Look out OH, PA, VA - obama bankrupting coal

[Unite Our Nation]

So you are saying that the person on tv who "says they represent obama" is lying?

 

[Mr. Shaman]

My father always taught me,

Actions speak louder than words....

Her impersonation of The Idiot Son is unparalleled!!

"During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative". During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002)." <See: CLINTON-Years!>

"She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing."

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.http://community.adn.com/adn/node/130537

 

[pocketfullofshells]

I think this was just found in the last 24 hours, they should turn it into tv ads in those states.

maybe you just found it, but it was easy to find and his point is that Coal is very bad in terms of Pollution. If coal wants to be a viable option then they need to cut down Emissions, or they will go under. And yes this si the same thing Republicans including McCain have supported, the Cap and trade system. And those who make energy clean will profit , and those who are bad polluters will suffer. Thats they way it goes.

worthless last dich efforts but a campagin that has no ideas of its own, no hope, nothing to offer but attacks on Obama.

 

[Andy]

maybe you just found it, but it was easy to find and his point is that Coal is very bad in terms of Pollution. If coal wants to be a viable option then they need to cut down Emissions, or they will go under. And yes this si the same thing Republicans including McCain have supported, the Cap and trade system. And those who make energy clean will profit , and those who are bad polluters will suffer. Thats they way it goes.

worthless last dich efforts but a campagin that has no ideas of its own, no hope, nothing to offer but attacks on Obama.

Well he's wrong... so...

There is nothing wrong with coal emissions.

Cap and Trade is horrible, and will cause a spike in electrical prices that will exceed anything we've seen in gasoline recently.

This is an attack for sure. A legitimate attack too. He openly stated he wishes to bankrupt the form of electrical power that provides the most to the US. And there is no reason for it. That's a pretty good reason not to vote for the coming messiah to me.

 

[laughinatreps]

There is nothing wrong with coal emissions.

Are you for real????????????????!

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2261

Cap and Trade is horrible, and will cause a spike in electrical prices that will exceed anything we've seen in gasoline recently.

""Little wonder that federal and state governments should refuse to contemplate any action which would harm the future of coal, even though coal is by far the largest source of CO2 pollution in Australia. On the other hand they are prepared to invest hundreds of millions into so called clean coal technology better known as Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS).

They argue that development of CCS technology will enable all countries dependent on burning fossil fuels for generating electricity to continue doing so without polluting the atmosphere. This would preserve the Australian coal industry, and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What they don’t tell us is that the technology is in the early stages of development, that it is unlikely to be available much before 2020, or that for the next decade there will be on-going, massive pollution of the atmosphere.

CCS involves capture of CO2 gas at the point of emission, its removal from chemical scrubbers used to capture it, applying pressure to liquefy it, then transporting it to an often distant secure underground depository.

The capital cost of retrofitting the technology, if developed, will be considerable. The recurrent operating costs, particularly for the energy required to liquefy, transport and inject the CO2 into the storage area is great. Combined, these will increase the cost of generating electricity from coal to the point where it will prove uncompetitive with electricity produced from geothermal and, ultimately, solar-thermal steam.""


The industry is going to bankrupt eventually anyhow. This is not an "attack on an industry", it is expediting the transition processes that should have been in progress for 10-15 years now.

 

[Unite Our Nation]

We have HUGE amounts of COAL=ENERGY SOURCE in this nation that we must use. Doesn't everyone understand the utter mess we are in with our oil dependence???

Not to mention the folks in thees areas would be further devastated!! Everyone one would in those states. Everyone's electric bill will go MUCH HIGHER.

 

[laughinatreps]

So in otherwords, what you are saying is, screw the environment and all the poisons that come from coal, screw renewable sources, screw everybody but coalminers?

People are more concerned with the big picture, beyond just the citizens in the coal producing areas, they are concerned with the global health, and not pouring tons of additional toxins into the air for our children and grandchildren to clean up. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

 

[Unite Our Nation]

No, that isn't what I am saying. Things are not so polar. We can have a balance. The fact is coal has been around for a hell of a long time. I don't see us dying of black lung disease. Do you? There are MANY MANY things the world is putting into the air that we need to reduce. But you CAN 'T make coal the fall guy for all of this, because it's not.

