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[quote user="eastside"] No surprise here.  Late last year I posted a thread "End of the line for coal?" that linked to a story in [url=http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_46/b4009089.htm?chan=search]Business Week[/url].The emerging consensus among power industry analysts was that coal was going to become more and more untenable as a power source because the newly elected Democratic congress was likely to enact carbon emissions taxes.  Some of the more vocal members of this group went off on a completely irrelevant tangent, disputing the scientific basis for global warming.  (Which is probably why the thread was removed.)  What we’re really talking about is political reality. That has progressed beyond scientific debate and Congress is now considering bills to tax carbon emissions. Good luck to the coal companies for finding alternative uses.  Every alternative that I've read about runs into the same problems with an emissions tax.<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118532834584277100.html">Link to the original poster's WSJ story</a> (may require subscription)[/quote]When it was discovered that concurrent warming is occuring on the other planets in the solar system, the idea of anthropogenic CO2 being a causal factor for Earth's observed warming went from being a highly auspicious debatable concept to a downright absurd notion, one that could only be carried forward by populist ignorance.  Hmmmmm......."populist ignorance"......that pretty much explains the 2006 elections.There is no scientific basis for the notion of man made global warming.  It is quite simply a religious disawakening, one on par with the 12th Iman.  It is dis-evolution.Opposition to coal is legit if it is based on normal environmental concerns, e.g. disruptions from mining the stuff, coal dust flying off unit trains, emissions of mercury, that sort of thing.  But basing opposition to coal on the notion of CO2 inducement of climate change is for the tin hat crowd.We had a discussion at our last meeting about how we're going to meet our future energy demand predictions.  Since the state decided to mandate a 30% renewable energy portfolio combined with a ban on long term contracts for coal power without CO2 sequestration, we like so many other utilities have decided to just ride it out and take advantage of the ability to pass on the higher costs of renewables, conservation programs, and ultimately passing on the cost of buying merchant energy at 10 times the cost of self facilitated coal power.  It is the consumers who will finally wake up to all this fraud once it hits them in the pocketbook bigtime, and then we'll finally see a reversal in this CO2 paranoia.  Maybe 5 years, 10 years down the road.  At least that's what the corporate directors are banking on.
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