From The New York Times, “Burning Coal at Home Is Making a Comeback“:

Problematic in some ways and difficult to handle, coal is nonetheless a cheap, plentiful, mined-in-America source of heat. And with the cost of heating oil and natural gas increasingly prone to spikes, some homeowners in the Northeast, pockets of the Midwest and even Alaska are deciding coal is worth the trouble.

Burning coal at home was once commonplace, of course, but the practice had been declining for decades. Coal consumption for residential use hit a low of 258,000 tons in 2006 — then started to rise. It jumped 9 percent in 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration, and 10 percent more in the first eight months of 2008.

Online coal forums are buzzing with activity, as residential coal enthusiasts trade tips and advice for buying and tending to coal heaters. And manufacturers and dealers of coal-burning stoves say they have been deluged with orders — many placed when the price of heating oil jumped last summer — that they are struggling to fill.

The story quotes an air quality official from Fairbanks who regards burning coal as harmful to local residents’ health. Also cited is the president of an environmental testing firm from Portland, Oregon, who notes that restrictions on wood-burning stoves do not apply to coal-burning ovens. But that’s it in terms of opposition.

Too bad the NYT reporter didn’t ask a representative from a national environmental group for a comment, perhaps the answer to this question: “Your organization is leading a national ad campaign against coal as a source of electricity. Would you also like to ban the burning of coal in homes so people can stay warm in the winter? If not, why not?”

Environmentalists must surely dislike coal on all fronts; widespread acceptance of coal for home heating makes it more difficult to argue against the fuel generally as an evil, environmental monster. After all, you can’t concede that it’s OK for people to heat their homes with coal but then object to the use of an electric baseboard heater because the electricity is generated from burning coal.

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds, who recalls heating with coal in Heidelberg. Your correspondent remembers traveling through eastern Germany soon after the Wall fell, while they still burned high-sulfur brown coal. Now that was awful.)

A big political story to emerge this weekend was President-elect Obama’s intention of repealing many of President Bush’s executive orders. John Podesta appeared the FoxNews Sunday show, test-marketing the theme to gauge the response from constitutencies. AP summary, “Obama plans review of Bush executive orders“:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama plans an “across-the board” review of President George W. Bush’s executive orders, with an eye toward making his own quick imprint on important matters, and will swiftly put in place a “diverse,” bipartisan team of Cabinet members and aides, key advisers said Sunday.

“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority, without waiting for congressional action,” said John Podesta, who is coordinating Obama’s transition planning. “And I think we’ll see the president do that to try to restore … a sense that the country is working on behalf of the common good.”

Obama’s review of his predecessor’s executive orders will range from a ban that Bush placed on federal funding for research using new lines of embryonic stem cells to an expected easing of oil and gas drilling limits in sensitive Western lands that the Bush administration could seek in its final month.

Utah. It’s always Utah. We remember the hullabaloo over President Clinton’s unilateral declaration in 1996 of Grande Staircase of the Escalante National Monument in Utah, locking up 1.7 million acres of land without congressional action, land that holds a trillion dollars worth of clean coal.

 As Investor’s Business Daily recalled in an editorial earlier this year:

The Utah reserve contains a kind of low-sulfur, low-ash and therefore low-polluting coal that can be found in only a couple of places in the world. It burns so cleanly that it meets the requirements of the Clean Air Act without additional technology.

“The mother of all land grabs,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said at the time. He has called what was designated as the Grande Staircase of the Escalante National Monument the “Saudi Arabia of coal.”

President Clinton’s move was a clear statement of policy that the Clinton Administration was not serious about reducing U.S. reliance on foreign energy and that “energy security” was anything but a priority. It’s useful historical reminder for the upcoming energy debates.

Democratic Governor Joe Manchin has been a business-friendly, tireless advocate of improving West Virginia’s economic climate, and a much-appreciated defender of the state’s coal and energy sectors. The NAM has also worked with Governor Manchin in promoting health-care information technology.

All in a way of leading up say, congrats, Gov. Manchin, on your re-election. West Virginia’s voters like the message of economic growth, and lots of tough issues will make your efforts even more necessary over the next four years.

Wow. Interest must be really high. As the doors opened this morning, the line wound halfway around the block. Who knew that many people wanted to buy Lou Reed’s “Berlin: Live at St. Anne’s Warehouse” the day of its release?

What did you think we meant?

Anyway, at the Chevy Chase Community Center at 8 a.m., there were indeed long lines, but not for people whose last names begin with T-Z. Voting took a total of seven minutes. The precincts around here are remarkably diverse politically, at least by District standards. McCain will probably get a good 7, 8 percent of the vote.

Elsewhere among the auguries, right before we reached the polling place, a commuting bicyclist smacked right into a car, or vice versa. We spotted eight people calling in the accident on their cell phones. Civic involvement lives! (Ambulance and firetruck came within five minutes; the biker survived but injured.)

And at the intersection of Connecticut and M, NW this morning, 8:45 a.m., a dead deer, a buck. Deer in Rock Creek Park, absolutely, but at one of the busiest downtown interesections in the city? Couldn’t have been shopping at Burberry’s. The cabbie said he’d never seen anything like it in his 18 years in D.C. (Alas, no camera.)

