The Coalfield Uprising

------------"This crap makes me so damn angry.
All of the letters written and campaigning against have done nothing. Perhaps it is time to get a stronger message out to the companies and the legislators."-------------csmonut

That is because you are using the wrong strategy.

Coal/petroleum/nuclear energy lobby has billions upon billions of $$$ to rain on media for advertising and buy corrupt politicians. 98% of all media outlets in the US are owned by only 5 companies----the media is certainly not going to do or say anything to piss off energy companies that control their income via advertising revenues. Especially since much of the energy market is in diversified conglomerates. The advertising pulled might have nothing at all to do with energy----but it is a BIG weapon for the controlling string pullers. As for political corruption and control---that only works well at the state level or above. The more concentrated the power, the easier it is to control and manipulate it.

The only reason that energy companies have control is that they lie. And they have the means to repeat that lie often enough that people begin to accept the lie as truth. The way to fight lies is with the truth.

The truth is.

Coal destroys the earth, the air, the water and the climate. Coal is expensive, dirty, and deadly.

The coal industry says----"We have Clean Coal"-----

The truth is, there is no such thing.

The coal industry says, "We are a regulated industry with very strict government control and regulation."

The truth is, controls and regulations are routinely ignored, willfully violated, or bought off with bribes and payoffs to corrupt politicians.

The coal industry says---"Coal is cheap, and would take trillions of $$$ and 50 or more years to replace all of our coal burning plants."

The truth is, the plants do not need to be replaced--simply converted to use natural gas instead. It would cut our CO2 in 1/2, there would be no need for climate treaties and 5 or 6% CO2 reduction quotas. It would take less than a year to convert any individual plant to natural gas instead of coal, and the cost would be minimal. Only the burners(furnaces) need to be replaced----everything else remains exactly the same.

It takes 1 ton of coal to produce 2.5 MW of electricity. A 1000 MW plant(medium size) will use 40 tons of coal per hour----every hour, day in, day out, 365 days a year, year in, year out. That makes 148 tons of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere every hour, day in, day out, 365 days per year, year in and year out. And that is just one plant. Is it any wonder the atmosphere is changing?
No matter how you try to clean up the smokestacks---so you can't see anything coming out----the CO2 still has to come out. You can't get any energy from coal without burning it. Is it any wonder that the coal and petroleum industries are spending hundreds of millions of $$$ to support global warming deniers?

We need hundreds and thousands of people, armed with the truth, who will attack King Coal and Big Oil on the local level. They can't fight every single change at every single level forever. We need to be making changes on the municipal, county and regional level. We need to be writing letters to municipal utility board members, and county supervisors----not senators and representatives that Big Business has already bought and paid for.

Drop me a message if you want more ideas about what to say, and who to say it to.

Nice to see future land to put a house on.

That mountain top removal shit is just wrong. I've read articles with pictures, showing them literally doing that right over top of towns. The coal chunks and dust raining down in the community from the blasting.

This crap makes me so damn angry.
All of the letters written and campaigning against have done nothing. Perhaps it is time to get a stronger message out to the companies and the legislators.

They can remove coal without doing this horriendous dqamage, but greed and lack of concern for others is their motivator.

this is no less than an act of WAR against the American people ! its just another case of greed run rampant...

Short sighted greed will destroy us if we don't demand from our legislators this shit be stopped. Just because it is the Appalachians that we have used and abused since the beginning of time is no reason to look the other way any longer. It is not only destroying those people, it is destroying the air we breathe and the atmosphere we depend on for our very survival.

GOOD CALL!-------------"Coalfield residents are not waiting for the Obama administration to come to their rescue. In fact, in the past year a surging activist and citizen lobbyist campaign has emerged as a fierce counterforce to the Big Coal lobby".
"The Obama administration remained indecisive throughout the summer, publicly announcing its intentions to bolster regulatory oversight while quietly allowing the Army Corps of Engineers to continue issuing Clean Water Act permits for mountaintop removal".

As we sit here at our electric devices, bemoaning the loss of land.

Good post, WakeUpPeople.
It's disgusting what is being done to the planet and it's people in the name of greed.

