And there are large coal reserves in the US and Russia. So if only two countries agree to stop using coal, the whole planet is saved (in a sense). The US and Russia have the tech to deploy other energy sources, while the Middle East has most of the oil and gas in tiny countries with little other way of earning a living.

BP reckons [1.5Mb pdf, but has oil and natural gas reserves, consumption, etc, so worth the download] that the world coal reserves are,

US, 247Gt
Russia, 157Gt
China, 115Gt
India, 92Gt
Australia, 79Gt
South Africa, 49Gt
Ukraine, 34Gt
Kazakhstan, 31Gt
Poland, 14Gt
Brazil, 10Gt
Or 828Gt of the world's 909Gt. The USA and Russia are 404Gt of this, and so are a substantial part of it. But the remaining 501Gt is more than enough to knock us over the edge.

Or if you want to consider production, the US and Russia together produce 1.363Gt of coal annually, leaving 4.832Gt of production annually. This gives us 13.8Gt CO2e of the world's 49Gt of greenhouse gas emissions each year; if carried over 92 years would give us a total of 1,270Gt CO2e. Again, that's plenty.

It'd need to be a truly multinational effort, I'm afraid. US and Russia alone won't cut it.

Thanks for digging up the numbers Kiashu.

I think there are few signs the US and Russia will stop extracting coal - even though the banks are starting to make it hard for would be coal burners to build new power plants in the US, Peabody and co are rapidly stepping up exports (see the NY article HO referred to in his coal post yesterday) - so it seems that coal will likely find its way up a smokestack somewhere unless the brakes are applied on a global basis.

Plus every man and his dog seems to be experimenting with coal to liquids (or at least thinking about doing so) now.

To be fair to Jamais and Hansen, they are simply outlining scenarios - unfortunately the BAU scenario looks the most likely by far at this point, which indicates that peak oil won't save us from global warming - far from it...

Optimism -->
Excitement -->
Thrill -->
Euphoria -->
Anxiety -->
Denial -->We're here. IMHO
Fear -->
Depression -->
Panic -->
Capitulation -->
Desperation -->
Hope -->
Relief -->
Optimism -->

"...which indicates that peak oil won't save us from global warming."

W/O oil coal doesn't get mined. If mined, it doesn't get shipped.

Collapse will decide how quickly AGW accelerates.

W/O oil coal doesn't get mined.

NAw, there is plenty of electric mining Eq. Getting the coal from the mine to the plants - that *MAY* need oil.

Which part of "coal to liquids" don't you understand ?

Does the phrase 'electric vehicle" mean anything to you ?

Why do people continually ignore existing, practical technology and come up with this "we need (crude) oil to mine coal, grow crops etc etc" ?

Talk about denial...

Kiashu, thanks for this - you've articulated exactly my trouble with the report - while I agree with Jason it would be enormously wiser to leave the coal in the ground, and that all efforts should be made on that front, I have real doubts about whether it is possible as oil prices drive people in precisely the opposite direction. A friend of mine who sells heating devices tells me they are seeing a renewed interest in home coal stoves by people who can't afford to heat their houses with oil (the Northeast is heavily oil dependent for heating, unlike the rest of the US).

I appreciate Hansen's work, and I think the analysis is valuable, but I think that if we can not burn the coal, we can not burn the oil, and if we can't not burn the oil, we'll burn the coal too, horribly.

Sharon

while I agree with Jason it would be enormously wiser to leave the coal in the ground, and that all efforts should be made on that front, I have real doubts about whether it is possible as oil prices drive people in precisely the opposite direction.

I think it's quite possible that people will decide to leave the coal in the ground. I just don't see why they'd pump the oil to the limits of what's physically possible, yet at the same time agreeing to keep the coal in the ground.

Either we have restraint with all fossil fuels, or with none.

And they completely miss deforestation, just blandly assuming that we could have some grand world forestation campaign. The fact is that people's efforts to stop deforestation came decades before any ideas about climate change were about. And yet still 17.5% of greenhouse gas emissions are from deforestation, illegal logging is rife and responsible for more than half the logging done in Asia, and so on.

That does not to me suggest that deforestation could stop, let alone be reversed. This is especially true in the Third World where most deforestation takes place, because... well, let's imagine that we stop pumping oil and gas and digging up coal. We in the West are wealthy enough to put in wind turbines and the like to make up for it. But what's Senegal going to do? Or Colombia? They'll cut wood and burn it, that's what.

So any effort at reducing greenhouse gases has to look not only at burning fossil fuels, which are after all just 55% of all emissions, but also at deforestation, and so on. If we don't want these countries to keep chopping down their forests, well first up we need to stop buying their timber, and second we need to give them an alternative. I'd begin building wind turbines not in Australia or the US, but in Senegal and Colombia and the like.

This would also help with rapidly rising in emissions countries like China and India, to show that you can have a good quality of life without burning fossil fuels.

Either we have restraint with all fossil fuels, or with none.

And they completely miss deforestation, just blandly assuming that we could have some grand world forestation campaign.

I think you are misunderstanding Hansen's intent. I believe (I have no direct connect to the man to test my hypothesis) the paper's intent is to show that restraining CO2 is possible. I don't think it is intended to show THE way, or THE best way to do so. They are outlining how the world's climate **can** be stabilized. Assigning to them comments such as "blandly assuming" shows lack of insight into the man and his work. He is well aware he is talking about massive shifts in economy, behavior, politics, etc.

Cheers

Anyone can paint such a scenario. That's no challenge. The challenge is to present one which is plausible.

It's not plausible that we'll burn as much oil as we possibly can, yet have restraint with the coal, and regrow the forests. It's like imagining that a burglar will take your DVD player but not the cash sitting next to it. Either he refrains from theft, or he gets right into it.

Had H&K described a scenario in which all fossil fuel use was restrained, my response would be, "that's nice - how?" But they didn't do that, they presented a confused and implausible scenario.

The senarios in that paper are a little dated now. You might be interested in the action plan outlined in this talk given in February in Bloomington, IL. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/illwesleyan_20080219.pdf
In the same directory you can find the draft paper I was responding to with the coral post at the Real Energy Blog.

Chris