As to the content of the article: How much energy do you expend to run the coal gasification equipment, and where do you get it from? What source material? Coal? Gas? Oil? Hydro? Wind?

I saw no mention of that.

MiMiCcs- I guess you are getting some RIGHTEOUS weed from Hemp4victory.

That's the only explanation I can come up with for your continued rant's that 'CO2 does not cause Climate Change'.

I ask, honestly, are you a climatologist? Chemist? Atmospheric scientist? Any of those?

If not, and you have listed no articles published in recognized peer reviewed journals that support your claims, then please SHUT UP!

The evidence, including the RAPID disintegration of Polar ice masses (the WIlkins Ice Shelf is literally hanging by a thread) is accepted by EVERY CLIMATE SCIENTIST NOT BOUGHT ABD PAID FOR BY THE OIL COMPANIES!

Is it just me, or is the so called leaders in the US getting stupider by the day?

So the list of things we can not use are: oil, wood, coal, nuclear, ethanol, methanol, or natural gas. Basically anything that grows or has to be dug up and burned. Hopefully, somebody can come up with a working ZPM quickly and the whole world can all cheap clean energy; but until that happens what can we use?

Wind power is great where you can get a steady breeze and solar is awesome but it doesn't work in all areas of the world. Cost may not be a huge factor in the USA but in most of the world it is and alternatives are still to pricy.

I would like to see less articles "complaining" and more offering solutions. This site use to have legitimate intelligent discussions. Now is just, "these people are stupid" and "everybody in the USA is evil". Absolutely nothing constructive. Is this an intelligent progressive site or have we all devolved into blind hatred and anarchy?

Didn't Kentucky pass a bill on allowing hemp to be grown? If so, why isn't KY fighting the DEA ban on hemp?

sugersmacks, do a google search on HEMP and learn why it beats fossil fuels 100% and why your gubbmint is a TRAITOR. You are right though. The author does a disservice by not mentioning a solution such as HEMP 4 FUEL.

http://www.votehemp.com

It should be an axiom by now that, when anybody wants to put something up with an eviro footprint of a an obese elephant, they start witn BS that it is "good".

For example, nuke-fired power plants are now being hyped as "CO2 neutral" -- which is a lie wrapped around a piece of shit -- that is, the tails from the mining, the nuke garbage AND the enviro cost to put all the digging and concrete up before you can turn the stoopid thing on...

In this case, it is kind of like saying, "We can keep drinking booze cheap if we stop buying at the Man and make the shit ourselves in the bathtub..."

Actually, North Dakota has had a coal gasification plant since 1988. It was started by oil investors who (when the price of oil dropped) left the taxpayers to pick up the tab (a familiar ring?). Here is a brief overview of the plant.

sugarsmacks,

Perhaps you will write offering the "solutions" that you are looking for?

i do not see myself as peddling "blind hatred and anarchy". i also see that, as i just wrote in another thread:

"Human activity on the Earth has disrupted the basic systems of the living Earth. We are living a massive transformation, the evidence of which is everywhere - climate fluctuation, cascading extinctions, ecosystem degradation, agricultural failures, etc etc etc. How is it possible for our minds and society to continue to compartmentalize and analyze "problems" like energy pricing as if we could assume that the underpinnings of the living Earth which supports human life and human economics will remain basically stable? We all know it is destabilized! i think we do not actually "assume" continued stability of the living Earth, we "pretend" it, because we simply cannot allow ourselves to look at the full picture of what is actually unfolding."

You say you want to read about "solutions" to problems of energy production. i think you do not want to look honestly at what is actually happening.

"Solutions" can only be discussed if we are discussing the actual "problems" that need to be solved. If we look for "solutions" that will allow us to pump ever-increasing energy inputs into a corporate economic structure that meets human "needs" through advertising and selling more and more things, then perhaps what i am writing will look like "blind hatred and anarchy".

destroying the planet to generate energy we could live without is akin to eating a nice steak cut from your own living thigh muscle when you're hungry...you can't have your body and eat it, too, nor can you use up the earth and still have a place to set your ass when you're tired of standing...we must shrink, not grow...use less energy, not more...humans must learn to live as animals again...

David Blume has already written about this, and has published the plan to overcome this problem. His star is about to shine!

Learn about his work and buy his book, it's the best money making plan on the market.

http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/?bid=2&aid=CD1&opt=

Mountaintop Removal which is a incredibly destructive method of getting at the coal is a clear and present danger to the environment. MTR is a shortcut as it blows away the mountain in order to get at the coal...over 1 millions pounds of explosives are used daily in West Virginia.

