The Other Fossil Fuel
by Jason Godesky
“The Smoky City” was a major industrial center of the United States in the 20th century. During World War II, Pittsburgh produced more steel than all of Germany. The steel industry centered on the Three Rivers put Pittsburgh on the map, but the Bessemer process that made steel production economical also required a great deal of coal. The smoke turned the skies black; the fires and molten metals from the steel mills made a hellish glow. Pittsburgh was the emodiment of the Industrial Revolution, and as such, cut of the same mold that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s infernal vision of Mordor. The photo to the right was taken at noon.
Today, Pittsburgh isn’t much cleaner, but it is much prettier. Today, it is air pollution from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois that follows the Ohio river valley to settle in Western Pennsylvania.1 The plight of industrial centers like Pittsburgh spurred initiatives to do something about the environment, resulting in “clean-burning” coal, used now almost as if it forms a single, unbreakable phrase. What they succeeded in doing was shifting from pollution we could see, to pollution we can’t see. Pittsburgh doesn’t look any dirtier than any other city today—but it’s still one of the EPA’s supersites.
The term “fossil fuels” is often used as if it were synonymous with petroleum, but there are two other fossil fuels, as well. Natural gas is also expected to peak between 2010 and 2020.2 But with coal, as the kids say, we have a “250 year supply.” So they say in their commercial, but even their website admits that this is only at current rates of consumption. Coal currently provides nearly half of our electricity; if we were to shift to primarily coal, obviously that number would be cut in half, and if current rates of consumption stay the same, then that means there is no growth—a fundamental assumption upon which our entire civilization is based. So, in fact, as a replacement for petroleum, coal provides for something much less than 125 years.
The shift to coal—and with it, to the Industrial Revolution itself—was, like all such major shifts in human history, largely involuntary. Coal was recognized as an inferior fuel, but was taken up of necessity, first in England, due to the timber crisis.
Coal had a limited use in medieval times, but was the fuel of choice only for blacksmiths. Coal fumes made it less desirable than wood, especially as coal burns poorly—it smokes a lot—in fireplaces designed to burn wood. As long as wood was available, it was preferred. But if wood was short, or coal was cheap, then coal might be used, even if it was used reluctantly. And, of course, the shortage of wood hit cities first; and the bigger the city, the more likely it would be to use coal.
From the earliest times there was considerable prejudice against coal because of the black smoke and fumes that it caused, especially since domestic medieval fires tended to be open affairs. In 1257 Queen Eleanor was driven from Nottingham Castle by the smoke and fumes rising from coal fires in the city below (there was a coal mine within a few miles of the city). In 1283 and 1288 there were complaints about air quality in London because coal was now being used in lime-kilns. In 1307, a Royal Proclamation forbade lime-burners to use coal in parts of south London:
An intolerable smell diffuses itself throughout the neighboring places, and the air is greatly infected, to the annoyance of the magnates, citizens, and others there dwelling and to the injury of their bodily health.
This proclamation did not work, and a later “commission of oyer and terminer” had instructions to punish offenders “with great fines and ransoms” for a first offence, and to demolish their furnaces for a second offence. Economics won out over comfort, however, and London was to remain polluted by coal fumes for another 600 years. Shakespeare’s Master Seacole was grubby and dirty, and Queen Elizabeth once stayed away from London because of the “noysomme smells” of coal smoke. The London Company of Brewers, sensitive to the Queen’s displeasure, offered to burn wood rather than sea-coal in their breweries close to the Palace of Westminster, since the Queen was “greately greaved and annoyed with the taste and smoke of the sea-cooles.”3
Once adopted, though, coal spurred the Industrial Revolution. James Watt’s improvement of the Newcomen engine, so often credited with beginning the Industrial Revolution, was invented to pump the water that began to fill the coal mines. Coal mining has always been an inherently dangerous occupation, as one might expect of any job requiring one to tunnel deep into the earth to haul black, dirty rocks where noxious fumes build up. The Smoky City was a center of the steel industry not only because its Three Rivers provided easy transport, but because it was also in the heart of “coal country.” Driving for an hour and a half southeast from the city, you’ll come to Quecreek, where, in 2002, nine miners were rescued after the mine flooded. Three hours south of the city in January 2006, things did not turn out nearly so well after an explosion in a coal mine in Sago, WV.