Apropos dead animals on Election Day, we’d missed this news about yet another California ballot measure. From USA Today: “If passed Tuesday, Proposition 2 would prevent California farmers from confining egg-laying hens, pregnant pigs and veal calves in ways that don’t allow them to lie, stand and extend their limbs.”

Wonder if there’s an interview with any presidential candidate saying,  ”So if somebody wants to build a confined-animal feeding operation, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum to meet all the regulations we’re imposing.” Would that be news?

There are few things less appealing than a bullying, self-righteous newspaper editor, scolding politicians  and the public. Case in point: Phil Bronstein, editor at large at the San Francisco Chronicle, responding to Gov. Sarah Palin and various commentators criticizing the paper for what should have been a big story, Senator Barack Obama’s anti-coal pronouncements.

Bronstein, “My role in the Obama interview cover-up“:

It’s hard to pack in righteous indignation, outrage and a big 15 minutes of fame all at one time.

That’s pretty much where we are here at the Chronicle after Governor Palin’s claims over the weekend that we suppressed comments about the coal industry by Barack Obama at a January ed board meeting right here in SF. If you know our editorial page editor John Diaz, you know that making him say “hell” in a story means he’s pretty livid over the charge.

Me? My feeling is that hinky things happen in a bar at closing time. Let’s always set the record straight whenever possible. But are we really shocked that politicians on all sides twist things a to suit their purposes? You must be as stunned as I am.

The reality is this: the interview wasn’t squirreled down some digital hole, as the Governor claims (”the notion of a “tape” itself is pretty Watergate-era dated). If someone “found it”, digging for anything to help in the coal states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, I guess we didn’t hide it. It was available in audio and video form shortly after it happened and remains on SFGate to this day. Links to both forms of the interview appeared in the print Chronicle on a number of occasions. If the McCain campaign wanted to use this, what took them so long?

Is that really the journalistic standard you want to set, Bronstein? Hey, we posted the recording, YOU look for the news.

Seems antithetical to the idea that journalists have value in exercising news judgment, skills of interpretation, the ability to provide context, and perhaps a small gift of good writing. “Hell, we posted it, our obligation is complete.” Is that it?

As said below, it should come as no surprise that the San Francisco Chronicle’s team of editors and reporters missed the news in their January interview with Senator Barack Obama, that is, his clear, unambiguous support for policies to prevent utilities from building new coal-fired power plants because the costs would “bankrupt” them. In a cocooned newsroom full of the like-minded in the one-party city of San Francisco, statements about bankrupting coal seem like unobjectionable observations of fact. We should bankrupt coal? Absolutely, it’s dirty. And we can replace it with wind and solar energy and conservation and wishes and hopes and dreams of a brighter tomorrow.

Bronstein seems to think his journalistic value was proved when Senator Obama criticized him for being cynical, and he throws in a gratuitous “wink wink” reference to his ex, Sharon Stone. But who cares what a candidate thinks of you (or your ex)? The important thing is the story, and you missed it, as you yourself admit.

Still, I didn’t jump out of my seat when Senator Obama made his comments about the coal industry. It didn’t lead our story and wasn’t in the leadline. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Or maybe, as John Diaz notes, the statements were a little more nuanced than Governor Palin found useful in her rally speech.

Nuanced?

Lots of reaction to the remarks by Senator Barack Obama to the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board in January saying that the coal industry and utilities could never build a new coal-fired power plant because his Administration’s policies would “bankrupt” them.

The key quote from Sen. Obama:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in wind, solar, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I have said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

The reaction from Gov. Palin, campaigning in Marietta, Ohio.

Now a couple points on this: One is that here again, why is the audio tape just now surfacing? This interview was given to San Francisco folks many, many months ago. You should have known about this, so that you would have better decision-making information as you go into the voting booth.

The value of the information is unquestionable, but the interview had been on the Chronicle’s SFGate website since January, which hardly seems like suppression. Instead, it appears that the Chronicle’s reporters and editors missed the news. Hardly a surprise: In California, killing off productive sectors of the economy is considered sport. They probably just didn’t recognize that Senator Obama’s position was all that unusual. Candidates and Congress demonize and single out the oil industry for punitive tax and regulatory policies, what makes coal that special?

On the other hand, you would have expected someone from the RNC or McCain campaign to listen to the interview at some point and identify the issue, perhaps bringing it up in a debate or a campaign ad. We used to hear about something called “opposition research.” Apparently it’s gone out of fashion.

The Obama campaign responded, as reported in the Charleston (W.V.) Daily Mail, calling the remarks “wildly edited” to take them out of context. Really? “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them…” From a campaign statement:

The point Obama is making is that we need to transition from coal-burning power plants built with old technology to plants built with advanced technologies-and that is exactly the action that will be incentivized under a cap-and-trade program.

So that’s what’s happening to all those banks and investment houses in the financial crisis. They’re “incentivizing” themselves.

Spreading around the conservative blogosphere today is the tape and transcript of a conversation Senator Barack Obama had with the San Francisco Chronicle on January 17, 2008. From Newsbusters.org (which does the bolding):

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.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

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

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a (sic) ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It’s just that it will bankrupt them.

