Obama’s reputation for being a monumental fraud and an embarassment is already preceding him.  Via West Virginia Record:

At least one state coal industry leader said he was shocked by comments Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made earlier this year concerning his plan to aggressively charge polluters for carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.

“What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there,” Obama said in a Jan. 17 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that was made public today first on the Web site newsbusters.org, which calls itself “the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.” The story later was linked on The Drudge Report.

I’ve linked to the audio excerpt here.  When you play the video, this is what Obama says:

“What I said is we would put a cap and trade system in place that is aggressive if not more aggressive than anybody else’s that is out there.  I was the first to call for 100% auction on the cap and trade system, uh, which means that every unit of carbon or green house gases was emitted would be charged to the polluter.  That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there being presented, whatever power plants are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are in place, uh, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a power plant they can; it’s just it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that is being emitted.

{…}

With respect to coal is for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter.”

2 Responses to “Coal official calls Obama comments ‘unbelievable’”

1. Ben Says:
   February 12th, 2009 at 12:12 am

   Working in the coal power plant I can tell a few things about baseline vs renewable energy.

   Baseline is power that is always available nearly 100% of the time, this demand is vital to nearly everyone in the world that uses electricity for computer security, manufacturing capability, cold / cool food storage, or just about any other business / money producing entity.

   Renewable energy is good for off setting peak demand due to thats usually when solar power is most viable (approx 2-6pm) while wind power is mostly viable at night when winds pick up due to differing high and low pressures b/c of uneven thermal heating of the earth from sun.

   Renewable energy needs to be backed up nearly 100% (1mw baseline avail and offline for 1mw un-predictable renewable.) Coal, hydro, cogen, fuel oil/natural gas, and nuclear supply the baseline for the USA. Coal power is nearly 58% of the power supplied in the US/Canada.

   That the Obama campaign would say this in the heart of coal country was not thought out on his part and probably should have cost him those states, I’m not sure if it did but Many things they said should have cost them the election but the electoral college seems like it gives individuals a raw deal.

2. Ben Says:
   February 12th, 2009 at 12:24 am

   Continued cause I forgot to state the money involved on the part of the industry

   Nox emissions costs/ton
   2005 (effectively none)
   2008 $500/ton
   2009 $6000/ton

   a 500MW plant using (low emissions tech) produces about 25 tons/day thus costing the rate payers 150k/day or approx 1 mil a week

   The state govt is blocking a proposed plant that will produce 800MW and only discharges about 5 tons/day, its 2 billion investment that is not comming out of the stimulus plan b/c its a sound investment. Why would obama, Dems block this preventing jobs in michigan where we are losing jobs rapidly.

Leave a Reply