Unemployment ! Jobs ! Damm , if it just were not for those pesky facks 

You may want to fire your statistician, we have a real unemployment rate of 15% with no end in sight.  Add to this another 5 trillion to the debt in 4 years.  Those rose colored glasses need to come off.

I recognize the job creation chart as one drawn up by the WH to hide the actual picture.  Job creation is bearly keeping up with population growth -- we're rowing hard to stay in place -- not go over the falls.

The unemployment rate has kept over 8 percent since Obama's inaugeration.  No president achieved that since and including the Great Depression. Quite an accomplishment

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

"The U-6 figure, the real unemployment rate,  includes everyone in the official rate plus “marginally attached workers” — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find."  This picture of the unemployment probem us even more grim.

http://www.portalseven.com/emp...2009&toYear=2012

Facts, when arrayed in a logical manner, are extremely pesky things, not conducive to use by knaves or liberals. 

translation... your chart doesn't say what i want it to, so i brought my own!

TVA was sued in 2006 for pollution caused by it's coal fired plants.(Before O'Bama) They lost the lawsuit, and have to pay out millions of dollars. A company cannot keep engaging in a process that causes these type lawsuit losses, therefore they are cutting back considerably on their coal fired units. There are pollution control systems available to remove most of the pollution, but you're talking hundreds of millions to install them. That being said, coal is no longer a low cost solution. If they lose lawsuits, or install and maintain expensive pollution control equipment, all these cost have to be passed on to the end consumer.   

Originally Posted by yoda:

translation... your chart doesn't say what i want it to, so i brought my own!

Translated from liberalese and troll, seeweed means his little ruse (canned WH chart) didn't work. As shown, there are serious problems with the economy.  Obama's fixes are only making it worse.  

While, there is truth in your post, the 800 percent increase cited isn't exactly cheap, either.  Meanwhile, China is building about one coal fire plant per week. India abandoned new coal fired plant construction -- three of their grids failed because of lack of capacity placing 13 of their 20 states powerless.

translation... i can tell you everything wrong ... but i have no solutions to help the problem, i'd rather just complain about someone trying to solve the problem.

TVA's engineering work on coal fired power plants was done in Muscle Shoals, and they're about as clean as technology will allow.  And, nuclear plants are too expensive to build.  We don't have enough wind for windmills, and 10% of U.S. steel production is going into towers and propellers that just sit in dormant winds.  Solar collectors are inefficient, and unprofitable.

No matter what the power industry does, it's not enough for "the administration." So, let's get rid of O'Bama and the democrats.

In the past, doctors bled patients to relieve them of the effects of "bad humors."  Bleeding probably killed George Washington prematurely.  

Government -- first stop the bleeding -- stop doing what doesn't help and only contributes to harming the patient. 

Inventor, I think everything that I stated was truth, not just truth in it. The lawsuit I mentioned was filed by the state of North Carolina, not the EPA. I mentioned the payout of millions of dollars(I think $60 million), but closing several coal fired plants was also part of the settlement. Probably more important, it set a precedent for the entire power industry that you can be sued, and you will probably lose. While I have my own list of complaints with the EPA and other environmental agencies, I hope we would never start looking to China for setting environmental standards. Where did the 800% price increase reference come from ? I don't know of anyone in the power industry predicting that.

Oldman,

My point was that the lawsuit is one result of taking regulations too far.  Rational pollution laws have advanced to a point of diminishing returns -- meeting the particulate levels are extremely expensive for the small benefit achieved.  

I used China as an example of no matter what we do to clean up the global atmosphere, there are others building plants that will obviate our efforts, leaving us at a disadvantage.

As to the 800 percent increase, from my original post to this thread:

"The auction set capacity prices at $136/MW across the PJM footprint, which includes the Mid-Atlantic region and parts of the Midwest, the committee noted. This price is eight times higher than the $16/MW price that was set for 2012-2013, it added."

The actual increase from $16/MW to $136/MW is 850 percent.  During the last days of communist Albania, households were limited to one 40 watt bulb and no other electrical appliances.  I swear that appears to be the goal of the left here.

We can just be thankful the Almighty God that we have a president who understands the energy problem and is attempting to do something about it. rather than cow tow to the powerful coal and energy lobby.

