Nov
9
(2005)
Peak Coal
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: energy, oil, sustainableenergy.
via Peak Oil News:
In 1865, Englishman William Stanley Jevons, one of the greatest social scientists of his day, wrote an exhaustive study titled “The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal Mines.” Jevons’ argument was that England was about to exhaust all available coal resources, which inevitably would mean the collapse of the industrial enterprise upon which Great Britain’s mighty empire depended. He wrote:
It will appear that there is no reasonable prospect of any relief from a future want of the main agent of industry (namely, coal).
And:
We cannot long continue our present rate of progress. The first check for our growing prosperity, however, must render our population excessive.
So, we’ve been through “peaks” in critical resources before, only to be saved by the magical discovery of a new, “inexhaustable, for real this time, no - seriously!” resource. In the case of Peak Coal, it was oil that rescued civilization from having to deal with sustainability. Perhaps it’s nuclear (or, for Shrub: nuke-u-lar) or some other yet-unknown magical resource.
Well, actually, the article goes on to say that in response to threatening shortages of coal, enterprising companies figured out better ways of extracting what was left, and the supplies lasted much longer than expected. This is extrapolated to oil, which, in theory, could last for quite some time if we just try harder to suck every last drop out of the planet.
We could just burn off the oil in our gas tanks, party like it’s 1999, and cross whatever is crossable in hopes that The One True Energy Resource is discovered in time. It’s happened before…
Comments
2 Responses to “Peak Coal”
We could get serious about the Fisher-Tropsch method of cooking coal to make a cleaner burning oil. Such oil would cost about $35.00 per barrel; if the byproducts of Hydrogenand electricty are sold the resulting cost would be lowered to about $25.00 per barrel. With our present coal supplies we would be self sufficient in oil for about 100 years. The Federal Government which is run by oilmen are not pursuing this stratagy.
Wait a minute - are you trying to say that the government that should be pushing for sustainable energy is actually run by representatives of the oil industry? That would be such a blatant conflict of interest that I can’t imagine any member of the voting public would stand for it!
Next, you’re probably going to say that they’re also representing the tobacco industry, or gun lobby groups.
Man, would THAT suck, if such an obvious conflict of interest was allowed to run unchecked in the most powerful nation on the planet…