Now you go careful there Richard: Watch out for that hoary old matador’s favourite known as Y2K!

Taz,

Obviously you have not read any of Heinberg's books. He is probably the world's best commicator on peak oil. Read the books, read the reports - the numbers speak for themselves and cannot be ignored!! As the leading exporter of coal the idea that world coal reserves may be more limited than previously believed has enormous economic and security implications for Australia. Someone should ask the PM whether he has seen the recent reports on coal.

michael_in_adelaide writes:

"Someone should ask the PM whether he has seen the recent reports on coal."

Ok I asked him. He said he's well aware of the recent reports. PS he wants you to stop ringing the lodge.

The "New College of California"....please disregard everything in this article.

In a magazine put out by the House of Reps entitled "About the House" (Sept 2006) there is an article entitled 'In the Wake of the Boom'. The opening paragraph begins 'The giant mine we call Australia has never experienced anything like the mass of minerals that was dug up and exported last year. The amounts are staggering and make you wonder if anything will be left in the ground for future generations.' The article goes on to express concern by 80% of manufacturers stating they are concerned about where they will be in three years time, a reference to the fact that supplies will be on the way to being exhausted by then. Does the government know? Obviously. Does it care? Not a lot. You see, as long as those who can buy the government's approval for this plunder, smaller community approval is neither here nor there. But is any of this money being spent on developing alternative resources, such as solar, wind, wave power etc? No. So what will happen in five years, when the author cites two reputable studies that show the end result? The future is bleak, as once this boom is over, the manufacturing industries will also start eroding. Where will we be? I can't even imagine. And yet we accept government policies without question.

How anyone could mistake this kind of crap "Scarenario" from the Eurospivs as credible science beggars belief. But lets just take them on their word, shall we?. Don't worry about global carbon emissions targets because they are all about to drop, big time. The price of energy will go up and all those supposedly unviable nuclear power plants will be delivering the cheapest electricity of all. And the only people who will manage to get by with a scrap of dignity will be the residents of country towns who only spend 5 minutes getting to and from work. They will still do so, by bicycle.

I can live with that. The major cities have created the problem, it is only the revenge of the gods that they suffer the consequences.

Laugh if off if you wish alzo but, rather than trying to discredit the source, look at the data instead. Why not download the two coal reports from the links in the article and read them for yourself. They were not produced by the New College of California. Mockery is simply the most common method of denial and is a very poor tactic for facing the future.

michael_in_adelaide: The parallel is here in “A Climate of fear”

http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/paranoid-planet/2007/03/17/1174080219538.html

Others may guess I’m not a Ray Evans fan nor have any affiliation with the HR Nicholls Society

Hey Y2K is back!

Hey Y2K is back!
Posted by Taz,

I wish.

michael_in_adelaide the credibility of the source goes a long way towards explaining the validity of the data. Considering the link in the article which goes to the website www.energywatchgroup.org which is a front for the company Solarpraxis AG, which flogs renewable energy technologies. Does it ever cross your mind to question the validity of your sources? If not, why not quote from the bible? It probably has some "data" in there somewhere.

Also consider the man who writes the article. He is from the "New College of California".

Their Mission Statement is:
New College of California is committed to education in support of a just, sacred, and sustainable world. We cherish intellectual freedom, the search for social justice, respect for differences, and a belief in collective responsibility for the welfare of all people.

All sounds very touch feely doesn't it. They don't like science to get in the way of a big group hug.

He is also a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute. Hmm and you wonder why I question your/his sources.

Real scientists actually try not to have a preconceived idea of the results before they begin. These charlatans begin a study with "I am going to find anything that backs my assertion that peak coal is about to strike". What did he find? Two whole reports, one of which isn't even published. When I say published, I use this term very loosely as the internet doesn't count as publishing.

In short, both cited publications are from questionable organisations. Touted by the very questionable author. Championed by the lost sheep michael.

I suggest you read that link more carefully Taz especially the last paragraph.
Maybe YK2 didn't happen because of all the measures put in place to prevent it.
We will never know and even if we did, the naysayers would still believe what they wanted to, no matter what proof to the contary.

My watch died due to a 2Yk problem. At work critical matters in many applications were not addressed for y2k they would have failed. There seems to be a fair amount of ad hominen attack rather than reasoned debate. If it was crap it is surely easy to debunk by an informed critic

I wonder if it has ever dawned on these Europlodders that the reason no-one has bothered updating their data on coal reserves for a few decades is that there is so much of it already out there that the smart operators stopped looking for the %&*$# stuff years ago.

Gosh, no more coal in Wales, must be a global crisis.

But don't mind me fellas. As Pink Floyd might have said,
"And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too,
you'll find some coal on the dark side of the moon".

