After making every possible effort to undercut the coal industry, President Obama seemed oddly surprised that he ran such a close primary against a federal inmate in West Virginia. But this is a week for evolving, and the Obama campaign has quietly decided to add “clean coal” to its list of energy priorities, Chris Moody reports:
President Obama’s campaign website added “clean coal” to a list of energy priorities late this week, days after Republican lawmakers noted the omission and a federal inmate received about 40 percent of the vote against Obama in the Democratic primary in coal-heavy West Virginia.
Previously, the campaign’s website highlighted “fuel efficiency” on a list of seven energy priorities, but it has been replaced by “clean coal” and the site now touts Obama’s “10-year goal to develop and deploy cost-effective clean coal technology.”
The Obama campaign denies it’s a flip-flop, and claims he’s always supported coal production. And that may be true rhetorically, just like he’s always been a supporter of Israel and human rights and domestic oil production and reducing the deficit. Of course his policies and actions have often suggested otherwise.
But the president has already evolved on one issue that his base appreciates this week, so he may as well toss a goodwill gesture at the bitterly clinging West Virginia types. Not that he’s actually going to do anything, like reconsider the new EPA regulations that have been crushing the coal industry. But at least the next time unemployed West Virginians demand to know what Obama’s done for coal lately, he can direct them to the new bullet-point on his energy priorities website.
No. This is NOT a change in policy — there are two issues here — (a) "clean" coal which means that nothing but Carbon Dioxide is coming out of the smokestack, no "pollutants", and (b) Carbon Dioxide/Global Warming and not wanting the Carbon Dioxide to come out of the chimney — in which case, you simply can't burn coal AT ALL. n nThink of it as the contrast between eating "healthy" and only being permitted to eat one tiny meal a day — the fact that it is now to be a "healthy" meal with all the sorts of stuff that we are supposed to eat but don't want to does not negate the fact that you are still not getting enough to eat in general. n nThink of it as Obama coming out and endorsing Kosher — perhaps ordering that all K-12 school lunches to be Kosher — while also ordering the elimination of said school lunches. This is essentially what he is doing here — and I have to explain the science of burning coal to explain: n nCoal is essentially solid carbon. When coal is burned, oxygen combines with the carbon and if there is complete combustion, you get (heat and) Carbon Dioxide (CO2). If there isn't — and there never really is — you will also have only one oxygen molecule bonding instead of two — this is Carbon MONOXIDE (CO) and what senior citizens may remember as "coal gas." n nCarbon MONOXIDE is very very deadly to humans (any animal with red blood) because CO bonds to the hemoglobin in your blood much better than Oxygen does, which means that there isn't enough (eventually any) oxygen in your blood and you die. Now, if hot enough, Carbon monoxide will "burn", technically "oxidize" – grab the extra oxygen atom out of the air and become Carbon DIOXIDE and prior to the conversion to "Natural Gas" (hydrocarbons such as Methane, Propane & Butane), gas was "manufactured" by spraying water onto a coal fire which produces a vast volume of Carbon MONOXIDE. This was then used first for lighting (gaslights) and then for both cooking and heating. (This is the explanation of "head in the oven" suicide references in Victorian novels.) n n"Air" is 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen and they are the chemical equivalent of the same gender, they usually don't mate but under high temperatures (and pressures, such as in a car engine) they will and produce Nitrous Oxide (aka "Laughing Gas"), Nitrogen Dioxide and a few other things I am forgetting here. There is Sulfur in coal (and Hugo Chavez/Joe Kennedy's "free heating oil") and this becomes Hydrogen Sulfide ("rotten egg smell") which then is absorbed by water droplets/vapor in the atmosphere to become H2SO4, Sulfuric Acid, and this is "acid rain." Although rain is naturally slightly acidic anyway because Carbon Dioxide does the same thing, and we would have some real problems if this wasn't happening… n nThere are trace amounts of heavy metals in coal, particularly Mercury, a particularly nasty neurotoxin, and an incredible amount of "fly ash" — airborne