--------"Ask the American people if they would buy a reasonably priced 60 mpg vehicle with an engine that will run for over 200, 000 miles. When they say yes, tell them it is a clean burning diesel. They may hesitate, but they will certainly take a good hard look at it."--------

Yes, then ask them if they want avoid environmental damage from oil and coal----(plug in hybrids will still be powered largely with electricity made from coal--Chevy Volt). And ask them if they would drive a car that will have no problems with cold weather(batteries on hybrid cars are subject to very reduced efficiencies in cold conditions too).
Ask them if they would drive a car that with the right fuel mix would actually be able to lower the effect of global warming----and prevent and reverse climate change. Ask them if they want a car that will give them a freedom of choice about what kind of fuel they can drive with, and not have to worry about what the price of petroleum will do in the future. We can make liquid biodiesel fuel from any kind of plant material at all, waste wood or agricultural waste----or algae. We have many choices. And with a bi-fuel engine like diesel/natural gas they can use a biofuel made from anything biological at all. You could run a diesel bi-fuel its entire lifetime and never use one drop of petroleum.

And we do not need to change anything major about our manufacturing, supply, storage, distribution, or servicing network. You would simply fill up with whatever is available with a bi-fuel, liquid or gas. And most service stations already have a utility connection for natural gas.

Last added bonus. The Jetta TDI has EPA mileage figures of 40 mpg compared to 50 for Prius. 20% less mileage than Prius--but at 140 hp vs. 98 hp----almost 50% more horsepower. Americans like horsepower.
Then ask them if they want to lower their cost of driving. Natural gas is cheaper to use than both petroleum and electricity.

I can't think of anything that is a downside that is a problem with diesel/methane bi-fuel vehicles.

Here is a comment about diesel/natural gas bi-fuel engine vehicles with explaination from another forum I comment on frequently. This explaination also holds true for coal. Coal fired electrical plants can easily and quickly be converted use natural gas at minimal expense. We have no need for coal, and we can generate electricity with natural gas even better than we can with coal. We can even run diesel engines directly with natural gas----you can't do that with coal.(natural gas diesel engines and generators are made by several companies) Railroad locomotives are diesel/electric hybrids.

Fred Linn: Comments (98) Follow-------------"Both Toyota and Ford owe us an apology in one particular area, and that is they are not selling diesel cars in America. The Ford Fiesta diesel is very popular in Europe, will get over 60 mpg, but Ford refuses to sell it in America. I talked to a Toyota dealer about diesel, and they are putting all their eggs into Prius technology."--------

Diesel may be the new direction for environmentally conscious drivers. The new clean diesel technology and ULSD(ultra low sulphur diesel) fuel makes them squeaky clean to run. VW is coming out with bi-fuel natural gas models now. Golf is on sale now(gasoline/natural gas)---Jetta TDI will be on the market with a factory option bi-fuel soon, end of this year or early next year as I understand.

Diesel/natural gas is an almost perfect wedding both from a practical and from an environmental standpoint. Diesel engines are durable, and the high compression ratio makes them much more thermally efficient than gasoline engines of similar power range. With a comparative octane of ~120, natural gas is uniquely suited to take advantage of the higher compression ratios of diesel engines---compression ratio is what determines thermal efficiency in internal combustion engines, the higher the compression ratio, the more % BTUs put into the tank as fuel are gotten back at the wheels as actual work done. Bi-fuel engines have been around for a long time, and easily solve one of the most vexing problems with liquid fuel diesel engines----fuel gelling and starting in cold weather. With a bi-fuel diesel engine, just start in natural gas mode, and run till the engine is warm, then switch to liquid if you need to.
Diesel engines offer similar over all thermal efficiency to hybrids, without the complicated and expensive battery technology. While hybrids achieve most of their efficiency savings in stop and go, city driving---diesels offer their efficiency savings equally across the board--both city and over the road.

Natural gas in in plentiful supply right now, and over all methane far outstrips even coal for recoverable deposits. Natural gas is not only plentiful, it is also cheaper, and much easier to extract than coal----strip mines don't work for natural gas. No expensive shovels, drag lines, trucks, skip loaders, conveyors etc. needed---it can either be piped or liquefied and shipped in highly dense form. Environmental damage is minimal compared to coal and petroleum.

The methane molecule is CH4. For each atom of carbon that is burned, four atoms of hydrogen are burned. You get more energy, and about 1/2 the carbon dioxide than burning an equal weight of coal. And we can easily make methane doing things we need to do anyway---treating sewage for one thing, or tapping into landfills and capturing methane produced naturally. If we capture methane that would have ordinarily escaped into the atmosphere---mixing it with fossil methane in a mix as low as 6% means that we can lower the greenhouse effect of the resulting emissions even though we are mixing it with fossil fuel. Methane captures heat 17X better than CO2---if we capture and mix methane, we exchange high greenhouse effect methane, for much lower greenhouse effect CO2. Mixtures of over 6% biomethane means we can actually lower and reverse greenhouse warming.

--------"Ask the Am