Alzo,
This report by the German Energy group was published a few months back.
There has been plenty of opertunity for it to have been denied, but I
have not seen any critism of the report at all.
Richard Heinberg is the messanger, why do you want to shoot him ?

Alzo, Tas, and Perseus,
you mock some basic math at your peril... and look foolish as a result.

Wasn't it Perseus that insulted peak oil as a concept a year ago? Yet this Thursday night at 8:30 the ABC Science unit movie "Crude" will announce the unthinkable, that the final oil crisis is almost upon us.

So tell me — if oil reporting is so pathetically weak, why can't coal be? Have you even READ these reports? Sure some of them are by greenie sources... but then again, "Greenies" are known for asking questions that others would rather have just swept under the carpet. I'm more inclined to trust Greenie sources than big business funded efforts like the global warming "Denial Machine" brought to you courtesy of Esso. (As shown on 4 Corners recently).

But forgetting the source of the argument, what about the argument itself? Who is honestly reporting RESERVES against the rate of exponential consumption? Or is everyone today so DUMB that we can't check the reserves, do the math, and realize that there is a problem? I think we are. We are so pathetically DUMB that we'll debate the merits of one author over another, listening to whom we darn well please, choosing the prophets we want to hear, all at the expense of reason and logic.

Please remember the 70 year "life-span exponential growth chart."

1% growth in consumption for 70 years means we will be consuming twice as much in 70 years.

1% = 2
2% = 4
3% = 8
4% = 16
5% = 32
6% = 64 times as much coal being consumed per day, just from 6% growth per year.

So if we DO hit peak oil by 2010 as the ABC science unit is declaring Thursday night, what do you think happens to coal? Hmmm? The Nazi's turned coal into liquid-fuels. Coal consumption growth, already quite alarmingly high, will simply explode as we fail to offset oil decline with coal liquid fuels. It will explode exponentially.

So guys, please do the math before you jump on the denial bandwagon!

Fossil fuel consumption could be easily met with renewable sources. The challenges are substantial but technical. Rather than calculating the economic devastation from peak oil/peak coal/global warming, perhaps it might be more inspiring to calculate the economic benefits resultant from overcoming the technical challenges for converting biomass to liquid fuels.

Hmmm...

Coal, as a finite resource, will peak, particularly as more and more of it gets munched up. However, I don't think the threat of an immenent peak is really that high.

For one, coal reserves, while dwindling, are still enormous. A Hubbert peak for bitumous coal in the US (bitumous is the "bad" type of coal, that is dirtier and less economically viable as the "good" antracite) is probably around 2200 based on http://www.geo.umn.edu/courses/3005/resource.html. Anthracite will most likely peak eariler, as there is less of it and it is cheaper to mine and process (although I couldn't find any data on it. Anyone know a source?).

Although there is some evidence that coal reserves may not be as large as we thought (ie this piece on NSW coal

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/reserves-to-dry-up-as-clean-coal-becomes-viable/2007/04/09/1175971023057.html

and the reports refered to by the author) I would suggest that they are pesimistic estimates, (although British coal production has already peaked). This is hardly an immediate problem, as is the issue with peak oil.

My own worry is that with a more likely nearby peak in oil and gas, liquified coal may become economically viable, bringing with it a surge both in coal consumption for transport fuel (to pick up the slack form oil) and a electricity generation (to pick up the slack form gas) along with it a massive increase in CO2 emissions (along with conventional pollutants).

We may resort more to the use of brown and bitumous coal, as opposed to anthracite.

My own impression is that peak coal is not the worry at the moment. Peak oil is much, much more urgent.

However, peak coal may become a problem in the future (if we let it). As such, I welcome any new attempt and research to estimate our remaining reserves more accuratly, and put that in economic and environmental context. I would say the data are not yet of sufficient quality to make the call, and I will be awaiting the release of the second report the author refered to.

We haven’t got enough water anyway for coal>electricity in SE Aus
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/drought-threat-to-power-supply/2007/05/19/1179497318748.html
i vote we turn it into charcoal, burn the off-gas (making less electricity) and sequester the solid carbon in soils. Don't forget the community ed, smart meters, & ubiquitous solar-thermal, Mr Theophanous (Vic Energy Minister - no point appealing to the COALition government).

--

Richard wrote: ..There seems to be a fair amount of ad hominen attack rather than reasoned debate. If it was crap it is surely easy to debunk by an informed critic.

Instead we have critics:
Taz, unexplained y2k reference
alzo ridicule
Perseus abuse, misrepresentation
Taz another y2k reference
Perseus more abuse, unevidenced claim

Flat-earthers only have a very small set of tunes.