About a month ago, an underground explosion killed five workers in Kentucky’s Darby Mine No. 1. Coming on the heels of the widely publicized deaths of 12 workers in another coal mine explosion in Sago, W.Va., on Jan. 2, the latest mishap has everyone from Ted Kennedy to Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky crying out for better mine safety. There’s a long way to go. More than 104,000 Americans died digging out coal between 1900 and 2005; twice as many may have died from black lung. The fatality rate in coal mining is almost 60 percent higher than it is in oil and gas extraction.
For all that, mining coal probably takes a lot fewer lives than burning it. Although coal-fired power plants generally keep getting cleaner, they contribute about three-fifths of all sulfur dioxide, one-third of all mercury, and one-fifth of all nitrogen oxide emissions in the United States. Air pollution’s precise health effects are notoriously hard to quantify, but its links to heart attacks, lung disease and cancer are well established. “Big Coal” includes a chilling quotation from Joel Schwartz, a public health researcher who produced some of the first detailed studies of the toxic effects of air pollution: “I see more people dying of particle air pollution than are dying of AIDS, and I need to call people’s attention to that.”4
Corey Powell’s review of Big Coal for the New York Times starts off with as concise a summary of coal’s place in modern civilization as one could ask for:
There is perhaps no greater act of denial in modern life than sticking a plug into an electric outlet. No thinking person can eat a hamburger without knowing it was once a cow, or drink water from the tap without recognizing, at least dimly, that its journey began in some distant reservoir. Electricity is different. Fully sanitized of any hint of its origins, it pours out of the socket almost like magic.
In his new book, Jeff Goodell breaks the spell with a single number: 20. That’s how many pounds of coal each person in the United States consumes, on average, every day to keep the electricity flowing. Despite its outdated image, coal generates half of our electricity, far more than any other source. Demand keeps rising, thanks in part to our appetite for new electronic gadgets and appliances; with nuclear power on hold and natural gas supplies tightening, coal’s importance is only going to increase. As Goodell puts it, “our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks.”
Coal has become near-synonymous with electricity because it is cheap and abundant. A pile of coal containing one million B.T.U.’s worth of energy costs $1.70. The equivalent amount of natural gas runs about $9. All electricity looks the same, so why pay more?5
Richard Duncan’s “Olduvai theory” expands White’s law to connect the rise of our modern civilization directly to electricity—to coal.
Electricity is not a primary energy source, but rather an “energy carrier”: zero mass, travels near the speed of light, and, for all practical purposes, it can’t be stored. Moreover, electric power systems are costly, complex, voracious of fuel, polluting, and require 24h-7d-52w maintenance and operations. Another problem is that electricity is taken for granted. Just flip the switch and things happen. In short: Electricity is the quintessence of the ‘modern way of life’, but the electric power systems themselves are demanding, dangerous, and delicate. All this suggests that permanent blackouts will be strongly correlated with the collapse of Industrial Civilization—the so-named “Olduvai cliff,” discussed later.6
As Duncan “briefly explains” in his abstract, “When the electricity goes out, you are back in the Dark Age. And the Stone Age is just around the corner.”
But the health effects of coal noted even in the Middle Ages have not abated with the passage of time, obviously. “Clean-burning coal” continues to poison our air. Because of the uranium impurities in coal, and because coal plants are not built with radioactivity in mind the way nuclear power plants are, “Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants.”7 Moreover, the energy that could be generated from those impurities in a nuclear power plant is actually greater than the energy produced from burning the coal itself.8
Then there’s global warming. To avoid dangerous climate change, many scientists argue that we must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 70 percent by 2050. Coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is responsible for nearly 40 percent of American emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Since 1990, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel power plants have increased by 27 percent, compared to 19 percent from all sources nationally.9
The smoke from coal once turned the city I live in to midnight at noon. It continues to poison my air as it wafts up the river from Ohio and beyond, and to continue this, they’re destroying the places I love most and hope to one day make my home.
