Joe Nocera, the New York Times's Environmental Stand-In, is a Disaster.

[wtmusic]

Joe's apparently been tasked with covering the (empty) environmental desk and there's a lot to learn! But he's just heard the coal industry's "clean coal" pitch, and is very excited. Check it out:


Hilltop strip mining in Appalachia.

A Real Carbon Solution

"Sometime this summer, in Odessa, Tex., the Summit Power Group plans to break ground on a $2.5 billion coal gasification power plant. Summit has named this the Texas Clean Energy Project. With good reason.

Part of the promise of this power plant is its use of gasified coal; because the gasification process doesn’t burn the coal, it makes for far cleaner energy than a traditional coal-fired plant.

But another reason this plant — and a handful of similar plants — has such enormous potential is that it will capture some 90 percent of the facility’s already reduced carbon emissions. Some of those carbon emissions will be used to make fertilizer. The rest will be sold to the oil industry, which will push it into the ground, as part of a process called enhanced oil recovery."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/opinion/nocera-texas-might-be-on-to-something.html?ref=joenocera&_r=0

[hatrack]

1. "Comments Closed" - Yeah, given the content of this awful column, and the responses, no surprise

Not a word about parasitic load and how that effects generation output, and the amount of coal needed to meet projected output.

Not a word about the fact that CO2 derived from the process will then be used to further enhance oil recovery, which (said oil being burned in one way or another) will further increase GHG emissions.

Not a word about the massive uncertainty surrounding long-term storage and capture, and the potential effects of large-scale releases from rock formations subjected to the acidic nature of high-pressure CO2 injection.

Not a word about the effects of mining still more coal to fuel this ridiculously expensive and baroque attempt to keep the old game alive.

But lots and lots of words about the silliness of environmentalists, especially Bill McKibben, and those who might espouse even a modestly different path than that envisioned for us by those who "understand the realities" and "know the markets".

Nocera's environmental effusions are pathetically arrogant and uninformed, and what little remains of NYT environmental coverage has taken less than a month to devolve to the status of full-on joke.

[wtmusic]

2. "ridiculously expensive and baroque attempt to keep the old game alive"

Poetry.

Without even getting into the detail of the proposed gasification/fertilizification/Earth-enema he's bubbling about, is the naiveté of thinking we can scrape this stuff up, process it, and then shove it back.

I wish comments were open, because you hit the nail on the head with that post. Please, consider sending it as a letter to the editor.

[wtmusic]

3. Joe vs. Joe - Romm takes Nocera to task:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/17/1731591/the-dangerous-myth-that-climate-change-is-reversible/