I find it difficult to comprehend some of these posts,the contention that we don't have to worry, we have 200 years coal left, haven't you any thought at all for your decendants, or it will be ok we will burn all the oil and coal, then you can use alternatives. It doen't matter if we burn it all now or in 200 years the fact remains it will be gone.
We shouldn't be burning anything, coal and oil should be reserved for plastics, lubrication and other chemical products then it might last a few thousand years.
There are alternatives for just about everything, we just need to take them up, all this blather about cost is a load of crap, example when the US Army switched to computers the cost of a silicon chip dropped to $2.50, thats why we all have computers today.
This continual deriding of people that suggest something you disagree with is crap, nearly 40 years ago we were warned about clobal warming and depletion of natural resources, if more notice had of been taken then we could have averted the future we now face, in the long run we will have to face the realities of our stupidity.
Just remember this the first bloke that stepped out of the cave and said "I am going to build and live in a hut " was derided "your going to live in a what" "Whats wrong with the cave you ratbag" and its been the same ever since, every advance made by mankind has been greeted with derision, plastic money, daylight saving, steam trains , round earth, earth not the centre of the universe, whatever, theres always a naysayer and his parrot in the wings.
Life doesn't swim merrily along theres always change, chaos, upheavals, disasters shooting the messenger won't stop that.

Liam, the carbon in soils thing has me really excited.

Imagine if there was no CO2 issue burning cheap coal, because global CO2 emissions were being CONSTRUCTIVELY USED (not sequestered) to completely reinvent agriculture? (BTW — I hate coal for many reasons, not just CO2 emissions. But imagine if Global warming just went away).

Tim Flannery recently attended the worlds first International Agrichar Initiative. Not only does agrichar produce FUEL from agricultural waste (avoiding the normal "Fuel or food" problem with most biofuel crops), but it also returns charcoal to the soil which completely revolutionizes farming. Farmers are getting double or triple yields with less fertilizer, because fungi grows around the charcoal, dies, and leaves organics and nitrogen back in the soil. (We still need to watch Phosphorus and Potassium, and might need to think about how to recycle our sewerage not just for water, but for fertilizer.)

This is all new science which must be evaluated by further tests, but has the soil Phd's all excited. Check out the claims.

"Lietaer said that a land mass the size of France using this system could lock up all the carbon the world needs to."
http://transitionculture.org/?p=192

Or this...

"Claims for biochar's capacity to capture carbon sound almost audacious. Johannes Lehmann, soil scientist and author of Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management, believes that a strategy combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon per year-an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions!"
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004815.html

Or the Truthout.org article that calls Agrichar the "Birth of a new wedge"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050307R.shtml

It's brand spanking new science, even though the ancient Amazonians used charcoal to fertilize their soils. And 7000 years later, we are still digging up their soil for potting mix.

We need Agrichar or "Terra Preta" to be evaluated and discussed at more forums, especially agricultural forums where they will probably be panicking about peak oil after Thursday. Agrichar might just create enough fuel and fertilizer to replace oil in the farming sector, if we are lucky. I hope so, for my kids sake.

Three points;
First: If you haven't got the fortitude to use your real name and hide behind some nickname that provides anonymity fine, however, your words will always lack authenciticity and easily label you as one subservent to your political masters; your job function is to create doubt, muddy the waters and spread misinformation; rather than be part of the solution, you are the problem.

Second: I’m a born and bred Queenslander and sick of the immigrants from other States that have brought their polluting ways and greed to a once great State. [Beattie included]

Third: in the early 70’s the Americans (the then biggest oil producing nation) oil production crashed, they had to get it elsewhere; in an atypical Aussie fashion, we took about 10 years to twig to the possibility that this could happen to us, we set up a National Energy Conservation Program (1979) ‘to create public awareness to conserve liquid fuel/s’; we were about 20% reliant on imported fuel.
Progressively, the various federal governments’ corporate masters convinced them of the money to be made and we sold off our fuels and now we are about 80% reliant on imports.

In inclosing, the population in Queensland in April 1861 was about 37,000, today its over 4 million .… so what you might say, well that represents a growth of 13,000% and we’re running out of water … what State of Ignorance do you live in if you believe there is unlimited resources to service the needs of a species that is in plague proportion

I am please to share with you that my company in conjunction with an American company has perfected coal to liquid fuels technology with our pyrolysis/gasification system.

We built our pilot plant late 2005 and then proceeded to trial various coals and develop our own catalyst ( patent pending) with a result being a diesel fuel (ECO FUEL) which includes:

1. Low sulphur and virtually no aromatics. In a properly tuned engine this leads to lower particle exhaust emissions
2. The absence of sulphur means that oxidation catalysts and particulate traps will operate at maximum efficiency
3. The existing diesel infrastructure can be used, unchanged
4. Can be used in existing diesel engines

Our system does not produce any of the less desirable co-products from a refinery, and produces a pure CO2 stream that provides an option for the capture and storage of CO2.

