Obama gets global warming. you just don't agree with him on this issue. He has consistently said that he will not push coal to liquid if it can't be sequestered and this can't be done efficiently (same as tester and schweitzer). he has an amendment that offers just this point.

I'll simply link to this article on Obama:

http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2004/08/0 4/griscom-obama/

Given that Obama still has a 100 percent rating from LCV he hasn't changed since then. He views coal as an option to ween us off foreign oil. If it can't be done in an environmentally friendly fashion, namely no worse than gasoline, than it won't be an option anymore for him. if it is as bad as gasoline, than it will merely be a substitute for gas, and, with the Boxer-sanders legislation (which Obama is a co-sponsor), will be accountable to the requirements of this bill.

I don't know if you have or not either, matt, but i would encourage you to read Obama's latest book.

It's pretty clear where he stands on the issues (especially foreign policy) and a whole lot better than analyzing sound byte answers.

Schweitzer is the biggest proponent, you should call him up and ask him to come by and explain his thoughts.

I'll repeat what I posted on the last of these conversations and just add that I'm not sure how you'll ever be satisfied if you expect politicians to behave as academics, always swayed by reason, never giving into parochial interests or supporting policies which might be good for their home but bad for others.  

That doesn't mean we can't do our best to hold their feet to the fire, but being despondent about it doesn't seem like it will help much.

>>>>>

Let me be clear, CTL is bad, it's a shame that Obama  is supporting it, and I'd like him more if he didn't.  

That said, it's a very minor part of his energy strategy, and is not intended to deal with global warming.  It's targeted at oil dependence, which is a problem closely related but in some ways distinct from climate change.  If CTL ends up in its best-case scenario for emissions (about even with oil), it will be a net good because it will provide another source of fuel, allowing additional diversification, lessening our vulnerability to price shocks in one commodity, and reducing money sent to OPEC and other oil-producing countries.  It will also increase the price of coal for electricity (more demand, after all), which might help natural gas or renewables get a foot slightly further in the door.

Of course, the best case scenario is unlikely.  But one thing that could really help create the economic incentive for it is a comprehensive cap (or tax) on carbon, which Obama (and all the Democrats) supports.  Another thing about that cap, it will apply to CTL production so if it does pollute more, they'll have to pay through the nose for it and frankly, the whole enterprise will die if they can't make it clean.

None of that is the real point though.  That is this: what we do right now in terms of CO2 pollution really matters very little.  Climate change is caused by decades of action, not a year or two.  It's far more important to create a framework that will reduce emissions 80% by 2050 (just to pick some numbers) than to reduce by 2% right now.  

Of course, it's quite possible that the only way to get the former is to do the latter.  Possible, but honestly a lot less likely than you'd think.  There's a strong case to be made for setting up a framework that demands serious innovation in clean technologies AND diversifies our (admittedly dirty) options right now.  

If CTL was seen as part of the ANSWER to global warming, that would be a problem, but I don't think anyone sees it that way.  They see it as a short-to-medium-term mitigator of the effects of the coming oil peak, and as a technology that will obliterated by the long-term shift to a carbon-reducing economy.

Now, I will be the first to admit that all of this depends on your belief that Obama would work to get those long-term innovation programs going: subsidies for renewables, better efficiency standards on appliances, a carbon cap or tax, etc.   If you think he won't, then you might be right than his plan is "nonsense."  But if you believe (as I do) that any Democratic candidate will be very similar in terms of their devotion to this issue (with the possible exception that Richardson might be more hard-nosed about it), then the shuffling around of subsidies now is unfortunate but of relatively little importance.

Like I said, I don't like CTL, I think it's a waste of time and money that ought to be going to hydrogen, hybrids, and putting some SERIOUS money into mass transit (one of the most important energy issues that no one seems to talk about), but in the grand scheme of things I just can't get too worked up about it.

"The point is not to bash Obama"....but that's what you've been doing on every post for the last three months.  Just endorse Edwards and get it over with.

Oh good lord. Can we have one thread here that doesn't immediately devolve into petty bickering about who supports whom?  Can we maybe talk about the issue instead of which particular politician we have sworn a blood-oath to defend?

