An old friend of mine used to say, "wait till China discovers toilet paper".
What he would be saying now is, "wait till India and Africa discover air conditioning"!
All that cool air takes hot power, and the latest black out in India proves it.

At least a piece of the problem is that people are discouraged by the failed efforts to develop new sources of clean energy. Billions wasted on carpetbaggers promising new wind and solar energy solutions have left a bad taste. Faux environmentists have gone to great lengths to keep us off course, refusing to look at more practical ideas. Sadly, the masses will turn to a dirty solution that actually works.

This whole "controversy" make me chuckle

Coal trains have been running down the Gorge and thru Oregon for decades

But, MORE coal trains is suddenly a crisis and, apparently, I'll need to wear a mask from all the dust.

People, just head out to a RR access point in the Gorge and search for all that coal dust that MUSY be there. When you find it, let me know.

Sure, coal isn't our cleanest option, but until all of you turn off you AC and unplug your flat screens, it's what we have as a nation. And, we have a lot of it

It's terrible that coal trains provide jobs and income to some folks and cause "righteous" indignation to "many, many more".

Don't want coal? Stop using your electricity. PGE has seen no need to curtail its Boardman Coal Plant operations because of Portland's love affair with electricity; wind/solar just isn't going to replace a solid stream of power from a coal plant, we can't build a dam, and nobody wants nuclear (even though we could site a nuclear plant or two on the shuttered Umatilla Army Depot, or at Hanford.)

Excellent. We need to use it here or sell it.

"Old King Coal" is hard to stop in more ways than one.

Friends tweet before dying in Md. coal train derailment
Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/friends-tweet-dying-md-train-derailment-201914665.html

Cause of deadly Ellicott City train derailment not yet determined
Updated: 13 minutes ago
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ho-train-derailment-folo-20120822,0,862414.story

Full coverage:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/

I can't wait to see the crime trains and streetcars running on solar/wind. Be interesting to see how that all works out for them.

Um, ErikH, Boardman is being shut down because of coal. In 2020 -- eight years from now. They did not want to spend the money to put in polution control scrubbers, so PGE is shutting it down.

We're green! We stopped burning Coal! Of course we will pay higher prices for our electricity, and then sell the coal to places with no scrubbers at all. I just love a lose-lose situation. Makes a zero-sum game absolutely positive!

Actually, Boardman is not being shut down, Zeb - they're converting it to a biofool plant, burning some kind of non-native grass.

I live downwind from the Boardman plant, I'll show you the freakin' dust smart guy, I have a jar of it...okay it's a baby food jar from many years ago but that crap is still in the atmosphere.

I also live downwind from the Umatilla Army Depot, which gassed the whole town in the mid 90's and no one said jack about it.

I also live directly downriver from Hanford. It's a trifecta!

I'm applying for disability due to respiratory problems. Problems which have derailed a promising legal career (I really was a good lawyer. I swear it.)

You'll find no semblance of objective opinion here. None whatsoever. I'm pretty open minded about most issues, fair. When you talk about clean air, I turn into the most raging lefty you'll ever encounter.

Perhaps not the MOST. I've never bombed anything or tied myself to a tree. ;-)

-Jo

Just an FYI the Umatilla Army Depot is still going. They are slowly shutting down though. Guys are getting laid off slowly. Some are transitioning to Hanford.

I'd vote for a new nuke plant here. Tons of jobs for my peeps. We are used to having nukes and WMD's around and would vote for one in 2 seconds. Even local democrats would support that (I speculate).

Just to be safe(er) how about we locate it up near Heppner. 40 miles or so off the columbia. There's water there, enough water? Google map it, it's basically the middle of nowhere but can easily expand it's population base to support a nuke plant. It used to be a lot bigger, and can regrow in a heart beat. That's Morrow county (where the aforementioned coal plant resides). I'd be surprised if a local referendum there didn't favor a nuke plant in the 85% range.