Climate Change 11of12: Clean Coal Power Plants

Lecture by Professor Richard Muller of the University California, Berkeley. Taken from Lectures 20 and 21 of the spring 2008 webcasts of Physics For Future Presidents. Also known as Descriptive Introduction to Physics. Emphasis is on conceptual understanding, rather than mathematics.

This lecture deals with the physics of climate change, the data on global temperature and carbon dioxide changes, and some potential solutions. Also covered are the many mistakes that can be made, including the trap of exaggeration. He warns against the danger of cherry picking and overstating the case. When people discover that the exaggerated case is not valid, they may dismiss the problem altogether. Professor Muller has researched this topic for many years and has co-authored a book with Gordon MacDonald called "Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes".

The reports of the IPCC are referenced much during this lecture. The full IPCC reports can be found here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/assessments-reports.htm

This lecture can also be found here, along with many other lectures:
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978515

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• clean
• coal
• igcc
• power
• plant
• carbon
• sequestering
• efficiency
• ipcc

[merrthad]

Carbon dioxide is bad now?

[theinquisitor]

@merrthad, in certain quantities yes. Water is also bad if you have too much of it. Without any CO2, the planet would be too cold. Too much and it's too hot. It's a matter of balance.

[superpinga]

"Clean coal" doesn't exist. All coal is by definition, DIRTY!

[theinquisitor]

Yeah, it's a bit of a misnomer, but the idea is keep the "dirt" out of the air, by sequestering it somewhere. The problem is if the sequestration fails.

I think some genetically engineered bacteria that metabolise extremely high concentrations of CO2 at an unnatural speed would be handy for this. Pump all that CO2 into a vat of those things, and they'd turn it all into food or fertiliser or plastic or something. That would be awesome.

[theinquisitor]

Yeah there are a lot of mitigating factors. Depends very much on what other energy sources we'll be using alongside coal. I think at best, clean coal will be stopgap measure. We'll surely need something more sustainable in the long term.

[Jacnas]

eia(.)doe(.)gov/oiaf/ieo/coal(­.)html

But it's of little importance here. I should've clarified that i'm not disputing the amount of coal there is (it wasn't even mentioned in this vid) but the projection of 100s of years worth of coal in the US. I would like to see his source for that. But since I can't, I can only speculate that it comes with a caveat "at current rates of consumption".

[theinquisitor]

Do you have a source that indicates what the amount of useable coal is? As they say in wikipedia [citation needed].

[Jacnas]

It was a nice lecture until the patently false claim about the amount of usable coal.

[Riggro]

man... I liked him until he said he drives a Prius...