I’ve written a number of times on various fallacies of the clean energy argument. It something that particularly annoys me because it makes the argument for effective sources of clean energy like increased efficiency less persuasive. I continue to find major news stories in the nytimes and AP promoting solar, clean coal, nuclear, bio diesel and ethanol as 100% clean sources of energy. They are not 100% positive energy sources. While it is true some of these sources of energy are cleaner than others, they ALL have an environmental impact. The bottom line is that energy production has an impact on our environment. The resource and energy costs in the production of energy is not insignificant. And for many of these supposedly clean sources of energy the resource costs of the input can be devastating to the environment. Here are a few of the most blatant instances of clean being not so clean. Clean coal is not clean if the mining involves mountain top removal and strip mining something commonly left out of articles proclaiming clean coal as this amazing clean energy source. Nuclear energy requires the mining of uranium and huge quantities of concrete and steel for the nuclear plants. Solar panels require silicon and other scarce materials that are mined around the world in less than environmentally sound ways. I think it important we continue the discussion on cleaner energy and move towards a world with cleaner energy. But truly 100% clean energy is impossible. Even biofuels that are seemingly renewable impact land use around the world and if the crops are fertilized with nitrogen alot of it will be washed into the rivers and eventually the ocean causing environmental disasters far from the source. Here is a comical video on “clean” coal directed by the Coen brothers and produced by Thisisreality.org