China became a net importer of coal last year. If anything, China’s impending coal supply issues are even more acute than those of the US. Don’t get me wrong – we’re fully capable of burning enough coal and oil to fry the climate – but anyone who blithely assumes that there’s enough coal to allow us to continue with the current supply mix for centuries, or even decades, may well be in for an unpleasant surprise. Shortage per se won’t save us from ourselves, and it’s foolish to base our defense of de-carbonization on peak-anything, since no one knows when the peak will be and there will be false periods of apparent surplus, perhaps many of them, between now and whenever the peak actually occurs. But if you’re thing is security of supply, you should be worried – very worried – about policies that blindly assume there’s “plenty of coal.”

Jim Bullis, not sure what it is you’re so smug about, but you apparently don’t even know how the ratio between CO2 from a coal plant and CO2 from a gas-fired combined cycle plant. The proper ratio is not 2:1, it’s 4:1 – gas has about half the amount of carbon by weight, but a CCGT is nearly twice as efficient as the average coal plant, so you’d need to capture 75% of a coal plant’s CO2 emissions to make it as “clean” as a “gas plant.” Not sure what other incorrect facts you’re running with, but you might want to check them before you run around assuming that you and Wilmot are the only ones who understand what needs to be done.

In a New York Times op-ed on April 25, Dan Becker and Jim Gerstenzang say the Obama Administration has the power under the Clean Air Act to order that the new coal plants now in the pipeline — presumably including the two new coal plants that Duke is building — be switched to gas.

Natural gas is still carbon positive, of course. Biocarbon by itself, without CCS, is carbon neutral. With CCS, biocarbon is carbon negative:

If there was a ban on new coal fired power plants in the U.S., I wouldn’t shed a tear.

But the existing plants should be switched to biomass/CCS, until the damage done by the industrial revolution is undone, and the climate returns to stability.

Bellona Foundation: How to go carbon negative.

http://www.bellona.org/ articles/ articles_2009/ carbon_negative_frederic

The latest observations of climate change tell us that carbon negative is not only an interesting idea, but a necessity if we are to avoid crossing dangerous climatic tipping point, writes Bellona’s president, Frederic Hauge in the blog on the Copenhagan climate negotiations. Frederic Hauge, 30/03-2009 By combining technology for CO2 capture and storage (CCS) with the use of biomass, future energy production can remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The latest observations of climate change tell us that carbon negative is not only an interesting idea, but a necessity if we are to avoid crossing dangerous climatic tipping point.

This article has also been published at the Cop15 Climate Thinkers Blog.

This spring, Dr. James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, visited several European capitals. Along with leading climatologists, Dr. Hansen argues that we are at the danger of crossing tipping points beyond which climate change will become irreversible. To avoid this and preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, Dr. Hansen and colleagues advocate reducing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.

Our entire Western concept of “energy” is built on a Ponzi scheme of ecological fraud. Mr. Rogers, and the banking/utility/media/war/fossil/fissile/fuel industry, is the Mr. Madoff (made off) of electical services.

Thank you Joe for your continuing contribution to the American public.

my sense is that the people who aren’t getting paid to make the argument of the week are more likely to think that liberals are saps leading the country to hell on the road of good intentions — this is a nice belief because it excuses you from participating in the engineering effort — other people take the risks of the new/necessary economy while you rake in every last pollution-economy dollar you can.

this is a surplus-economy strategy unfortunately — if the risk actually needs to be borne by the whole group, they’ll fight that, leaving the risk incompletely addressed.