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Stocking Stuffers: Singing Coal - Lame Duck Watch

This Is Reality

We all heard it during the Presidential Campaign, but the mere statement "Clean Coal Technology" mystified me. Every time I think of coal, I think of a picture of Elinor Roosevelt visiting the coal mines of West Virginia. How on earth can coal be clean? In what context? In what world?

Now, reality has set in and my suspensions are correct:

In reality, there is no such thing as "clean" coal in America today. Coal cannot be called 'clean' until its CO2 emissions are captured and stored safely.

Let's be clear: there are no US homes, factories, shopping centers or churches powered by coal plants that capture and store their global warming pollution.

Today, coal power plants emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the pollutant causing the climate crisis. A third of the America's carbon pollution now comes from about 600 coal-fired power plants. And of the more than 70 proposed new coal power plants, barely a handful have plans to capture and store their CO2 emissions. If these dirty plants are allowed to be built, this will mean an additional 200 million tons of global warming pollution will be emitted in America each year. Until coal power plants no longer release CO2 to the atmosphere, coal will remain a major contributor to the climate crisis.

Scientists indicate that we can avoid the worst climate impacts if we turn CO2 emissions around in the next few years. The Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, in 2007, said, "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." For coal to maintain a role in America's energy mix, the industry must act quickly to stop emitting CO2.

The Reality Coalition is a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the League of Conservation Voters, and tells the truth about coal today — it isn't clean. We are challenging the coal industry to come clean — in its advertising and in its operations. You can learn more about the reality of "clean" coal here or take action and help stop misleading coal campaigns.

— The Reality Campaign Website —

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Winter Garden Update

Everything came up! Turnips are stuggling, but they always do.


Expecting family in for New Years. We should have a nice salad.


Every strawberry plant (25) survived. New leaves on each one.

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Acting Your Age

For some odd reason, this doesn't look right to me. No matter how we look like, things do wear out. How would we know? And what are the mental stability of this.

When I first saw the picture, I thought it was photo-shopped, I mean really .. doesn't it look like an old man's head stuck on a 30-something's body?

LAS VEGAS – It's one of those photos that make you do a double-take. Dr. Jeffry Life stands in jeans, his shirt off. His face is that of a distinguished-looking grandpa; his head is balding, and what hair there is is white. But his 69-year-old body looks like it belongs to a muscle-bound 30-year-old.

The photo regularly runs in ads for the Cenegenics Medical Institute, a Las Vegas-based clinic that specializes in "age management," a growing field in a society obsessed with staying young. Life, who swears that's his real last name, also keeps a framed copy of the photo on his office wall at Cenegenics.

"He's the man!" patient Ed Detwiler says teasingly, pointing to the photo of the doctor who, in many ways, has become his role model.

Detwiler, 47, has been Life's patient for more than three years. In that time, he has adopted the regimen that his doctor also follows — drastically changing his exercise and eating habits and injecting himself each day with human growth hormone. He also receives weekly testosterone injections.

He does it because it makes him feel better, more energetic, clear-minded.

— Full Story