Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Both of these outcomes (the peak and decline of coal production within a few decades, or 4°C of surface warming) would be an unmitigated disaster for human civilization. There’s no doubt about it. Running low on coal would be great for the climate, but would blow up human economies. If we have more coal than we know what to do with, we would blow-up the climate but the coal would help sustain human economies, absent a miraculous breakthrough in renewable energy.
– Robert Rapier reviews “The Impending World Energy Mess” by Hirsch et al
– Crude Oil Futures Increase to 25-Month High in New York as Dollar Tumbles
– Coal and Cancun
– U.K. Natural Gas – An Early December 2010 Status Report
– Special report: How BP’s oil spill costs could double
– A Scramble for the Arctic
– Leaked cables reveal Saudi minister of petroleum helped craft toothless Copenhagen climate accord
– The Truth About the Risks to Freshwater Aquifers Posed by Underground Carbon Sequestration
Economic recovery may look anaemic, especially against the backdrop of the Eurozone crisis, but measured in CO2 the downturn is over. After falling by 1.3% in 2009, global emissions are set to bounce 3% this year. Worse, the emissions cuts pledged at Copenhagen last year fall 40% short of what’s needed to limit warming to 2 degrees and avoid runaway climate change…
America is beginning to look a lot like the dark “Pottersville” vision in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey is shown a town where the middle class has been destroyed and lives in poverty under the thumb of evil Big Banker Henry Potter. Bailey’s heroic efforts to help the middle class saved Bedford Falls. America can help the middle class prepare for energy shortages with energy retrofit loans — or funnel billions to Potter-like promoters of Too Big to Fail energy projects. Where’s that angel Clarence when we need him most?
The cover of the current Atlantic promises to tell “why the future of clean energy is dirty coal,” but the article is necessarily sparing with evidence that emissions from burning coal can be economically “sequestered” (or kept out of the atmosphere).
Last week we asked for your help with the YouTube/See3 DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards. Thousands of organizations participated and four were awarded the top prize. THANKS TO YOU and your support, Post Carbon Institute secured the Best Video in the Small Nonprofit category. For this we are grateful and proud.
– WSJ: China’s Coal Crisis
– ‘Peak coal’ to see prices soar (audio)
– Should we be planning for the end of cheap coal?
– The Chinese Coal Monster – running out of puff
– The Atlantic: Dirty Coal, Clean Future
– Cleaning Up Coal
– Fridley, Heinberg discuss ‘peak coal’ in NATURE journal
This week, science journal Nature says the world is on the verge of exhausting its cheap coal supplies. With rising demand and dwindling supplies of high quality usable coal, prices could be much higher by the end of the decade. The finding could also have implications for the controversial technology, carbon capture and storage. ABC (Australia) reporter Greg Borschman interviews Richard Heinberg.
The idea that coal is cheap and plentiful drives much thinking about future world energy consumption. It can explain the resistance of the United States and China to carbon-cutting policies — both countries have lots of coal, and they don’t plan to stop using it anytime soon. But is it a reasonable assumption? Richard Heinberg and David Fridley argue in this week’s Nature that coal prices are likely to start rising much sooner than everyone thinks — perhaps by the end of this decade.
Coal is very vital to China and decreasing exports, together with increasing import clearly show that they have a supply problem. But whether this is due to resource problems, production problems or infrastructure bottlenecks is hard to say yet. A more comprehensive study of the Chinese coal assets needs to be done.
In The Maltese Falcon a character tells detective Sam Spade, “By Gad, sir, you’re a character, that you are! Yes, sir, there’s never any telling what you’ll do or say next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.”* I’m telling Bob Hirsch the same thing. There’s no denying the man’s considerable credentials within the energy industry, nor his contribution to peak oil scholarship as principal author of the first major U.S. government report to take the issue seriously. But neither is there any predicting what outlandish thing he’ll propose next in his efforts to spread the message.
