The whole notion of clean coal is a lie. It's marketing and branding. I guess in some dream the black rock doesn't cause mercury pollution or that somehow it gets buried in the ground. Sorry coal like nuclear has got to be the stupidest way to boil water we have thought of yet. It's an ancient method from the 1800's that isn't going to solve our problems no matter how much of it we have. That so many of the status quo have a vested interest in keeping this outdated energy source alive is our problem.
Big coal, nuclear, oil these guys aren't going away without a massive fight. Every day they chip away at our resolve to use clean energy sources. For the few of them to succeed means the whole world fails. Solar Thermal is the way out of our collective mess. The sooner we flip the switch to clean energy sources the sooner we'll get our economy back. Relying on the dinosaurs of the industrial revolution and their minions is a death sentence to our economy, environment, health, standard of living and national security.
Here's a few snippets from the article linked in the title above and below. Read it and tell your friends.
...the U.S. Department of Energy said: "Burning coal is the dirtiest way we produce electricity."
Coal...is associated with unsafe mines, mountaintop removal, acid rain, black lung, lung cancer, asthma, mercury contamination, and, of course, global warming.
...a coalition of 48 coal and utility companies, which form the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, shelled out $45 million on advertising last year. And its money paid off.
The PR firm they hired, the Hawthorne Group, boasted in December, "President-elect Obama and Sen. McCain, their running mates and their surrogates adopted our language and included it as part of their stump speeches. ... We nearly turned candidate events into clean coal rallies."
"Currently there's no economical way to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal, and many experts doubt there ever will be," Bryan Walsh wrote in Time magazine.
1 billion gallons of contaminated coal-waste sludge spilled from a holding pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority coal plant in Harriman, Tenn., on Dec. 22.
The chemical-laced flood wiped out neighborhoods, covering cars and knocking homes off their foundations, while spilling into a tributary of the Clinch River -- a major source of drinking water.
In all, over 400 acres were covered with the toxic coal-ash mess, leaving enormous questions about the risk to human and environmental health.
Javier Sierra wrote, "According to independent tests, the coal sludge contained amounts up to 300 times the legal limits of arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and thallium. These are the ingredients of a stew with an enormous toxic potential that can cause cancer, birth defects and impede both the mental and physical development of children."
Disposal of coal combustion waste in coal mines is poisoning streams and drinking water supplies across the country. The solid waste generated by burning coal in power plants is the second-largest industrial waste stream in the United States. ... the waste's toxic contaminants, including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, selenium and thallium, can readily pollute streams and drinking water. These chemicals can result in a number of health effects in humans, including neurological damage, cancer and reproductive failure, as well as widespread ecosystem damage.
The biggest coal-producing state in Appalachia, West Virginia, tourism already contributes more to the economy, and creates far more jobs, than the coal industry and has for more than a decade. It doesn't take an economist to tell you that mountaintop removal is permanently destroying the best economic assets that mountain counties have: the beautiful and ancient Appalachian Mountains themselves.
That's enough cutting and pasting - read the article in the link and pass it on to your friends - we live in an old soviet union type era - where mis-information is spread through allegedly benign media outlets. Don't be fooled think for yourself and get the facts.
This
or This
You decide - speak up here and vote the coal representatives out of office
Here're the Top 5 Myths About Coal By Tara Lohan
Thank you Tara keep up the great work!
Solar Thermal Additional Information
Coal is Dirty Website
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