Our NOx and CO more than complies with EPA emission regulations.

We are currently preparing our engineering drawings for the first of 5 commercialized plants with each plant processing 25 tons of coal per hour. Our trials have shown that 25 tons of coal per hour will give us a yield of 12,000 plus litres of diesel per hour.

We are currently trialing brown coal on behalf of a Victorian company wherein initial tests have shown excellent results. It is to be noted our process does not require the moisture to be removed nor the coal to be dried.

A formal press conference will be held later this month announcing our success.

Eclipse Now is getting all hysterical again and calling anybody who disagrees with his pet subject DUMB (with emphasis). I find it best to ignore him as he blathers for pages on peak "anything", citing psuedo scientific references.

ChrisC at lease admits that peak coal isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Eclipse Now and Liam are getting "really excited" together about making some charcoal to solve the world's problems. They talk of "spanking" science and the "Birth of a new wedgie". Eclipse Now also brings out that old chestnut "I hope so, for my kids sake" *sniff*, an emotional plea that ends many of his posts.

daniel boon are you (back from the dead) or are you related to Sir Joh? Sounds like you bought his book on rhetoric.

big bear your company's process sounds very interesting, I look forward to reading about it.

This whole concept of "peak anything" is mired in moronic simplicity. For it implies some sort of catastrophic decline when there is every indication that technology will replace a resource long before the resource runs out. It is particularly stupid when we are talking about a resource like coal that is so large that it could last a century or two. Given the rate of technological advance in just the last 30 years, can anyone seriously suggest that there will not be a cheaper alternative to coal by year 2100?

Humans reach maturity sometime between 20 and 25 but do we all hit the panic button because we have passed "peak human"? Should we drive the kids to angst ridden torpor because they are rapidly approaching "peak human".

Both peak oil and peak coal are nothing more than the point at which reserves begin to be reduced through use. And the important issue is not whether the volume of new discovery is lower than the volume of resource use but, rather, how large is the gap between the two and how long will existing and projected new resources last. Clearly, if resource use is 105% of resource discovery, and current stocks will cover 75 years of use, then the actual use can be maintained for a lot longer than that.

A very good example of this interaction of resource discovery, technological change and resource use was the supply of whale oil for household lighting. The use of gas and electicity kicked in long before the supply of whales ran out even though the industry had long since passed the point of "peak whale".

I just can't wait for "peak moron", the point at which the supply of new morons drops below the stock of existing ones.

Alzo, you must have missed the bit where we asked for actual arguments with data and logic, specifically dealing with the problem of exponential growth. No, you are back to sarcasm and trusting in the "prophets" who are telling you what you want to hear. You don't seem to comprehend that exponential growth in consumption halves and quarters your quoted "reserves" very quickly.

You reveal how closed you are to new paradigms and information even when I am positive about something like the Agrichar solution. Instead of carefully reserving judgment until you have sought further information, you jump right in, boots and all. You seems to know better than a multi discipline scientist like Tim Flannery, or the many soil scientists at the International Agrichar Initiative. Tell me Alzo, where did you obtain your soil Phd? ;-) Are you aware that this discussion has just hit the Scientific American?
http://tinyurl.com/yryfrr

Perseus, you once again demonstrate just how desperately you need to watch ABC's "Crude" Thursday night. Do you have any idea of the projected rates of decline?

The market panics when we lose just 200 thousand barrels due to trouble in Nigeria. Imagine what will happen to the price of oil when we lose 2 MILLION barrels of daily production capacity each and every year? Persy, I'll fill you in on some of the details. There’s be an international bidding war. Some airlines and trucking companies will bankrupt immediately, and very soon fuel rationing begins under the Liquid Fuels emergency act, recession turns into depression, and there’s a serious threat to our very food supply.

But don't worry, there's HEAPS of coal you say, pulling statistics out of thin air. Yet the SMH documents how NSW could RUN OUT of coal in 35 years — let alone when NSW coal might “Peak”. Can I suggest you try reading these reports before you get stuck into them? That way you might just camouflage your currently blatant denial. Persy, try to remember that the best lies contain a little truth. ;-)

Perseus I strongly object to your comment. I'm 53 and I'm nowhere near peaking even though I no longer play footy. However possibly some people's ability to understand does peak sooner which brings me to your statement "Both peak oil and peak coal are nothing more than the point at which reserves begin to be reduced through use. " That is NOT peak oil etc. Clearly unless a source is renewable it begins to be reduced from the moment it is first tapped/exploited.

