The Extinction of Coal
©1996-2010 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
The coal lobby has told everyone that there is enough coal to last 200 years. That is
true only if:
- There is absolutely no growth in coal usage.
- The three million new Americans born each year will use no coal whatsoever directly or indirectly in their
lives.
- Coal won’t take up any slack as oil gets more expensive and rare.
- America will refuse to sell coal to China.
- No coal will be used to generate the electricity to charge the batteries of the coming electric cars.
How long will the coal really last? It depends on the rate of growth in consumption of coal. How can you predict what
that rate of growth will be?
- Historically growth in coal consumption has run at 2.86% per
year.
- The population of the USA grows at 1.1% per year.
- You expect coal use to increase as oil prices rise or concerns about vulnerability to foreign
oil take hold. Coal is used primarily for making electricity. It is burned to make steam that drives electric
generators.
- As the USA converts to electric cars, it will need coal to generate the electricity to power
them since there is no other power source ready.
- The USA has the more coal than any other country. It is only natural that the USA will
preferentially use domestic energy sources.
| Top Coal Reserves |
|---|
| Country |
% |
|---|
| USA |
27.1% |
| Russian Federation |
17.3% |
| China |
12.6% |
| India |
10.2% |
| Australia |
8.6% |
- As other energy sources dwindle, there will be huge political pressures to use still more
coal to enable the USA to retain military superpower status.
- The Chinese will be pounding at the doorstep with truckloads of cash wanting to buy all the
coal the USA will sell it.
- Clean coal is illusive. The problem is it takes about 1/3 of
the electicity generated to sequester the CO2 generated. This makes clean coal-fired
electric power quite expensive. The Norwegians are sequestering CO2
from burning
natural gas. Going to clean coal will consume the coal reserves much faster just to get he same energy.
- On the other paw, by some miracle, Americans could awaken to the fact that burning all
that coal will, through the global “warming” CO2
emissions, heat the planet so hot it will kill nearly every living thing, and wisely decide to leave the coal in
the ground.
The bottom line is the more you rely on coal, the sooner you will run out of it. This should be too obvious to
mention, but the energy lobby have tricked the public into ignoring the effect of increased demand.
How are the Calculations Done?
Here is the basic formula derived from calculus. The formula works for any finite resource, not just coal. You can
read up on the derivation at flinders.edu.
extinctionYears = 1. / rate * ln( rate * reserve / extraction + 1 )
The ramifications of the little equation inside this program are profound. The raw data came from the Coal industry lobby, the site that puts coal in the
best possible light. You can browse source
repository to see my Java code.
Dr. Albert Bartlett
Watching a video by Dr. Albert Bartlett inspired me to write this Applet. He had a look at my calculations and told
me that the calculations of how long coal will last are the same as the ones he published in 1978 in his paper Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis in the American
Journal of Physics. 
I highly recommend it.
DVDs of the talk, Arithmetic, Population and Energy by Professor Emeritus Albert A. Bartlett of the
Department of Physics and the book, The Essential Exponential for the Future of our Planet are available
from the General Book Department of the University of Colorado Bookstore. This book contains reprints of Prof.
Bartlett’s papers on exponential arithmetic, energy, population and sustainability. More information is
available online, CUBookstore.com CU Bookstore, Campus Box
36, Boulder, CO, 80309-0036
Phone (303) 492-7599; FAX (303) 492-0420; Toll Free,
(800) 255-9168
- DVD Price: $12 plus shipping and handling
- Book Price: $18 plus shipping and handling
(Prof. Bartlett accepts no royalties from the sales of these DVDs and books.)
Papers can be downloaded from the website: AlBartlett.org
The talk, Arithmetic, Population and Energy can be seen in eight parts on YouTube
.
If you don’t trust the formula or the Java program, write yourself a spreadsheet to cross check my program
that calculates the amount of coal consumed and amount left in, year 1, year 2 etc. You only need elementary school
math for that.
Papers
Doctor Bartlett sent me four technical papers that might be of interest for further background. You will need
Open Office to read them.
Trouble Shooting
If, coal, the above Coal Extinction Calculator Java Applet does not work…
- This Java Applet needs at least 32-bit (not 64-bit) Java 1.5. For best results use the latest 1.6.0_18. and a recent browser.
- Firefox 3.6 requires Java 1.6.0_10 or later.
- If you have Windows 7 64-bit and Internet Explorer 64-bit, you can use 64-bit Java.
- You should see the Applet above looking much like the screenshot. If you don’t, the following should help you get it working:
- If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, try another browser. Seriously. Microsoft has taken great pains, over and over, to screw up Java and every other multi-platform standardisation.
- If you are using Internet Explorer 7 or 8, you must allow blocked content permission for Active X to run. This also gives permission to Java to run. Click the Information bar, and then click Allow blocked content. Unfortunately, this also allows dangerous ActiveX code to run. However, you must do this in order to get access to perfectly-safe Java Applets running in a sandbox. This is part of Microsoft’s war on Java. Don’t put up with it! Use a different browser.
- Especially if this Applet has worked before, try clearing the browser cache and rebooting.
- To ensure your Java is up to date, check with Wassup. First, download it and run it as an application independent of your browser, then run it online as an Applet to add the complication of your browser.
- If the above Applet does not work, check the Java console for error messages.
- If the above Applet does not work, you might have better luck with the downloadable version.
- If you are using Mac OS X and would like an improved Look and Feel, download the QuaQua look & feel from randelshofer.ch/quaqua. UnZip the contained quaqua.jar and install it in ~/Library/Java/Extensions or one of the other ext dirs.
- If you still can’t get the program working click HELP for more detail.
- If you can’t get the above Applet working after trying the advice above and from the HELP button below, have bugs to report or ideas to improve the program or its documentation, please send me an email at
.
Acquiring the Program
| Package | Version | Released | Licence | Language | Notes | |
|---|
Coal |
1.0 |
2009-11-29 |
free |
Java |
zip for Coal Java source and compiled class files to run on your own machine as an application or Applet.
First install the most recent Java.
To install, extract the zip download with WinZip,
(or similar unzip utility) into any directory you please,
often J:\ — ticking off the
“user folder names” option. To check out the corresponding source from the Subversion repository, use the TortoiseSVN repo-browser to
access coal source in repository with [Tortoise] Subversion client on wush.net/svn/mindprod/com/mindprod/coal/.
After you have installed the jar, you can run it as an application. Type: java -jar J:\com\mindprod\coal\coal.jar
adjusting as necessary to account for where the jar file is.
download ASP PAD XML program description for the current version of Coal.
Coal is free.
Full source included.
You may even include the source code, modified or unmodified
in commercial programs that you write and distribute. Non-military use only. |
|
|
|---|
| |
|---|
❘ PAD facts
❘ screenshot
❘ browse source repository
for the current version of Coal.
Calculates how long coal will last in the USA given various rates of growth in use.
Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to
Roedy Green :
