"60 Minutes" Coal Reporting Misses Point (VIDEO)

This week's "60 Minutes" had a feature on coal which compares the CEO of Duke Energy "a reformed tobacco executive." Sounds like it has potential, right? It's encouraging that such a large media outlet reports on coal in the context of how dangerous it is to the climate, but the piece still falls short.

Despite consulting Dr. James Hansen, Scott Pelley manages to spit out this gem: "Cleaning up the carbon would solve everything." Then the program goes to a carbon sequestration plant -- the only one in the country, the show says -- which liquefies carbon emissions and pumps them underground. Pelley, narrating, says that everyone agrees that this is the only way to make coal safe for the planet.

While he does say that this South Dakota coal plant cost far too much to be replicated on a large scale, Pelley's reporting omits the first part of the process of using coal for energy -- the part where you gather the coal. If you don't know what that looks like, it looks like this:

I don't get it. As television producers and reporters, how do you cover a story and leave out the big explosions?

Here's the full "60 Minutes" piece.

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Comments

[Jane Ingles]

I know that there is a reclamation act which applies to strip mining. Why does not Congress pass such an act applying to blowing off mountaintops if they cannot outlaw it all together?
i realize that many people rely on coal for heat but they are being selfish because they are ruining the rest of the planet! Alternative fuel is the ONLY answer to the energy problem in this country. I know that the windfarms are ugly as are the solar panels but THEY WORK and they are cheaper and certainly cleaner than cold and not nearly as dangerous as nuclear. As to nuclear we have all those wastes which were to go to Yucca Mountain about 20 years ago and are still sitting around on the site. Now wouldn't a terrorist just love that?

[aercolini]

The free market has spoken

[gas123]

How about an even larger point: Without coal, poor people would freeze to death.

[RustyPatina]

They didn't miss the point, they avoided it. Mountaintop removal coal mining is wholesale desecration of the environment. I hope there is a special place in hell for anyone involved in it.

[GOPHater]

Read Mary Mapes book Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and the Priviliedge of Power to learn all you need to know about the lack of balls at 60 Minutes. Or, simply ask Dan Rather.

[ConservativeHippie]

Domestic natural gas is more environment friendly from beginning to end than coal or nuclear. It provides good paying jobs and royalties which equals more tax dollars.

[Top 411]

China is building coal fired plants all over the place, and India officials have recently said, they have no intention of following any treaty or protocol. You never here the alarmists complaining about that... They just want to get their hands on the big, bad United States, and dictate what we can and can`t do... Global warming is a political power grab and the only thing man-made about it, is the hoax that it is.

[DailyElitist]

While it's certainly true that the hysteria surrounding it is way overblown, when you say global warming is a hoax, you destroy your own credibility. It's quite indisputable that CO2 does have a significant greenhouse effect, so it's clear that human activities do put at least *some* upwards pressure on global mean temperatures.

The problem is that countless other factors, which are neither all known nor well-understood, come into play, so asserting that the relatively recent rises in global mean temps is due primarily to human activity is mostly unfounded, and totally unscientific. Additionally, many of those drumming up public hysteria about climate change are ideologically opposed to human development and industry.

Focus on that - the Goreites' ideological rejection of our ability to solve problems, and the dubious nature of the assertions that human behavior is mostly or wholly responsible for climate change. When you say it's flatly a hoax with nothing to it, you're being as irrational as the people who say it's the end of the world if we don't drastically cut our carbon emissions immediately.

[diogeron]

"Top 411": What are your qualifications to say that "global warming is a hoax?" Why should we believe you rather than the National Academy of Sciences? What are your bona fides on the subject?

[surferjay]

In the long run coal is a disaster. We need no more short term thinking about energy! Solar and wind is long term.

[DailyElitist]

That's insane. There's no possible way to get off coal without large-scale development of nuclear power. Unless you want to induce a holocaust of the world's poor, that is. It's not about politics, it's about the immutable laws of PHYSICS.

[norkas]

Daily you gave no idea what you are saying. Using a swing trminal with solar power will cause a exit and storage and light up a city for years with NO pollution or need for coal

[HeevenSteven]

Oh do tell me what you know about immutable laws of PHYSICS.

[coco51]

When the piece ended on Sunday, I was left in that suspended state of wanting..you know like when you have a regular coke and all you taste is chemicals? I watched with my 9 y-o grand-daughter and expected a piece that showed the "harvesting" coal to the manufacturing of electricity and all the in-between. He even went one further by pointing a finger at China and India. why? he failed to explain. I got the feeling that Pelley was more impressed with Jim Rogers business accumen and responsibility to his shareholders than Rogers lack of interest in building even one enviro-plant similar to one in North Dakota.

[atlantajoe]

Why is it that a democrat state like WVA rapes the environment ? Should Byrd and Rockefeller step down or is it ok when dems do it.

[Alice215]

West Virginia is a poor state. Coal is all they have. They export energy from coal fired plants.

[eristeleute]

West Virginia's coal problem is far more complicated.

