Clean Coal

The mining of coal in WV is being done according to federal laws.
If it doesn't look pretty, don't look. When they are done, the forests
will take over again. Pa was logged from border to border. It has more
trees now then ever and is still being logged, just in a different way.

I would suggest you compare apples to apples instead of oranges. There is very little likenesses to timber harvesting & mountaintop removal, the soil is never removed or the contour changed much in logging, very little clear cutting anymore & rapid replanting & forest management in order to ensure future harvests. It is an on going business much as farming. Mountaintop removal is just what it is, a lot of the timber isn't even harvested, everything on top is pushed into the low areas & covered by thousands of tons of rock & shale with nothing left to support regrowth. Some crap seasonal rye grass seed hydro seeded on does not a forest make. If you want a fair conversation tsb then have a fair comparison or don't look at the mountains & trees. I also hardly think that Pa. has more trees now than Penns Woods ever had. I enjoy burning coal as much as the next person here but I also think that destroying our heritage so that a relatively few can profit by selling our coal (mostly overseas) at a cost that will have to be born by us all is asking a "bit" too much.

Things that make me think.
"our coal" " relatively few can profit "
A representative republic that operates under a capitalist
economy makes opportunities for everyone. Extracting resources
be they human or mineral is hard work. Socialism has never worked
no matter how many times it's been tried. Europe is about to find
out again.
Clean energy is a scientific and economic joke. We don't need to be
or act like pigs, but the laws of physics and economics do not change
because we wish them to.

samhill wrote:It is an on going business much as farming. Mountaintop removal is just what it is, a lot of the timber isn't even harvested, everything on top is pushed into the low areas & covered by thousands of tons of rock & shale with nothing left to support regrowth. Some crap seasonal rye grass seed hydro seeded on does not a forest make.

That's about the same process every ice age had, at least they are burying the trees to make more coal.

But the next ice age will uncover it before it's done, but then again the human race will most likely be long gone.

The bad thing about what they are doing with
regard strip mining and mountain top removal
is that they do not even bother to create
terraces and plant tree farms or vineyards with
the useable top soil and gravels they dig out.


The creation of terraces and tree farms would
permit quick regrowth of timber stocks and
the trees would outpaces the weeds as they
would have greater advantage as the terraces
reclaimed would be exposed to the sunlight more
quickly than any brush regrowth and the trees would
create a canopy faster and block out the sunlight
from the ground and kill off the weeds and invasives
like poison ivy, oak and sumac

The creation of narrow terraces would also allow the terraces
to be logged efficiently using narrow guage rail and locomotives
when the time comes as long track panels can be laid down
efficiently on the terraces as logging advances.

Its too bad becuase they are missing an opportunity to create
a valuable asset with all the ground that has a huge amount
exposed to sunlight to create a valuable byproduct that is
renewable.


Whats extremely wastefull and ironic at the same time is that the haul trucks
they use burn up to 64 gallons of diesel fuel per hour and are only fifty percent
efficient adding more stupidity to the equation.

lzaharis wrote:Whats extremely wastefull and ironic at the same time is that the haul trucks
they use burn up to 64 gallons of diesel fuel per hour and are only fifty percent
efficient adding more stupidity to the equation.

There's energy costs associated with any fossil fuel. If you have ever heard the term peak oil it's not because there is no oil left in the well. It's the energy costs that make them no longer feasible to operate, if you're using a lot of energy to get it out of the ground it's fruitless. Many of these real old wells they inject with water (more energy), then they have to pump it out which contains both oil and water(more energy), they the have to separate it.... Compare that to a new well where it comes out of the ground by itself. You can actually apply that to to the whole process. If you are using a lot of energy to get it out of the ground , have to ship it all the way around the world and then have even more energy costs to refine it if you're using more than one gallon of oil to do that it's unsustainable. That's why there will be a steep decline when peak oil does happen.

saragnac wrote:I believe the term is cherry picking data. What's amazing about all this is that it has not been proven that CO2 is actually causing much, if any significant warming. In fact, last year's data is showing that solar radiation is seeding clouds which may just be the culprit to all this. It would also explain the cyclical changes when you look at it from a proper point of view, say over thousands of years, not just 60.

This blog post was not about climate change or warming. The words "warming" and "climate" don't even appear in the paper. I wrote the blog because mountain top mining is destroying Appalachia -- not just our mountain tops and valleys below, but the economy and the health of those who live there. Please take another look at the paper, and let me know if there is something in it that you don't think to be true.

- David Stang
http://davidstang.com/?p=89

DavidStang wrote:lease take another look at the paper, and let me know if there is something in it that you don't think to be true.

"Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste", true or false David?

The answer of course is it could be true or false, without context determining whether that statement is true or false is impossible. For example we could give an article a bold name like that and get it published in a respected scientific publication Like Scientific American. Of course it's not until a year later the article is changed with the following addendum:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ste&page=2
*Editor's Note (posted 12/30/08): In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

At that point the damage is done and every environmentalist in the world that can't think for themselves and never read past the title assumes coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste..... and yes I've seen people trying to claim this.

Your article has the same problems, no context.

As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.

Very, very little of the worlds nuclear waste is committed to dry casket storage at $1MM a pop it's all in waste pools waiting for someone to work out what the hell to do with it. It's just common sense - 50 years of power for 500,000 years of waste is just plain stupid. There are better ways of boiling water. However, with most envirolunies common sense was last on the list when God was handing out talents. However, most have big mouths.

David,

Even the scientists disagree about your point(s) as much as they disagree about global warming or clean energy projects.

Here is an excellent article from the Center for Environmental Journalism: http://www.cejournal.net/?p=410

I have worked with a nuclear reactor and have no issues with the reactors, just the politicians that run them!

DavidStang wrote:

saragnac wrote:I believe the term is cherry picking data. What's amazing about all this is that it has not been proven that CO2 is actually causing much, if any significant warming. In fact, last year's data is showing that solar radiation is seeding clouds which may just be the culprit to all this. It would also explain the cyclical changes when you look at it from a proper point of view, say over thousands of years, not just 60.

This blog post was not about climate change or warming. The words "warming" and "climate" don't even appear in the paper. I wrote the blog because mountain top mining is destroying Appalachia -- not just our mountain tops and valleys below, but the economy and the health of those who live there. Please take another look at the paper, and let me know if there is something in it that you don't think to be true.

- David Stang
http://davidstang.com/?p=89

Too much information was gleaned from the internet and not qualified in my humble opinion. Be careful of statistics. Figures can lie and liars can figure.

In my brief read of the article, I ended up confused at to what your primary goal and position was. If your beef is not with coal, but only mining technics, then focus on the mining pros and cons, not the product pros and cons.

Don't forget long wall mining too, it has planned subsidence of the ground above. Should it be limited or curtailed also?

Don't leave it at coal mining. There are many other mineral mining techniques that have left vast superfund clean up sites. Look at copper, lead, uranium, silver and gold mining also.

Enviromental issues are tough to balance as everbodys tipping point is different and there is so much to be gained from peddling junk science.

EarthWindandFire wrote:
I have worked with a nuclear reactor and have no issues with the reactors, just the politicians that run them!

I should note that while I may have given the impression that David had that comment in his article that is not the case. I was just using it as an example.

An interesting conundrum regarding using acid gasses as a suspicion for asthma dosen't fly so well when a study concludes that Amish children, most of whom are exposed to more outdoor environmental conditions have very little to no asthmatic symptoms compared to children living more sheltered lives.

Asthma was almost unheard of prior to WWII. It's a little odd that it showed up after the country switched to oil after a century of burning coal.