There was a time in this region when union miners would have extracted the coal that lies beneath Lost Mountain with hand picks and shovels in deep underground shafts. But twenty-six years after Jimmy Carter signed into law the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), the coal industry has developed much more expedient and much more destructive methods of mining. Instead of excavating the contour of a ridge side, as strip miners did throughout the 1960s and ’70s, now entire mountaintops are blasted off, and almost everything that isn’t coal is pushed down into the valleys below. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than 700 miles of healthy streams have been buried by mountaintop removal - some say the number is twice that - and hundreds more have been damaged. Blasting on the mine sites has cracked the foundations of nearby homes and polluted hundreds of family wells. Creeks run orange with sulfuric acid and heavy metals. Wildlife populations have been summarily dispersed. An entire ecosystem has been dismantled.10
“Mountain Top Removal” strips off the tops of mountains and throws them into valleys, leveling off whole mountain ranges to expose coal in a strip mining operation par excellence. Beyond the sheer horror of transforming the landscape on such a basic level, the ecological implications involve poisoned rivers and streams and the wholesale obliteration of entire habitats.
Throughout history, humanity has moved to lower quality resources as those resources we preferred were wiped out. This was how the bronze age transitioned into the iron age11 Will we move to coal, as oil becomes more expensive? Coal is still extremely efficient, in pure terms of EROEI, particularly in the United States.
If you turn to coal, we’re now using twice as much energy from oil as we are from coal. So if you want to liquefy coal as a substitute for oil in transportation—which is its most important application—you would have to mine coal at a rate that’s many, many times at the rate of what we’re doing now. But the conversion process is very inefficient. So you’d have to mine much more than that. If you put that together with the growing world population and the fact that the rest of the world wants to increase its standard of living, you realize that the estimates that say we have hundreds of years worth of coal in the ground are wrong by a factor of ten or more. So we will run out of all fossil fuels. Coal will peak just like any natural resource. We will reach the peak for all fossil fuels by the end of the century.12
Nuclear power is not an answer, either, even though it’s far more attractive than coal; neither are any of our “alternative fuels.” There may be enough uranium for another 50 years of nuclear power,13 and other options, such as thorium, remain experimental at best. There is no switch-out techno-fix that will allow us to continue living as we have, but blind pursuit of will-o-wisps like coal or nuclear could cause far greater trouble than we’ve already stirred in ecological ramifications, without any actual payoff, since neither can avert the basic fact that we’re living beyond our means, and we need to powerdown.
The biggest problem with our bounty of coal is not what it does to our mountains or the atmosphere, but what it does to our minds. It preserves the illusion that we don’t have to change our lives. Given the profound challenges we face with the end of cheap oil and the arrival of global warming, this is a dangerous fantasy.11
Thanks Jason
Important for us not to be blinded by peak oil into ignoring peak energy
Comment by cassandra — 27 June 2006 @ 7:58 PM
Excellent article! It pulled many things together for me about coal mining, the environment, and peak oil. Thanks!
But is it just me (?), or is there a problem with the quoted statement, “To avoid dangerous climate change, many scientists argue that we must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 70 percent by 2050.” Looks like dangerous climate change RIGHT NOW to me. I think we need to throw those scientists out on a small boat in the next cat 5 hurricane.
Comment by Ryvr — 27 June 2006 @ 9:25 PM
Wow Jason two great essays in one day!