Peak oil is the point at which the supply (as in the technically achievable supply, not market controlled supply) no longer meets the demand for that resource even though a majority of the resource may still be unexploited. The result is that there is a shortfall of supply against demand which firstly leads to price increases (the current US situation with refined fuel is an example, but that will correct itself), but moreover as oil (or gas or coal) are needed for economic growth the level of growth, to the extent that oil etc is not replaced by another technology, will taper off before reverting to decline.

I don't know when oil will peak, some suggest it peaked in 2005 the industry suggests 2030 maybe it somewhere in between but when it does and if 'we' haven't any alternatives ready (only about 55% of oil is used in transport you are looking at one use of some of the remainder: plastics) it will get messy.

I suggest you understand an issue next time before you comment.

Hi Perseus, Peter JH and others,

Perseus, your substitutionist economic argument against peak anything is a core belief of the cornucopian view. However, it is not valid since technology/subsitution require energy to function/occur. Energy is the central enabling resource that makes techno- and substitutionist-fantasies possible. Once energy availability starts to decline there is simply less that you can do. The real problem with peak oil/coal is that, on the post-peak down-side of the energy resource availability curve (whether it be oil, coal or whatever) the energy required to be invested for an energy return begins to increase rapidly so that the net energy available decreases at a faster rate than the decrease in the physical availability of the resource.

The mocking cynics above may laugh now but I would love to catch up with them in 10 years time and stuff copies of their words into their sorry little mouths.

Peter JH, I have heard your definition of "peak" occasionally used by others but I do not think it is the most valid. I think that the best definition of "peak" anything is the moment of maximum production rate after which production can never be raised to the same level. This need not occur at 50% of resource depletion but tends to do so.

The sooner the stuff runs out the better. I live on a once beautiful river, now destroyed by longwall mining. Fourteen rivers are at present under the same threat but too few people give a damn. Has anyone driven through Singleton and Muswellbrook recently ? Coal mining has turned once fertile agricultural land into a vast and hideous moonscape, which will never recover. Coal mines are also about to destroy the black soil and aquifers in the Liverpool Plains. And that's just in NSW - I hate to think of the destruction now taking place in Qld and elsewhere. I'm afraid this country will be vandalised and our water sources wrecked before we wake up to ourselves. What sort of society are we, I wonder, to allow this to happen to our country ? (Answer: a colonial settler state of recent origin, settled by people whose only aim has ever been to rape the land and make a buck).

When the US hit oil production peak in 1970 (or there abouts), they were woefully unprepared for it (despite Hubbert acrately predicting the peak in 1956). The US could no longer sustain its economy by domestic production alone, so began to source more of their oil from elsewhere, notably the middle east.

When the Yom Kippur war broke out, OPEC placed an embargo upon the west.
Increasing oil dependance was one of the many factors that made the OPEC "oil weapon" wielded during the Yom Kippur War. Prices rose, economic recession occured and a decade of high unemployment began. Oil exporters suffered emourmous levels of inflation.

Newer technologies did not step into the breech to help the US when it met it's own production peak. Now, with an oil peak suggested within the 2 decades, I don't see any new technology coming in the replace all the cars on the road or planes in the sky (not to mention plastics).

Peaks will bring problems.

Still, I will reiterate I don't see a coal peak any time soon. Dosen't mean I'm a fan of coal, or that coal will not peak in the future.

What a quaint assumption, a doco appears on the ABC, it must be right. Give us a break, what about the ABC morons bunging on about an island off Bougainville that was supposed to be evidence of rising sea levels but this rising sea level was not even present on Bougainville itself, only 80km away. The Science show had even reported, 3 years earlier, that the island was in a volcanic zone and was SINKING. The ABC is nothing but green "Boganville".

But do let us all know if this ABC crud bothers to quantify the amount of shale oil and oil sands that latest technology can deliver at well below current prices.

*Perseus:* "This whole concept of 'peak anything' is mired in moronic simplicity. For it implies some sort of catastrophic decline when there is every indication that technology will replace a resource long before the resource runs out."

You mean as in Easter Island, or the Levant (where the Greeks and Phoenicians cut down all the trees to make warships) or the "fertile crescent" (where excessive irrigation eventually turned the most productive farmland of the ancient world into salt marshes).

History is rife with civilizations exploiting a resource to excess, then crashing and burning. Read Jared Diamond.

*Perseus:* "I just can't wait for 'peak moron', the point at which the supply of new morons drops below the stock of existing ones."

Don't have to worry about that as long as you're posting.

Peter JH and Michael in Adelaide give slightly different definitions of peak.
In fact if demand is still increasing their definitions are to
all intents and purpose the same.

To deny that peak production occurs and that there are alternatives that
will mean the party time continues, is simply wishful thinking.
The whole problem is caused by the energy density of oil and next coal.
The next energy density available requires so much material and energy
input to make practical that if we don't use the presently available
energy to build it, we simply won't make it.

