Jeff Goodell: How Clean Coal Cooks Your Brain

You use the word anarchy like it is chaos. The words have nothing in common. However, great article.

Ignorance is America's largest expense. This article does everything in it's power to increase the cost of ignorance. I actually enjoyed reading it until the "bullshit" comment. No self respecting author who wants to be taken seriously uses language like that in what is supposed to be a factual and technical piece of writing. Add to that the complete lack of any supporting evidence or arguments, this article is a long piece of prose with no purpose other than to mislead the misinformed.

Hi everyone - comment settings are being formatted right now, soon you will be able to submit a name, user profile etc (if you want) along with your comments.

 

But have at 'er in the meantime, just wanted to give you an update.

- Kevin

If you don't think coal AND the coal business is dirty, take a drive thru Eastern Kentucky and the rest of Appalachia. BIG COAL makes tons of money from the poorest counties in the poorest, least educated states in our nation. Think that's a coincidence? Wake up.
Billions of dollars of black gold are trucked out of those mountains!!
Check out this website (http://www.kftc.org/our-work/canary-project) for first-hand reports from people who are fighting to save the watershed of the entire Southeast, which also happens to be the ONLY mixed mesophytic forest in North America--the world's oldest and biologically richest temperate-zone hardwood system.
Every time I see one of these propaganda commercials about how CLEAN coal is, it turns my stomach. If you want to see more, just look up "mountaintop removal" on Google or YouTube. Get informed and take action!

I came from Scranton, Pennsylvania, which sat on the largest seams of anthracite coal in the world. Scranton was mined to exhaustion by coal companies up until 1927 (literally up to within inches of folks' basements, until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court told the coal companies that "surface rights" did not give them license to destroy homes). The entire area was mined to exhaustion in 1959, when the Susquehanna River broke through a mine wall and flooded out the entire honeycomb of mines beneath Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties.

I like to call the Scranton area America's first great environmental disaster zone. Perhaps there's a theme park in there somewhere...kind of a time-elongated Chernobyl.

Rules of thumb from one who grew up there:
1. If a coal company says it, it's a lie.
2. If they say coal is clean, it isn't.
3. If they say you won't suffer, you will. (Just Google "black lung" for starters).
4. If nature stands in their way, nature will be destroyed.
5. If they say it's economically necessary, the money's leaving your area and never coming back.
6. If they say they'll clean it up and make it better, they won't.

We exhale the same amount of CO2 as we inhale oxygen.
Green plant life does just the opposite. IT REQUIRES
CO2 to "INHALE", and it then "EXHALES" OXYGEN!

OLD-FASHIONED FIRE EXTINGUISHING, TOGETHER WITH SANE CARE OF TREE DISEASES, IS ALL THE CARBON SEQUESTRATION THAT WE NEED: We once had truly "healthy Forests", before the
Kafka-esque tree-haters, or DENDROPHOBES, joined with the PYROMANIACS TO CREATE A CONSERVANCY FOR SMOKE!

IT'S A MAD DESIRE BY THE IGNORANT TO MAKE MONEY FROM SO-CALLED "CARBON EXCHANGES" that are going to destroy lur atmosphere!!!

THIS IS FAR MORE DESPARATE THAN ANYTHING HAPPENING ON WALL STREET. THINK ABOUT A LIFE WITH INSUFFICIENT OXYGEN, BUT ALL THE CAVES FILLED WITH CO2!

Sure no process is 100% "clean" but you really need to get more educated on advancements. Your arguments are way to slanted. Not to mention I am very sure every single one of us does not live 100% green. IT IS NOT JUST AN ADVERTISING SLOGAN! Please wake up and state more facts. I could have accepted what you said if you said it isn't "clean" but "cleaner" which is actually more the truth. Although clean is not a word that describes the exactly level of absent contaminants. I am sure you even say your house is clean when in fact there is always some dirt or dust to be found. Throw your weight behind a problem constructively and help the problems and we will get even better.

