Muzzle or abolish the EPA… for ‘more jobs’…
Just how f*cking dumb does the ‘Energy sector’ think we are anyway? (pretty damn dumb apparently)… and then they attempt to blackmail America by claiming the EPA is ‘riding roughshod’ on the Energy (coal) producers… attempting to make us believe that stopping the EPA is the only way get cheap energy and more jobs.
It is a measure of the power elites’ smugness that they don’t even TRY very hard to mask their lies anymore!
‘clean coal’ makes as much sense as ‘healthy cancer’.
The Big Lie:
Yee HAW!!:
Is that not obscene? Gotta hand it to ‘em though, it took a LOT of chutzpah to come up with a PR campaign slogan like ‘Clean Coal’…
Clearly, the ‘Carbon Consortium’ and their GOP cronies are well familiar with Hitler’s Mein Kamf and the concept of the ‘Big Lie’:
22 years ago and truer than ever!
You tell ‘em Frank! (goddess I miss that guy!)
The Hideous Truth:
… and they’re tear-gassin’ ‘em in Oakland and Atlanta as I write…
Comment on October 26, 2011 @ 1:29 am
the latest scientific american has an article on fracking – haven’t read it yet but saw in the pull box the mention that it was Dick-head Cheney that got the Bush-wacked admin to pass a bill exempting fracking from the clean water act – when that’s the biggest threat and danger already established with regard to fracking. It’s called the Halliburton Exemption.
how did this country get so far off-track
Comment on October 26, 2011 @ 12:04 pm
Cat-eyes: You are correct. How convenient! Let’s just grease the right palms and get an exemption from the law!
From the film ‘Gasland’:
Comment on October 26, 2011 @ 1:03 pm
The only reasonable conclusion is that any energy source based on burning anything is a long term losing proposition… the obvious corollary being that such burning involves releasing (very inefficiently) the energy long stored in once living things. ie: Carbon.
There are exactly two ‘ultimate’ sources of energy on our planet. Natural radioactive decay and the Sun itself.
Solar energy is still viable, but its cost/efficiency curve has been so far disappointing. Battery technology has made considerable performance improvements, but requires another big leap to really make electric cars, computers and long-term energy storage truly practical.
The first (Earthly) Cyanobacteria managed to figure out photo-synthesis (far more efficient than solar panels!). I think a more ambitious study of how to duplicate this remarkable process is long overdue. Hydro-thermal and even seismic energy are also essentially ‘free’.
Thermodynamics says that ALL that is required to produce useful energy is a separation and a DIFFERENCE between A and B! Energy therefore is simply a (localised) reduction in ENTROPY.
Wind and waves are good (and utterly renewable) sources of energy, as also are hydroelectric dams… but those involve unintended consequences that offset some of its advantages. ‘Moving parts’ (like turbines and dynamos) are inherently inefficient, and that friction heat waste also makes things wear out.
Can you imagine even 80% efficient solar panels and batteries that could store that energy for YEARS… along with a ‘smart’ electricity transmission grid where individual buildings can ‘upload’ surplus energy for credit???
Energy ‘crisis’ SOLVED… as well as going a long way toward cleaning up the air and water and the landscape in general! It CAN be done. We just have to quit the ‘lip service’ and get down to WORK!
We have access to effectively UNLIMITED CLEAN ENERGY. We just have to get SMART about it…
Oh wait! Did I say ‘SMART’? I knew there’d be a snag somewhere!
Oh well.
Comment on October 26, 2011 @ 3:32 pm
Interesting, isn’t it, how perfectly well some humans on the planet are playing the villian; choosing the worst possible alternatives, and indeed making them up if they do not exist. Like some Saturday morning cartoon character with insecurities from a bad childhood.
This all ends badly for the villain as well, though. They and their offspring.
Comment on October 26, 2011 @ 10:49 pm
How ’bout this stuff?
New Google Map Reveals U.S. Geothermal Resources 10 Times Greater Than Coal
I feel a heat buildin’ up down deep.
Comment on October 26, 2011 @ 11:57 pm
Cat-eyes: I read as much of the SciAm article as I could without a subscription, and found this in a ‘Storified’ comment on the article you referred to:
I find it amusing that although New York state appears ready to allow the rest of NY to get ‘fracked’, the capitol of Albany won’t have anything to do with it (“fine, but not in MY back yard!”)…
When you can light your DRINKING WATER on FIRE, and your family is falling ill to various strange neuropathies, I’d say that should be a pretty strong clue that something is terribly amiss! I saw ‘Gasland’ some time back, and although it’s obviously an advocacy piece, I was frankly horrified by what is apparently going on…
There is no ‘middle ground’ on the fracking issue.
Given the less than stellar environmental track record (to put it very charitably) of the petroleum industry, I think we are properly suspicious over their so-called ‘proof’ of how safe the method is. To put it more bluntly, we’ve been glibly lied to by the industry over and over and over and…
But $40B profit per quarter is a pretty strong motivator too I guess.
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Max/geothermal: Nice! This is all essentially ‘free’ energy, that is going to happen anyway… we might as well make some use of it!
Of course, if the Yellowstone caldera goes ka-boom, all bets are off anyway!
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One key thing that has held us back from a sane energy policy is what I’ll call the ‘vested interest effect’. It’s long been known that the over-cozy relationship between big-oil and big-gas-guzzling cars has effectively frozen any progress in electric (or any non-internal-combustion) vehicles until only very recently.
Why think ‘outside the box’ when the box you’re in is very, VERY comfortable??!
Comment on October 27, 2011 @ 12:28 am