Is America Ready to Quit Coal?

just an allusion wrote:

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Yes, America IS ready to quit coal and actually has been for sometime now (as has been most, if not all, countries), though the oil companies have been feverishly burning reserves in hopes of recuperating some of the inevitable losses they're faced with on the backside of our full conversion to alternative fueling for our power generation by perpetrating a need for reversion back to petroleum fueling.
Let me explain...
Natural gas also offers a number of environmental attributes. Natural gas, due to its unique molecular structure, is the cleanest burning fossil fuel. During combustion, natural gas produces fewer polluting emissions than other fossil fuels and its combustion does not damage the ozone layer. Natural gas production and use contributes less to global warming, as compared to other fuels.
Natural gas, composed primarily of methane, exhibits the main products of it's combustion are carbon dioxide and water vapor, the same compounds we exhale when we breathe. Coal and oil are composed of much more complex molecules, with a higher carbon ratio and higher nitrogen and sulfur contents. This means that when combusted, coal and oil release higher levels of harmful emissions, including a higher ratio of carbon emissions, nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2). Coal and fuel oil also release ash particles into the environment, substances that do not burn but instead are carried into the atmosphere and contribute to pollution.
The combustion of natural gas, on the other hand, releases very small amounts of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, virtually no ash or particulate matter, and lower levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other reactive hydrocarbons.

Notjustamom wrote:

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If you are going to make quotes like this, you should at least site them. This came directly from the NaturalGas.org site. Don't plagiarize the work of someone else.(http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/natural... )
I am appalled that you did this. God, at least reword it.

Mothra wrote:

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You make some good arguments for natural gas as a fuel source, but it would be stronger if you would drop the whole global warming nonsense, and just focus on pollution, cost and energy potential.

Northie wrote:

"Coal is 80 percent of the planet's problems...The number one enemy is coal and we should not forget that."
-Dr. James Hansen
And here is Hansen's letter to Barack Obama on what to do about this:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/200812...

dont snow me wrote:

<quoted text>Great idea! And when all the natural gas has been burned up, we can bring back coal trucks, coal bins and shoveling coal into our furnaces, like we did when I was a kid.

Demand factor wrote:

<quoted text>Georgia replaced coal power plants with natural gas and drove the price of natural gas sky high. Natural gas went from being the cheapest energy to the most expensive.

WillB wrote:

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Where is the electric coming from?
Coal (coke) plays a very vital role.

SFC wrote:

Even if the entire US went to solar and wind, it wouldn't make a difference, because the rest of the world would still us coal and oil. So the will have cheaper electricity and no worries if the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. If we were to build 20 new nuclear power plants, how much money would be saved? How many construction and maintanence jobs? The French are on 90% nuclear power and if those worthless b*st*rd can do it, so can we. But until they are completed, drill for oil here, and keep the coal fires burning.

Aero_Engineer wrote:

With the tech we currently have there is simply no way to stop using coal unless we go to nukes, which I am against due to its radioactive waste that takes thousands of years to break down.

ron wrote:

i fail to see how you can eliminate one power source without first providing alternatives. right now, notwithstanding the possibility of some invention that would revolutionize the power industry, viable alternatives would appear to exist only well into the future.

just an allusion wrote:

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I'm curious why he overlooked the viability of Natural Gas...I'll have to contact him about that.

Northie wrote:

Pickens just declared that the US has no more than thirty years of gas reserves at present, so gas is inadequate as a long-term energy source; it is merely a bridge to renewables.

tina anne wrote:

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They made the same claim about oil thirty years ago and look how that prediction turned out. There are others who are predicting that we have a century or more of natural gas. Right now I would not be willing to bet on thiers any more than I would on Pickens predictions.

Northie wrote:

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"They"? Who are they? Pickens? If so, please tell us what he said about oil depletion.
And, no matter what anyone may or may not have said decades ago, our domestic oil is indeed nearly gone, and we live in the most throughly explored, most drilled land on Earth, so we can be quite sure that no huge fields at economic depth remain. Are you in favor of slavery to the Saudi Royals, to Chavez, Putin, Ahmadinijad and the rest of the foreign oil gangsters?