Clean coal will save us!

I've always looked ahead aways and tried to guess how the USA will try to maintain its "non-negotiable" way of life. Since the oil is drying up and natural gas no real substitute for things like transportation the natural choice will be coal. The US has one of the largest coal reserves left on the planet and it will naturally use coal to stave off the inevitable. The first part of getting coal mainstream is to dispel the "myth" that it is dirty, toxic stuff that pollutes and causes 4x-5x the global warming effects when compared to natural gas and oil. The new buzzword is "clean coal", which is a somewhat hilarious oxymoron (if you ignore the tragic consequences down the road). I just watched a "clean coal" commercial that tried to convince me coal is both "clean" and the solution to "preserving our way of life" (in the US). This is the first of a long media blitz to convince everyone that "clean coal" is America's only hope. Course it doesn't matter that "clean coal" is neither clean nor anything more than a stopgap solution whose consequences will be severe.

I fully expect that liquified coal as a gas substitute will appear shortly and will be "guaranteed to burn more cleanly than petroleum based gasoline". Some pseudo-science will be dumped into select scientific journals to support this and a carefully orchestrated media campaign will ensue to make sure folks accept this as gospel. The major media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc will line up with "pro/con" viewpoints that will end with a subtle endorsement of "clean coal". A bunch of forward looking technologies will be showcased to show how we will dispose of coal's toxic byproducts and greenhouse gas emissions. None of these will be anything more than pie-in-the-sky Rube Goldberg-esque technologies but it will establish the idea that coal is "clean" and essential. Anyone questioning this in a serious and vocal manner will be branded as unpatriotic or worse.

The reality will be $3-$5 a gallon "clean coal" gas that Americans will use to ease themselves off of foreign petroleum. The side-effects will be a very rapid rise in CO2 levels beyond anything the IPCC or anyone else had considered possible. I fully expect that within five years of "clean coal's" appearance at the pump we'll see 450 parts per million CO2. Since my guess is "clean coal" fuel will be mainstream by 2010 this means 450 ppm by 2015.

Clean coal is a bit like treating a terminal cancer patient who has a year to live with something that makes it appear that the cancer has disappeared for 2-3 months but actually accelerates its growth markedly and kills the patient after half a year. The patient gets 2-3 months of symptom relief but suffers horribly in the 3 months following their "symptom free" period. Clean coal is the equivalent. It will relieve the end-of-oil symptoms for a brief period (say three to five years or so) but will accelerate climate change to the point that things become very ugly very quickly.

My guess is that the advent of "clean coal" fuel marks the terminal spiral of rapidly accelerating climate change that will produce sea level rise predicted for a century from now in a few short years.