First, we are not a "Democrat" state. Historically we have voted for Dems, yes, but that alliance was mostly rooted in labor union support. In recent years that has been largely replaced by the "God, Guns, Gays" Republican conservatism. For most of us who live in West Virginia, our switch to being a "Red State" in 2000 was hardly a surprise. We also have one of the oldest *and* least educated populations in the country, and many people just want a simple life, or maybe the good ol' days where things were "better."

Which brings me to my second point: West Virginia has an infatuation with coal. Most of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and many of our younger relatives, work or worked in the mines. If you're "lucky" (I use the term loosely) enough to get a job in the mines, it has been and continues to be a fairly well-paying job. Even though mountaintop removal has largely replaced underground mining - something most underground miners vehemently oppose - West Virginians still view themselves as deeply connected with coal.

[eristeleute]

Finally, (out-of-state) coal companies own West Virginia; you need only look at their tv advertising, "YES, COAL" interstate billboards, and "I

[fbs]

yeah, its all West Virginia's fault that they have coal. Let's go ahead and get our scapegoats right and blame eastern KY, southwest VA, west PA and most of OHio as well. They all marry their sisters or farm animals and raped the environment with their backwards coal energy. The Truth is, Appalachia is the most pristine, beautiful forest and wildlife areas of our nation. God forbid we blame the big cities for using all the electricity that the coal is needed for.

[madashellvoter]

WVA hasn't voted for a democrat in the last 3 Presidential races. Just because they have two DEMOCRATIC senators doesn't make them democrats. It’s a VERY religious and under educated state.

[STORMATSEA]

how about we start controlling over population? It is the cause of all of this crap

[iplaw]

We could easily sustain the population we have, except we like big expensive toys. We are actually in much more danger than we realize, over production of organic waste gases caused the earths atmosphere to be unbreathable by most species in several mass extinction events. Recent changes in atmosphere led to the disappearance of all mega animal species, which required more oxygen than our atmosphere currently contains. Further reduction in atmospheric oxygen could cause the extinction of humans, or evolution into small humans.

[smarternu]

No I don't think so - the world is extremely overpopulated. The overpopulation is destroying the environment.

[gevan]

Would that be "we" as in North American, or "we" as in Earthling? Asia and Africa are under some hightened level of strain already; and it will only get worse.

[DailyElitist]

That's nonsense. By what standard is the world "overpopulated?"

Answer: the dubious standard contrived by anti-humanist ideologues who want to exploit climate change as a veneer for their pseudo-scientific eugenics experiments.

All "overpopulation" means is that a given area does not produce enough consumables to meet the needs of its population. The solution to this can be either to, euphemistically, "reduce the population" - also known as "killing people" - or to raise its productivity. Humanists go with the latter, fascists with the former. Which side are you on?

At bottom, that's the real question - do you believe human beings are capable of solving problems and progressing technically, scientifically, economically, and culturally; or should we just throw up our hands and say "screw it, it's too hard, best not to even try," as we prepare to kill off most of the world's population and regress back to the caves?

[Eyeheartfreedumb]

Uh, does anyone think it's a good idea to put a large, concentrated pocket of "carbon" deep underground? Don't you think this will have consequences down the road (I know, they'll come up with another make believe process like sequestration once that environmental disaster presents itself)?
Also, with cap and trade, don't you think states taht are used to being poluted are going to sell their credits. Places like Kentucky are going to become more poluted and unlivable while Californians say, "wow, look at all the clean air... that cap and trade sure worked." Kentucky will reply with a cough. The poor people who live in poor states that are already poluted will simply see more polution while the rest of us breathe a sigh of relief.

[Eric King]

Damn those dinosaurs for dieing and then having their bodies contribute to carbon deposits deep underground. We commonly call that oil. It's carbon, but of a different form. Carbon is everywhere. Carbon is in us. I don't see how putting it back where it came from could possibly hurt us.

[gevan]

I heard somewhere that "what goes down, must come up." Geological time is not always what we think it will be.

[MJinCanada]

The ilovemountains video makes me want to cry. I've seen the GoogleEarth images too. Tragic.

And for all you people who think it doesn't matter to you, think about the water that comes out of your tap. And if you are "too smart" to drink tapwater, think of all the "spring-fed" bottled water you drink. Some of it comes from those watersheds, downstream of the mines.

People living in communities downstream of one of Canada's environmental disasters, the Tar Sands project, are seeing outrageously high rates of cancer. A rare type of cancer that affects maybe one person in ten thousand in the rest of Canada will strike two or three people in a village of 500 downstream of the tar sands.

[crazylikeafox]

CBS got the point.

The point being big coal wants the taxpayer to pay for researching and developing the ever elusive carbon sequestration.

Their game is burn coal until that day never comes.

[kburlz]

Since it's a matter of finding the least-bad alternative, regulated nuclear should be on the table. Fallout can be contained to some degree, while coal is an ongoing global disaster.

[AngieMom57]

Hanford Nuclear Waste Reservation mean anything to you?

[ibsteve2u]

Don't lose sight of the fact that the more expensive energy is, the more the poor will be hammered - and being poor means that they cannot absorb too many blows to start with.

Forcing people to watch their children's lips turn blue won't buy much eagerness on the environmental front.

[atlantajoe]

The only problem with using hanford as an example is it can't be blamed on Reagan or Bush. Why were democrats such big polluters anyway ?