It's going to be a long campaign season...

It's not so simple to just measure who is purest on global warming and say they are the best environmentally. Energy security is important as well and a world where the US has a less interventionist presence in the Middle East because of our energy independence has a MUCH better chance of addressing global warming. The US has historically low influence in oil producing countries because we use so much oil we are like junkies going to a dealer for a fix.

Change that political dynamic and a whole range of new global arrangements to combat global warming become possible.

I'm with writer James Howard Kunstler, whose most recent book (The Long Emergency) lambasted alternative fuels as a solution to the Peak Oil issue. The evidence that is available so far about alternative/renewable fuels  supports his thesis: that there is no substitute for oil and that the alternatives are either unrealistic, or tend to accelerate environmental degradation and climate change. Look at ethanol here, here, here, and here.

Tester and Obama do not agree.

The point is not to bash Obama, who for all intents and purposes is probably the only way that progressives have any shot at beating Clinton.

Last time I checked there was a pretty good progressive leading in Iowa, Labor's guy, the one who has rejected Rubinomics and is now speaking out against the militarism of Bush's GWOT. Matt, given your serious problems with Obama, maybe it's time you hopped on board the strong-and-steady Edwards's train. He's not perfect, but from most angles, he's looking like a better progressive than Obama, no?

You know Matt, I can appreciate your frustration with all the candidates and with the dem party in general.  I really can.

Only occasionally will policy move forward in a great burst of energy and change.  Most often change is incremental, two steps forward and one step back, swinging with the pendulum of party politics.  Bush moved the ball forward because of 9-11.  Most presidents don't have that kind of power.

I am frustrated by you wanting something you can't have.  The drive to take back Congress elected many many non-progressive dems.  This website and others supported those non-progressive dems very loudly.  But now we can't count on them to vote against war funding.  We can't count on them period.

Well barring unforeseen circumstances, one of the three dems running (Obama, Clinton or Edwards) is going to be the next president. More likely one of two is going to be the next president.  The time has come to start accepting that.  

If you can live with Hillary as President then keep doing what you are doing.

 Al Gore's Ten Point Plan for Global Warming, presented to both houses of Congress on March 21, 2007:

1. Immediately freeze carbon at the existing level; then implement programs to reduce it 90 percent by 2050.

2. Reduce taxes on employment and production, instead taxing pollution (especially CO2). These pollution taxes would raise the same amount of money, but make us more competitive by encouraging employment while discouraging pollution.

3. A portion of the revenues must be earmarked for low-income and middle-class people who will have a difficult time making this transition.

4. Negotiate a strong global treaty to replace Kyoto, while working toward de facto compliance with Kyoto. Move the start date of this new treaty forward from 2012 to 2010, so the next president can start to act immediately, rather than wasting time trying to pass Kyoto right before it expires. We have to try to get China and India to participate in the treaty. If they don't immediately participate, we have to move forward with the treaty regardless, trusting that they will join sooner rather than later.

5. Impose a moratorium on construction of any new coal-fired power plant not compatible with carbon capture and sequestration.

6. Develop an "electranet" - a smart grid that allows individual homeowners and small businesses to create green power and sell their excess power to the utility companies at a fair price. Just as widely distributed information processing led to a large new surge of productivity, we need a law that allows widely distributed energy generation to be sold into the grid, at a rate determined not by the utility companies, but by regulation. The goal is to create a grid that does not require huge, centralized power plants.

7. Raise CAFE standards for cars and trucks as part of a comprehensive package. Cars and trucks are a large part of the problem, but coal and buildings must be addressed at the same time.

8. Set a date for the ban of incandescent light bulbs that gives industry time to create alternatives. If the date is set, industry will meet this challenge.

9. Create Connie Mae, a carbon-neutral mortgage association. Connie Mae will defer the costs of things like insulation and energy-efficient windows that cut carbon but are often not used by builders or renovators because they add to the upfront costs of homes, only paying for themselves after several years of energy savings.

