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Sure, look at that chart. According to that chart, we'll burn coal forever. Now, consult reality for a moment, or take a look around. Coal is finite, a resource

Sure, look at that chart. According to that chart, we'll burn coal forever. Now, consult reality for a moment, or take a look around. Coal is finite, a resources stored away over a tremendous period of time, much of it burned in about a century. So your "always" is at best temporarily true, and thus worthless, it can't actually have predictive power. Although you insist that new sources "always come on top" you're either just observing that the chart was designed this way (facile) or you didn't look at the actual data closely. In 2014 there was more "traditional biomass" (ie people burn stuff) than today. Since this practice is extremely inefficient it makes sense to see it phased out, cooking food over a literal log fire is simple but that's the only upside. Also Solar looks like about 2.5% to me. How is that "negligible" ? Is the population of Bangladesh "negligible"? That's about 2.5% of the world's population.

newpavlov 2y ago
>Coal is finite, a resources stored away over a tremendous period of time, much of it burned in about a century Sure, it's finite, but we will run out of oil and natural gas much faster than of coal. There are centuries worth of known economically viable coal reserves. Even more, if we count low-quality lignite and peat reserves.
- DrScientist 2y ago
  Do those 'centuries' include the large increases in power demands across the world, ( as the wider world develops ) and the requirement to replace the missing oil and gas when they run out?
  - Filligree 2y ago
    People would choke to death before we could use that much coal, so I doubt that will matter. It’s effectively infinite: We have access to more than we will ever want to use.
yodsanklai 2y ago
> Although you insist that new sources "always come on top" you're either just observing that the chart was designed this way (facile) or you didn't look at the actual data closely. I mean that new energy sources came in addition to existing ones. We consume as much wood as we ever did. Coal didn't reduce wood usage. Oil didn't reduce coal and so on...
- Krssst 2y ago
  Nuclear did remove almost completely fossil fuels from the French electricity grid. Only example I know of of a grid that succeeded in getting rid of almost all fossil fuels. (transport and heating keep using a lot of fossils however)

newpavlov 2y ago

>Coal is finite, a resources stored away over a tremendous period of time, much of it burned in about a century Sure, it's finite, but we will run out of oil and natural gas much faster than of coal. There are centuries worth of known economically viable coal reserves. Even more, if we count low-quality lignite and peat reserves.

DrScientist 2y ago
Do those 'centuries' include the large increases in power demands across the world, ( as the wider world develops ) and the requirement to replace the missing oil and gas when they run out?
- Filligree 2y ago
  People would choke to death before we could use that much coal, so I doubt that will matter. It’s effectively infinite: We have access to more than we will ever want to use.

yodsanklai 2y ago

> Although you insist that new sources "always come on top" you're either just observing that the chart was designed this way (facile) or you didn't look at the actual data closely. I mean that new energy sources came in addition to existing ones. We consume as much wood as we ever did. Coal didn't reduce wood usage. Oil didn't reduce coal and so on...

Krssst 2y ago
Nuclear did remove almost completely fossil fuels from the French electricity grid. Only example I know of of a grid that succeeded in getting rid of almost all fossil fuels. (transport and heating keep using a lot of fossils however)