[ExI] THE END for fossil power

[Samantha Atkins]

On 03/31/2011 08:25 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 3:59 AM, Eugen Leitl<eugen at leitl.org>  wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 11:49:45PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>>> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Eugen Leitl<eugen at leitl.org>  wrote:
>>>> Science has been slow to embrace Peak Oil, but they're
>>>> there now. (How long will it take for them to admit
>>>> Peak Coal?)
>>> I should expect hundreds of years. The US has something like 400 years
>>> of coal reserves, and China has a lot too.
>> Try around 2025.
>>
>> http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2396
> "The general consensus view on coal supplies has long been that we
> have hundreds of years of the stuff left"
>
> The articles you provided indicated that we were close to peak coal,
> but it also showed a slowly tailing off supply. What I'm saying is
> that after peak oil most charts show the supplies falling off rather
> precipitously,

No, I don't think so.  Peak Oil means "peak", i.e., that we manage to 
get less out of the ground year on year ever after that.  It doesn't 
mean the amount we get falls precipitously.   What would fall more 
rapidly is the percent of demand actually met as the demand curve for 
oil is still increasing.

>   but with peak coal there was a significant amount of
> coal available for a significant amount of time afterward. So peak oil
> is a much greater problem than peak coal (assuming they are even right
> there, which I'm not particularly giving in on yet.)
>
> Now one thing I found very concerning, and I hope it is not right is
> that the US is now a net coal importer.

Not from what I have read.  China has depleted enough of its coal supply 
that it is very likely it will seek to import coal from the US.

Build molten salt thorium reactors fast enough and you can forget about 
oil and coal as primary energy sources in a fairly short timeframe.

- samantha