After reading about the non sustainability of alternative fuels followed by the nightmare of reliance on coal as a fuel I am quite depressed. Not that we cannot go on using fuels the way we have, but that we will try. Since coal is relatively cheap I can imagine that it will continue to be mined whatever the environmental consequences. After all who really needs the appalachians with all those boorish hillbillys. In fact I have a dark vision of people in a walled city on the plains guarded by their genectically modified slave race designed to keep away any intruders that would foolishly try to avail themselves of the bounty. All the while other miserable wretches slave in the coal mines to supply the black rocks that burn so their masters might bask in the glow of a cathode ray tube. I look out now on the ravaged remains of the once fecund ranges of appalachia. Her mountains reduced to so much rubble while the once lush green valleys and hollows are filled with the toxic remains of their mountain guardians. They are green in a way but it is the sickly green of mutant kudzu, the only plant that can hang on to these wasted lands. Out of the mists come the forgotten ones. Those that refuse to work in those pits of mordor, who avoid the citys like the plagues they are. These poor souls are hunted down like animals, for they indeed live like them by foraging the best they can amongst the remains of whatever passes for the natural world. These skraelings have a name for themselves. They are called Anthropik.
Comment by Drex — 27 June 2006 @ 11:56 PM
Drex, you just totally harshed my buzz.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 28 June 2006 @ 12:08 AM
Ryvr, I had the same reaction, but a quote’s a quote.
Drex, command is a luxury afforded by a glut of energy. When resources are tight, hierarchy is always the first thing to go. It takes a lot of energy to dominate people, and energy is precisely what we’re running out of. These feudal lords will need armies, but how will they be fed? Unpaid soldiers are always the quickest road to revolution, after all. Even the most oppressive regimes cannot rule by coercion alone; you need to give the people what John Robb’s been calling a “plausible promise.” Collapse is precisely what happens when that promise ceases to be plausible. In the Middle Ages, feudal lords offered serfs protection. What will the neo-feudal lords offer? I’ve heard such dystopian visions before, but they never address these basic concerns any more than the utopian ones, so I put as little stock in them as any baseless fantasy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 28 June 2006 @ 10:03 AM
Jared Diamond gives an informative account of the mining and petroleum industries in Collapse. I learned a lot about the economic motivations for the industry strategies, and how the mining industry often “passes on” its cleanup costs to the taxpayers, sometimes for decades. It’s quite eye-opening.
Comment by Anonymous — 28 June 2006 @ 11:11 AM
That first picture reminded me of an excerpt from Middlesex, by Jeffery Eugenides
“And then the Rouge appeared against the sky, rising out of the smoke it generated. At first all that was visible was the tops of the eight main smokestacks. Each gave birth to its own dark cloud. The clouds plumed upward and merged into a general pall that hung over the landscape, sending a shadow that ran along the trolley tracks; and Lefty understood that the men’s silence was a recognition of this shadow, of its inevitable approach each morning. As it came on, the men turned their backs so that only Lefty saw the light leave the sky as the shadow enveloped the streetcar and the men’s faces turned gray and one of the mavros on the runners spat blood onto the roadside. The smell seeped into the streetcar next, first the bearable eggs and manure, then the unbearable chemical taint, and Lefty looked at the other men to see if they registered it, but they didn’t, though they continued to breathe. The doors opened and they all filed out. Through the hanging smoke, Lefty saw other streetcars letting off other workers, hundreds and hundreds of gray figures trudging across the paved courtyard toward the factory gates. Trucks were driving past, and Lefty let himself be taken along with the flow of the next shift, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand men hurrying last cigarettes or getting in final words - because as they approached the factory they’d begun to speak again, not because they had anything to say but because beyond those doors language wasn’t allowed…
On the factory floor, my grandfather was trained for his job in seventeen minutes. Part of the new production method’s genius was its division of labor into unskilled tasks. That way you could hire anyone. And fire anyone. The foreman showed Lefty how to take a bearing from the conveyor, grind it on a lathe, and replace it. Holding a stopwatch, he timed the new employee’s attempts. Then, nodding once, he led Lefty to his position on the Line. On the left stood a man named Wierzbicki; on the right, a man named O’Malley. For a moment, they are three men, waiting together. Then the whistle blows.”
