The contents below are paid advertisements. Their appearance does not imply an endorsement by The Oil Drum.
“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”
—Henry Ford
Search The Oil Drum with Google
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Technician: Super G
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Summer Streets a Success!
- Plan for Hydro-Fracture Drilling for Unconventional Natural Gas in Upstate New York
- Enjoying Life Close to Home: Fun Streets
TOD:Europe
- Russian gas and European energy security - a reprise
- Russia: There Is Life After Peak Oil
- Should EROEI be the most important criterion our society uses to decide how it meets its energy needs?
TOD:Canada
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
- Weekend Energy Listening: Wind Power with Paul Gipe
TOD:ANZ
Peak Oil Primers
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- Ecological Economics
- David Strahan
- Econbrowser
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- Environmental Economics
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Organizations
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
My dad used to be baffled and bemused by our use of coal (anthracite) here on our little farm in Maine. He remembers being a kid in Ohio in the 40s and shoveling ash and tending the coal furnace. He said coal was 50 cents a ton then! Now we pay circa $300.00/ton!
Why do we use this "dirty fuel?" How else can you use an 1885 Cyrus Carpenter set range, with double ovens and water front? The only other option is wood, which is just too much work.
Five tons of coal gets us through five months of winter, providing the heat for half the house, all our hot water (hence, the water front), and all our cooking. Ash pan has to be emptied daily. Cans of ash go to the landfill or into a big hole in the woods out back left by loggers from the 40s. It gives us utter independence from The Grid and keeps us at home.
I'm alright Jack!...and isn't this just the problem worldwide. Everyone wants to just have it better for themselves without thinking about the general condition. So I'll just burn some coal and let others worry about the waste products and their effects.
Unlike you, of course, who are so virtuous that you waste nothing and pollute not a whit.
You apparently didn't hear that we're virtually off the grid (THE COAL HOG) and that we burn anthracite, which burns clean.
But who cares? What are you going to do, sic your minions on me?
Off the grid but still on the internet. That coal burning computer must be quite an innovation. Tell us about it.
Is it really too difficult for someone to understand that you can have internet connectivity and not be connected to the power grid at all yourself?
Or is it better to latch onto an opportunity to let the lizard brain run wild in an effort to smash another tribal member's reputation in order to further your own social fitness and inclusion?
In this case, it seems the answer is quite obvious.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Coal will be king and for precisely this reason. Everyone pisses and moans about the kind of world we will leave "for our children and grandchildren", but nobody ever really gives a crap about future generations. When was the last time a meaningful policy was enacted and followed for the sake of "our children and grandchildren"? It's just another aspect of hypocrisy so prevelant today. Say one thing, do another. Then excuse it with "Do as I say, not as I do." Whatever.
When a family is offered the chance to heat their home for an entire winter at a price significanyly less than what they pay now (for oil or gas), it will be game time. Throw in the argument that since China and India are boosting their use of coal, it doesn't matter what we do with respect to the environment, and it's almost a no-brainer.
Interesting comparison chart here of home heating coal to other fuels. They say one ton of coal equals 8,200 KWh, 306 gallons of propane, or 1.4 cords of dry wood.
If (when) we run short of natural gas, I expect that people will turn to electric heating, since it seems to be readily available and clean. If this electric heat is derived from coal, how much is the equivalent amout of coal to the other calculations, delivered in this roundabout fashion?
If this roundabout approach is used, couldn't we end up with more demand on the grid than it is set up for?
Thanks for that useful link.
I'm not so sure you are free of the Grid because the prices you pay for the coal are tied by the whole economics of substitution; it is not, after all, your coal mine in the back yard which you have kept secret from everyone else. When the Grid gets tight, I'm thinking you will find that coal hard to find.
cfm in Gray, ME
Even in Pennsylvania, people willing to sell good anthracite coal to new customers were already hard to find. We looked into a variety of coal, wood, corn, wood pellet and even rice coal stoves, and found that wood and wood pellets were really the only fuel we could readily buy. We knew people that used coal, but none of the suppliers were interested in new customers.