Recently I have been inundated with TV ads advocating the use of coal – "America's Energy Source". These ads come from groups with misnomers like "The Clean Coal Council" (there is no such thing as clean coal), and they claim that if the mean old EPA forces utilities to stop killing people with pollution and mercury poisoning, then people will have to pay 70% more for their electricity.
The problem is that it ain't necessarily true. It isn't burdensome regulation that is killing Coal, it is economics. Coal is no longer the cheapest energy source. Natural gas is cheaper and puts out no mercury, hardly any particulates, and half the greenhouse gases as coal. Four years ago coal produced 50% of the electricity in the country, now it only produces 40%, by 2020 there will probably be more electricity produced by renewable energy than by coal (if the Republicans don't take total control).
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/12/28...Those Fossil fuel ads say that there is risk with all energy production. We saw some of the risk at Fukushima and now we have to worry about radioactive fish.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...Plutonium is the most toxic element in the world. One pound if evenly distributed to all of the people in the world would give everyone cancer. The number 3 reactor at Fukashima has MOX fuel which is a mix of Uranium and plutonium. The spent fuel storage pools are a hundred feet above the ground, and damaged. Another quake could be disastrous.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-200428... http://blog.imva.info/world-affairs/seis... But coal is even worse. Coal kills 4000 people for every one that nuclear kills for the same amount of energy, and that doesn't even consider the potential deaths due to global warming.
http://www.disinfo.com/2011/04/nuclear-a...There is no such thing as clean coal. It destroys the earth to dig it up. By listening to the coal folks you would think that coal equals jobs and that the locals support it, but the coal companies by going to mountaintop removal and huge machines, provide about one tenth the jobs of underground mining which doesn't totally destroy the land but is much more dangerous. The Appalachian people strongly oppose mountaintop removal. For some reason they love those mountains they live in.
http://ilovemountains.org/There is no such thing as clean coal. Coal produces 40% of America's Global Warming causing CO2.
http://www.radioopensource.org/global-wa...There is no such thing as clean coal. Even pollution controls, produce toxic ash that is filling up valleys and ponds. In 2008 one such tailing dam burst flooding the valley with 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic sludge that contains arsenic, lead and selenium. This was enough to flood 3000 acres one foot deep.
So the fact that we are weaning ourselves from coal is a good thing right? Not if they just ship all of the coal to China. In China 75% of the electricity is produced by coal, and we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. They are willing to pay coal producers several times as much money as our power plants are, for the coal. Huge coal trains a mile long are scheduled to go through our towns and cities in the North West with 500 pounds of coal dust being blown from each car along the way. This means even more pollution since the extra pollution of the trains and ships will add to global warming and then the pollution will be blown across the ocean to America anyway.
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/06/co...There is risk with any energy production? Yes we should develop natural gas but do we need to pump toxic chemicals into our aquifers with fracking to get it? Do we need to kill all the sea life in the gulf and in the arctic to get the oil? In Washington last year they produced so much hydro and wind power that they had to shut the windmills down for a while.
http://greeneconomypost.com/wind-turbine...The biggest problem with renewable energy is that we are lacking a smart grid to get the power to where it is most needed. That risk can be easily remedied.