It is like coal is attacked for the ideology rather than the science of it - maybe it reminds the left of the "old world" of the industrialization they hate - I don't know.
The animosity against coal is puzzling. All I can think of is that coal is so cheap and plentiful that it makes the expensive so called "green" alternatives not viable so they attack coal and even attempts to modernize coal into a "cleaner" fuel is attacked.
The folks like Al Gore and the United Nations could care little about Global Warming or pollution. It is about getting all nations equal. China is bringing on-line something like a new coal-fired plant every couple of weeks! China’s safety and operating standards are so poor that they have coal mine fires that are burning out of control (impossible to stop once they get big enough) that these fires put out as much CO2 as all of the U.S. cars and trucks in a year.
Of course most people don’t know that, and I think most of the sheeple really are concerned about the environment. But have the wrong idea that America is the biggest polluter. If they really wanted to save the earth they would let us mine in the U.S. where we have some reasonable standards and maybe limit the number of mines in places where they don’t care what they do.
It all starts with religion. They worship the creature more than the Creator, so error after error follows.
Hydrocarbons are irredeemably evil, and so are damned, regardless of how inadequate the alternatives.
They talk about hydrogen as a fuel, like you can just collect it somehow, ignoring all the realities that make it impractical.
They ignore thorium, because nuclear is anathema.
Hypocrites and elitists.
Even bark can generate power cleanly. At Huber, a wood mill near my home, they burn bark that they strip off their timber.
I cleaned some of the rods that keep soot from escaping into the atmosphere. Of course, decmorats are afraid of microscopic carbon. Funny thing though, carbon blocks sunlight. Just like clouds, a cloud of ash is carbon-based.