The Wondrous World Of Clean Coal That Exists Only In Trump's Mind

[hatrack]

EDIT

Yet there was Republican nominee Donald Trump on the stage Sunday night talking about how President Barack Obama and, by extension, Hillary Clinton, are waging a war on the energy sector and coal in particular. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "is killing these energy companies." And he stressed "there's a thing called clean coal" and that under a Trump administration, he would restore coal mining jobs in states like West Virginia. (He also spoke about foreign companies buying up failing energy "plants" and "rejiggering" them, but nobody seems to know what he was talking about, so we'll just leave the gobbledygook alone).

This isn't the first time a member of the GOP ticket has been talking up clean coal. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, his running mate, has been touting coal for years and spoke of a "war on coal" repeatedly during the vice presidential debate. The Republican platform promotes clean coal, too. It's become a mantra for many conservatives, even if it is an oxymoron.

Back in this circumstance called reality, what's actually happened in the energy sector is that much of the world has been moving away from coal for decades. U.S. mining jobs have been mostly in decline since the 1980s. The chief culprit isn't the EPA, it's competition within the energy sector. The rise of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has raised domestic production of natural gas and oil while OPEC countries have been producing more oil as well. Cleaner-burning natural gas is simply a cheaper, less-polluting option for power plants and manufacturers, and that's proven costly for the coal mining companies, as many have slipped into bankruptcy.

EDIT

None of those problems go away if we simply refuse to believe in them. Coal's decline isn't a product of politics, it's a function of chemistry. Perhaps science can produce the means to tap the benefits of coal without its enormous shortcomings, but it can't right now. A clean coal plant under construction in Mississippi has gone $4 billion over budget and doesn't yet function. A costly project in Illinois has been abandoned. China is investing in the concept, and we ought to wish them luck, as the chances for success appear slim. At this stage, it would surely be cheaper to simply plant trees to offset carbon production than expect coal to burn cleanly.

EDIT

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-clean-coal-20161011-story.html

[LWolf]

1. ONLY in Trump's mind?

http://www.science.smith.edu/~jcardell/Courses/EGR325/Policy/ObamaEnergy_Aug08.pdf

Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology. Carbon capture and storage technologies hold enormous potential to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as we power our economy with domestically produced and secure energy. As a U.S. Senator, Obama has worked tirelessly to ensure that clean coal technology becomes commercialized. An Obama administration will provide incentives to accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale zero-carbon coal facilities. In order to maximize the speed with which we advance this critical technology, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will instruct DOE to enter into public private partnerships to develop 5 “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with carbon capture and sequestration.

Clean coal is a bipartisan problem, and exists outside of the narrow campaign lens.

[mountain grammy]

2. OUCH!

From the tell em what they want to hear department. I actually remember this from the 08 campaign and thinking WTF?

[LWolf]

3. Campaigns...

no side is ever really clean.

Meanwhile, the ISSUE is critical, and the country hangs on what candidates are saying, instead of what's actually being done.

[GliderGuider]

4. "The world" is fucked. Politicians aren't going to save it. nt

[LWolf]

5. But so many

don't care about anything but whether or not their "team" wins an election, and then they go back to their lives, leaving politicians to do just that: save their world.

And THAT's why the world is fucked.