Actually, conventional coal plants don't emit soot, and they don't emit flyash (unless there is a malfunction). Good combustion prevents soot, a precipitator or baghouse captures flyash, combustion control reduces NOx, a scrubber can remove sulphur, mercury, and nitrogen compounds. Conventional coal plants are really cleaner than the anti-coal people want to admit.
The term "clean coal" is typically used to mean newer design boilers where pollutants like sulphur are captured before they even enter the flue gas stream. There may still be flyash in a "clean coal" process like a CFB boiler. These type of boilers still require a baghouse or precipitator.
What the general public really means when they talk about "dirty coal" is the conventional plants of old, which burned coal without any controls at all. These do not exist anymore with maybe one or two exceptions. These days they have added CO2 as a pollutant from "dirty coal" to maintain the villainization as the emissions of coal plants continue to get cleaner. This is just BS.
That's why I said "sooty"...to emphasize that I had said "carbon," not "carbon dioxide."
The argument given was something like:
"Carbon Dioxide is Essential for Life and therefore it can't be a pollutant."And I disproved it by example: Carbon is essential for life, but when carbon is emitted as particulate matter, it's a pollutant (a conclusion you accepted).
armydoc>However, sooty emissions are a thing of the past, given clean coal technology.
So you are accepting the idea that we can limit emissions. Well, similarly, Barack Obama wants to list CO2 as a pollutant that can be "treated" with technology and have emissions reduced. Do we really want to argue that?
armydoc>No, the real issue is capping CO2 output in the name of dubious, emotional "science".
Exactly. But the argument given did not address this issue. It provided a tangential and fallacious argument. Maceman "gets it" thus:
The point is that once the government can declare CO2 to be a pollutant, and has the power to regulate it, there is virtually no aspect of human activity over which it can be denied from exercising authority and control.This needs to be fought vigorously and rigorously, not fallaciously. :-)
>Ramius:
In my estimation a "pollutant" is something that does not belong there, or is in abnormal, artificially induced quantities that cause harm of some kind. I remain unconvinced that CO2 is causing any harm whatsoever.This is a different argument than the one to which I responded. This one is saying that you disagree whether it's causing harm or not, and that's a very valid point of disagreement. My beef was with the initial post, which didn't have this qualifier in it. Perhaps semantics, but it's an important distinction since we can't assume everyone agrees that CO2 is causing no harm.
I am increasingly persuaded that CO2 is an ~effect~ of climate change, not a cause.
I think that's true most of the time. But as gets pointed out, there were no SUVs in the Mesozoic. So we've never had CO2 forcings from industrial emissions, transportation sector, etc. So just because the atmospheric CO2 levels have been an effect under normal, variable conditions, that doesn't mean that it can't go the opposite way with a forcing of CO2.
For example, you can add ice (cause) to a drink to make it colder (effect). But then if you force the system by making the drink colder (put it into the freezer), the cause and effect can reverse--you get ice.
While I don't believe that CO2 is forcing temperature to the extent the IPCC does, it's silly to think that 800-year lags, etc., can put the question to rest, as the whole point of the enviro crowd is that the system is NOT operating the way it does naturally.