Matters of Opinion

Mrs. Conclusion: Hello, Mrs. Premise.
Mrs. Premise: Hello, Mrs. Conclusion.
Mrs. Conclusion: Busy day?
Mrs. Premise: Busy! I've just spent four hours burying the cat.
Mrs. Conclusion: Four hours to bury a cat?
Mrs. Premise: Yes! It wouldn't keep still, wriggling about, howling its head off.
-- Monty Python's Flying Circus

In an editorial Sunday, The Buffalo News holds out only the vaguest hope for the plan by the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities to turn its long wished-for new coal-fired power plant into a demonstration wonder for the technology called carbon capture and sequestration. If it works, the United States can have some hope of powering itself with its abundant coal without pushing climate change past the breaking point. If it doesn't, well, what is Jamestown to do with its shiny new toy?
If Jamestown can take the state’s money, add some federal grants and private investment and really invent what they are describing, it could be monumental indeed. If not, well, state officials must be firm: No carbon capture, no coal-fired power plant.

More about CCS:
* Carbon capture is trendy enough that it has its own Journal, its own center at MIT and, of course, its own page on Wikipedia.
* It also has serious doubters, prime among them Greenpeace, which calls the whole idea "a scam" and "a pipedream." And Environmental Advocates of New York and allied groups that point to, among other concerns, the potential for any CCS plant to eat up as much as 40 percent of its own generating capacity just to capture the carbon.

--George Pyle/Editorial Writer