Everything has a peak, which is why we're in a recession right now. The problem is when dealing with the economics of each situation, predicting "Peak Anything" in fundamentally unknowable. We're actually in a very strange Peak Oil situation right now, although temporary because prices should rally by next year (if we're not all hobos by then).

There really is probably 200 years of coal in the US, from a geologic point of view. The question is how much can be extracted at reasonable cost? Pick a number, 20 or 50 years sounds OK to me because we simply cannot know that.

Then as I reflect on the topic, "Peak Anything" in this context means that we'll run out of traditional fuels and have to look for new ones. Isn't that a good thing? Sustainability?

Onward through the fog

That coal may last for another 200-300 years usually is prefaced by the caveat "at current rates of consumption." If consumption rates grow at a fixed rate of even 1%, the "exponential expiration time" decreases markedly.

The arguments advanced by EWG and David Rutledge, among others, are compelling.

I'd second Bart's mention of Heinberg's new book on coal - I know that he's been able to get advance materials - you might contact him for more discussion of this issue.

To me, one of the major issues is that any "shift to another finite resource" strategy is precisely the strategy offered by the baby boomer generation to Gen Xers like me - that is, push the problem of on one's posterity.  In 1979, Carter identified Global Warming as a major issue and there was a solid body of research suggesting that we'd hit resource limits within a few decades - and despite the hard work of many boomers to avoid it, the solution we got was "stick the problem with another generation."

Personally, I decline to enact that solution again - to deliver to our children a warmer, poorer world based on the assumption that resource limits shouldn't be considered until we bang hard against them.  The idea that one's posterity should endure the hardships the parents are unwilling to endure is one that has to go - simply because it is morally evil.

Sharon

Sharon, with dirt under her fingernails.

If the peak coal theory can be verified it would be good news and an incentive for alternative fuel development. However even if it just last 20 years Peak coal will still be detrimental to the Mountain Peaks of Appalachia. If Mountain Top Removal can't be stopped my new theory is Peak Peaks as we will be running out of Mountain Tops or Peaks down here in E. Kentucky or W. Virginia.

Much of the 200 year coal reserve they are talking about in the Eastern Coal fields is located under the water table. The mining of this coal will require deep or what we call shaft mines. These mines are gassy or what we call hot mines and the danger from methane gas explosions is always present in this type of mining. The cost is prohibitive for this type of mining when the price of a ton of coal drops below $65-$70 s ton. This is the reason Mountain Top Removal has become the popular way of mining for the Coal Corporations.

Experiments have been done in Europe on Coal degasification a process similar to the fracturing of the strata process used for Natural Gas Wells. Liquid Nitrogen is introduced into the coal seam and an explosion cracks the coal seam allowing the Methane Gas to flow into pockets. When the gas is drawn off  you have a methane gas free mine. The process may take several years but you have the added advantage of selling the gas from the degasifying process. The Natural Gas Pipe line infrastructure is already in place for transporting the gas to market. Of course the U.S. Coal Corporations are doing nothing in this regard so when the easy coal is gone miners will have to work in dangerous gassy mines while the methane is drawn out through the ventilation system being wasted as a fuel source as it goes into the environment in its raw unburned form.

Our only hope is for a cheap alternative to coal that will make coal even more cost prohibitive to mine. They will mine every last available lump of coal if there is any margin of profit at all because coal reserves are now Taxed in Kentucky and some other states. You pay for the coal you have in reserve even if you do not mine it. With George Bush's midnight rule changes on Mountain Top Removal the coal corporations will have even more incentive over the next 20 years to do Mountain Top Removal Mining.

Our current geological activity in the region is not creating any more Mountain Peaks so I can say with absolute authority we have hit Peak Peaks in E. Kentucky and W. Virginia. Demand has over taken supply since they raped the 1977 Surface Mine Act and Mountain Top Removal has become the predominant type of strip mining in Appalachia. I can  definitely say we have hit Peak Peaks and we currently are on the downward side of Peak supply. spiraling down the peak graph as we use up more and more mountain peaks, valleys and fresh water streams.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

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