Even if we get moving now the resulting civilisation will be markedly
different to what we have now.

To suggest that oil shale or oil sands will bail us all out is just
plain silly. It indicates that those suggesting that have not even
understood the magnitude of the problem with those processes.
For goodness sake go and read about it. There is not the gas or water
available to do it presuming that enviromental problems can be overcome.
Even the building of moveable nuclear power plants to process
the oil sands turns out not to be practical.

god stopped making coal and oil a long time ago. there's a fixed amount in the ground. humans are using both at an ever increasing rate. both will be gone at some point in the future.

the question is: when, not if.

it seems obvious to me that the transfer to renewable resources must happen. also obvious that the sooner we begin, the less painful the transition will be. it also seems obvious that we have a duty to succeeding generations not to continue fouling the air with fossil fuel consumption gases.

arguing against the immediate transition to renewable energy makes sense if you work for a coal company, have no children, and don't give a damn for the human race in general. otherwise, arguing against renewables is merely psychotic.

Awwwww, Percy Percy is sulky sulky, and doesn't like certain facts being broadcast from our ABC. Interesting, rather than watch the show closely and deal with and debate the data, Persy calls the ABC names (just in case they made one scientific mistake on one case,... ever.)
Listen Precious Percy, can I suggest that you limit yourself to posting when you have one or 2 facts to contribute and debate? You are lowering the quality of posts on this forum, and I can almost hear the knuckles dragging along the ground in true internet-troll fashion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_trolls

Demos is right. The sooner we wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the better. We need to change to the "Electron" economy as quickly as possible, and electrify trans-continental rail and city tram transport systems immediately. (And bye bye airlines after peak oil). Tim Flannery's desert city "Geothermia" was an inspirational idea.

The GOOD news is that we are running out of oil, gas, and coal and this will force us to change our way of life. As Kjell Aleklett says,
"Global warming exaggerated, insufficient oil, natural gas and coal"

"In the present climate debate, however, the amount of available fossil fuels does not appear to be an issue. The problem, as usually perceived, is that we will use excessive amounts in the years ahead. It is not even on the map that the amount of fossil fuels required in order to bring about the feared climate changes may in fact not be available."

http://www.energybulletin.net/29845.html

The BAD news is that energy infrastructure takes decades, and we are utterly dependent on oil for transport and coal for electricity with all renewables amounting to diddly-squat of our current energy supply. It's time to lift our heads out of the sand and take a long, hard look at the energy landscape... with the rose-coloured glasses removed. We need an international energy cop with some real authority to just go in and audit reserves of everything. Otherwise, we'll just keep sleepwalking into the future.

Good to see you keeping the standards of debate so high Eclipse "Awwwww, Percy Percy is sulky sulky". We all aspire to this sort of eloquence.

I see the Austalian Alarmist of the Year, Tim "Chicken Little" Flannery is in the paper again today. This time flip flopping from supporting nuclear energy to being dead against it. Wish he'd make up his mind. He's more of a science fiction write than a "multi discipline scientist".

"Tim Flannery's desert city "Geothermia" was an inspirational idea."
So I can put your name down to go and live in the desert with Tim? Maybe Liam could join you and you could all get "really excited" together.

Good to hear we can stop worrying about global warming though. Please tell the media. Especially Robin Williams of the ABC's Science Show, who seems to believe in 100m sea level rises by the end of the century. Him and Flappin' Flannery make a great double act.

Somebody tell Demos that God didn't make oil or coal. Unless he is citing the bible as a reference??

yes, alzo, it's right there- day two , i think.

genesis doesn't insist fossil fuels are in exhaustible, at least. how about you? if the earth were flat and without limits, you'd have an argument. your insistence on being rude to people you disagree with, in the face of basic science, suggests you don't have much education, or enjoy being rude, possibly both.

fortunately, you can be heard in spite of your lack of manners. we all can, and we all can evaluate the worth of what is said. keep trying, whatever your goal is.

The Energy Watch Group paper has coal production peaking between 2020-2030, plateauing till 2050, and declining till 2080. The amount of coal likely to be produced between now and 2100 (the area under the curve) looks like it is at least 3 times larger than the coal used so far. We have already increased CO2 concentrations by about 100pm. This suggests that business as usual would result in greenhouse gasses stabilising at somewhere around 700 ppm CO2, which corresponds to something like 800-1100 ppm CO2-equivalent. This would lead to eventual temperature increases of 4-8 degrees - the sort of climate change that will wipe out agriculture in southern australia and cause massive extinctions.

drwood;

It is not as simple as that. The most desirable and cheapest to
dig out has what has been used up till now.
It will get increasingly more expensive and of not so popular types.
This will effect its usage.
BTW, it now seems that there is not enough coal and oil to cause global
warming to become much worse.

