I make no comment on anything like peak oil, peak coal, pollution, the desirability of using or not using fossil fuels, etc, etc. My comment relates purely to climate science.

But I think it would make sense for the IPCC to commission or do a serious evaluation of the global resource. It would be interesting to find out that everyone has been wrong all these years about how much carbon there is that can be expected to end up in the atmosphere under business as usual scenarios.

If it is true that there is actually far less coal than most thought, this is good news. Peak coal is unlikely to be found to looming quite as near as peak oil, and in that case the transition even under business as usual energy scenarios could be predicted to be orderly. I take it people don’t see peak oil as great news because they fear disruption.

I may personally fear large economic and social disruption, but I hope they run out of oil and coal tomorrow. As in WWII, when it took invasion of US territory before people woke up to the obvious, running right out of fossil fuels would cause the kind of effort we need to replace them, and if we ran out tomorrow, it would be that much easier to achieve a 325 – 350 ppm target level in the atmosphere.

Bob Wallace – my interests are purely in the science. I am extremely well aware of the science, having spent a very large amount of time on it, read a large number of scientific papers, and communicated directly with prominent researchers in three countries. I have been involved in organising presentations by researchers from both sides of the argument, and still am. Any views that I have have been formed over a period of time, and are based solely on scientific research and facts (normal meaning of “facts”).

Whoever removed “Mike”’s comment – it’s a bit late now, but if you restored it then people could see what Bob Wallace was replying to.

Your interests can’t be purely in the science.

You aren’t aware of the science.

Perhaps you’re looking forward to a future introduction to the science?

The answer is simple – there’s no such thing as “we”. Words like “we”, the “economy”, the “country”, “America”, are nothing more than that: words.

What really exists is a free-fire zone of ususally mutually exclusive interests, and regarding any question, e.g. the best use of resources, the only real question is, cui bono?, Who benefits?

That’s why a concept like having a rational long-term resource triage plan can never be seriously considered – it benefits no vested interest, and those are the only interests which any longer exist (the “people” having abdicated long ago).

As I recall they are essentially assuming global coal reserves of 1 trillion tonnes, and this is consistent with the IEA’s figures (World Energy Outlook 2008), *but* the IEA also refers (p.128 of WEO 2008) to the “lack of incentives to prove up reserves… Exploration activity is typically carried out by mining companies with short planning horizons, rather than by state-funded geologic surveys.” I.e. there is probably much more coal than has been discovered, because prospecting has been ad-hoc in much of the world, because the economic demand hasn’t been there for anything more.

The second is for Brian… and for Jim Hansen. Nuclear is the most expensive of the options. That is without taking externalized costs such as the impact on health care. We have been unwilling or incapable of tracking custody of nuclear material from ground to ground. So why is this different. So again, a question. Why are we advocating so strongly for the most expensive solution to our problem?

This is not about technology. It is about having the political will to do what is right.

Wes Rolley CoChair EcoAction Committee Green Party US.

“The three points that I raise concern: (1) coal, (2) carbon tax, and (3) nuclear power.
* * *
(3) Nuclear power: it would be great if energy efficiency, renewable energies, and an improved (”smart”) electric grid could satisfy all energy needs. However, the future of our children should not rest on that gamble. The danger is that the minority of vehement antinuclear “environmentalists” could cause development of advanced safe nuclear power to be slowed such that utilities are forced to continue coal-burning in order to keep the lights on. That is a prescription for disaster.”

http://www.columbia.edu/ ~jeh1/ mailings/ 20081229_DearMichelleAndBarack.pdf