For this no commercial scale examples exist. The FutureGen plant in illinois was to be the showcase for clean coal technology.The US averages 30 coal mining deaths annually, while China averages a staggering 8,000. Mountaintop removal mining, a method that is common in Appalachia, destroys ecosystems and has permanently buried over 1,200 miles of streams. Coal mining causes water pollution and lowers the quality of drinking water in neighboring
communities.So all should care about it.

Clean coal isn't an invention in itself, but there are minor inventions that do make the overall process cleaner, opposed to the "old way". But for the most part this is correct... just not exact.

One of my favorite novels is Germinal by Emile Zola. It is quite saddening to think that it depicts coal miners striking in the 1860's and nearly 150 years later, it is all the same. Yes, man's greed for energy used to satisfy his vanity is depleting our earth. Only a catastrophe, and it may come sooner than later, will make them open their eyes.

Carbon fuels have been obsolete since 1992. Why are we still using them? www.blacklightpower.com BlackLight Power Inc., is the pioneer of technology based on the patented process of releasing chemical energy from hydrogen called the "BlackLight Process." More specifically, energy is released as the electrons of hydrogen atoms are induced by a catalyst to transition to lower-energy levels (i.e. drop to lower base orbits around each atom's nucleus) corresponding to fractional quantum numbers. The lower-energy atomic hydrogen product called "hydrino" reacts with another reactant supplied to the reaction cell to form a hydride ion bound to the other reactant to constitute a novel proprietary compound, or two hydrinos react to form a very stable hydrogen-type molecule called a dihydrino molecule. As hydrogen atoms and catalyst atoms are normally found bound together as molecules or are bound in other compositions of matter, BlackLight has invented a solid fuel that uses conventional chemical reactions to generate the catalyst and atomic hydrogen at high reactant densities that in turn controllably achieves very high power densities. The catalyst causes the hydrogen atoms to transition to lower-energy states by allowing their electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus with a release of energy that is intermediate between chemical and nuclear energies. BlackLight's experimental results on its process and compositions of matter are published widely and have been replicated by independent groups.

One of my favorite novels is Germinal by Emile Zola. It is quite saddening to think that it depicts coal miners striking in the 1860's and nearly 150 years later, it is all the same. Yes, man's greed for energy used to satisfy his vanity is depleting our earth. Only a catastrophe, and it may come sooner than later, will make them open their eyes.

I really don't believe people in America know where our electricity comes from. Ok, we go 100% electric by a certain year. were is it going to come from? you can only dam up a river so many times, before there is a massive problem for you to write about. you can only put so many wind turbines up, before you write about it. How about, is it really Global Warming, Or could it really be just a slow Polar shift?

Please look at this link. Watch the smoke destruction video. http://push.pickensplan.com/profile/JamesTracy We are looking for the right partners. www.purepowercorp.com

this is a incredible news for me, a young Italian girl

That is so rotten, I hate false advertising. It is so sad that people will believe that coal is now clean. Those people need to get a clue, and I do not think they should be allowed to pt that stuff on TV.

So many people do not realize the health effects with coal. Just because it works does not mean it is good. We need to find an alternative. FAST.

