I was saddened to hear the details of the climate bill soon to be released by Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman.
This bill could be a step backwards, not forward, unless the Senators fix key provisions in the upcoming weeks.
Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman have made a heroic effort to craft a bill in the face of opposition from the Chamber of Commerce, Lisa Murkowski, Koch Industries, and other representatives of dirty power. Their hard work to create a bill that would address global warming, make America more secure, and create jobs can come to fruition in the upcoming weeks. This would require the elimination of subsidies for the dying, dangerous nuclear industry, protecting women's and children's health by phasing out coal, supporting states' rights to protect the health of their citizens, and leaving America's Clean Air Act intact.
The main drivers of progress on global warming in the U.S. have been: 1) state laws, such as California's tougher standards on global warming pollution from tailpipes or renewable energy standards, 2) the Supreme Court's decision, brought about by a lawsuit by ICTA, Greenpeace, and other groups, to allow the EPA to regulate carbon pollution, and 3) energy policy.
These drivers have led the coal industry to slide up to the table to eliminate these avenues of regulation in return for one weak, national bill in which the industry will receive tens of billions of tax dollars and a price on carbon that is so weak that no signal will exist to shift the world from coal to clean energy. In return, the coal industry held policy makers hostage, demanding that the EPA be stripped of its authority to regulate carbon pollution in line with what is needed to protect public health. On top of that, states like California could be stripped of their states' rights to pass appropriate air pollution safeguards to protect the public health.
This roll-back of clean air legislation would be a price too high to pay. Giving away the leverage to reduce pollution further in the future leaves our children's future at risk.
Unfortunately, the bill does not address the biggest driver of global warming quickly enough - the burning of coal. You've heard the hype about "clean" coal. If "clean" means being the number one source of mercury, which threatens to cause birth defects or brain damage to the children of one in six American women, then coal is clean. If "clean" means being one of the greatest sources of pollution that triggers asthma attacks and emphysema problems, then coal is clean. In reality, coal is dirty. Burning coal is no longer moral.
The clean energy provisions of the House bill require less clean energy than we will already have; state policies are simply ahead of federal energy policy. We expect the provisions in the Senate bill to be business as usual as well. The price on carbon in both bills will generate a lot of cash but won't be high enough for at least a decade to drive a shift from coal to cleaner energy sources.
The international efforts to address global warming in Copenhagen crumbled in part because, while European heads of state were offering to cut pollution by 30% below 1990 levels, the U.S. commitment is merely 4% below 1990. President Obama's hands were tied there by the very polluters that are now driving loopholes and environmental rollbacks into this bill.
Senator Graham argues that this bill is not an environmental bill; it is a national security bill. The bill, which is ironically scheduled to be released on the anniversary of Chernobyl, includes up to 12 new nuclear power plants. As someone who was in D.C. on 9/11, I dread the thought of new nuclear plants after the 9/11 Commission Report stated that "Atta also ... considered targeting a nuclear facility he had seen during familiarization flights near New York."
Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman should be commended for stepping out as leaders on this issue. The way to address global warming, make America more secure, and create jobs is to update the bill to eliminate subsidies for the dying, dangerous nuclear industry; protect women's and children's health by phasing out coal; support states' rights to protect the health of their citizens; and leave America's Clean Air Act intact.
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http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/10/coal-chernobyl-twice-week-and-coal-9.html
Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium. The population gets 100 times more radiation from a coal plant than from a nuclear plant. So in 2004 by burning 4.6 billions tons of coal, we released 5980 tons of uranium into the air and 14720 tons of Thorium. This is like 80 truck size dirty nuclear bombs releasing 1 ton of radioactive material every day.
How does everyone like their current exposure to radiation from coal burning? How would it compare to exposure from full scale nuclear power replacing coal?
The health of everyone would be a lot better off burning the thorium in the coal in a nuclear reactor, than burning the coal itself.
http://environment.change.org/blog/view/thorium_nuclear_energys_clean_little_secret
Although not yet widely believed by scientists, water can replace oil as fuel.
Future cars might become substantial power plants when suitably parked, ending any need to build coal or nuclear plants and demonstrating far less expensive alternatives to fossil fuel. Eventually, automobiles may pay for themselves.
See Moving Beyond Oil and Running on Water at: http://www.aesopinstitute.org
To learn more about water as fuel, visit the website of parallel technology developer, BlackLight Power.
Scientists understandably have a hard time accepting fractional Hydrogen, the basis of this radically new energy.
Laboratories should repeat the fractional Hydrogen experiments published by Rowan University and successfully repeated by GEN3 Partners, who advise Fortune 100 firms.
