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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Midwest Coal Rush |
| 2007-03-10 |
| Coal-fired power plants are bad, because the contribute to global warming. No alternative is offered, except conservation and "green, renewable source." Wossamatter with nuclear? From the top of a new coal-fired power plant with its 550-foot exhaust stack poking up from the flat western Iowa landscape, MidAmerican Energy Holdings chief executive David L. Sokol peered down at a train looping around a sizable mound of coal. At this bend in the Missouri River, with Omaha visible in the distance, the new MidAmerican plant is the leading edge of what many people are calling the "coal rush." Due to start up this spring, it will probably be the next coal-fired generating station to come online in the United States. A dozen more are under construction, and about 40 others are likely to start up within five years -- the biggest wave of coal plant construction since the 1970s. The coal rush in America's heartland is on a collision course with Congress. While lawmakers are drawing up ways to cap and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, the Energy Department says as many as 150 new coal-fired plants could be built by 2030, adding volumes to the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of half a dozen greenhouse gases scientists blame for global warming. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #6 Short of loony plans to dry up the Oceans. Those plans are not loony! How else can we expose Ryleh and hunt down Cthulhu?! |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2007-03-10 20:44 |
| #5 You could ground all those jets. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-03-10 18:03 |
| #4 Anybody else notice the lie slipped in? Quote, emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of half a dozen greenhouse gases scientists blame for global warming. no dammit, water vapor is the most prevalent, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Short of loony plans to dry up the Oceans. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-03-10 17:54 |
| #3 Gaia's my personal bitch. Global warming if a socialist flimflam. Fire up the coal plants... |
| Posted by: badanov 2007-03-10 17:22 |
| #2 Instead of looking at CO2 as waste, it should be used in water tanks full of algae that can readily be converted to biodiesel and ethanol. A power plant like this would significantly improve its bottom line by producing hundreds of tons of such algae, harvested like any other crop. And producing biodiesel at a much lower cost than by using more complex plant crops. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-03-10 15:48 |
| #1 The solution is real simple. Every time you need to reduce CO2 emissions by 1%, you go and destroy all the electrical devices in a few thousand homes. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2007-03-10 15:17 |