Once the mountains are gone, they are gone. The destruction is total and damage permanent. All fans of CommonDreams need to educate themselves on the threat posed by coal and do soemthing to stop MTR. Ilove mountains is a good place to start now, so that we can save mountains for our children.

Coal's lower price also means policymakers at the smaller levels feel more secure signing long-term deals going forward. To implement true energy alternatives, we need immediate solutions, not future plans. We have to stop MTR in the meantime. As long as we use coal, and in the absence of regulatory oversight at the federal level, companies like Massey and Peabody will use MTR.

I would suggest hemp4fuel use the real thing. It's vitamin THC. Our cannabis receptors require it.

Thanks, dubet at 3:25!
Succinct, how could you make it any clearer?

Our using less fossil-fuel energy and not more is the point of several CD essays today. Good comment in your post.

For "Sugarsmacks." Thank you for the best recommendation and astute remarks I have read in these interminable writings over the bemused months. You are a fresh breeze, which, of course, would make you a very lousy politician. What have I just said?!? Sorry, I will try to do better from now on.

I do not have any, have not seen any in actuality, but have seen pictures of working models to operate vehicles using on board generated hydrogen from water.No polution but develop[ers have found it is highly dangerous to the long life if the "establishment" gets wind of your operation. Pooofff!!!

Its called runaway stupidity. What happens the result of polluting the environment with biological toxics in the air food and water.which affect neurological functioning. Real intelligence of the nation faalls to the extent of being a vicious positive feedback cycle. Increased stupidity leads to increased fixity on more desperate measures to prolong an unsustainable way of life. The toxins continue to accumulate, leading to stupid decisions that accelerate toxin production that prevents new thinking. Some of the toxins act like drugs and increase the craving for short term solutions, and erase long term memory. The process only stops when most of the population has reached a state of terminal dementia, and poison themselves to death. Many politicians exhibit mental symptoms of an advanced state of decline, another positive feedback effect.

One SOLUTION is to downgrade the military since it's the number one USER of fossil fuel. And what does it use it for? Mostly to co-opt the resources of OTHER lands by force. If the US didn't opt for the such vast militarism, we'd see fuel reduction right there! Maybe our economy and national karma would get a chance to heal, too.

HEDOLOGY: Interesting post, and very creative reasoning!

Full moon tonite.

The problem is you all seek solutions to problems that do not exist. CO2 does not cause significant warming. We are not running out of energy anytime soon. These are both myths.

In addition, any solutions are constrained by the other myth, that government can only spend money that it gets from taxes or that it borrows from the Fed or other countries central banks.

Those who dare peek past the curtain that covers up reality, consider this.

The government can create it's own money, and loan it out at low interest, say 2%, and simple interest at that, not compound. Payable only after the project starts generating revenue.

The projects would be to develop solar power plants that would in turn provide electricity for a massive cross country network of high speed trains to transport commodities and passengers, and reduce highway and air transport which burn liquid fuels. This railway network would also extend from Canada into South America, each nation financing it's share of the cost in the same fashion. The federal government owns over 30% of all land, and this land can be given away or made available rent free for the power plants and railways.

Under our current economic system, we never would have been able to build the transcontinetal railways that allowed this country to become a superpower.

Government could also address other domestic issues like health care and social security with government created money. The Federal Income tax can be rolled back to what was intended, a tax only on the top 10%, and at much lower rates than today. Taxes are only needed to pay interest on government debt owed to foreigners (3.5 trillion). We also need to go back to fixed currency exchange rate mechanism. The floating rates main purpose is to attack countries that do not play by the rules. The USD will soon be attacked in order to convert the world from the Petrodollar to an IMF world currency which will turn the US into a Zimbabwe hyperinflationary disaster.

Your leaders know this, but the plan is to destroy America as a sacrifice to Globalization and One World Government. They know that to oppose the evil forces that rule in the shadows is to end up like JFK and many others.

Those who embrace the myths and deny the evil forces that are destroying this country from within and without are going to be woken up very soon to a real nightmare. The timeline is now months and years, and not decades.

The only solution is for you the people to wake up, and even then, that might not be enough.

MiMiCcs: "for a massive cross country network of high speed trains to transport commodities and passengers, and reduce highway and air transport which burn liquid fuels."

I think most of us will be shocked when an above-freeway set of lightweight rails is built for a fully automated transit system, at a tiny fraction of the cost of the freeway.

--"You mean we were paying all those billions for nothing?"