Although renewable energy is still a very small percentage of our power requirements, as Confusus said "the journey of 1000 miles starts with one single step" . 

Closer to home, I believe that TVA is planning on a phaseout of coal as the major power source. I'm quite sure it will be around for some time , but hopefully only during periods of high demand. 

Plans are now to finish WPN U@, then Belefounte U! & 2.  Although I have not seen anything from TVA about this, I found this article in Popular Science a while back : 
 http://www.popsci.com/science/...lar-nuclear-reactors

We need to already be started getting off coal for baseline power., In reality it is not cheap, but over the long run both expensive, dirty, and environmentally disasterous . If you don't believe that last part, just take a trip to Drakesboro , KY and drive down to the Paradise Power plant. Then ask yourself "is this place where I would want to live and raise my family ? "

If you haven't ever been there, you should not even comment on that last part.

Coal is cheap, it's been made expensive by liberals.  China and India will gladly buy up our reserves.  Don't think for one minute that this resource will be left in the ground, it's going to be used somewhere.

Your president is also responsible for defaulted green energy loans and cronyism.  He's also responsible for the largest increase in our national debt by any president.  He's also responsible for the class warfare being waged in this country and has divided this country like no other president.

Green power is extremely expensive as a main generator of electricity, as the Spanish found out the hard way.  

The Spanish newspaper La Gaceta runs with a full-page article admitting Spain’s “green jobs” is a boondoggle, which President Obama cited as his model for the United States. Spain has abandoned their alternate energy program as a failure – a failure that contributed to their present economic recession, unemployment and deficit.

“La Gaceta boldly exposes the failure of the Spanish renewable policy and how Obama has been following it. The headline screams: “Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster.”

According to the Spanish government, the policy has been such a failure that electricity prices are skyrocketing and the economy is losing jobs as a result (emphasis added):

The internal report of the Spanish administration admits that the price of electricity has gone up, as well as the debt, due to the extra costs of solar and wind energy. Even the government numbers indicate that each green job created costs more than 2.2 traditional jobs, as was shown in the report of the Juan de Mariana Institute. Besides that, the official document is almost a copy point by point of the one that led to Calzada being denounced [lit. "vetoed"] by the Spanish Embassy in an ob act in the U.S. Congress.

The presentation recognizes explicitly that “the increase of the electric bill is principally due to the cost of renewable energies.” In fact, the increase in the extra costs of this industry explains more than 120% of the variation in the bill and has prevented the reduction in the costs of conventional electricity production to be reflected on the bills of the citizens.”

http://www.iberica2000.org/es/Articulo.asp?Id=4363

Personally, I believe in learning by experience -- other peoples' experience and expense.  But, that certainly hasn't stopped Obama.  Bain has an 80 percent success rate in its startups and rescues. Obama's failure rate for green companies is certainly much worse.

Green power is much less dependable than coal, NG, or nuclear.  Solar power doesn't work at night, or on rainy or cloudly days.

Wind generators are not as efficient as advertised and don't work when the wind is low, or in very cold weather -- just when power is needed for heat.  Because green power is not dependable, an alternate source must be readily available 24/7 -- a source ready for instant generation.  Natural gas is the only source that meets that requirement.

As to my assertion on the inefficiency of wind power:

"The John Muir Trust (JMT), one of Scotland's leading conservation bodies, has challenged the common assertion that wind farms run at an average of 30 per cent capacity over a year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear...nt-than-claimed.html

I would like to thank Seeweed for the mind picture he gave me with "cow tow."  I could just see a pickup truck pulling a cow to the coal company.   Kowtow is what Obama does to practically every world leader he meets.  

Murray is not the only coal producer reducing its work force in the face of increased scrutiny from federal environmental regulators. Recently, Consol Energy - parent company of the Marshall County McElroy and Shoemaker mines - issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN notice, for a plan to lay off 318 employees at the Fola Operations in Bickmore, W.Va., east of Charleston. The layoffs are expected to take effect Aug. 30.

 

Also in West Virginia, Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources recently announced plans to cut their work forces throughout the Mountain State.

 

All three companies blame the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for causing a downturn in coal demand, citing this as the reason for reducing their coal operations.

