Wednesday, December 24, 2008

"Clean coal"? Humbug!

Here's a pleasant way to wake up on Christmas Eve: To discover you're surrounded by 500 million gallons of coal sludge -- which happened after a containment wall holding back the mess broke. About 400 acres in eastern Tennessee have been covered by the mess which will take at least 6 weeks to clean up and who knows what other damage has been done. 400 acres, more than the area covered by the Exxon Valdez spill.

Welcome to the world of clean coal, people.

After a record breaking $50 million ad campaign to brainwash Americans into believing that it's the way to go, we have this awful mess. Where exactly are the tailing that come from "cleaning" coal supposed to go anyway? You have to put all that fly ash somewhere -- you know, arsenic, benzene, mercury; all natural substances but when concentrated in coal burning that's where the problems start. Carbon capture and sequestration can only handle so much. Sure, the argument will be "this was the dirty coal" but who believes that crap anymore? Clean coal, dirty coal. ToMAYto, ToMAHto.

You want to prove it works? Run a real demonstration project, and accept full liability from any bad stuff that comes from it, including disasters like this.

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I'll be on and off during the next week or so. Merry Christmas, y'all.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Regarding the Tennessee sludge does anyone know if any clean coal was involved?