Comments on: Texas Ranchers Battle New Enemy: Coal

By: Bruce Miller

Bruce Miller — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:06:00 +0000

Any thorium in Texas? China wants to know.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:28:00 +0000

You can love on that natural gas all you like, but remember that it’s going to pour CO2 into the atmosphere and cause temperatures to rise, droughts to expand. And I doubt that you, having Texas on your mind, needs to be reminded what higher temperatures and stronger droughts are like.

Wind doesn’t blow 24/365, but you’ve got places in Texas where the wind blows a heck of a lot of the time. Why not take advantage of that free and cheap to harvest energy? Use wind when the wind blows. Fill in the gaps with natural gas while we develop storage solutions.

Oh, and don’t forget solar. The price of solar harvesting is dropping rapidly. System prices are already below your average wholesale power cost and once the panels are paid off they will give you decades of almost free electricity. Just imagine what your utility bill would be like if electricity cost a penny a kWh for the sunny hours.

Use natural gas wisely. It’s a good bridge technology to get coal plants shut down quickly. Then it’s a good backup for wind and solar while we wait for something even better to develop.

By: TexasOnMyMind

TexasOnMyMind — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:50:00 +0000

Not being a fan of coal myself, I had hoped upon reading the headline to this article that it might contain real, factual information. Instead, we get more of the same, comically ignorant leftwing drivel.

The thought that hopelessly unreliable wind farms are somehow a viable, scalable alternative to Texas’ 19 coal-fired power plants is so laughably unrealistic that it really doesn’t even deserve serious consideration. The only scalable, reliable, price-competitive alternative to coal power in Texas or anywhere else is natural gas. Given that Texas produces about 30% of the nation’s natural gas each year, it’s an obvious answer to the problem.

By: Chip Stander

Chip Stander — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:45:00 +0000

Your argument does not hold water so to speak. Water Use by thermal generation in Texas accounts for 1.2% of ground water use and 1.9% of surface water use. There are many reasons to move away from fossil fueled generation, but water use is hardly one of them. Irrigation uses over 50% of water in Texas and simple water management techniques could save much more water than the total thermal generation use.

By: Ed

Ed — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:29:00 +0000

Ironic that “natural economic” forces are reshaping the change over to alternative energy. Just wish that it would be happening faster. Coal, though we owe it a great debt it is now time to save the remaining “low quality” (almost all of the ‘hard’ high quality anthracite coal was mined out years ago) for better uses than burning it and releasing a lot more than just CO2 into the atmosphere. Mercury and arsenic being the worst but a fist full of other “pollutants” are also released. Lets get serious with wind and solar (wind is actually solar but that is a different story) and move more rapidly toward a “clean” energy future or suffer the consequences of inaction.
Ed