Put scrubbers on and keep mining!!!

There is a middle ground laugh!

 

[laughinatreps]

The capital cost of retrofitting the technology, if developed, will be considerable. The recurrent operating costs, particularly for the energy required to liquefy, transport and inject the CO2 into the storage area is great. Combined, these will increase the cost of generating electricity from coal to the point where it will prove uncompetitive with electricity produced from geothermal and, ultimately, solar-thermal steam.""

I don't know how many different ways to say it.......

 

[Unite Our Nation]

Sorry, laugh, that is one source and opinion. I have other data that says otherwise. As with most issues, there is more to the story!


April 2006

Coal. Dirty, old world coal. Surely, after a couple hundred years of use, there's nothing particularly interesting about such an anti-environmental dirty, destructive (strip mining and acid rain, particulates and mercury) commodity. Solar and ethanol are the way to go, right?

Well, yeah, except for one little niggling bit about them both being completely uncompetitive with coal based on price alone. So there are lots of market manipulations (taxes, 'total environmental impact accounting', etc.) to try and make the 'green' energy sources look price competitive with the 'dirty' sources. But at the same time, there has been 30 years of work (since the 1971 Clean Air Act) to make those 'dirty' sources clean, and those efforts have been enormously successful.

Today, the drivers toward 'clean' energy are not really pollution derived, since almost any energy source can be used today in a relatively pollution-free fashion. They are rather price-based, and more nebulously political. On the political front there is the environmental contingent that is wedded to particular 1970's based ideas (that are seeing a current resurgence), and not wholly disjointed from that movement there is a wider dislike for sending petro-dollars to distasteful foreign regimes. That's the 'energy independence' crowd. Coal dovetails with both those desires.

The energy independence bit is easy. The US has more energy reserves in the form of coal than Saudi Arabia has in oil. If you want to keep the money here, using US coal is one way to do it. In fact, the transformation of our economy since the 1970's is the reason that the current high prices of oil are not having the same deleterious effect of high oil prices after the Yom Kippur War (cf. #3 here, and supported here - in summary, we're just as energy dependant today, but it is now mostly electrical (60% of energy and GDP), which is nearly 100% non-oil based, and only minorly oil based (40% of energy but only 15% of GDP), although important for transportation).

"The new shift is the greening of the coal industry. Scrubbers to eliminate sulfur (and mercury, etc.) from coal smokestacks have been required for all new sources for some time. The industry chose to fight the regulations tooth and nail, claiming that major repairs were minor repairs, and refusing to build new plants, to avoid the scrubber mandate (they are expensive). But that approach stymied the industry growth, so there was a shift to 'clean' coal, which meant 'low-sulfur' coal, since the smoke stack pollution monitoring could be satisfied with that feedstock even without the latest scrubber technology. Finally, some of the players have decided that instead of retrograde fighting, maybe they should just go with the spirit of the regulation and see if they can make a business model for it, and it turns out they can. The absurdity of this paradox is that the shift is now towards high sulfur coal.

The Wall St. Journal (sub. req.) did a nice job on this yesterday. They looked at 3 coal sources: Northern Appalachia [NA], the Powder River Basin [PRB], and Central Appalachia [CA] (see further review). The NA coal is high sulfur, and as a result has 40% more heat content than low-sulfur PRB coal, and 10% more heat content than low-sulfur CA coal, but sells for $53/ton, whereas PRB and CA coal sell for $55 and $71/ton, respectively, including transportation costs. So who wouldn't want to get 40% more heat for between 4% and 25% less, for a total $/btu differential of ca. 44-65%? The only problem is that using high-sulfur coal necessitates scrubbers, but for that price differential, it's worth it. Currently "...between 30% to 40% of the nations coal-fired electricity output is generated by facilities that use scrubbers, but that figure is expected to jump to about 60% during the next five years..." So, that was a long-winded background (although much more could be said). We haven't completely decided if we are interested enough, but we may take a look at some coal producers. "