Biden-Palin Face Off - Page 3

I was hoping it was going to be more obvious... Well Biden did do better but I was hoping for a dramatic humiliation of Palin. But she did well lol, I was disappointed, I wanted her to fumble~

Seriously, I am totally with you guys on the 3rd grader shout out thing... What is this, high school president debate? She was good but redundant...

Does anyone know anything about "clean coal"? Is there even such thing? Sen. Biden mentioned it but I can't quite tell whether he is being truthful about this or not.

It was hillarious how she practicly dodged many of the questions and never really answered theM.. yikES!

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/p...coal_myth.html

The 'Clean Coal' Myth

The phrase "clean coal" is polluting the energy debate. The phrase is an oxymoron. We can come up with ways to clean up after coal - many of them very expensive and, in the case of coal's greenhouse gas emissions, untried. And we can use coal more efficiently than in the past. But coal itself is not clean and never will be. That is a matter of chemistry and geology.

That hasn't stopped the phrase "clean coal" from seeping into politics like coal dust on a Beijing morning. Indeed it's likely viewers will hear the phrase at least a couple of times in Thursday's vice presidential debate.

Sarah Palin used the phrase "clean coal" at least twice during her speech at the Republican National Convention.

And last weekend the Obama campaign tried to defuse a controversy set off when Sen. Joe Biden was quoted as saying that he and Obama did not support any new coal plants in the United States, including "clean coal."

The McCain campaign quickly put up radio ads in places like Colorado and Ohio highlighting Biden's comment. "Clean Coal is important to America. And to Ohio," said the script. "For Ohioans, coal means thousands of jobs. Economic growth. More affordable electricity. For America, coal means energy independence. And clean coal means cleaner air. But Obama-Biden and their liberal allies oppose clean coal."

The Obama campaign did not respond by saying there's no such thing as clean coal. That would be too subtle for the intense campaign season. In Colorado, The Denver Post quoted an Obama campaign spokesman, Matt Chandler, as saying that "Sens. Obama and Biden are committed to investing in clean coal and developing five 'first-of-a-kind' commercial scale clean coal-fired plants in the U.S."

But the truth is this: There is simply no such thing as clean coal. Prying it loose from the ground is a dirty business and burning it produces a variety of pollutants and greenhouse gases. The Clean Air Act and subsequent regulations have sharply reduced nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions that caused smog, soot and acid rain by forcing utilities to build expensive scrubbers. Now many environmentalists are trying to block new coal-fired power plants because the existing ones produce 36 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

This is controversial because half of U.S. electricity comes from coal-fired plants, and if U.S. electricity consumption keeps rising the way it has for most of this decade, the country will need more electricity-generating plants. Then there are all the coal mining jobs in the country, especially in swing states like Ohio and Colorado.

To be sure, there are cleaner ways to burn coal, all things being relative. New coal plants operate more efficiently than old ones and therefore burn about a third less coal. And companies have been trying to come up with ways to isolate carbon dioxide from exhaust gases and bury it in the ground.

What do politicians and coal boosters mean when they talk about "clean coal?"

To some politicians, the phrase "clean coal" may seem like shorthand for technology that would separate carbon dioxide out of the exhaust of a coal-fired plant and bury it in the ground. So far, however, no coal plant like that exists in the United States, though a handful of companies are interested in building one. Such plants are expensive and untested. The Energy Department recently announced that it would hand out billions to a few firms to try out technology to capture and bury carbon dioxide in the ground. The financial rescue bill passed by the Senate Wednesday night included tax credits to firms that do that. But it will be many, many years before any carbon sequestration plant is in operation.

I've also heard many utilities, coal companies and politicians use the phrase "clean coal" to describe certain coal plants that convert coal to energy with an efficiency rate of over 40 percent, compared to older plants that function just over 30 percent. These plants, called "supercritical" plants, operate at higher pressures and higher temperatures and burn coal more efficiently, thus requiring less coal to generate the same amount of electricity. But either kind of plant still produces emissions.

The way big coal companies and industry associations use the phrase "clean coal" often makes coal seem like an easy and relatively harmless way out of our energy and climate change problems. Take the group "American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity." (And who wouldn't be for clean coal electricity?)

On their web site: "Thanks to an abundance of coal, combined with American ingenuity and advanced technologies, we don't have to choose between affordable energy and improved air quality," the ACCCE says. "That's right -- electricity from coal is getting even cleaner everyday."

But we do have to make choices about our energy future. And we're not really making them.

I'm not saying that we should switch off all the coal plants. Our current dependence on coal-fired electricity can't be denied or wished away. But let's have an honest, more dispassionate debate about the future.

Whether we want to continue building new coal plants should be a question that weighs: Americans' desire for cheap electricity, the steep costs and uncertain technology for capturing carbon dioxide and burying it in the ground, the cost of renewable energy sources, our capacity to use existing electricity supplies more efficiently, and the uncertain but potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Those issues are tough enough without hinting at easy solutions that don't exist.

I think Biden did such an awesome job. You can tell the difference between Biden's substantive answer versus Palin's non-substantive answer and I really could see Bush in Palin when she actually revels in her ignorance just like Bush did right down to "nukular." And Palin's winking at the camera/audience all the time was sooooo fake.

Biden wins the debate hands down.

EDIT: Favorite line of the night came from Biden:

Commentator analogies of the debate:

Quote:

Palin looked like the student who crammed to memorize the test and eked out a B. Biden looked like the professor who wrote the book, and taught the class

In regards to Palin's winks and smiles:



lol!