major disaster from collapse of man-make object...and NOT on River Road

[acroyear]

I'm all for being impressed when local DC news (that's not political) makes the nationals...but this is MUCH bigger and more important...and therefore doesn't seem to be noticed by anybody...

Pharyngula: Let's talk about clean coal:

When power plants burn coal to produce energy, the coal doesn't just vanish into the atmosphere to cause global warming. No, there's a substantial amount of left-over sludge called coal ash, a nasty mess that is enriched for toxic heavy metals. It is seriously nasty stuff. This glop has to be stored, somewhere, usually piled up and walled-off, because it's not healthy for anything.

[youtube video]

This is happening right now, here in the United States. Yesterday, a retaining wall failed, and 500 million gallons of coal ash — the vile grey slime in the video — poured down into the tributaries of the Tennessee River, the water supply for Chattannooga and environs.

We're looking at a major environmental catastrophe, bigger than any oil spill, and most of the news media are silent about it. I checked CNN, MS-NBC, even Fox News…not a word

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Didn't say I had one. I was just one of those trying to "keep real" about coal, and that NO energy source is without consequences. The fact that we're only getting about 35% thermal efficiency out of it (65% burned coal is going to waste) should already be a clue that it's not the future and never should be seen as such. There's no such thing as "clean coal" - it's a right-wing invented term of spin used to deflect criticism of the abuses against the environment that the coal industry preys on.

For myself, I really want to see two "great inventions":

1) artificial photosynthesis - solar power that converts CO2 to O2. If we're making it too damn hard for the plants to do it all (and are killing the algae in the oceans that used to do it for us), then we'll have to do it ourselves.

2) *direct* energy. Heat, or something else (Nuke) that takes the excited electrons and released chemical energy and directly puts it into the grid rather than relying on magnetic turbines to do it. Even Nuclear power is really just a giant steam-producer for a large magnet array (at a 45% efficiency, mind you - better than coal). There's got to be some better way of tapping heat into electricity besides this.