A slightly of topic question I have is;
In the past when CO2 levels have risen it has been after
temperature rise. Not the other way around. Why is it so ?

The temperature changes (due to global orbit "wobble" over time) affects the oceanic CO2 uptake, and the Co2 follows about 600 to 800 years later. Even though this at first seems to contradict Global Warming, leading climatologist already understand this process and mainly use that graph to illustrate how much higher humanity has pumped CO2 levels than all previous ages (that we can measure anyway).

But as others have said, there may not be enough oil, gas, and coal to fuel Global Warming.

By the way, this review of Crude tomorrow night states:

"The world revealed to us by this doco is wasteful, mass-consuming, ignorant and real. It's a wake-up call that leaves you wondering exactly what you can do, and whether it's too late. This is perfect viewing for those interested in the state of the environment, petrol prices, and the end of the modern world as we know it."

http://www.yourtv.com.au/reviews/index.cfm?i=11875

Bazz:

Coal getting more expensive to mine and use will affect how much net energy it produces but will not affect how CO2 is produced.

Oil peaking at around the present will mean that the rest of its use will contibute to global warming by a similar amount as it has so far (the Hubbert curve is symmetric). The figures in the Energy Watch Report suggest that "Business As Usual" is still likely to lead to temperatures stabilising at over 4 degrees higher than average. Fossil fuel scarcity may lead to less emissions than in some of the IPCC SRES scenarios, but there is nowhere near enough scarcity to stop dangerous climate change. The likely effects of a 4 degree temperature rise are described on Page 294 of the Stern Review.

It is more likely than not that sanity will prevail and we won't have a business as usual scenario. For both environmental and energy security reasons we need to reduce emissions faster than will be caused by scaricity, and that will require have a significant price on carbon.

Alzo and co, I have read some of the links presented here, and some are written by Professors and people who have spent years at uni studying this stuff, are you saying they are all idiots and they are wasting their time. Would you close dowmn universities and shoot the academics this would seem a logical extensions of your attitude, as you have have no repect for their work. Thats what Pol Pot did, now that was raging success.
The only thing you have come up with is a book by a oil company representive, now how much credibility would he have?.
You seem to think this party can go on forever, have a look at the fishing industy 36 out of 39 of the worlds great fisheries are finished and are showing very little or no signs of recovery, these include Newfoundland Banks, Dover Banks, North Sea the worlds great fisheries that they thought were inexhaustable and they are finished.

Her with the day job looking over my shoulder now said "I might as well read comics".

Sure OLO is amusing but can anyone guess who I was reading at the time?

Btw this old pc was down for a day or so with run time errors on W so no pretence in between

Eclipse says
"The temperature changes (due to global orbit "wobble" over time) affects the oceanic CO2 uptake, and the Co2 follows about 600 to 800 years later."

So what he alludes to is that CO2 has much less effect on temperature than natural factors. The Earth's sensitivity to CO2 is vastly overestimated.

The Stern review is largely discredited as it uses every worst case scenario possible. Makes the IPCC report look very mild in comparison. Come on it was written by an economist, what would he know. Four degree temperature rises are at the high end of IPCC estimates and that relies largely on estimated feedbacks.

alanpoi says:
"some are written by Professors and people who have spent years at uni studying this stuff, are you saying they are all idiots and they are wasting their time"
Only the ones from the "New College of California". You can probably buy your degrees from there. Most of the links cited are written by lunatic fringe dwellers.

alanpoi says:
"Would you close dowmn universities and shoot the academics this would seem a logical extensions of your attitude, as you have have no repect for their work."
Absolutely not alan. If people want to waste their money getting a degree from one of these universities it is their right. However if they keep publishing bunkum in public forums, then they will not get respect.

For the record, I don't think fossil fuels are inexhaustible. Yes they will run out obviously. Coal peaking in 15 to 20 years?....you wish.

Alzo, again you read too much into whatever source you quote, especially me. All I was pointing out is that those ice core samples were not the basis for concern over CO2. As John Houghtin, head of the IPCC says...

"That carbon dioxide content and temperature correlate so closely during the last ice age is not evidence of carbon dioxide driving the temperature but rather the other way round - TRUE.

The programme went on to state that this correlation has been presented as the main evidence for global warming by the IPCC – NOT TRUE.

For instance, I often show that diagram in my lectures on climate change but always make the point that it gives no proof of global warming due to increased carbon dioxide."

http://tinyurl.com/2xu4yj

New Scientist covers it here as well.
http://tinyurl.com/2c7ld5

Global Warming IS still a threat if we don't deal with it through agrichar and renewable energy systems — and rezoning our landscapes for New Urbanism, and moving towards a Hi-tech bright green eco-city and New Urbanism (and maybe even re-ruralized) mix of city plans for a low energy, post-oil, post-coal world.

