We may have a LOT of coal, and we might be able to reduce demand enough to stretch it for 200 or more years. But there's no way we'll be able to maintain a fixed consumption at today's rate beyond the estimated 2020/2030 peak.WetEV wrote: 200 years of coal is at current growth rates, not at current consumption. There is a LOT of coal.
Total estimated reserves are 948,000 million short tons. Current use is about 8,000 million short tons a year. Source [EIA links removed]
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadm ... 2007ms.pdf
In addition:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5256
All this is outside my area of expertise - I have to rely on the experts. If you have information that turns this apparent consensus on it's ear, please share it!This appears to be quite a sophisticated piece of resource modeling, and a good one to bring out when someone blithely comments that 'we have enough coal left to last hundreds of years, so why worry.'