Comment by Raku — 29 June 2006 @ 1:29 PM
I’ve made some edits based on some excellent criticisms from “Adam.” Thanks!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 June 2006 @ 1:53 PM
This article has been reprinted on Energy Bulletin.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 June 2006 @ 3:44 PM
I hope to one day go in there with mycelia innoculations and turn that shit into food, which will then jumpstart the cycle back to a functioning ecosystem, not just a bunch of half dead saplings.
I am still in the research stage, but other have already been applying a new-found understnading of microbiotic life that will feed off of the wastes of humans and revitalize the ecosystem.
I hope that I will be able to contribute someday to YOUR landbase and be a part of making it a healthier place to live.
Comment by Tony — 29 June 2006 @ 4:36 PM
In a lighter frame of mind I have hope that a lot of the environmental damage from mountain top removal will be cleaned up. I have read about the amazing return of animal life to the Chernoble area since the humans have retreated. The planet does have the power to regenerate in ways we never imagined. In the same vein the skraelings survived and even prospered while the Norse with their ridgid adherence to a way of life unsuited to the new climate died off. Tony, are you refering to mycorrhizal fungi that live in symbiosis with plants and help them take up nutrients? I hope you can help. Even kudzu with its nitrogen fixing ability would be hard pressed to remediate the type of infill operations refered to in the article.
Comment by Drex — 29 June 2006 @ 7:58 PM
No actually, mycorrhizal fungi are alittle too sensitive to handle such a job, which is why resotrations over polluted lands are so difficult.
The fungi I propose(Sourcing Stamets, Yao, Summerlin, and St.John) to use are saphrophytic fungi.
The enzymes produced by saprophytic fungi are extremely powerful, and even modern science still as yet to duplicate many of them.
It has been shown over and over agian that such poor soils, such as diesel contaminated soil from government vehicle yards can begin to show life within a year fromt he beginning of running the mycelium or say for example, pleurotus osteratus, or the Oyster mushroom.
This is what happen in a nutshell:
Let’s theoretically restore 5 acres of fossil-fuel polluted land.
First, the amateur mycologist/restorationist innoculated large amounts of wood chips with grain spawn. It takes two months for the grain spawn to fully colonize. You woudl only need a run of mycelium that would take up the size of a small clsoet, or about 50 quart-sized mason jars.
Then, in about a ton and a half of wood chips, spread your colonized grain spawn. In about three months, the woodchips should show vigourous growth, and even may begin to fruit.
You msut run with the mycelium, and this is a sign that it is entering into the “fall” stages of life, and needs new food.
Which, for this cycle will no longer be grain or woodchips, but the fossil fuels themselves.
take the woodchips and spread them over the soil. Mix them into the soil.
Within a month, you should be seeing some fo the largest fruitbodies of Oysters ever in your life. There is so much energy in that contamination.
Of course, these are not food for you to eat. But they are food for insects and bacteria. As the fruitbodies die, and are colonized with fast-moving insect and microbial life, the primary enzymes of the oyster has already made it hospitable for more life. Secondary life then moves in, worms eat the mycelium, and bring other fungi and seeds with them.
This is the point you can begin to natural seeds.
There is also an additional bonus to this process.
Say you are trying to remove mercury from the soil. Oysters are hyperaccumlators of mercury, so removing the fruit bodies and having them dealt with is a lot easier than trying to mechanically process the mecury out.
It has been theorized that the fungi fruitbodies with hyperaccumlated heavy metals can be decomposed, and the metals recycled. hopefully in my lifetime, I will get to experiement with this hypothesis.
So in heavily polluted areas, saphropytic mushrooms must come before the more senstive mycrorhizal species ( but the truth is, there are some species that are both! lots to lern, more to do, hope I’ve got time for it all)
Comment by Tony — 29 June 2006 @ 9:53 PM
On the assumption that mankind takes to coal and creates a global warming disaster and eventually kills itself; perhaps this might explain why activities such as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life (SETI) fail to find any. Now described as the Fermi paradox, the thought goes that if we so firmly believe in ET life that we spend millions of dollars searching for it why can’t we find it.