Newsbusters notes that the Chronicle reporter and editors did not deem the Senator’s remarks worth a story in January. Now, everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes media outlets simply miss a story.  We can see how you might overlook a policy statement to the effect that coal, which provides about half of U.S. electricity, will have no role in the economic country’s future.

But after Sen. Biden’s comments condemning clean coal, wouldn’t Senator Obama’s remarks have regained news value?

Huh. Just really hard to understand the failure to report this.

UPDATE: A San Francisco Chronicle headline, October 21: “Candidates’ energy plans like peas in a pod”

Well, that’s just not true, is it? As the Chronicle’s own interviews aptly demonstrate.

This post with video by the Politico’s Ben Smith on Senator Biden’s abjuration of coal is getting widespread play among the bloggers, chatterers and the commentariat.

Some great rope line video from Joe Biden’s recent Ohio swing, where he was asked by an anti-pollution campaigner about clean coal — a controversial approach in Democratic circles for which Obama has voiced support, particularly during the Kentucky primary.

Biden’s apparent answer: He supports clean coal for China, but not for the United States.

“No coal plants here in America,” he said. “Build them, if they’re going to build them, over there. Make them clean.”

“We’re not supporting clean coal,” he said of himself and Obama. They do, on paper, support clean coal.

Even disagreeing (strenuously) with Senator Biden on coal as a matter of policy, we must concede that his position is not unheard of. It’s shared by quite a few leading environmentalist opponents of energy development:

• “There’s no such thing as clean coal” — Bruce Nilles, who directs the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign. (Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 11, 2008.)
• “There’s no such thing as clean coal” — Robert Kennedy Jr. “‘Coal is dirty and destructive in every aspect of its production and burning.” (Real News Network, Aug. 28, 2008.)
• “There’s no such thing as clean coal” — Ilan Levin, legal counsel for the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) in Austin, Texas (The New Scientist, Aug. 3, 2007.)

From Sen. Obama’s June 28th, 2005, floor statement on passage of H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2005:

Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I would like to express my gratitude to the managers of the energy bill, Senators Domenici and Bingaman, for their support of two amendments that I offered. I am proud that these amendments have been included in the legislation that the Senate will vote on today, and I believe that their enactment will help America increase its energy independence and transition our energy industry to full usage of 21st century technologies.

The first adopted amendment, which was cosponsored by Senator Lugar, provides $85 million to three universities for research and testing on developing Illinois basin coal into transportation fuels, including Fischer-Tropsch jet fuel, a type of low-emissions diesel that can be used in jets and diesel. The funds provided in this amendment will assist Southern Illinois University, Purdue University, and the University of Kentucky in upgrading existing facilities and constructing new facilities to conduct research and testing on this technology. It is critical that our Government invests in domestic fossil fuel supplies in an innovative manner, and this is a commonsense way to expand our coal industry in an environmentally friendly manner.

Fischer-Tropsch appears not so popular on the campaign trail these days. No mention in the Senator’s latest energy speech, delivered Monday.  He does mention carbon sequestration favorably, however.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial today, “The Green Hornet” takes a critical look at that speech and its disconnect from economic, technological and energy realities. In a a relevant passage the editorial also notes that “the cap-and-trade program also favored by Mr. Obama would effectively bar new coal plants.”

Problems like these are the reality of “alternative” energy, and they explain why every “energy independence” plan has faltered since the 1970s. But just because Mr. Obama’s plan is wildly unrealistic doesn’t mean that a program of vast new taxes, subsidies and mandates wouldn’t be destructive. The U.S. has a great deal invested in fossil fuels not because of a political conspiracy or because anyone worships carbon but because other sources of energy are, right now, inferior.

Charleston Gazette, article: “At West Virginia resort, Bush praises coal power“:

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. - President George W. Bush touted coal during a speech at The Greenbrier hotel on Thursday, but didn’t stop there, as he promoted virtually every means of domestic power production as a pathway to energy independence.

“There is no more reliable source of electricity than coal,” Bush told the crowd of about 450 people gathered for the West Virginia Coal Association’s annual meeting.

“Coal is affordable. Coal is available right here. And coal provides jobs,” he said.

Charleston Daily Mail, editorial: “Bush is right about coal power“:

PRESIDENT Bush’s address on Thursday to the West Virginia Coal Association showed that for an oil man from Texas, he understands the state and the product it is most known for.

Unlike Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid, Bush knows that coal is not making America sick.

Rather, the electricity that coal provides makes the American economy healthy and strong.

“One of the challenges is energy prices,” Bush said. “I’m a big believer in technology and innovation. Technology can change basic industry to keep us competitive and economically viable in the future.

“In order for this country to be economically competitive, we need to make sure we have a reliable supply of electricity. There is no more reliable source of electricity than coal. Coal is affordable and coal is available right here in the United States of America. Coal allows us to keep our prices reasonable, and it provides jobs.”

Bush is most correct. Coal not only provides jobs in the coalfields, but the cheap electricity it produces makes many other industries possible.

Transcript of remarks.