This weekend I took a trip to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. I thought, 'well, I love science, how could this be bad?'. Well let me tell you.  

We made the mistake of going on the 'coal ride', which consisted of being taken down into a mock coal mine to view the mining practices of yore, and today. 

What we learned was that coal mining used to be dangerous and is now safe. Thank God! Beyond that when we excited the exhibit we saw the following sign: 

At first I was pretty appalled to see a sign championing a non-existant, and slightly dubious, technology such as Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS, or what the industry is calling, 'clean coal technology') at a museum of science. 

Then I realized they weren't even talking about CCS. They were just putting the word 'clean' next to the word 'coal' in an effort to convince the youth of Chicago that coal is in fact clean. 

It's like that scene in Star Wars where Ben waves his hand in front of the storm troopers and said, 'There aren't the droids you're looking for'. 

Let me be perfectly clear. This is really dangerous. In 2007, the Museum of Science and Industry was the second most attended cultural attraction in the city of Chicago. Of course, if you look at the funders, you get quite a few LLPs, which are usually large consulting firms, and a bunch of energy companies. 

Each year tens of thousands of people get what little info they have on the coal industry from what amounts to a commercial from the industry themselves at the museum.  This makes the concept of 'clean coal' that much more believable when it comes up, say, in the State of the Union, delivered by Chicago's favorite son, President Obama.