(1) Advanced Technology Research SPECIAL REPORT: “GLOBAL WARMING” IS A FALSE THREAT BASED ON FAULTY SCIENCE The above headline may seem quite shocking to you – given that the media, many politicians, many (but not all) scientists and others, continue every day to repeat the false claim that the planet is warming. You might also try to dismiss the following as simply a conspiratorial fabrication by some conspiracy nut. But the following information about planetary weather and our world are all based upon FACTS and factual material only. That is because Advanced Technology Research, ATR, accepts NO grant funding monies of any kind and therefore is able to present FACTS and comment upon societal, technological and environmental issues without the pressures that those who do take such funding are under, to present only “information” that forwards the special interests of those who fund their “research”. The basic facts regarding long-term weather conditions on Earth which have never been refuted or proven incorrect, but which have been suppressed, were captured in calculations by Serbian civil engineer Milutin Milanković in the 1920’s. He discovered that the Earth has both a tilt, a wobble and a varying ellipticity in its long-term orbit around the sun, resulting in 100,000 years of ice age conditions, with much shorter periods of warmer weather, of the type that anyone reading this report and their recent generations of family members were born into. These are known as inter-glacials, or periods between ice ages. These inter-glacials last for about 11,000 years. After and preceding every inter-glacial is the return of another 100,000 year ice age. The best estimates available indicate that we now nearing the end of the current interglacial. We are in the last part of its 11,000 years, and that means that Earth is already heading back towards ice-age conditions once again. This DOES NOT mean that tomorrow, or next week, or even next year or in the next ten years, that you will wake up to a mile-thick glacier in your front yard. Such an expectation would simply be ridiculous, but those that are trying to prevent the factual information -- that the planet is NOT warming over the long term -- from getting out, often forward such scenarios, in a feeble attempt to discredit those who present these facts. (2) ATR presents this information, with NO other motive than that which arises from an honest caring for the majority of those that are inhabitants of this planet. ATR does not care if the facts prove global warming or global cooling. What we truly care about is that any information on what is happening with our weather now, and on what is most likely to be happening in the future, is presented FREE from vested interests meddling with the scientists providing that information. Sadly that IS NOT the case with many of our scientists at present. Even one of the strongest proponents of the myth of “global warming” told a close personal friend of one of our researchers that he knew that “global warming” was false – but that he knew where his grant funding money was coming from, and thus that he had better keep promoting what he knew to be a myth, so he would keep the money flowing to him! This is not the behavior of a true scientist, but that of a paid mouth, merely pretending to be a credible scientist, in the opinion of ATR. How The Public Has Been Fooled: There is a method that has been used to confuse and fool the public into thinking that the myth of “global warming” is reality. It is quite confusing when nearly every media source has jumped onto the “global warming” band wagon and is daily, in news reports and often in un-related reports – gratuitously pushing the idea that Earth is warming and that mankind is the reason for this “reported increase in temperature”. The way that the public has been fooled into thinking that higher land temperatures equal a warming world overall is as follows: If we agree, for the moment and for the sake of the following scenario, that the earth is currently receiving less sunlight because of the Milankovich orbital geometry effects, then we will understand that, as a result, there will be less evaporation of ocean and lake waters, resulting in less cloud cover and less rainfall. The consequences of less rainfall to cool the land, and less cloud cover to shade it from the sun, would then bring on higher land temperatures. Well, that certainly makes it look like the planet is warming. We have higher land temperatures. But what is happening out in the ocean surface waters, where less sunlight is reaching those waters due to the Milankovich effects? Well, interestingly enough, those who monitor global temperature trends have moved their monitoring stations, from a more even ocean / land distribution, to a situation where land monitoring stations are the main places from which these “scientists” are getting their temperature data. And cities – “urban heat islands” -- generate their own heat, thus stacking the deck even further in this biased promotion of “global warming”. (3) Here is a fact that is irrefutable: overall, Earth cannot have both warming and drought at the same time. That is because if the planet is warmer, higher rates of surface water evaporation result – more, not less, moisture would then be evaporated and available for drought allaying precipitation. But we presently suffer severe drought and even expanding desertification in many