Richard Register of Eco-City builders says he can visualize a quick make-over of CBD's that would let people live "Light and Local" for under 10% of our current energy requirements, yet still maintain an attractive, hi-tech way of life. It's about clever planning and designing energy efficient CITIES (not energy efficient cars.)
http://www.ecocitybuilders.org/

Perseus lacks perspicacity:
"This whole concept of "peak anything" is mired in moronic simplicity. For it implies some sort of catastrophic decline when there is every indication that technology will replace a resource long before the resource runs out. It is particularly stupid when we are talking about a resource like coal that is so large that it could last a century or two. Given the rate of technological advance in just the last 30 years, can anyone seriously suggest that there will not be a cheaper alternative to coal by year 2100?"

I can seriously suggest that.

I am not stupefied by the fantasy that technology will replace a resource long before the resource runs out.

Have a look around the planet, P. Is technology replacing water in NSW and SA long before the water runs out? Non-renewable energy sources can become unobtainable, just as surely as water in a drought.

It struck me as folly, years ago, that we are burning irreplaceable chemical feedstocks when we burn coal and oil. We can synthesize many of the complex organic products which we once obtained from these natural sources, but I wonder about the energetics of the processes involved. It makes more sense to me to conserve these resources and use them with greater finesse. I would hope Coal could be made to last, as an economical chemical feedstock, for far more than 200 years, though I doubt there is any guarantee of political will except in Utopia.

Anybody interested in energy flow in the environment ought to delve into the work of HT Odum (Google "HT Odum" embodied energy emergy).

michael_in_adelaide might be particularly interested, if not already aware of this work.

I am told that there is new technology that can convert Coal into fuel oil and petrol.

Is this the reason so many Australian coal reserves have been purchased by OS companies.

Has anyone else heard of this?

I have not heard of heaps of Aussie coal being bought up by overseas units... unless... was China buying uranium fields or coal fields? Can't remember what that story was.

But the Coal liquefaction is a real thing. Indeed, studies on old reserve data (not the revised reports that Heinberg was quoting above) argued that, based on the more traditional data + a massive increase in coal consumption because of coal liquefaction trying to offset oil depletion, that peak coal would be somewhere mid century.

See
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052504_coal_peak.html

The Nazi's perfected coal liquefaction in WW2 when their access to oil was limited.

See here for more on coal to liquids programs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_liquefaction#Liquefaction

I noticed that just this month China became a net coal importer. It also went from, amongst other things, a net steel importer to a net exporter just a year or so ago. Way back in 2004, it was soaking up 49% of global cement. China's economy is on fire and there is no likelihood of a drop in coal orders soon.

As some research has indicated, it's also not air conditioners and cars that are driving China’s current energy demand but heavy industry and the mix of what China makes for itself and what it buys from others.

When you think of it, we are seen an extraordinary shift in the world’s middle classes from North America to North Asia. In a few years the middle classes of India and China will be somewhere between 400 - 800 million people. Thus, consumption-led demand is China’s future energy challenge

Wow, so even all their coal is not sufficient?

That's what happens with exponential growth people!

China is the only country in the world who's energy needs jumped by 20% in ONE year! (2005).

Yes EN, Chinese coal's not enough. For 2 main reasons I think. One is sheer demand on a scale we've never seen and we're merely observing the bottom or start of the growth curve.

The second is China's largest and westernmost province, Xinjiang, is perhaps not a strategically reliable longterm source of energy even though it has 30% of China’s oil reserves, 34% of its natural gas reserves and 40% of its coal reserves.

Xinjiang is faraway and Beijing’s authority is questioned by some citizens. This place has also had a low-key (in media at least) "Holy" war going on for a century or so, although China doesn't discuss it.

For example, Chinese police raided a Xinjiang terrorist camp in Jan 2007 killing 18 and arresting 17 but it doesnt make global news. I think that's not simply all about Chinese censorship though. Lack of publicity is also because some still like to promote insurgent propaganda that terrorism is only against the West, and only because of the West, and if only we were nicer to them these poor misunderstood, really quite adorable men would go away and not try to kill us or change our society and style of governance. But information warfare is another story.

Anyway, China has just announced that it is building 90 VLCC's (the largest crude oil carriers) so that it can make sure its fleet is owned and navigated by Chinese thus giving more confidence in stable supply in a time of war or fierce global energy competition.

China has about 25 of these enormous ships compared with Japan, Greece and Norway which have slightly bigger fleets. China is already the world's third biggest oil importer, behind the US and Japan, and its demand is not slowing either. And all this doesn’t take into India. With all these global trends, no matter what policies we have here with whichever government, our own lives by 2020 many reckon, will be quite different to now.