BBQMan: Coal hasn't exactly given me warm fuzzy feelings. There's the mercury problem and other pollution problems combined with lopping the tops off of mountains in West Virginia and blocking rivers and streams with the 'debris'.

We were told (those of us who looked this stuff up years ago) that Montana had enough coal for 150 years worth of our country's gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel needs using the Fischer-Tropsch process (invented in the 1920s) of turning coal into those fuels (South Africa, for example, produced all their gasoline that way when they were subject to boycotts because of apartheid). We were told that it would produce these fuels at the equivalent cost of $40/bbl oil. That was 8 years ago and still nothing.

Nuclear is a different story - one which I'm very much in favor of for a variety of reasons.

Wind is proving to be very effective in two countries I've recently visited - the Netherlands (where I saw offshore windfarms that have been producing electricity for quite some time) and Scotland (where it seemed like every 3rd or 4th mountain ridge had a small farm on it). Why not here?