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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (32931)	7/2/2012 8:34:31 PM
From: Bilow	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86352

Hi MW; Everything you ever wanted to know about coal dust and trains: bnsf.com Their complaint is that the coal dust eventually clogs up the ballast on their tracks but that's very close to the tracks (on railroad property and therefore not an environmental concern). If coal dust were really a problem with trains, I'd think that you'd be able to see it from the air like you can see any other major environmental disaster. If you go to the BNSF website you can see where they ship coal. It seems a lot of it ships out of Washington State and Texas. Their farthest east port is Quincy as in "Coal train kills woman on tracks in Quincy" which you can find if you google quincy+washington+coal. So we go to Quincy on google-maps and look for the railroad tracks. We're in luck, we find a train. Look. Is there a coal dust problem here? I don't see it: maps.google.com When they say that 500 pounds of coal dust "can" escape from a car they are giving a worst case estimate. There's about 100 tons of coal in a car so this is losses of about 1/400 or 0.25%. This is a substantial loss. A ton of coal is about $50 so we're talking about $12 worth of coal. A unit train has around 100 or 110 cars so this could be $1200 worth of coal total lost per shipment. I would think it would pay to have a little mitigation going on. And that's what the BNSF link says they're doing. Enough said. Industry and government is taking care of the "problem". What's going on with the environmentalists is, as usual, the same old green on the outside red on the inside. They're trying to stop all industry. Doesn't matter if the industry reduces man's effect on the environment. All man's work is bad to them. -- Carl

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (32931)	7/4/2012 3:05:25 PM
From: Eric	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 86352

The coal dust was blowing only on the corner and not particularly much of it. Not enough or regularly enough to put a coating of black even close to the tracks. In Antwerp, my car used to be coated with a fine soot layer due to diesel exhausts and home furnaces. That was annoying. That "scenic river basin" has coal train drivers to enjoy it and not many others. Right next to a major highway.. So are we supposed to breath it? The coal goes to combustion and thereby to providing CO2 for plants. What pollution do you mean? Not all plants can tolerate a higher CO2 concentration.. Did you had biology in college, specifically plant biology classes? That coal dust even looked as though it might have been added by careful pixelation AFTER the video was made. One can't trust Alarmists to be honest with their representations of reality. You don't even live here. I've seen trains up in Canada do the very same thing close to that spot. You need to stay "down under" in your world of ignorance. The "writer" who had "aching lungs" from passing coal trains in Russia would be hard pressed to get a similar problem there. He'd have to risk being run over by the train to get more than a hint of coal dust up his nose. The writer of the post is an expert on atmospheric sciences.. Something you know nothing about! I've known him personally for over thirty years. Please continue to post your antiscience crap.