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To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (50390)	5/24/2004 1:21:14 PM
From: RealMuLan	Respond to of 74559

"According to Venezuela's Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, oil prices will fall when Middle East tensions ease and speculators step back. He said at the weekend there was a premium of $8 a barrel in oil prices because of fears of sabotage attacks on key oil infrastructure in the Middle East, which holds two-thirds of global reserves." edition.cnn.com

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (50390)	5/24/2004 1:25:08 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

In large electrical generating plants, what advantage can there be in removing non-carbon components of coal before burning when they're so easily removed after-burning through emissions recovery currently used? You end up recycling the same sulfide compounds and fly ash etc. It seems to me to be the same process but more efficient. Why bother going to the expense of preprocessing? The largest portion of electricity, generated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, is driven by coal. The plants are in Utah, Nevada and Arizona closer to the coal mines. But the emissions recovery is extensive.

To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (50390)	5/24/2004 7:05:01 PM
From: Toby Zidle	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74559

Burning coal cleanly is, in theory and superficially, a good solution. In practice, however, burning coal cleanly is an economic and environmental oxymoron. It simply isn't being done. Rather than instigate a long, boring, technical argument, I'll refer you to a web site that gives a pretty decent summary of what is wrong with coal today and why even the theoretical solutions are bad solutions. "Coal generates 54% of our electricity, and is the single biggest air polluter in the U.S." ucsusa.org Waste products are NOT harmless today. "Waste created by a typical 500-megawatt coal plant includes more than 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber each year. Nationally, more than 75% of this waste is disposed of in unlined, unmonitored onsite landfills and surface impoundments." ucsusa.org The above page also discusses the 2.2 billion gallons of water that have to be cycled through the coal-fired power plant and the effect of the consequent "thermal pollution" on living ecosystems. On waste heat: "Much of the heat produced from burning coal is wasted. A typical coal power plant uses only 33-35% of the coal's heat to produce electricity. The majority of the heat is released into the atmosphere or absorbed by the cooling water." Aren't you concerned about 'global warming'? You say, "We can also reduce the SO2 with coke to produce harmless CO2 + sulfur." Since when is CO2 harmless? Haven't you heard of the 'greenhouse effect'? And with even minute amounts of uncaptured sulfur, we have the well-documented consequences of 'acid rain'. Even if all these problems were minimized, you haven't addressed the issue of new mine development. Building clean-coal power plants infers you have access to the raw material that dozens of new power plants require. The Sierra Club and other environmental protection advocates have tied up mine development for years in courts and governmental red tape. If you could clean up all the technical problems, where does the coal come from?