines with fewer high-efficiency models has the government suggesting that homeowners living in the shadow of the 150-metre giants be compensated for lost property value.

Most politicians and citizens are in agreement that wind power is the way to a cleaner, more environmentally friendly future, but many also believe rows of wind turbines are an eyesore and destroy the harmony of the nation's gentle landscape.

The new initiative to compensate property owners comes on the heels of a report from a special commission created by parliament to determine the most aesthetic means of erecting new wind turbines across the country.

Although about 20 percent of Denmark's energy is generated by wind power, the amount needs to rise significantly if the country is to achieve the 2009 wind power goals set by a parliamentary agreement three years ago. Replacing existing models with a reduced number of larger ones has been proposed as a way to reach those goals.

But citizens' groups concerned about the effects the new wind turbines have on the landscape have managed to stall the process. Connie Hedegaard, the environment minister, believes the new initiative will help get it back underway.

`If you live near a new wind turbine, you should be able to receive compensation from the state,' she told Weekendavisen newspaper. `But note that it is only if one can document that they've suffered a financial loss from the placement - in the same way as those who live close to a new motorway.'

Hedegaard has called together the mayors of 22 cities to discuss the issue in August and to work out the details of such a plan. The opposition, however, is pushing her to bypass the meetings and use her authority to dictate where the wind turbines should be placed, putting up as many of the new wind turbines as necessary to meet the country's targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Hedegaard said she would rather have the debate on a local level.

`I still think it's best to discuss the situation out in the communities,' she said.'There are cultural lines in the landscape that you can't necessarily see just by looking at a map.'

When wind turbines began to sprout up in earnest at the beginning of the decade Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, the former leader of the prime minister's Liberal Party, expressed the feelings of many when he called wind turbines `politically correct, economically questionable and ugly'.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102388.html

Wind energy advocates and the opposition are welcoming the Liberal-Conservative government's long-term strategy for boosting renewable energy production.

The new proposal increases subsidies for wind energy
[...]
According to the plan, subsidies for a kilowatt hour produced by a new wind turbine would be increased to DKK 0.20 from the current DKK 0.123
[...]
Kim Mortensen, the party's energy spokesperson said, however, that it would push to raise the subsidy to DKK 0.29 per kilowatt hour.

Yes thermocouples might just work to directly tap geothermal heat.  Converting it to electricity without using water to produce steam to spin turbines.

Current thermocouples are only 10% efficient, making this impractical on a large scale.  But higher efficiencies might be possible.  Photovoltaic cells started out around 10% efficiency at converting sunlight to electricity.  

Now they reach 40% for the latest greatest design.  But they aren't in mass production yet.

Wind is a the cheapest and cleanest baseload power source right now with no further breakthroughs.  Mass production will make it even cheaper.  Demand is there with wind machines back ordered a couple of years right now.

Wind power resitors like the Kennedy clan in Mass are the only obstacle.  The coal and nuclear lobbies could be overcome without traitors like these switching sides to hinder mass adoption of wind.

Wind electricity also powers plugin vehicles and that replaces oil too.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

This is without solar.  Which can offset a huge portion of air conditioning load right now.  When the southwest needs air conditioning the sun is shining brightly.

Conservation that uses a smart grid to precool and preheat large heating and cooling loads is another great way to fill in that remaining 5%.  And geothermal heating/cooling would actually reduce that heating/cooling load way past the 5% mark.  Saving maybe 80% of the 36% of US GHG produced by heating/cooling buildings.

  Backup from biogas obtained from manure and other waste, itself backed up with natural gas reserves can take care of more than the 5% left over.  Not to mention pumped hydroelectric storage.

Coal reserves can be converted to natural gas underground for a long term natural gas reserve, once coal is no longer needed to provide baseload power.  This process leaves the coal mess underground where it is right now.

There are no more reasonable excuses to delay the large scale wind powered grid, only oft repeated talking points traceable back to the coal, nuclear, and oil lobbies.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

If those facilities can be made to retrofit CO2 controls, then a lot of CO2 emissions can be prevented in the near-term.  I don't care if it's accomplished through command-and-control, carbon tax, or cap-and-trade, but if post-combustion control becomes cost-effective, that could make a huge difference a lot sooner than anything else except efficiency.

Maybe they'd even do it in China.  Hey, a girl can dream, right?

They won't even put on air filters for the pollution, even if Japan is willing to foot the bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/worldbusiness/ ...

What makes you think they are going to contract with multinational oil companies to bury their carbon at sea for them?

-David Ahlport

But my larger point still stands -- there's a lot of coal-fired power plants in the good ole U.S. of A. that already exist and aren't going anywhere any time soon.  

So if there's cost-effective post-combustion CO2 control available, then hooray -- in a regulated carbon environment, CO2 emissions from pre-existing plants will come down faster.