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Ol Clean Coal

By donar | Related entries in Cartoons, Energy, Environment, Political Graffiti

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 and is filed under Cartoons, Energy, Environment, Political Graffiti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Ol Clean Coal”

J. Harden Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Can someone please explain to me what the point of this cartoon is? I just don’t understand what is trying to be communicated.
Jim S Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 4:05 pm
That there is no such thing as clean coal even if you do discover a way to minimize air pollution at the point where it is “used”. Current mining practices pollute the surrounding environment so much that it renders the phrase “clean coal” an oxymoron. Blowing the top off of a mountain, dumping the resulting mess into river valleys and then doing nothing to repair the damage is not clean by any stretch of the imagination.
J. Harden Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Thank Jim S.. Honest question (no transparent equivocation): So the campaign against “clean coal” is rooted in the environmental effects of mining coal and is not a denial of the effectiveness of carbon sequestration technology? It is not an argument against the idea that coal can be “used” with minimal, if any, CO2 emmissions?

I don’t disagree that certain types of coal mining leave an undesirable footprint, but that argument is not clearly stated in the campaign against “clean coal” – at least from what I have seen. Also, there are many different emerging technologies that reduce the emmissions of coal-fired power plant, for instance micro-bacterial sequestration that could potentially be used to create bio-diesel. These are fantastic technologies that, in my opinion, pose realistic opportunities to not only reduce CO2 (if that is your thing) and create renewable bio-fuel off-takes.

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