dust, much of which is smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Both the fly ash and the dust from coal being added to the furnace were routinely just sucked up the chimney and became the black smoke that used to belch out the top. n nWe managed to clean a good deal of this up — the bottom-fed coal furnaces that UMass took off line a couple of years ago actually were CLEANER than the boilers that had been retrofitted to burn natural gas but the goal of "clean coal" technology is to take this even further with things like a "fluidized bed" so as to produce *no* Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen compounds, Sulfur compounds, etc. This is what Obama is endorsing with his pro-clean-coal statement. n nBUT HE IS STILL PROPOSING DRACONIAN LIMITS ON THE CARBON DIOXIDE THAT IS ALLOWED TO BE RELEASED INTO THE ATMOSPHERE. Remember Coal is all Carbon — hence all your heat produces Carbon Dioxide. Natural Gas is mostly Hydrogen which becomes H2O or water vapor. This is why all the power plants being produced burn natural gas — Methane has 4 Hydrogen atoms for ever single Carbon one. Hence Coal is at an absolute disadvantage if Carbon Dioxide is regulated/limited/taxed because of the basic chemistry. n nThis is why I say that this is like Obama supporting all meals being Kosher, but then not letting anyone eat any of them — it becomes a moot point — although I fear that this ruse will confuse more than a few. n n
One other thing — Carbon MONOXIDE is a major safety issue whenever *any* fuel is burned in a house. This is different from "coal gas" in that you are not actually *burning* Carbon Monoxide, merely producing it by burning something else, but I don't want to have not mentioning this on my conscience. n nCarbon Monoxide is a particular problem with forced hot air because the "plunum" rusts through and the combustion gasses go up into the heated air and are circulated through the house. Usually this isn't fatal with an oil furnace because people usually notice the smell of "truck exhaust" and respond to that. But with Natural Gas, you get NO warning smells and if anything blocks the exhaust — bird's nest in the chimney, a loose brick falling down the chimney, a snowbank blocking a through-the wall discharge (which code permits to be only 18" above the ground, which I think is totally STUPID) — Carbon monoxide levels very quickly build up in the house from any kind of gas-burning appliance because (a) the device can't burn properly and (b) is only able to vent into the house. n nAs CO poisoning makes one both cold and sleepy, people think they have the flu and go to bed. This builds up over days, and one day husband goes to work (where he breathes good air) and comes home to find his entire family dead. n nThis is why you really want to have THREE CO detectors — they do sometimes trip false alarms and there is no tougher decision than having to trust just one detector or presuming it is a false alarm. Yes, you take it seriously, but if you have three and the other two aren't sounding, it is possible but not likely that they both are defective. And if you are ever "too tired" to want to deal with a detector going off, and just really want to take the batteries out of it and go to bed, that is a warning sign that you ABSOLUTELY MUST take it seriously, right now. n nBut if two are going off — that is a 911 panic call and everyone is out on the front lawn until the fire department (or gas company) has gone through the entire house with a "sniffer", a fairly expensive piece of equipment that can tell exactly what is in the air. No competent firefighter is going to make a fuss about this because they know that the small children die first, and by the time the adults are showing serious symptoms, it will already too late to have much hope of saving the small children. n nI don't want to scare anyone, but I have been involved in a couple of close calls on this and I didn't want to say that Natural Gas isn't Carbon Monoxide (factually true) without also saying that Carbon Monoxide produced by devices burning Natural Gas — well over the past decade has killed more families in their homes than fires have. And it is a particular problem when people have converted from oil to natural gas in an older home because the higher moisture content of the natural gas exhaust brings the accumulated soot off the chimney and it falls down in sheets, thus blocking the exhaust gas flow. n nAgain, I don't want to scare anyone — but those new laws that are popping up about how you have to have a carbon monoxide detector — it also is a good idea….