Todd wrote:
On 03/03/2014 06:59 PM, David Hare-Scott wrote:
unproven technology ("clean coal") will come to our rescue and thus
we ought not to worry

You don't think it is possible to clean up coal, but drinking
toilet water is okay? I suppose we all pick our favorite
technologies.




I never said it couldn't be done at all. Every coal-fired power station
does some cleaning of its effluent now but this is not CO2.

It is quite possible to clean up effluent from burning coal to the level of
removing all (or nearly all) the CO2 as well, this has been done in
demonstration plants. What the coal industry, who claim that it will save
us from climate change, have yet to do is show how it can be done on a large
scale and what it would cost at that scale. Despite millions being sunk into
it the technology is unproven at the scale that would be required to allow
coal burning not to be the major contributor to greenhouse gas production
that it is today.

I suspect that the cost might be so high that it would make other energy
sources much more attractive and this is what the coal industry is worried
about. But until they actually do it we don't know.


David

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