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> Right. Only about 1 trillion in proven reserves, a number which often increases over time due to technology and economics and exploration. I get that, but yo
by vonmoltke 7y ago
> Right. Only about 1 trillion in proven reserves, a number which often increases over time due to technology and economics and exploration.
I get that, but you are claiming that the unproven reserves of one portion of the US are more than five times the current proven reserves of the entire world. Where is your evidence for that?
> We cannot rely on Peak Oil (or Peak Coal for that matter) to stop our reliance on fossil fuels and the ensuing climate change.
No, we need to stop burning them. That is unrelated to extracting them except for extraction being the first step in the process.
- Robotbeat 7y agoSorry for not providing the citation right away. Here's the evidence (with discussion and links to source studies) for trillions of tons of coal in Alaska: http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/AlaskaCoal/HowMuchCoal.html http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/AlaskaCoal/HowMuch... In particular, it links to this 2005 USGS study: https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/ https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/ > "The combined measured, indicated, inferred, and hypothetical coal resources in the three areas are estimated to be 5,526 billion short tons (5,012 billion metric tons), which constitutes about 87 percent of Alaska’s coal" The amount of fossil fuel energy in the ground (if we're very clever about extracting it) is absolutely vast. Enough to provide current needs for hundreds or even thousands of years, but to cook the climate and chemically change the atmosphere to that of a stuffy room long before that.
- de_watcher 7y agoWe're just changing climate back to what is was way before us. Current state was created by the organisms who went into the ground. Our turn now.