Coal and Carbon

I talked about the difference in costs between oil and Solar and Wind energy. But the big daddy is coal. Coal is the dirtiest of all energy sources. Yet we use more coal then anything except possibly oil. By far and away, coal is used to produce most of our electricity. It also heats a lot of older homes. Now, every time you turn around, somebody is talking about clean coal. In order to have coal be clean and by that I mean that all of the carbon dioxide is removed, and all of the toxic impurities are removed, there's not all that much left. Ever see a smokestack from a coal fired plant? They say they can remove all that pollution from the smokestack and build pipelines to someplace where they can compress it into, I don't know, blocks I guess, and store it under ground. Now, forget the cost of capturing the smoke, building 23,000 miles of pipeline, building the equipment to compress it, and building the facilities to store it, how about in your backyard, and just concentrate on how much we're talking about. 5.4 billion tons in 2009. That's like 41 super tankers per day, 365 days per year. That will have to be stored somewhere. Back to your backyard. Just how big is your backyard? All of this stuff will have to be designed, invented and built and or purchased by, guess who? Oh and by the way, in order to capture this smoke from the smokestack, it will reduce the production of electricity by about 28% of every generating facility in the country. Which means they'd have to build more then a third more generating plants then they now have, just to stay where they are now, in production. Are you beginning to get an idea of how costly coal really is? And that doesn't take into account the possibility of any problems, like a pipeline breaking and the ensuing cleanup, or any pollution to ground water, you know, the drinking water aquifers. But don't fear, there's a proposal in the proposed energy bill in the Senate to spend $2.4 billion on it. $2.4 billion? That's not even a down payment. Not even a deposit. If you think that the bailouts for Wall Street and the car companies was high, wait for the price tag on clean coal. But, hey, as long as you have deep pockets, you can afford to keep paying for a bad idea. Can't you?