It is the Season to review. Review the past year and the almost past Bush administration, that is.. The media and many people I know seem eager to believe that the new Obama Administraion will bring a fundamental change to the functioning of the Federal government and the totalitarian policies it has been carrying here at home and the Superpower violence it has been visiting to people all over the globe. This is a hopeful view but not one I share. We have been living within a country taken over by a Coup. If you doubt my use of that word I refer you to Jane Mayers Book, The Dark Side or Eric Lichtblau's Bush's Law and my interviews with them. If the Supreme Court had not used extra constituional powers to stop the Florida recount in 2000 Bush would never have been president. The information contained in Mayer's and Lichtblaus well documented book lay out the usurpation of legislative and judicial powers by the Bush administration in the days and weeks following September 11th 2001.
The results are the horrors we have seen in the last 8 years including the unprecented intrusion of our military throughout the globe and the well documented removal of any expectations Americans might have to privacy in their communications andtheir actions. We have seen the Democrats in Congress posture about what they would do if they only had the power and then we've seen what they would really do when they got it. Nothing. At least nothing to take us back to a kinder, gentler Imperialist superpower.
It appears that the overwhelming majority of the rulers of this nation, those elected and those not, are more than happy with the moves towards fascism. That is probably why nobody but Naomi Wolf has actually used the C word.
Civil Liberty and Peace organizations all have their lists of actions they hope the new president will take. If his appointments and the attitudes and actions of the new Congress indicate anything, we have a long struggle ahead just to undo the damage done to the Bill of Rights and to stop the continued use of the U.S. Military to dominate the world.
Comments
your upcoming coal show
<div>here's a summary by 2 of our clark and cowlitz county anti-coal activists. this might be useful, if you haven't seen it already. the first refers to what a coal-fired plant can do - locally, and eventually, globally. by permititting coal transport we are contributing to global disaster.</div>
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------ Original Message ------<br>
From: "Jon Cole"<br>
To: CASCADE-LOOWIT-COAL-FORUM@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG<br>
Sent: 3/13/2012 2:05:29 PM<br>
Subject: Re: [CASCADE-LOOWIT-COAL-FORUM] Letter: Coal exports will harm community | The Columbian<br>
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<div><span>Thanks for crunching these Howard. Although I am no mathematician, but I did a little research of my own, and everything works out. On average, it takes:</span></div>
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<div><span>1,100 pounds of coal to generate 1 Megawatt Hour of electricity (1.1 pound coal/Kwh)</span></div>
<div><span>Transalta has two 730 Megawatt burners, so 1460 Megawatt Hour capacity</span></div>
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<div><span>So, 1,100 x 1460=1,606,000 pounds of coal burned EVERY HOUR Transalta operates at capacity. The numbers are already pretty big, so we'll divide by 2,000 to get it into tons and we arrive at 803 tons every hour. 24 x 803=19,272 tons every day, and 365 x 19,272=7,034,280 tons every year. Since they don't run wide open 24x7, they "only" consume 5.7 million tons per year.</span></div>
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<div><span>Now, lets look at emissions:</span></div>
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<div><span><span style="font-weight: bold">For every pound of coal burned, there are 2.86 pounds of CO2 generated</span>. It seems counter-intuitive, but when you think about some </span><span style="font-size: 10pt">(very)</span><span style="font-size: 10pt"> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt">simplified chemistry, coal is mostly carbon, and one carbon atom is being combined with two oxygen atoms in the emissions, hence nearly three times the weight.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 10pt">With 2.86 as our multiplier, 2.86 x 803=2,296.58 tons of CO2 every hour, 24 x 2,296.58=55,117.92 tons every day, and 365 x 55,117.92=20,118,040.8 tons every year if operated at capacity. Fortunately, they "only" burn 5.7 million tons per day, so it's "only" 16.3 million tons of CO2 every year.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 10pt">How about mercury? Fortunately (very, as this stuff is quite poisonous) according to the EPA, Transalta ranked 125th in the Nation at 361 pounds of mercury emitted in 2009.</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 10pt">Gosh, only 361 pounds in a year, that's basically a pound a day. What can that harm? Well, a little goes a long way. Since a gram of mercury is enough to poison a 20 acre lake, let's make pounds into grams:</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 10pt">16 ounces in a pound, and 28 grams in an ounce, so every day we get 16 x 28=448 grams of mercury released into the atmosphere. