Stinky McCoaltard Gets A Letter

Nevada Governor Stinky McCoaltard got a letter in the mail recently, from James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard’s Institute for Space Technology. Hansen is the recipient of this year’s Desert Research Institutes’s Nevada Award, and a noted critic of the very coal-fired plants old Stinky is so gung-ho about.

Hansen pointed out the short-comings of Stinky’s short-sighted views in the letter:

Governor Gibbons, I understand that you have also supported
proposals for new coal-fired power plants, in Ely, Mesquite, and White
Pine. These coal-fired power plants would expose ratepayers and Nevada
to grave financial risk. Steeply rising construction costs and coal
prices are themselves ratcheting up the cost of coal-fired electricity,
and sure-to-appear federal legislation that demands elimination of CO2
emissions will drive costs much higher. Given that Nevada’s geology is
not very well-suited for storing CO2, any assumption about retrofitting
a coal-fired plant for CO2 capture is a dubious and financially risky
proposition.

A major additional disadvantage of coal is the pollution associated
with it. There is no such thing as "clean coal." Good stewardship of
creation, of the planet that we inherited, suggests that the best place
for coal is in the ground, where it is. Renewable energies are also
superior in requiring little water, a resource that is becoming
increasingly precious.

Although the fossil fuel industry pedals misinformation, claiming
that renewable energies can only be a niche contribution to energy
needs, that contention defies common sense. As proof of the contrary,
consider just one of the renewable energies, solar power. The
technology for solar thermal power stations already exists, power
stations can be built rapidly, and as the market for them increases
their unit costs will fall steadily, as the cost of coal power
continues to rise. There is enough solar energy in a small
fraction of our desert Southwest to provide all of the electrical needs
of the United States. Nevada has the potential to be a leader in this
field, providing power for itself and for distant locations as a
low-loss grid is developed. Leadership would provide great economic benefit to Nevada and provide a large number of high-pay jobs and new businesses.

The full letter is reprinted over in Grist.

Note the bit about Nevada having a geology not well suited for storing CO2. Of course, Stinky’s spokester Kickheifer never heard of that, or simply lied, by saying:

the coal-fired plant that Sierra Pacific
Resources wants to build near Ely would help meet the state’s power
needs and would help promote new methods for capturing pollutants. (Sun)

This despite the power company being on record as saying it doesn’t want to actually have to PAY for CO2 reduction technology–should any such thing ever come into existence, that is.

Anyway’s, looks like the power company and its hedge fund overlords are a likely target for a takeover by California power companies, because they want access to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal. (RJ) Now, why didn’t Stinky think of that?