10. The SEC should require disclosure of carbon emissions in corporate reporting.
- From the AlGore.org web site.

It's especially frustrating b/c we're such a wind-rich country.  

Is this "coal-to-liquid" the same as Coal Gasification as advocated by William Rosenberg, former assistant administrator for air and radiation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.?

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/ksgnews/Featu res/opeds/051705_rosenberg.htm

"Why has America's discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason-the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power-was and remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault."

Al Gore, The Assault on Reason.

Dick Gephardt working for peabody? WTF? The biggest union-busting coal company out there? I know they're headquartered in ST. Louis, but that's pretty disgusting. I used to have a lot more respect for him. But he should have told them to get lost and go find somewhere else to spend their billions.

Unless some dolt at UMW wanted Dick to get involved in the hopes that they could get Peabody to open up some of their mines to union workers. Fat chance.

This whole CTL is absolutely disgusting. It serves no one. The coal seams aren't deep anymore in the east, so all that coal that Rahall and Boucher and Byrd want to get out will come from strip mining and mountain top removal (which Rahall whole-heartedly supports btw). Absolutely disgusting.

The greatest threat here is the potential uniting of the coal industry with the oil industry in support of a gasoline-based near-term future.

Coal can be used to generate electricity MUCH more cleanly than is being done now, after all the Bush rollbacks of pollution control regs. And burning coal to make electricity in huge, closely monitored power plants has to be more efficient than using coal to make liquid fuel that will then be burned in a million small engines.

With coal in the role of a fuel for making electricity, the industry could become a supporter of an electric-based near-term future -- electric cars, electric-powered high-speed trains, commuter rail, streetcars, subways, etc.

Instead of looking for ways to put $30 or $100 billion behind a plan to put more fuel in the gas tank, Congress should be looking at ways to back the less polluting alternatives.

Check out the article at lightrailnow.org,
"Electrification 101: Ready-to-Go Urban Rail Projects as a Medium-Term Response to America's Oil Problems, by Alan S. Drake, May 2007."

Drake lists over 100 planned or proposed rapid transit lines, new and extentions, all across the country, where construction could start within 1 to 3 years. What's lacking is the needed federal funding match. The projects would cost upwards of $135 billion, including the state and local shares. But the Repubs have starved the federal grant program, and cut back the amounts and percentage of the federal matches, so that only a handful of public transit projects can get help in any year.

Drake's target: "Reducing total US oil consumption by 4% . . . in a dozen years just by focusing on building urban rail."

If only our team in Congress were as aggressive in support of these energy conservation projects as they seem to be behind the subsidies for using coal to keep fuel-burning cars on the roads.

From the new Grist link:

"In plain English, this means that best case scenario -- all new CTL plants are accompanied by CO2 sequestration facilities -- you come out with a fuel that's barely better on greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline.

With regard to global warming, the very best we could do with CTL is stay on the same disastrous trajectory we are on now. Does that sound like something that deserves taxpayer subsidies?"

Yes, quite possibly.  If the best-case scenario happens, then CTL is probably good because it diversifies our gasoline consumption possibilities, potentially staves off an oil shock, and at the very least pushes back the length of time before the oil peak hits and gives us a little more give in our economy when it does.

It's not supposed to fix global warming.  Let me repeat: it's not supposed to fix global warming.  It's part of a strategy to reduce the amount of oil we use which is a valuable goal completely independent of climate change.

As I said above, the best case scenario is probably unrealistic, particularly given the way political will works and given the other more valuable things the money could be spent on.  But we spend a LOT of money that should be going to better program and it doesn't necessarily mean everything less than perfect should just automatically be cut.  

As I've said, I like Obama and I do NOT like CTL, so his support for it worries me.  But I can't really imagine it being a deal-breaker, nor do I see it as demonstrative of the failure of politics.

I'm genuinely disappointed with Obama on this issue.  It shows a lack of seriousness in combating climate change.  As an Obama supporter, this is not a deal-breaker for me.  I know that politics is often very ugly, particularly when home state interests are involved.  Still, this is very disappointing.