It could be that a direct result of having the energy to communicate over inter-stellar distances, and that takes vast, vast energy, is a greenhouse effect that kills the race that created it. mankind have existed for but a flicker in stellar time and the galaxy is vast. We must NOW decide if we aspire to live for millenia and fulfill Issaac Asimov’s dream to populate the galaxy, or perish from our own stupidity.
From the Greek tragedy, Oedipus, man’s greatest stupidity is not making a great mistake, it is knowing the consequences of a mistake in advance and making it anyway.
Comment by mark robson — 29 June 2006 @ 11:15 PM
I don’t think it’s techically necessary for an industrial society to wipe itself out ecologically. Maybe with a different set of resources, we might have found a basis for industrialism that didn’t require poisoning our planet.
I think the better explanation might be precisely the explanation for all of earth’s collapses: complexity is subject to diminishing returns.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 June 2006 @ 8:23 AM
nature maintains without engineers and analysts a system more complex than we can imagine to describe.
An RNA assay finds an average of 3,000 different species.
Of those species, only about .1% can be cultured using standard lab techniques, the only way we have right now of understanding behavior.
The complex relationshp between these and other organisms isn’t jsut misunderstood, it’s simply not understood at all. But we at least kow it’s there, and we know it will regrow itself once the Microbiotic Holocaust ends.
So i think using complexity as a dirty word is a litlte premature, becuase I beleive humans can easily mimc the complexity of nature as we begin to understand it, developing systems not based on our abstract goals as much as systems already in place, tested with time.
We simply don’t know, bt knowledge is growing everyday. I beleive we now know enough. Considering there is as much organic life in an acre of prarie as there is in a rainforest, we should at least adopt a doctrine of do no harm, finding a way to halt the Microbiotic Holocaust.
We don’t need to continue to do stupid things like completely destroy an ecosystem. But we still do. The gap is in information, and some organizations are learning, and the opportunities are only gorwing. But as Mr.Hon always said, “what you don’t knwo can kill you.”
Comment by Tony — 30 June 2006 @ 10:07 AM
Who’s using it as a dirty word? All I ever said is that complexity is subject to diminishing returns—and it is. While the universe has found some startlingly stable levels of complexity, most of the universe is as basic as it can be: most atoms are hydrogen; most life is microbial; etc. Lots of things, even things never made by people, have died out for being too complex, because complexity requires energy, so it needs to be more effective to justify its higher cost. The brain humans sport can only be justified inside the skull of a nomadic, omnivorous primate, because only in that context is it useful enough to balance its enormous energy cost.
The same is true of human society, which is built on top of an ecological system and thus inherits a great deal of complexity from the very beginning. A society with no complexity would be non-existent, and if you want to see what minimal complexity looks like, go ask the Ik of Uganda. It’s not pretty.
The problem isn’t that complexity’s “bad,” the problem is that it’s subject to diminishing returns, so it can’t be the answer to every problem. Sometimes, the answer might be to reduce complexity. Complexity is a feature of all systems, but it’s not a goal to be pursued, so much as an investment to be made, and like any investment, you need to pay attention to the ROI you’re getting from it. If that ROI drops, you need to invest less in it for a while.
One day, I do believe we’ll find startlingly stable levels of social complexity. But we’re not there yet, and right now, we very much need to scale down our complexity, before we can try investing our complexity in a different direction. Sankofa.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 June 2006 @ 10:21 AM
I agree with you Jason. the degree at which we opertate as a Monoculture is by definition rather simplex, in fact, the entire threat of mankind to the planet is underlined by a simple, basic assumption of Unlimited Natural Capital.
bacteria are a good example of an organism that is as comple as it needs to be, however, when compared to just a simple chemical reaction, it’s very complex. When you compare the organism of bacteria to the complexity of their relatioinships as a meta-organism, as well as their symbiotic(or market) relationships, the single organism is but a cog.
