Nature Reports Climate Change—Peak energy: promise or peril?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0903/full/climate.2009.19.html

Feature

Nature Reports Climate Change
Published online: 19 February 2009 | doi:10.1038/climate.2009.19

Peak energy: promise or peril?

The notion that we're running out of fossil fuel is gaining support in some unexpected quarters. But is peak energy good or bad news for the climate? Kurt Kleiner reports.

Will we continue to use fossil fuels to the detriment of our planet and the human population? Or can we clean up our act in time to avoid calamitous change? That's the dilemma the world currently faces, yet in spite of efforts to transition to alterative energy sources, projections show that annual fossil fuel demand is likely to increase 45 per cent by 2030.

But those projections make an important assumption — that there will be enough oil, coal and natural gas to meet the demand. That's a view that is increasingly being challenged by researchers, who are now looking at what declining fossil fuel supplies might mean for the Earth's climate. Although some say that a peak in energy production could allow us to avoid the most serious consequences of climate change, others fear that we will still suffer disastrous impacts and run out of energy to boot.

"It's not enough to sit back and say, 'Oh, because we're going to run out of fossil fuels we don't have to worry about the climate.' But (this) does seem to indicate that the more fossil fuel rich scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have little likelihood of being realized," says Robert Brecha, a physicist at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

The concept of fossil fuels peaking first came about in 1956, when an American oil-company geophysicist named M. King Hubbert correctly predicted that US oil production would climax in the early 1970s. Hubbert had noted that production of any particular oil field followed a roughly bell-shaped curve: production increased until about half of all oil had been recovered from the field, at which point it went into abrupt decline. Hubbert simply extrapolated the curve to production numbers for the United States as a whole. Since then, others have suggested that global production of oil — and of fossil fuels in general — will follow a similar curve, peaking either now or in the near future.

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[excess_3]

1. rubbish ...

whether you like it or not,
there is plenty of coal

[NickB79]

2. Rubbish to your rubbish

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/29919


"However, future scenarios for global coal consumption are cast into doubt by two recent European studies on world coal supplies. The first, Coal: Resources and Future Production (PDF 630KB), published on April 5 by the Energy Watch Group, which reports to the German Parliament, found that global coal production could peak in as few as 15 years. This astonishing conclusion was based on a careful analysis of recent reserves revisions for several nations.

The report's authors (Werner Zittel and Jörg Schindler) note that, with regard to global coal reserves, "the data quality is very unreliable", especially for China, South Asia, and the Former Soviet Union countries. Some nations (such as Vietnam) have not updated their proved reserves for decades, in some instances not since the 1960s. China's last update was in 1992; since then, 20 per cent of its reserves have been consumed, though this is not revealed in official figures.

However, since 1986 all nations with significant coal resources (except India and Australia) that have made the effort to update their reserves estimates have reported substantial downward revisions. Some countries - including Botswana, Germany, and the UK - have downgraded their reserves by more than 90 per cent. Poland's reserves are now 50 per cent smaller than was the case 20 years ago.

These downgrades cannot be explained by volumes produced during this period. The best explanation, say the EWG report's authors, is that nations now have better data from more thorough surveys. If that is the case, then future downward revisions are likely from countries that still rely on decades-old reserves estimates. Altogether, the world's reserves of coal have dwindled from 10 trillion tons of hard coal equivalent to 4.2 trillion tons in 2005 - a 60 per cent downward revision in 25 years. "

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Which you know how exactly?…

Here's a graph from the article:

Chart, adapted from an Energy Watch Group report⁵, shows projected regional production of three types of coal: lignite, bituminous and sub-bituminous. The group expects coal production worldwide to peak around 2025.

[excess_3]

4. c'mon, there is plenty of coal in the ground

the --> option <-- to use it will
be there for hundreds of years

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Once again, I ask, "How do you know?"

Some say there's plenty of oil in the ground. Others believe there is less.

How do you come by your knowledge of how much coal there is in the ground?

[excess_3]

6. try these links

http://www.rudrumholdings.co.uk/second_level_pages/ff2.htm
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_reserves#Reassessment_of_the_Gillette_field

..............................................
second link is interesting,
section 5, Gillette field,
reserves at $10.47 a ton, 10.1 billion tons
..at $60 a ton, 77 bilion tons

...................
more links, if anyone are interested