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt">Thankfully, new scrubbers are going into effect this year to cut that in half. That helps some, but mercury is so poisonous zero is the only number I can live with. There's already too much mercury in seafood for me to be able to eat it as much as I would like. I for one don't believe for a second the power plants this </span><span style="font-size: 10pt">exported</span><span style="font-size: 10pt"> coal will be burned in will have the best available technology in their facilities, so 44 million tons of burned coal probably translates to more than 8 x 361=2888 pounds of mercury emitted (most of it headed for the Pacific Ocean).</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 10pt">I know trains are the focus of our campaign, but keeping in mind emissions and having a few facts handy can be helpful to sway people in the right direction too. For Climate Change deniers, increasing their awareness about mercury may help. </span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 10pt">All the Best-</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: 10pt">Jon</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-weight: bold">From:</span></b> Howard Leighty<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold">To:</span></b> <a href="mailto:CASCADE-LOOWIT-COAL-FORUM@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG">CASCADE-LOOWIT-CO...@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG</a> <br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold">Sent:</span></b> Saturday, March 10, 2012 4:38 PM<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold">Subject:</span></b> Re: [CASCADE-LOOWIT-COAL-FORUM] Letter: Coal exports will harm community | The Columbian<br>
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<div>I am a numbers guy. </div>
<div>I like to verify the facts using the available numbers together with facts gathered elsewhere.</div>
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<div><b>Facts gathered elsewhere</b></div>
<div>{you just need to trust me that I researched these things online a few months ago}</div>
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<div>Each standard railroad coal car can carry approximately 120 tons of coal.</div>
<div>Each standard railroad coal car has a coupled length of 53.1 feet.</div>
<div>Each year has 365 days.</div>
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<div><b>The calculation (5.7 million tons of coal per year)</b></div>
<div>Suppose we assume that there will be 5.7 million tons of coal delivered per year by train.</div>
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<div>5,700,000 tons per year ÷ 365 days per year = 15,616 tons per day (every day).</div>
<div>15,616 tons per day ÷ 120 tons per car = 130 cars per day.</div>
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<div>130 cars per day x 53.1 feet per car = 6,910 feet per day (not counting the locomotives)</div>
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<div>It is not uncommon that a long heavy coal train may require multiple locomotives. Typically there can be four engines pulling at the front, two engines pushing in the middle and three engines pushing at the rear. That is a maximum of 9 locomotives. If we consider that a modern diesel-electric locomotive (engine) is about 67 feet long and there are up to 9 engines, then arguably there is up to an additional 600 feet of length due to the locomotives.</div>
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<div>6,910 feet + 600 feet = 7,510 feet for a typical train.</div>
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<div>7,510 feet per train ÷ 5,280 feet per mile = 1.42 miles per train.</div>
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<div>If we suppose that the train speed in town approaching the port will be about 5 miles per hour,</div>
<div>then 1.42 miles ÷ 5 miles per hour = 0.284 hours for the train to clear a crossing.</div>
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<div>0.284 hours x 60 minutes per hour = 17 minutes that each crossing will be blocked for each train</div>
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<div><b>The calculation (44 million tons per year)</b></div>
<div>44 million tons ÷ 5.7 million tons = 7.72 (multiplier factor)</div>
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<div>7.72 x 1.42 miles = 11.0 miles of train each day.</div>
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<div>At 5 miles per hour, each day will see 7.72 x 17 minutes = 131 minutes of blocked crossings each day.</div>
<div>That comes to 2 hours and 11 minutes each day when crossings will be blocked.</div>
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<div>It's a numbers thing.</div>
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<div>=Howard Leighty=<br>
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Tutoring Help in Math, Chemistry & Physics<br>
for Middle School, High School and College<br>
<a href="http://math-wizard.com/">http://math-wizard.com/</a><br>
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