Another debunking of clean coal. The thing is it will never happen beyond a few demo projects. The point of the exercise is to buy time for the coal industry, not to actually get results. PM Rudd has chosen to throw in his lot with Big Coal and too bad for the Reef and the Basin. On Victoria's brown coal specifically I believe they will get $3bn in free carbon permits early on so they are teflon coated with respect to emissions cuts. Then add a few more years of inaction as they prepare for the miraculous advent of clean coal.

Problems with local groundwater haven't made it to the national media yet. I gather that even though the coastal desal plant will be allegedly powered by wind turbines the water pipeline to Melbourne area will use brown coal fired electricity. Note also that the Basslink cable to Tasmania emerges from the sea at Gippsland so I think we can infer the 'clean and green' State gets its increased electricity use from Victorian brown coal. No wonder emissions are going up when the PM promised they would go down.

Appropriate last word summary of CCS,Chris - "insane".

Whatever the motives of those who are promoting CCS,and there are some very cynical people amongst them,one has to question the mental fitness of these people to make decisions which impact so severely on Australia,the present population(not just humans)and the yet to be born.

The sad part is that we could be making rational decisions now and starting to put them into effect while there are still the resources available.But that is not going to happen unless there is a seachange in mass knowledge and opinion with a willingness to apply enough
pressure for radical change.

Just as "insane" encapsulates the present situation I believe "revolution" is the only hope for the future.

Yes Manorina "revolution" is the only hope for the future but a very faint hope.What chance to those who are concerned and who might one day be willing to take matters into their own hands have again the powerful establishment who on balance are more willing to go to war in some foreign land that put the same effort and expense into dealing with climate change and the other environmental pressures facing mankind?

I agree that 'clean' coal is a myth. Sequestration is merely moving the problem. One wonders how much energy will actually be used in sequestering the CO2. To me it's a bit like Nuclear energy simply moving the problem (what to do with the waste? burying it where?

I also agree that Rudd’s policy (?) like little Johnny’s has a short term focus.
Given their reliance on ‘the vote’ one can’t really blame them.
Consider for a moment Australia’s economy is built on us being a farm with assorted mines. Even the pulp mill is continuing the mental block that we are only an extractive economy. The obvious flaw is that previous governments both side have never actually taken a realistic long term plan i.e. how do we want to be in 25/50 years given the limitations of resources and the health of the planet.

Successive governments have taken the easiest road (and most popular option)…money and jobs now. This inturn has meant giving effective control of this country (the western world) to capitalism and those who control it.
In effect governments have thrown their hopes and faith for the future (unwisely) on the aggregated competition of a series of self-serving (largely amoral) entities.
The theory is arguable but the reality of capitalism isn’t so ultimately self cancelling of extremes benign.

The problem any government faces today is how to balance economic growth (capitalism), therefore jobs and at the same time re jig our society/economy to one that can cope with short, medium and long term future social interests planing.
None of this can be done in the life of one or two terms in government.
To complicate the issue government’s serious decision making ability is mired in the quicksand of politics and we as people let it happen.

Coal ash mishaps include Aberfan, Wales, where a school was buried during school hours, and Buffalo Creek, which I think was in the US state of Virginia, with about 100 killed. So no environmentalists are saying coal waste is "as dangerous" as nuclear power waste, which hasn't harmed any neighbour of any nuclear power installation, ever, anywhere.

There is not now, and has never been, such a thing as an antinuclear environmentalist.

With uranium costing about US140,000 a tonne, and coal costing about a million dollars per uranium-tonne-equivalent -- much less than other fossil fuels -- there is no mystery about why astroturfers would insinuate that nuclear waste has not always been harmless. But it has.

--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/