--"The freeway was too slow and it's full of nutty drivers who cut you off, and there's drunk drivers."

--"Now I don't have to find a parking spot, and my car picks up my groceries."

--"I don't have time to point a car an hour a day. Time is money."

Coal is high-carbon fuel. I say that it shall accelerate global warming. Such an action, where everyone does it, is unthinkably stupid.

So get the other people to stop first, and then we can continue polluting to our hearts content forever while they conserve forever. That's the pipe dream. For pipe dreams see the guy with the hemp, ezeflyer.

We're going to evolve an international tariff system (and other sanctions) against environmental carbon-burning rogue states. Model: Whaling countries learned that whaling was damaging the rest of their economy, so they stopped for a few decades.

Sugarsmacks,

Uninformed dismissals aside, a conserving society (we use several time the energy most European countries use, and they use several times what Japan does) powered by complementary solar and wind along with small amounts of micro-hydro, cogeneration, geothermal and other sources are the answer. We have the technology, we have the money and we have the labor and materials; all we need is to clear the path of a few obstructive selfish people and the many others they have fooled into believing we can't, or don't need to make this change. (And who knows which MiMiCcS is--either a mad scientist or one who doesn't understand science enough to listen to the rational things it tells us and separate them from unfortunate and bizarre delusions--or both. A perfect illustration of what we're up against.)

Think and feel for yourself. Do the math. Do the leterature. Take a walk in the woods to clear your bodymind.

"The coal industry and its supporters say"

At the founding of the nation Jefferson recognized that industry should have no say, and not even a right to exist past the completion of specific tasks. It's easy to see why. This coal liquefication plant is being promoted by industrialists who are exploiting the society's addiction to energy as a means to achieve an economic end - perpetuation of their enterprises, with no concern whatsoever for the public interests. The implication is that the public interests are to be subordinate to the entrenched industrial interests. This is exactly the kind of massive abuse by the British East India company that inspired the founders of the US to severely restrict the political power of industrialists.

PaulK. Maybe you can not read, I said reduce, not eliminate. Yeah, we are spending those billions on highways since there is no shortage of oil. But hey, they wanted a solution to a problem that does not exist, what can I say. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

"We're going to evolve an international tariff system (and other sanctions) against environmental carbon-burning rogue states"

Well China is going into Coal liquification also. China says get stuffed. We are going to apply sanctions to our biggest banker. LOL.

BTW, CO2 does not cause significant global warming. It is a scam to get you to accept carbon trading and taxes that will take money out of your pocket, if you have any.

One of my physics professors said that"If you allow me four free parameters I can build a mathematical model that describes exactly everything that an elephant can do. If you allow me a fifth free parameter, the model I build will forecast that the elephant will fly." This is the basis of the Climate Science Models that say CO2 will cause significant warming. Unfortunately, Americans have been so dumbed down they can not figure it out. The say there is a consensus, not knowing that a consensus is a political term, and does not exist in science. A consensus on a hypothesis is even more absurd to real science. Global warming is a fraudulent pseudoscience dressed up as science while in reality it is a religion of the neo-malthusian eugenics movement. Most people accept it as a matter of faith, and fraudsters wearing the robes of science are the high priests. Question the faith and you are a heretic, or as they say today, a skeptic or denier.

MiMiCcS July 16th, 2008 9:53 pm
The problem is you all seek solutions to problems that do not exist. CO2 does not cause significant warming. We are not running out of energy anytime soon. These are both myths.
________

Call me crazy, but I wonder about the 6.7 billion people on earth, along with all of the other animal live exhaling C02 24 hours a day. Has anyone ever calculated how much C02 that produces compared to automobile and industrial emissions of C02? Most cars are driven less than an hour a day, but animal life breathes 24/7.

I can't help wondering if an oxygen shortage will become a more imminent danger that global warming due to C02. Each POUND of gasoline burned combines with TEN POUNDS of oxygen, and each gallon weighs around 6 pounds. Isn't that incredible? Each GALLON burned requires over 60 POUNDS of oxygen. And the Amazon, the "lungs of the earth" are being clearcut. I'd like to know if the percentage of oxygen in the air has remained constant, or has it been reduced, by even a small fraction of a percent over the last 50 years or so. Like I said. Call me crazy.

"The USD will soon be attacked in order to convert the world from the Petrodollar to an IMF world currency which will turn the US into a Zimbabwe hyperinflationary disaster."

