“pseudo” clean coal

“unclean coal” or “uncleanable coal”

However, will the right wing/corporate marketers/deniers be able to convince the public that committing to renewables and climate legislation will mean higher costs of living?

Shellenberger and Nordhaus have it right when they say the mantra should be “clean, cheap energy”

as is the interactive Reality Fly By which is seemingly endless …
http://www.thisisreality.org/#/?p=canary

The last thing we’d want to do is examine this proposition Gore is touting, i.e. that carbon capture and storage is nowhere “close to being a reality”, because it is just a “cynical and self interested illusion”.

Make sure NOT to read the IPCC summary where it states carbon capture and storage is “economically feasible under specific conditions” right now, meaning, in the IPCC’s words “the technology is well understood” and is already being used commercially to a limited extent. Limited, only due to the fact that it requires a “favourable tax regime or a niche market” such as the carbon tax Norway has imposed or the niche market presented by enhanced oil field recovery in North America. Mark Jaccard, interpreting the IPCC data states that a coal fired CCS plant could produce power for 6- 7.5 cents a kw/hr, but we all know “clean coal” is bogus so that must be a lie, after all it is based on careful study of what the IPCC says.

What is holding carbon capture and storage from being widely implemented to keep 90% of newly constructed coal fired electricity plant emissions out of the atmosphere right now is the fact that people don’t want to make the industry start building them because people don’t want to pay. We’d rather dump on the technology and promote something more expensive, while doing nothing about the new plant that China puts in every week. We won’t even negotiate with them let alone show them the way forward with their coal by proving out the full scale use of the technology.

Obama had a plank in his platform to build five full scale CCS coal fired plants, cooperating with industry to do it, let’s see what this technology is good for. Gore’s campaign is just to say, where are all the plants, this technology must be bogus, eh? This isn’t Gore’s finest hour.

http://action.thisisreality.org/content/details

QUOTE: “CAN COAL POWER BE PART OF THE SOLUTION TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS?
If America’s coal power plants capture and store their CO2 pollution,
they will no longer be contributing to the climate crisis
and could form a crucial part of a clean electricity generation mix.”

MESSAGE: Coal can be “part of the climate solution”, and is “crucial”!

QUOTE: “WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN FOR COAL TO BE PART OF THE CLIMATE SOLUTION?
Integrated capture and storage for coal power needs to be commercialized so it is available for all coal power plants. …
To be part of the future energy mix, … Greater investment …
could speed the availability of electricity from coal power
that doesn’t release its carbon pollution to the atmosphere.”

MESSAGE:
We “need” taxpayer subsidies to “speed the availability” of *Coal* CCS!

QUOTE: “WHAT IS ‘CLEAN’ COAL?
(CCS) is the technical term for preventing global warming pollution from
coal power plants. Technology assessments indicate CCS can prevent 80% to nearly 100% of a coal power plant’s CO2 from entering the atmosphere.”

2 MESSAGES: CCS is a great *Technological Fix*! (It just needs a little
subsidy from taxpayers.) But CCS *only* works with coal!
CCS is *only* a tool to make coal carbon-neutral.
CCS *cannot* be used on biofuel power plants to actually *reduce* carbon in the atmosphere.

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT:

(1.) Gore & Co. bent over backwards to be accurate on the *potential*
of Coal+CCS to be carbon-neutral. But in so doing, their website totally
trashes (by omission) the potential of Biofuel+CCS to be
*carbon-negative* —
i.e, to *genuinely* be “part of the solution to the climate crisis”.

(2.) Gore & Co’s conceptual contortions also trashed any notion of *TIME RISK* — the Opportunity Cost of Delay. I.e, what happens to
irreversible greenhouse forcing, and the size and angle
(a proxy for techno-economic feasibility) of the required Stabilization Wedges *before* Coal+CCS is deployed commercially (if ever)?

(3.) Gore fails to mention *INTERNATIONAL* RISKS of coal WMD proliferation.
By implying that every coal plant can be retrofitted with CCS (i.e, IGCC
is not needed), this gives permission for India and China to build coal
plants, under the guise of a CCS “Research Exemption”. (That loophole
is big enough to support an entire industry forever — consider the
“Research Exemption” for Japan’s Whaling industry!)

(4.) Gore’s website is 100% compatible with massive
*TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES* for Coal+CCS.

—————–

By comparison, the ad is a minor problem. Its message is so ambiguous,
that it actually “preaches to the choir” on *both* sides of the issue!
The message-munging is *not* primarily caused by Lakoff’s repetition
caveat. Rather, the “clean” message reinforcement stems from the *IMAGE* of a clean landscape, and a narrator in CLEAN, WHITE clothing.

(Alternatives might be “Coal = Climate Killer”, or a Joe Isuzu liar
character that equates “Clean Coal” with “Dirty Disinformation”.)

The question is, what forced the enviros’ to blow $millions on such
a hasty, ill-conceived campaign rollout? The answer, I fear,
is what’s happening in behind-the-scenes Congressional drafting
of Obama’s “Clean Energy” stimulus bill.

Speaking of incredible dishonesty, wasn’t it Nancy Pelosi who said during the campaign that she wanted to use more natural gas so we could stop depending on fossil fuels?