There's A Lot Less Coal Out There Than We Think - But That's Not Civilization's End

TreeHugger has covered the uncomfortable and largely under-publicized topic of peak coal on a number of occasions, but David Roberts over at Grist just brought it up again--and it's a topic certainly worth revisiting as the future implications are great. I'll take the question out of Roberts' title to sum it up: There's much less (easily recoverable) coal than we think (and are told).

The gist of it is that the conventional wisdom about coal spouted out around the US is that the nation has a 200 year supply available, sometimes touted as double that, seemingly in fits of smoky pollution-loving optimism.

But according to new analysis in the journal Energy,

The global peak of coal production from existing coalfields is predicted to occur close to the year 2011. After 2011 the production rates of coal and CO2 decline, reaching 1990 levels by the year 2037, and reaching 50% of the peak value in the year 2047. It is unlikely that future mines will reverse the trend...

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