I have long maintained that a time of heavy inflation is being either allowed to happen or being purposely engineered.
I've always felt that the reason would be so that the 10 trillion dollar national debt could be retired and entitlement programs like social security and medicare could be paid for with dirt cheap dollars. Of course that $1100 a month social security check will buy a couple tanks of gas and a week's groceries. Your remarks preceding the quote I extracted give us all LOTS of food for thought.

Hydrogen is clean fuel, whether burned, producing water vapor for exhaust, or used to power fuel cells which produce electricity with hot water as a byproduct.

Where do we get cheap hydrogen which is currently very expensive to produce? Well. There have been recent advances in solar panel technology. Some engineers in Pittsburgh have come up with an electricity from sunlight producing material that can be "painted" onto or "coated" onto sheet metal making solar panels a LOT cheaper than previous. I do not know whether this method has yet been scaled up for industrial production of these panels.

I envision using these "cheaply" produced solar panels to produce electricity for input to electrolysis of sea water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can be captured for later use to be burned or used for input feedstock to a fuel cell. The oxygen could be simply vented to the atmosphere (my choice) or it could be captured for use in other industrial processes or medical uses.

It seems to me that this process might be cheaper per unit of energy produced compared to the costs of locating, drilling, shipping, refining, etc., of petroleum products. But the best thing about it would be the totally clean production of electricity (yes, except for any hydrocarbons vented to the atmosphere initially in the production of the solar panels and the building of the solar electrolysis plants).

I have yet one more "crackpot" idea I'd like to see investigated. We now have various "hybrid" vehicles that run on either/or a gasoline motor and an electric motor in the same car. This requires the use of a weighty and inefficient and environmentally unfriendly battery pack.

Why couldn't we build a car the size of a Prius, but using a very small TDI (turbocharged direct injection) diesel motor, maybe with a 250cc displacement, not itself sufficient to power the car. This small diesel would run continuously, using much less fuel and therefor creating much less pollution than a larger motor running even part-time as in the current Prius configuration. (Note: there is a LOT more energy in an ounce of diesel fuel compared to gasoline -- something like a 1.6 to 1.0 ration. Today's diesels can also be made to run much more cleanly than in the past.) There would be NO battery pack. Instead the diesel motor would turn a generator that would continuously charge a bank of capacitors from which electric motors at each wheel would draw current. This is simply a scaled down version of the way railroad diesel electromotive engines work. I'm not sure whether the train engines use battery packs or capacitors or neither, but simply generators run by the diesel engines to provide power to the electric motors at the wheels.

So call me crazy.

If I remember my facts correctly from a past reading, the conversion of coal to a liquid fuel is energy inefficient. In other words, it takes far more manufacturing energy to create a unit of coal fuel, than the energy that it is able to release in an internal combustion engine. So, couple this with the pollution and carbon problem and where is the sense? Maybe, the plant is being subsidized. Before, the people catch on, the owner will have made a few million dollars.
Maybe that will help the economy???

Peacefreak - you memory is correct. The same with tar sands. The quickest way to make a change is to make public transit free and gradually reverse autosprawl.
.
http://freepublictransit.org
.

"I guess you are getting some RIGHTEOUS weed from Hemp4victory." - galen

Yeah? Well it sure beats whiners such as yourself complaining about "peak oil" and not giving other solutions a chance. I see that you're now a Big Oil hack and a neo-Malthusian racist in one who would rather ignore the real solutions and instead complain about the crisis all the time. America would have been a hell of a lot better off if hemp were allowed to compete with fossil fuels but your SELF-RIGHTEOUS RIGHTWING mind refuses to understand. Weed sure as hell beats all those fossil fuel shit you've been poisoning yourself with all your life. Losers cry "peak oil". Winners never back down on solutions beyond oil and fight to disprove the doom-and-gloom end-of-the-world myth.

http://www.votehemp.com

Hemp4victory - Go for it. Hemp *could* be a PARTIAL solution.

But no alternative, in any combination will be able to equal the simple energy density that oil has.

And the alternatives can not be turned into the vast assortment of products that petroleum supplies. Ya CAN'T turn sunbeams into CD's. And most of the 'alternative' technologies are heavily dependent upon petroleum for their very existence.

Yes, I know you can grow hemp anywhere, and harvest it several times a year, and it can be turned into many useful products.

But it comes NO WHERE close to what can be done with oil.

More's the pity.

I'm no right-winger. I personally think Bush should burn in the public square. But I am a realist, and I say while alternatives are PART of the answer they are not THE answer.

The answer is going to be a MASSIVE cutback in Western style consumerism and Western style living. Nothing else will do. And we will NOT have a choice in the matter.

