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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CommanderCricket who wrote (97046)	2/21/2008 9:08:51 AM
From: Bearcatbob	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 206325

Ultimately the price we pay for electricity will become the issue. Higher prices will reduce our competitiveness and there will be more screaming from the left about our bad economy. If clean energy is what is needed - then do coal gasification. Then the complaint will be CO2. Anyway coal is used there will be CO2 issues. The majority of energy from coal comes from the C + O2 reaction. The amount of H in coal is low. This CO2 argument is no longer amusing idiocy. It is becoming a serious national threat. Bob

To: CommanderCricket who wrote (97046)	2/21/2008 9:36:00 AM
From: ChanceIs	Respond to of 206325

Natural seepage of crude oil into the marine environment Received: 7 November 2002 / Accepted: 23 June 2003 / Published online: 3 October 2003 Abstract Recent global estimates of crude-oil seepage rates suggest that about 47% of crude oil currently entering the marine environment is from natural seeps, whereas 53% results from leaks and spills during the extraction, transportation, refining, torage, and utilization of petroleum. The amount of natural crude-oil seepage is currently estimated to be 600,000 metric tons per year, with a range of uncertainty of 200,000 to 2,000,000 metric tons per year. Thus, natural oil seeps may be the single most important source of oil that enters the ocean, exceeding each of the various sources of crude oil that enters the ocean through its exploitation by humankind. walrus.wr.usgs.gov ___________________________________ The point of this posting??? I sat in a Senate hearing once where the Siera Club DEMANDED that all offshore crude production cease. We were destroying the environment, etc. Sen Landrieu asked them point blank about the ratio of spills to natural seepage. The Sierra represented stammered that he didn't have the data with him. Then Mary explained reality. Humorous if it wasn't so serious. Remember...Moses much less civilization would have been in a fix without some natural seepage: Exodus 2:3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got him a wicker basket and covered it over with tar and pitch. Then she put the child into it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.

To: CommanderCricket who wrote (97046)	2/21/2008 1:51:12 PM
From: nrg_crisis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 206325

a week without electricity Your point is well-taken, Commander. There's no question that we need the energy that coal provides and that our society would come to a cold and dark halt in a hurry without it. But imo we also have to be realistic about coal's costs, many of which are 'hidden'. We can quantify pretty well the health-care costs for, say, the greater incidence of lung diseases among people who live downwind from coal-fired power plants. Less quantifiable, but still real, are quality-of-life issues like the value of cleaner air. My rule of thumb is that a coal-fired power plant discharges into the air more or less the entire periodic table, including heavy metals, naturally-occuring radioactive elements, and other first-rank nasties. Studies have shown that living near coal-fired power plants results in higher radiation exposure - from the uranium and thorium discharged - than does living an equivalent distance from a nuclear power plant. In my view, 'clean coal' is an oxymoron, at least using current technologies. (And this is leaving aside both the mining-safety and global-warming debates!) Which is why the DOE's decision to pull its funding of FutureGen is simply incomprehensible. IMO we should be going full-bore on ways to make clean (or, at least, much clean-er) coal as available and as practicable as possible, as soon as possible ... and then export the technology to other parts of the world where there are little or no clean-air standards in the first place. So as I type this on a computer running on electricity powered by my local coal-fired power plant, I am also very much aware that dependence on coal for our energy needs is a low-grade Faustian bargain, at least using current coal technologies. I'd far rather see electric utilities develop new nuclear facilities than new coal-fired plants until FuturGen-like technologies come to fruition. nrg