Coal Is Clean… Since When?
Posted on Apr 14, 2008 - 03:50 PM
By: Adam Beazley
If you haven't already noticed, the coal industry has launched a massive advertising campaign aimed at fooling the world into thinking that coal is clean, or can be clean. In no way shape of form can coal ever be considered clean, green or even greener, considering that no part of the coal mining process is environmentally friendly.
Sure there is a lot of talk about carbon sequestration and I have even posted about new and innovative carbon sequestration techniques, but even if 100% of the carbon from burning coal was sequestered, coal would still be one of the dirtiest fuels known to man. Most people just think of coal as some substance that miners dig up, but most people have not really seen the devastation coal mining does to mountain tops and their valleys below. Thats not to mention the damage don't to local waterways as well as the local water supplies.
Anyway, I don't think words can really describe the damage, so have a look at this short video about coal's dirty little secret:
Are you still "For" clean coal?
Write your local representatives and educate them.
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Show/Hide Comments (4)
By K on 07/15/2008
Coal digging Oil drilling - metals mining - no differentyou can’t get it with out damaging something.. Ever see rock quarries…??
There is no way out of doing some damage when you need a raw material something is getting toasted.. Your house .. made from wood ? paper ? even recycled ...nylon .. you name it you have helped destroy it..clothes, lotion, food, you have done something to the land.. You say food does not destroy the land - why do you think you rotate crops ???
By Adam Beazley on 07/15/2008
so what is your point? Just continue to ravage the earth instead of trying to be more conservative? Yes, most resources are very damaging, thats why its nice to begin using new materials which are not as damaging. Like FSB certified wood, bamboo, recycled materials, etc..
The idea here is to use less, but its impossible to think that all of the human race is going to stop consuming and live in trees, and thats not what I am saying. My angle is that we need to choose the cleanest, least damaging and most efficient materials and power sources to build and run our world.
By K on 07/15/2008
My point is that there is Clean Coal power plants. I live near a zero emission coal fired plant - one of the first such in the country.
And pointing out the methods of gathering coal - well that is not exactly declaring anything more harmful than what all of these other industries do. Lambasting one while excusing the others, I would say biases your report. Think about Hydro Electric Power.. these dams are they good or bad.. some say bad on account of the fish and also the land, others say good on account of the people (flood control and power). Yet they are a pretty clean source of energy. Nuclear Power - it is clean, can it be dangerous - yes. Then what to do with the waste ? Alas we find it is not so clean.. Wind power - those ghastly looking things spread across the landscape - don’t inspire me to say WOW. I will not even get into how windmills are made and the raw materials. Then there is solar.. well that too has a number of issues - think of how it is made and you might get the point. The semi conductor industry has not been known for clean chemicals and a clean waste stream, quite the contrary, not too mention all of that sand they dig up.
So the point is which really is cleaner or has less impact.. It is easy to pick on one and say it is bad because you might have a visual que, but with out looking at the complete picture we can easily be biased maybe not willingly or consciously but by our own visual que or understanding of the processes involved - or by what we ourselves feel is less impactful.
By Adam Beazley on 07/16/2008
All very good points, but one thing you are overlooking is this simply fact:
coal, oil and nuclear require not only raw materials to build the facilities, but they require raw material to be used as the fuel. This means that in order to continue producing fuel the digging must go on for ever until none is left.
Wind and solar on the other hand use renewable resources to create the power. Yes, of course raw material is used to create the solar panels and wind turbines, but once created, you have 30+ years of fuel free energy. The fuel is the sun in both cases (sun creates ground winds that drive wind turbines). So, without a doubt solar and wind are the lesser of evils.
You mentioned that you have a zero emission coal factory and thats great, but thats 1 in a million. This is why I come down on coal so hard, because its just the nature of the fuel that makes it so that it can really never be clean or even close to clean. From the asthma causing pollution and poisonous mercury, to the radioactive fly ash and polluted rivers, coal is NOT nor will ever be clean or “zero emission.” Its just impossible.