 

http://www.timesleaderonline.c...al-mine-closing.html

But is the EPA really to blame for a downturn in coal demand? No, it's just simple economics -- with an opportunity for baseless Obama bashing as a side benefit. 

Why Coal Plants Retire: Power Market Fundamentals as of 2012 

July 30, 2012

Power companies in the U.S. have announced a growing number of retirements of coal-fired power plants over the past 12 to 14 months. While not unexpected, recent announcements have sparked debate over the causes of these business decisions, with some pointing to regulations issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as the primary reason. 

Putting aside the political context of the current debate, a closer examination of the facts reveals that the recent retirement announcements are part of a longer-term trend that has been affecting both existing coal plants and many proposals to build new ones. The sharp decline in natural gas prices, the rising cost of coal, and reduced demand for electricity are all contributing factors in the decisions to retire some of the country's oldest coal-fired generating units. These trends started well before the EPA issued its new air pollution rules. 

In general, the owner of a coal-fired power plant (or of any generating facility, for that matter) may decide to retire the plant when the revenues produced by selling power and capacity are no longer covering the cost of its operations. Though sometimes these decisions are complex, they essentially can resemble the basic choices that households face, for example, when they have to decide whether making one more repair on an old car is worth it; often, making the repair is more expensive and risky than the decision to trade in that car and buy a new one with better mileage and other features that the old car lacks.

These plant-retirement decisions thus turn on these economic fundamentals: Can the plant produce power at electricity prices that allow the owner to cover its operating and investment costs, including the ability to earn a reasonable return from the production and sale of electricity? It is these other considerations, beyond the EPA's clean air rules, that have been influencing recent coal plant retirement decisions.

http://www.coalpowermag.com/en...-as-of-2012_400.html

Prop - the plants being mothballed are due to the cost to bring them up to compliance by the drop dead dates.  If it were just economic, they would simply be idled until the economy picks back up.  If it were economic, none of the green power sources would be used as they are primarily peak power sources (and expensive) and without high peak demands, baseload units would only be used. 

Colbert Fossil, which may be on the chopping block, is producing a megawatt-hr for $21, which is inline with TVA's newer and most efficient fossil plants.  Last time I looked, the cheapest was around $19.  TVA would have no problem making money on this plant with hub market prices are at or above $50/megawatt-hr. 

I find it interesting that Colbert has been pretty much idled around 6 months/year for the last 3 years and there has been no improvement in air quality.

Inventor was dead on about green power inefficiencies.  It's well documented that It takes 3 MW of green to replace 1 MW of coal/nuclear/natural gas. 

Hope everyone enjoys their future high energy rates,  Especially, if the greenies shut down fracking -- no more cheap NG.

i hope everyone enjoys their planet.. we have no right to ruin it for future generations, in the name of "cheap ng"!

Anyone who's traveled outside the US and western Europe, knows that the poorer the society, the more polluted it is.  Portions of Russia may not be habitable for hundreds of years.

Drillers have practiced fracking for NG for nearly 100 years, with litttle to no ill effect.  Certainly, fracking is cleaner than digging for coal. Guess I should thank our resident greenie for affirming my comment on fanatics.  They won't be happy until we're in early 18th century mode with 90 percent of the population dead. 

Originally Posted by interventor1212:

with "little to no ill effect"? really?!?!  i guess your google works different from everyone else , in the real world. i see page after page after page of problems associated with "fracking". from sinkholes to blowouts to total destruction of all wildlife and vegetation... once again, the local rt. wingnut has proven the conservatives don't give a rip about the planet we live on!

As conservatives live on this planet, have families and wish the best for their children and grandchildren, of course, they care for the planet.  They also know that a wealthy nation, with more people employed and living well is the best way.

As go Google, we follow up on the claims and find most, if not all, the anti-fracking claims were false. Next, someone will claim the spotted owl need deep woods to nest in.

NG is a clean and sustainable form of energy. Plus, it provides the US with the opportunity to become a net EXPORTER of energy over the next 20 years. We can liquefy, package, and ship natural gas to the Asians cheaper than they are currently buying it from the Russians. NG goes for roughly $3 per unit right now and the Russians are charging the Asians approximately $18 a unit. That is an arbitrage opportunity if there ever was one.