Sorry about the poor choice of words, Jason, didn’t mean to put oyu on the defensive. I didn’t realize what I intended, to be general, and what I actually typed, which looked liek I was “calling you out” were so different.
As far as stabilizing complexity, nature already provide enough archetypes to get us working for thousands of years, so for me, the improvements to the economy are more about follwing natures lead than taking on those human models subject to diminishing returns.
Sankofa is an Akan word that means, “We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today.”
Sweet, thanks for the new term.
Comment by Tony — 30 June 2006 @ 12:33 PM
That’s exactly my point. Any less complex, and it would no longer be life, it’d just be a chemical reaction. And all life is vastly outnumbered by all the chemical reactions, which are in turn outnumbered by all the physical processes, and so on. The universe drives towards greater diversity, and as a consequence, there’s a growing complexity, but there’s always more simplicity than complexity. Most physical processes are as simple as they can be while still being physical processes; most chemical reactions are as simple as they can be while still being chemical reactions; most life is as simple as it can be while still being alive.
It’s not a matter of good or bad; it’s a matter of ROI, and living beyond your means.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 30 June 2006 @ 12:42 PM
http://www.prosefights.org/coal/coal.htm
on way back to my 50th high school reunion http://www.prosefights.org/shattuck/shattuck.htm
while having fun too
http://www.prosefights.org/shattuck/flyfishmadison/flyfishmadison.htm
Comment by billp — 30 June 2006 @ 7:57 PM
This is a very good article that summarises the decisions that we must face in the future as the over-consumers that we are. It’s obvious that we must change our direction to renewable fuels instead of these finite and polluting resources.
Comment by Brad — 1 July 2006 @ 10:05 AM
Thanks for excellent read. This is a very compelling piece, exposing coal for the evil it is.
As circumstances would have it, I discovered just a day or so ago a fine pieee by an author, David Fleming, of whom I know next to nothing, exposing a different energy source, nuclear power, as an equally preposterous evil. Fleming’s is the best discussion of nukes I have been able to find so far. The URL: http://www.feasta.org/documents/energy/nuclear_power.htm
(or simply Google under Fleming nuclear power: the hit you want is the link to the essay ‘Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be A Major Energy Source’).
Sincerely,
Toomas (Tom) Karmo
http://www.metascientia.com
Comment by Toomas Karmo — 6 July 2006 @ 7:17 PM
How odd–I was already sent that exact link by a different reader when this article went up, and I’ve been thinking about doing another article on nuclear using that and some other arguments, as well.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 July 2006 @ 9:58 AM
So I did.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 July 2006 @ 5:49 PM
Why coal-rich US is seeing record imports. Even with all the coal in the U.S., we’re importing coal nonetheless–why? Because what coal we have left is plentiful, but too low in quality.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 July 2006 @ 1:23 PM
My husband works at the local electric power company. I can’t believe I’ve never been curious as to HOW they generate all that electricity - COAL. I passed this article along to him. Now he’s worried he might start glowing in the dark.
WHY haven’t we perfected solar power yet??
Comment by karasu — 25 July 2006 @ 3:32 PM
We pretty much have perfected solar power, as far as I know. The problem is that it’s expensive and inadequate. My article before this one, “Do you believe in magic?” dealt with the limitations of solar power.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 26 July 2006 @ 8:48 AM
Flora is the ultimate solar collector, perfected and tested over innumerable generations.
Comment by JCamasto — 27 July 2006 @ 2:22 PM
Richard Heinberg, “Peak Coal: Sooner Than You Think”
Reviews new evidence that global coal reserves have been vastly overestimated (by as much as 60%), and predictions of decades or even centuries of coal left are based on old assessments, at levels of production last seen decades ago. Revised assessments put peak coal closer to 5-15 years.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 May 2007 @ 10:54 AM