We get the best of both worlds! EPA has effectively banned coal power plants (which produce half of the nation's energy), so we ship it over there, let the Chinese burn it without the emission controls standard in our plants, and then we get the emissions sent to us free of charge!

We should be liquifying it in Montana to make gasoline!

But the greens oppose that too because the greens want to cut off man's energy usage. They also want man to be concentrated in big, dense cities.

Thanks
JK

Can we fill the return trains to Montana with our garbage? The strip mines could be filled with Portland garbage and then we could buy the biomass generated natural gas back from them. The cost savings created by this simple green sustainable circle would be equitable.

They're already here. You can see them lined up daily on the tracks along SR-14 in The Couv.

This would be a good one for the "Occupy" folks. They can set up camps blocking the tracks. I might even get in on that action. The idea that we are shutting down "dirty" coal plants here just so we can ship coal to have it burned in even dirtier coal plants in China makes me sick. The LNG terminals/piplelines and the Keystone Pipeline are kids play compared to this idea. Portland will be a choke point for this proposed rail traffic. It ain't gonna be pretty folks.

Memo to self -- don't buy house near tracks.

Wonder what the salmon will think with all of the added metals (aluminum, manganese, cobalt, nickel, iron, mercury, etc.) and sulphur, etc., incl. radionuclides, from the coal dust and debris at the mouth of the tributaries that cross under the RR tracks along the lower Columbia?

Not going to help them locate the mouths of their spawning streams, that's for sure.

And, the Feds (STB, NMFS, BPA, et al.) sure shouldn't be happy about it.

Then, of course, the 1855 Treaty tribes can also put their feet down about it and stomp.

Proposed coal terminal in the Columbia River Valley or Coos Bay = Bad Investment.

And Jim, coal gassification is super filthy dirty (compounds the natural disaster of coal mining) and takes too much energy and precious clean water to produce. There's a good reason it went out with the Nazis.

Great move! It's difficult to find a way to interject Nazis into this, but somebody managed it!

Maybe the Japanese will get rid of their dangerous nuke plants and convert to coal.

That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Mojo: And Jim, coal gassification is super filthy dirty (compounds the natural disaster of coal mining)
JK: Please provide evidence for this claim. Include evidence that the process cannot be made clean under our current pollution rules.

Mojo: and takes too much energy and precious clean water to produce.
JK: You are so wrong (again):
1. Define too much energy? We routinely lose 2/3 (or more) of the energy making electricity or driving a car.
2. Water is NOT is short supply in most areas.

Mojo: There's a good reason it went out with the Nazis.
JK: Are you capable of getting anything right? The process is in use today. Has been for decades. Google coal gassification, coal to liquid, sasol.

A bit of advice: One does not get useful information from the greenie weekly reader - please read some stuff from the other side, otherwise you will to continue to be wrong about most things. You might also try taking (and understanding) some science, math & particularly logic.

Thanks
JK

Max: Great move! It's difficult to find a way to interject Nazis into this, but somebody managed it!
JK: This subject is a natural as the Nazis got ½ of their liquid fuels from coal for the last two years of the war.

FYI, the process was improved and used for decades by South Africa during the embargo years. Now they are marketing it to the world to make oil from both coal & methane. Its really a simple concept:
1.Use coal to make “city gas” (the stuff we used before natural gas for heat, stoves & lighting.)
2. Use a catalyst to combine the gas molecules into longer chains which are liquid.

Sasol is marketing a wide variety of products from coal usually made from oil. I have seen mentions of other oil companies starting to get into this process.

Natural gas can be used in place of the “city gas”

Thanks
JK

There are just so many things wrong about this.