areas of the world. This fact speaks loudly that the sunlight reaching the planet is diminishing, which results in less evaporation of surface waters, in drought/desertification, and in a cooling world – not a warming one. One then might ask, given the preceding argument, what is the individual to do? -- laugh in the face of environmentalists, and keep driving cars and trucks any way we please, not caring about poor gas mileage vehicles? Certainly that is NOT the answer. Much of what comes out of the tailpipes of cars, and out of factory chimneys, has been cleaned up, but those pollutants are still not safe for mankind, or for animal and plant life, to live in and to breath in, especially in high concentrations when viewed in a fresh air/polluted air mix. The first steps are to continue to recycle, to drive our vehicles rationally, and to demand that the products we buy are made in factories that are as clean and as un-polluting of our world as possible. Never forget that the “vote” of your dollar, in your role as a consumer, speaks with a very loud voice, in that you can shape the types of products that are produced, as well as the way they are produced -- ALL as a function of what and where you buy. Naturally the following would be a personal choice, but ATR suggests that one should NEVER purchase eggs that are not from cage free chickens since ATR does not think it proper to support a farm that forces chickens to sit in a cage for their entire lives, pumping out eggs. ATR feels that such is animal abuse, and we will not support that type of egg production. In this way, through certain, concerted buying/boycotting strategies, consumers can support those farms that do operate with cage free chickens. Because one often buys such staple items regularly – “voting” for such products with your dollar will make it more likely that such products will continue to be available to you as a consumer. As a result, those farms that don’t operate with cage free chickens will then lose out on sales – until they change their egg producing methods. This is but one example of the power you can wield as a consumer! Next, if you care about the future of this world and about what we will leave to our children and their children -- or, if you believe in re-incarnation -- that you will be born again into another, later life in this world -- you might ask yourself the question: “What will be the condition of the world for my future family members, and, perhaps, for me, personally, as well [again, if you believe in re-incarnation]? (4) So that would make a case for demanding of your elected officials -- from local city governments all the way up to the President of the United States -- that the question of what our planet’s weather is really doing be revisited. Only this time completely free of vested interests intervention, pressure and lobbying. Now I am well aware that this is a very tall request – because I am going to detail what our research over the past many years has shown to be the reason that the myth of “global warming” has been pushed in the media, by many of our elected officials, in our schools, and in society at large. And we as a collective group of people that care about each other and the survival of ALL people in this world are up against some of the most diabolical, suppressive, and evil intentioned individuals that people of good will have ever faced. Who is Behind the Promotion of the Myth of “Global Warming"? ATR, some years ago, obtained a de-classified CIA report about planetary weather that was authored in the mid 70’s. The report covered how the planet would again be host to ice ages. It even surmised that the United States might be hard put to fend off the multitudes that, because of adverse weather conditions as the planet headed back -- towards cooler, drier, and then eventually ice age, conditions -- could not grow sufficient crops to feed their populations. And because the report stated that the U.S. would be one of the last areas on Earth that could still sustain anything approaching large crop yields, that the U.S. might find itself in such an unpleasant [but powerful, the CIA pointed out] situation of trying to decide who would receive food supplies and who would not. Then at about the end of the 70’s -- with a new power source, fusion power , making strides, slowly but steadily -- the tone changed suddenly to the promotion of the myth of “global warming”. First, let me explain exactly what fusion power is, and is not. It is NOT atomic fission – which is the type of power we have in our current nuclear reactors and submarines. “Fission” is based upon “fissioning” – breaking apart – heavier atoms like Uranium or Plutonium, releasing energy from the atomic nucleus in the process. Nuclear fission is a dangerous form of energy with equally dangerous waste products which have to be continually guarded against falling into the wrong (e.g., terrorist) hands, which have to be packaged, shipped, stored, and secured for hundreds of years, all so that no animal life ever comes in contact with it, and, again, so that terrorists never get their hands on it in order to make a dirty bomb. Fusion is the exact opposite of “fission”. Fusion IS the act of “fusing” lighter atoms like Hydrogen together. In that fusion process, energy is released from the atomic nucleus. (5) Some versions of fusion release this energy without releasing any heavy particle radiation. Fusion