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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
How Much Coal Remains?
Richard A. Kerr, Science via Environmental News Network (ENN_
The planet’s vast store of coal could fuel the world economy for centuries–and fiercely stoke global warming–but a few analysts are raising the prospect of an imminent shortfall
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To a geologist, gauging how much coal the world has left to burn is a fairly straightforward, if daunting, business. Millions upon millions of drill holes have revealed where the coal is. So geologists can just evaluate each seam’s quality and the cost of extraction. Add up all the coal worth mining and you’ve got lots and lots–within the United States, a century or even two of U.S. consumption; globally, 150 years’ worth for the world.
But there’s another, emerging approach to assessing coal resources that yields more sobering results. Rather than go into the field, these analysts go to the record books to see how fast miners have been producing coal of late. By fitting curves to that production history, they come up with a number for the total amount of coal that will ever be mined and a date for the greatest production, the time of “peak coal,” after which production inevitably declines.
Early results from this curve-fitting analysis of production history show much less coal being mined than geologists ever expected and a peak in coal production looming as early as a decade from now. Curve fitting “is a worthy competitor to a geological estimate” of remaining coal, says David Rutledge of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, a nongeologist who has produced such an estimate himself. Geologists beg to differ. “The whole notion of applying statistics to time series [of coal production] is fraught with danger,” says energy resource geologist Peter McCabe of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in North Ryde, Australia. “I think what you see in Rutledge’s presentation is a fundamental misunderstanding.”
(13 March 2009)
Also at Organic Consumers. The original article (behind a firewall) is at Science. The March 13 podcast from Science covers peak coal at the end:
For some reason, ENN and Organic Consumers have the headline “Is Peak Oil Almost Here?” when in fact the subject is peak coal. -BA
Science Magazine on peak coal
Robert Frederick, Science Magazine podcast (transcript and voice)
[Starts on page 9 of the 18-page transcript]
Host – Robert Frederick
In related news, coal production may be nearing its peak. According to the World Coal Institute, coal is the largest source of energy for the world’s electricity and, at current production levels, there are proven reserves to last 133 years. But as Science news writer Dick Kerr reports, new analysis suggests that coal production may peak as early as 2020, raising questions about when alternatives to coal might become available and about how bad greenhouse warming might get from burning the remaining coal. Here’s Dick Kerr.
Interviewee – Richard Kerr
There’s a lot of new interest in trying to anticipate when the world might run short of coal. There’s been a lot of attention given to when the oil might run out, but now some researchers are applying the same kind of techniques to coal assessment. And, the new approach is a bit sobering. The early estimates coming out of this work suggest that the world might be running out sooner rather than later – sometime in this century rather than the next century or two. And that has experts on both sides of the question getting into the fray, let’s say.
Interviewer – Robert Frederick
How are these estimates being made? Is it by drilling holes in the ground, or some other approach?
Interviewee – Richard Kerr
Well, people have drilled the holes, and then the resource assessment people come in, and they look at, “Well, there’s the coal in those seams underground, but how much of it can we actually get out? How much is going to be practical? How much is going to be worth the cost of extracting it?” And those are the geologists, and they turn all that into an estimate of how much coal is still in the ground that people will eventually take out. The new approach doesn’t go to that data – it goes to production data: how much coal has been produced in North America or China or Great Britain in the last couple hundred years. And they take that data and do a pretty simple plotting of this historical production, and then they draw a line through it and come up with how much coal is ever going to be produced from a particular region.
(1X March 2009)
For the audio, see the middle of the March 13 podcast from Science.
Richard Kerr is a longtime science reporter. He has written previously on peak oil. -BA
The Oil Drum Demographic/Opinion Survey Results
Nate Hagens, The Oil Drum
A couple months ago, I did a survey among The Oil Drum readership asking 24 questions. The main reason was to test out ‘SurveyMonkey’ (which seemed to work quite well). In addition to demographics, there were also questions relating to Peak Oil, Climate Change, and Likert scale questions concerning the future. I have not had time to properly analyze the data with any statistical rigor but wanted to share the raw numbers (unfiltered) with this community. They are at this link.
(12 March 2009)
Some interesting points from the results:
92.8% of the respondents are male
49.1% agree with the statement:
Peak Oil means the end of growth. There will be large dislocations and unrest over time. There will be some disaster areas and some successful areas on the planet but the average living standard is going lower.
85.4% are “very” or “exteremely” concerned about Peak Oil and resource depletion in general.
The results confirm my impression that the technical approach to peak oil appeals to men, but not to women. -BA
Australia radio interview with Dmitry Orlov (audio)
Phillip Adams, Late Night, ABC (Australia)
Reinventing Collapse
Dmitry Orlov says that the US should be looking to its old enemy – the Soviet Union for lessons on how to deal with the global financial crisis. He says the coming upheaval presents a plethora of opportunities for reinvention – if it’s handled right.
(10 March 2009)