National labs should repeat the experiments as well as design their own.
As technology using small quantities of water as fuel is demonstrated and reaches the market, it will become increasingly difficult to ridicule, ignore or deny.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, within a few months a bomber rolled off an assembly line every 59 minutes.
These radically new technologies are much simpler and inherently cost-competitive.
Let's have an all out effort to develop them without delay!
There will be widespread support to end the rising price of imported oil - which threatens to abort economic recovery.
Rapid reduction in the need for fossil and nuclear fuels can be led by consumer demand.
There wasn't a lot of angst-ridden social conscience-inspiring B.S. involved in that car, just 3 tons of highway-cruising comfort and about a quarter-acre of hood. An American car. Come to think of it, maybe we'd do better, these days, without all the angsting or other self-inflicted mental antics. Personally, I think there's people behind the environmental movement with a control fetish to go with their little leather sandals. Maybe if they spent more time 'controlling' each other, they could at least get out of the way, and let real engineers get in there and do some work, and dispense with all the social engineering.
I have visited a number of plants and seen the 3-4 foot thick concrete walls laced with steel reinforcing rods that are as thick as my forearm. I also know how glass and steel office buildings and the Pentagon are constructed. There is a considerable difference in the architectural strength between containment buildings and office buildings.
If a jetliner were to attempt to fly into a reactor containment structure, it would most likely miss - containment buildings are far smaller than cooling towers - but even if the pilot was really skilled, the result would be more like a bug hitting a windshield. Messy, but not dangerous to the equipment inside the containment.
Nuclear plants are clean enough to run inside sealed submarines and deserve encouragement in any clean air bill.
National energy priority #2: Energy independence
National energy priority #3: Replace coal and uranium fueled power plants with 4th generation reactors using thorium.
National energy priority #4: Dismantle raptor-killing windmills and desert habitat-destroying solar arrays.
Climate bill priority #1: Eliminate pollution
Climate bill priority #2: Minimize habitat destruction
Climate bill priority #2: Economic recovery
Climate bill priority #3: Energy independence
How we accomplish this? 1.) Eliminate all subsidies. ALL. 2.) Place a clear price signal on all forms of significant pollution from the energy industry, including ghg production, long-term nuclear waste production, and chemical pollution of our water stores. 3.) Place a clear price signal on habitat destruction, including land-use footprints, migratory bird paths, fuel processing and transport infrastructure, and farmland used for biofuels. 4.) Give all proceeds from numbers two and three, divided equally, to every man, woman, and the first 2 chidlren of every man and woman in the country. 5.) Let the market decide all else.
People need to spend more time looking at coal prices.
Metallurgical coal is now $200/tonne on the global market. Up from $100/tonne a year ago.
Whats a $20 or $30/tonne tax compared to a $100/ton price increase?
Same is true for steam coal. The DOE project steam coal prices of $2.14/MBtu for 2011.
The cost(without delivery) on the global market is now $3.40/MBtu for steam coal and rising steadily.
There is a reason the Chinese have 20 nuclear power plants under construction and another 40 on order. Nuclear is cheaper then coal.
That's not even considering when you take out all the subsidies and loan guarantee's, and add in the cost to transport and store the waste safely for 1000's of years on end, which would be done on the backs of taxpayers. Not that I'm living in constant fear of the Red Army marching through my town... but, Socialism anyone?
We need the tax because of price swings. The financial cost to produce energy may go up and down, but the environmental costs are always there. When the price of gas went from $4 down to $2 and change / per gallon in the last few years, all of a sudden people didn't care about the environmental effects so much. Amazing how that works.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1202/
"The total original coal resource in the Gillette coalfield for all eleven coal beds assessed, and no restrictions applied, was calculated to be 201 billion short tons
Coal .... be mined, processed, and marketed at a profit at the time of the economic evaluation. With a discounted cash flow at 8 percent rate of return, the coal reserves estimate for the Gillette coalfield is10.1 billion short tons of coal (6 percent of the original resource total) for the 6 coal beds evaluated."
Yep...there are 200 billion tons of coal in Wyoming. Only 10 billion of it 'economically recoverable'. The US uses 1 billion tons a year.
It costs 2-3 cents per ton/mile to haul coal by train. China already imports 100 million tons a year, India is projected to be importing 100 million tons a year and Europe imports 200 million tons a year. All that coal is going to have to be hauled by train.
If Europe started building nuclear power plants at the rate of 1/month it would take them 20 or 30 years to get off of coal. It'll take china and the US at least 40 years to get off of coal.
Warren is going to make a lot of money hauling coal because even after people realize that 'coal is not cheaper' it'll take them 40 years to do something about it.