power reactions “run” mainly on Hydrogen, which is the most abundant element on our planet, and in the universe as a whole. The problem with using fusion power at this time is that our scientists have not yet been able to induce and maintain the high temperatures & pressures – the high energy densities -- that a sustained fusion power generation process requires and thus no practical power source has come from fusion…yet. The tragic aspect of all of this in the view of ATR is that many factors that practically guaranteed fusions failure were enacted at this time. Funding to fusion projects was slashed with the intention to prevent further advances. The U.S. educational systems were grossly under funded, with the intention to insure that the very bright minds that we should be fostering in our schools, that could come up with future technological advances we need, including fusion, would never rise to that achievement. When you couple this with the dramatic rise in the number of students being pumped full of worthless – and, worse, dangerous and cognition-damaging -- psychiatric drugs, based on equally trumped-up, false claims as the myth of “global warming”, such as made-up maladies like “hyperactivity” and others, one can see plainly the final coffin nail that was intended to be driven in, all to prevent advances in our technology that we sorely and obviously need; technology that would benefit the many but pose a real problem for the hyper-wealthy few, who have other plans. Their Plans: From everything ATR has been able to compile regarding the false information used to construct the myth of “global warming”, and regarding the motives that could be operating in that tiny ruling stratum of ultra-powerful monied people, a scenario as to why “global warming” has been pushed so hard has emerged. The oil companies and the international banks are covertly run by a very select, few families. They stand to reap enormous amounts of additional revenue – and social power -- via two main campaigns. One campaign is to keep the world addicted to oil as the primary source of energy on this planet. The other campaign is to make sure that as many countries as possible get into debt to the international banking establishment, so that a further tightening of power and control for these families is achieved, even as yet greater monetary wealth is generated from the interest that their banks charge on loans taken out by national leaders and governments, ostensively in order to build up and develop their countries. That is the state of the world today – especially for the developing countries in Africa and South America -- though this state of affairs is not limited to those two continents. The main fear of these families is that something like fusion power would be developed because the result – though good for the bulk of humankind as a whole -- would severely curtail their influence and power. (6) If a workable fusion reactor was developed and sold to, say an emerging African country. That country would, in a short time, have the ability to become independent of these ruling families’ oil companies and banks. Because a fusion reactor can run on hydrogen, the country could begin to draw from ocean water to fuel the fusion reactor, thus providing both a virtually endless supply of low cost, pollution-free, clean energy and de-salinated water, both needed to expand agriculture, feed their people, and support industrialization. This country could then say “no thanks” to oil imports, (there goes the profit from oil) and pay off their old bank loans (there goes the interest on the loans that these families’ banks would have otherwise gotten in perpetuity) and there would be a country free of the control by these families. The false claim of “global warming” is a veiled attack on such technologies, on such economic development, toward such independence, and on such raising of human living standards. But only in advancing such technology will we be able to save ourselves from our own shortsightedness in the pollution we have inflicted upon this planet, and thus also upon ourselves, thus far, and be able to rise to the present and coming challenges of feeding and housing ourselves decently, especially in a world turning back towards cooler conditions, and heading towards the post-interglacial ice-age resumption. ATR wishes to remind you that NOTHING man has ever done to the rest of Earth’s natural systems compares with the damage and destruction which mile-thick glaciers scraping across the land have done and will do to those systems. Going back towards some sort of simple lifestyle will not solve our environmental problems. As stated before, neither will being irresponsible by just continuing along in the same way we have been, just because there seems to be plenty of oil to burn, not to mention plenty of other natural resources to squander. But ATR is not a prophet of doom and gloom. There are steps that can be taken to avert the ruling families planned catastrophes, and we firmly believe in the capability American spirit to overcome their evil plans. The spirit that, in founding America, beat the Nation that was the greatest super-power of all time up to that time, England; the group of individuals who, in founding America, created the most important (non-religious) document of all time so far – the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and The Bill of Rights; the country that