I am with the American Coalition of Clean Coal Electricity. As you know, energy is a highly complex issue and cannot just be solved overnight. And in order to keep up with growing energy consumption, we’ll need to keep coal in the energy mix. It’s a reliable, abundant and affordable source of energy.

And whether you like it or not, developing countries like China and India have huge reserves of coal and they’re certainly using it. Chu warned that if China continued on its path, in 30 years it would have equaled all the carbon pollution the U.S. has ever released.

Chu was just in China trying to open up their market to our clean technologies. We should work to develop those technologies here in the States so we can export it around the world — therefore boosting our economy here while reducing GHGs. (You can read about that here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-climate15-2009jul15,0,2145660,full.story).

As for your questions, there are new regulations that carefully outline what can and cannot be done with regard to certain types of surface mining.

Those involved in the production of coal care about the environment, and that’s why they comply with current rules that require coal operators to establish a buffer around streams. There are other steps in place to make sure extraction is as clean as we can feasibly make it. And any project undertaken has the endorsement of the Army Corps of Engineers on ecological issues. You can read more about that at http://www.nma.org.

I hope that answers your questions.

How can coal be clean when, at least in Appalachia, early deaths from coal mining is costing communities more than the mining companies bring in?

How can coal be clean when coal ash ponds dump out into nearby rivers and poison them with toxic waste?

How can coal be clean when mountaintop removal mining destroys pristine Appalachian mountains and streams and floods rivers with millions of gallons of toxic mine waste?

Also, the moderator deleted your second comment – it was identical except for the first sentence, and so offered nothing new. It did, however, look like it might have been auto-generated. Which makes the moderator’s other observation that much more interesting – the IP address from which you posted both comments has been listed at spamcop, spamhaus XBL, SORBS, and the Composite Blocking List as a host responsible for sending spam and/or hosting a trojan site. So I’m curious – is the ACCCE contracting with someone who runs a likely illegal botnet, running the botnet themselves, or just hosting with someone who’s security is so bad that they’ve become a bot host?

There are a lot of modifiers in your comment: “once”, “is completed”, “will be”, “one of the cleanest”, and number projections.

So what you’re saying is basically nothing. You don’t have a plant, you have a plan that a lot of people (except politicians…who aren’t really people) are very skeptical about. Have you really figured out what to do with all the captured baddies? It seems to me that private investors tend to flee from “clean coal” projects; what is the ACCCE’s projection for breaking even?

Hey, i get it…it’s something and it plays well in soundbites as it proposes a seemingly simple situation to a complex problem. So instead of telling us how great this will be, why don’t you show us it actually working; doing what you promise; and not being a complete money pit.

Oh, and you forgot to mention how the ACCCE plans to clean up the process of coal mining. Cutting a length from one end of the rope and splicing it to the other end does not make the rope longer.

And I assure you that I didn’t even think about the expression “frack” from Battlestar Galactica even once while writing….

the exact same studies being used by industry to oppose fracking actually counter the industry’s own arguments

That’s pretty funny. Thanks for explaining “fracking.”

Re wind turbines affecting weather: What’s another blustery day — or 364?

Uncle B, your vision of the future is intriguing, to say the least.