Please read Heinberg's 'Powerdown' and The Party's Over'.

Galen. "As to the content of the article: How much energy do you expend to run the coal gasification equipment, and where do you get it from? What source material? Coal? Gas? Oil? Hydro? Wind?"

You are like my dog. He likes to be hand fed. Perhaps your google is out of order.

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/howgasificationworks.html

Obviously you would not use a liquid fuel to convert cheap coal to a liquid fuel. Since you are converting coal, most likely you would use coal for the energy. Efficiencies are about 40%, but have potential to get to 60%. The carbon released can be sequestered.

Galen

As for this.

"I ask, honestly, are you a climatologist? Chemist? Atmospheric scientist? Any of those?

If not, and you have listed no articles published in recognized peer reviewed journals that support your claims, then please SHUT UP!

The evidence, including the RAPID disintegration of Polar ice masses (the Wilkins Ice Shelf is literally hanging by a thread)"

You obviously can not read or are too lazy to open links. I guess I will have to feed you again. On second thought, just open up this link

"Here is a list of peer reviewed articles by scientists that argue against elements of the consensus (in most cases you can only see the abstract, unless you want to buy them).

http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2008/04/peer-reviewed-articles-skeptical-of-man.html

And here is an article that suggests CO2 is needed to cool the earth.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a788582859~db=all"

It seems I need to be a climate scientist to question the science. Good science can be taught to non-scientists. Why are they failing. Yet those who support the science, do not need to be qualified. This is called faith. For the record, I have a degree in Chemical Engineering, and I have researched both sides, something you obviously have not done.

Galen

Your contention that RAPID disintegration of Polar ice masses is occurring is simply not true. It is media hysteria.

Since the last ice age, temperatures have increased 6 °C over 12,000 years, and 0.6 deg C over the last 100 years. The average temperature of the ice caps is not 0 °C but significantly lower (minus 15 and below would be a good average) while only relatively trivial peripheral regions are near melting point.

Have you heard of lapse rate? It is the fall in temperature of approximately 6.49 °C/1000m with altitude up to 11,000m. The significance of this being that Antarctica has a mean elevation of almost 2,500m, so is about 16 °C cooler than the surface at sea level to begin with while Greenland, too, has significant elevations.

Soot causing summer Arctic sea ice melting

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=impure-as-the-driven-snow

Now to be fair, Arctic sea ice extent in the Arctic is down about a million square kilometers today vs. where it was decades ago. But the Antarctic is up about a million, so the net world anomaly is about zero right now.

As for the Wilkins Ice Shelf hanging by a thread.

The Antarctic peninsula makes up 2% of the Anatarctics surface area and even less of it's total ice mass. It is warming while the other 98% is cooling. Localized warming is not indicative of extreme global climate change. If some ice shelves break up, so what. The planet has been warming for 12,000 years since the last ice age. We are due for another ice age, since interglacials on average last 12,000 years.

Also, the Wilkins ice shelf likely formed durng the little ice age 400 years ago.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p25s10-wogi.html

"Although it's been stable for as long as scientists have been able to reach the continent and study it, the shelf scientists see crumbling today appears to have formed either between the Roman era and the Medieval Warm Period or with the onset of the Little Ice Age. Indeed, he adds, "it's kind of a come-and-go ice shelf" compared with the other vanishing shelves, which have been stable far longer"

Since it is already in the water, it's break up will do nothing to increase sea levels. Your fears are not grounded in reality.

And do not give me instructions to shut up. You sound like the lefts wingnut equivelant in your intolerance to opinions you do not agree with.

Well don't worry america, the coal industry will give your DEMOCRATICLlY elected thieves losts of money and bush will as well and it will be a go for this cutting edge tech.

every time I visit America I notice one thing. The place no matter where I have been smells. The air is not clean and some cities smell like shit, human waist.

kentucky KY state, and that is what Kentucky is doing to America and the world, a little KY up the environment butt

I can't STAND this!
Kentucky has been a refuge for me my entire life. It's killing me... the mountaintop removal is such a big deal- why isn't all of American freaking out about this?
REMOVING MOUNTAINS TO HASTEN OUR DEMISE.
I can't put my mind around this, or any of the other horribly destructive scenarios playing out all over the world.

Yet another distraction from the main game which should be the transition away from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy! They are proven, existing, reliable, affordable… the only obstacle is a lack of political will to break the shackles of the fossil fuel industry. Coal is disgusting and dirty as hell. his sounds like the idea of storing CO2 on the ocean floor, great in theory but incredibly dangerous.
--------------------------
Muthu

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