6 AM EST Tuesday - Brian wins
Well, the rumor mill has acquired a grist farm, and it is looking increasingly like Brian has a direct line to President Obama
Lots of speculation on what will be in it. You've got mine from February and May: no shutdown of Keystone, but something else substantial, with fingers crossed it's the NRDC proposal to regulate existing coal power plants. The speculation suggests a bunch of other climate-related actions will also get thrown in, both on adaptation (which makes sense practically and politically) and carbon sequestration (which makes sense politically, I'm less sure practically except that it needs to be fully researched).Brian's advice, "How's this deal: everyone, including other fossil fuel interests, gangs up against coal" appears to be what will happen.
Consider this an open thread on the speech tomorrow. In the meantime the other Whitehouse can entertain the assembled
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One good thing is that Obama's making his main move on climate before announcing Keystone. A positive effect of the enviro focus on Keystone is that it increases how much Obama will have to offer in return for allowing Keystone. That makes it more likely that he will have to do something additional to help the climate, beyond what he's announcing today, when he ultimately comes out in favor of Keystone.
Making the use of coal in the US more expensive means the price of coal in the US drops.
But a drop in the price of coal makes it more appealing to overseas consumers.
Much as we do in health care, the US consumer will be subsidizing foreign energy.
Eunice.
Transportation costs can be a bitch
Hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons.
Absent Zeal, a commodity in oversupply in the Climate Wars, an obvious way to take a whack out of power plant CO2 emissions is to tax coal in proportion to the prcentage of carbon it contains, so as to encourge production from deposits that get the most BTU's from hydrogen, and discourage the burning of coal closer to anthracite .
If all the US burned was high volatile coal, it could take a half a Wedge of annual CO2 emission off the US charts .
The numbers speak for themselves , but it isn't going to happen because both sides loath the distraction of the the merely reasonable.
The best way would be to frack the coal mines for the hydrocarbons and leave the stones lie. Most of the volatiles are lost because the coal is ground up underground so it can be transported out of the mine on conveyor belts.
Oh yeah, coal are stones, not hydrocarbons and Eli has the Raman spectra to prove it. (Somewhere)
It'll stand pat and await Ethon's Promethean judgement : hydrogen is hydrogen even when fossillized, and amber is just a thermoplastic polymer that happens to have been made by God.
Finest kind of coal, amber. They should burn more of it.
> tax coal in proportion to
> the prcentage of carbon
>> frack the coal mines
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-graphite-lubricates-fault-zones.html
Ya know, I suspect if we still had Tesla around, there'd be some way to connect the coal beds to the atmospheric electrical circuit (via Google's balloons and long conducting tethers?) and just run our civilization off slight flickers in the overall natural variation in electron flow.
But, alas ....
Oh, wait, Captcha hints, let's see what 'oogling its suggestion turns up:
Stimulation of methane generation from nonproductive coal by addition of nutrients or a microbial consortium
EJP Jones, MA Voytek, MD Corum… - Applied and …, 2010 - Am Soc Microbiol
Sequestration of carbon dioxide in coal with enhanced coalbed methane recovery a review
CM White, DH Smith, KL Jones, AL Goodman… - Energy & …, 2005 - ACS Publications
much else suggesting there's probably a better way to pull energy out of the ground. Sigh.
Thank's for the epiphany, hank--
' Qu'ils mangent du charbon'
the upside of which is to ask the synthetic bioloy go to guys f they have any genes up their sleve which, repackaged in whatever anaerobe du jour is on the menu , can much on coal and framboidal pyrites and burp forh just plain hydrogen.
Whereupon West Virginia's happy hydrogen miners would become culture heros inside Joe Romm's beltway, and enemies of the state in Texas.
I shoulda turned on Speellcheck:
Thanks for the epiphany, Hank--
' Qu'ils mangent du charbon'
the upside of which is to ask the synthetic biology go-to guys if they have any genes up their sleve which, repackaged in whatever anaerobe du jour is on the menu , can munch on coal and framboidal pyrites and burp forh just plain hydrogen.
Whereupon West Virginia's happy hydrogen miners would become culture heros inside Joe Romm's beltway, and enemies of the state in Texas.
Sadly, the person I think most closely resembles President Obama is Andy Revkin.
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