defeated one of the worst threats to freedom the world had ever yet seen, up to that time – the Nazi régime, funded and founded by the same families that now “own” the “Global Warming” myth-mill -- and one of the only countries on Earth that still has in place a document that reminds us that we have these rights as a living person which no government has the right take away or deny. (7) What Can Be Done? There are constructive steps against this calamity that any person can take, whether young or old, regardless of race or creed, and no matter what educational level they have achieved. ATR encourages everyone that reads this special report to carve out some personal time from what may have become a very busy, stressful life, as we all strive to survive in a world with madmen in control of energy, finances, and the political machinery -- in this country, and to a great extent, in the entire world. Never forget that individuals can make a difference via actions “large” and “small”! Rosa Parkes, the lady who refused to give up her seat on a bus in the South, simply because of her complexion, set off a process that changed our world with that “small” decision. The Founding Fathers put their lives on the line, for ideals and freedoms that they held to be so important that they were willing to pay the ultimate price for them. Thomas Edison changed the world with an idea. On and on goes the list of people who decided to take a stand, and so changed the world by their actions. YOU have the power to do that as well. How well or poorly the world, this county, this state, and this city turn out, depends on what you choose, or fail to choose, to do to make it decent and livable. It is up to us, it’s on our shoulders, and by our decisions and our actions, whether this country -- and, to a large degree, whether the world – continues to support freedom for the individual or not. What You Can Do: • Write to your elected officials from the local level to the President and demand that a re-evaluation be done regarding planetary climate trends by scientists free from influence by special interests [Good luck! “Money talks”!] ; a re-evaluation based on facts only [who decides “fact” from “fiction”? What is “fact” versus what is “fiction” will typically be a matter of controversy, even among scientists holding to differing hypotheses; only scientific experiment can decide among these differing hypotheses, and, even then, the interpretation of the experimental results can be a matter of controversy for some length of time]. The results must be triple checked to prevent any manipulation of the findings. (What we have been given regarding the myth of “global warming” has been manipulated, and is based upon deliberate distortions of factual information). • Do not vote for any tax increases and only support candidates that agree NOT to raise taxes. Currently the U.S. Government spends billions of tax dollars on psychiatry which is used to dope our citizens with worthless and, worse, (8) damaging, drugs. Demand of your elected officials that they de-fund psychiatry and that they call for an immediate investigation into psychiatry and the flawed methods psychiatrists employ – which are also not based on facts. This sort of investigation would uncover a sexual-abuse scandal (psychiatrists having sex with their patients) which has been covered up and which is much, much, much larger in scope than the current media hype surrounding the religious – sex scandals. • Never submit your child, or any other family member, to psychiatric drugging, and if any family member is ever doped-up with those drugs – take them immediately to a non-psychiatrist nutritionist, to supervise weaning them off of these worthless and, worse, damaging, drugs. We need your children, all children, able to read, learn new information and be the ones that come up with new ideas and technology to solve our environmental and societal problems. • Get involved with the Parents Teacher Association (PTA) and demand that they fire ANY psychologists or psychiatrists employed by the schools that are promoting drugging school children. Students are now being set up for “mental health screenings” which are nothing more than an attempt to get even more on these worthless and, worse, damaging, drugs all based on the never-proven theory that some children have biochemical deficiencies in their brains. • Write letters challenging newspapers that forward the myth of “global warming” to provide facts from scientists NOT being funded by foundations, owned by the ruling families we mentioned, which seek to allow only the myth of “global warming” to be advanced. • Keep reading and listening and questioning – as the answer we have been given by the media, politicians and some scientists regarding the planetary trend of climate is NOT motivated by scientific factual information, but by an ulterior political-power agenda operated by the ruling oil/finance families. ~ ~ ~ Thank you for reading this special report: “Global Warming” is a False Threat Based on False Science.” Remember, how this world turns out and the condition that it is left in for our children and their children and their future offspring depend on what all of us do here and now in supporting rational solutions to our environmental or societal problems which are based on factual information. You can make a difference! ATR – Advanced Technology Research P.O. Box 528 Santa Rosa, CA 95402