<A new thread for the weekendThe Oil Drum

27 comments on A little more on coal mining

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Stuart Staniford on January 15, 2006 - 4:34am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
I think we should talk about coal a lot more - it seems really important to understand it. Can you be induced to talk about reserves, grades of coal, EROEI in the remaining reserves, "clean coal technologies"... etc....
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Johnny on January 15, 2006 - 10:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I am also interested in strip mining and "Mountain Top Removal" problems as this link describes:

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle& ;artid=365&page=1

"It's the dirty little secret that the U.S. government wants to keep hidden from the eyes of America, and the world. There is no better example of a human catastrophe linked to environmental destruction than life in the coal fields of Appalachia."

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Dave Cohen on January 15, 2006 - 8:08pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, HO once told me (personal communiction) that mountain top removal modified the environment in not necessarily a "bad" way. Needless to say, I disagreed and still do. It was the pollution stuff created after the mining that bothered me most--aside from screwing around with the Appalachians as if we humans were "God". On the other hand, most environments we live in on Earth are human modified now. What is actually "natural" is more and more scarce. And as climate science tells us, we have modified the Earth's atmosphere and oceans irrevocably--at least in any timeframe we care about.

Sorry, HO, had to speak to it.
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Heading Out on January 16, 2006 - 1:01am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Grin:
   Hmmm, I can see that this coal set may well extend for more than the originally planned couple of weekends.  Now I also have to go and find some photographs.
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Stuart Staniford on January 25, 2006 - 1:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yeah - it was at dinner in Denver.  I remember his impish grin as defended how Appalachia was much better for getting rid of all those pesky mountains and giving them lots of nice flat useable land.
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Nate Hagens on January 15, 2006 - 1:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Rough numbers from IEA and USFS sites give the following BTU approximations (not adjusting for quality or EROEI)

Crude oil - assume 1 trillion barrels left >5,205 Quads

Nat gas - 6,343 Trillion CF =>6,507 Quads

Worldwide Forest (trees, not agricultural crops)
87,205 million cords> 1,395 Quads (of which 2-3% is sustainable)

Worldwide coal reserves 1,081,054 million short tonnes =>
22,649 QUADS

Latent worldwide BTUS in coal almost double oil, nat gas, and wood combined!

I need to figure out how to put images in my posts but a 2001 paper entitled "Life-cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory for Fischer-Tropsch Fuels" by John Marano and Jared Ciferno shows a graph (in 186 pages) that demonstrates the GHG emissions of CTL are basically double that of conventional oil, all in.

Peak Oil, if soon, will be a disaster.
Peak Oil, if we have time enough to adjust to creation of liquid fuels will become Peak Coal

Starve of fry?

Personally, Id rather the hard crash sooner, so future generations can used the stored sunlight in coal for things other than NASCAR and war.

Can you say "real estate boom in Alaska'?

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Nate Hagens on January 15, 2006 - 2:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
OK - I profess ignorance - I have a graph of various FT processes on a GHG comparison - it pasted fine in a MSWord doc but when I try and paste it into a comment box on TOD nothing happens? Can someone tell me how to post a graph or image on here? thanks
-lastignorantsasquatch
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Stuart Staniford on January 15, 2006 - 3:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
First you need to get it up on the Internet somewhere.  Try flickr.com if you have no other option available to you.  Then with the "Comment formatting" option set to "HTML Formatted", you insert text into your comment that looks something like:

Some text commentary here.<p>

<img src="http://my.picture_location.com/my_picture_url.gif" width="90%"><p>

Some more text commentary here.

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Nate Hagens on January 15, 2006 - 4:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
OK thanks Stuart - from the Ciferno paper, lets try this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16092113@N00/86990826/ click on the "ALL SIZES" button in upper left
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Nate Hagens on January 15, 2006 - 4:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
perhaps this will work. sorry for graphics learning curve.
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Nate Hagens on January 15, 2006 - 8:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Actually, in the above (successfully..;)linked graph, the combustion component of various fossil fuels vs liquids from coal are all about identical (makes sense). Its just that the refining component for CTL creates much larger GHG (the purple area). As a component of total GHG emissions, CTL looks to be 6 times the amount of marginal GHG than natural gas or crude oil, even though the choice to use fossil fuel liquids itself is much of the GHG equation.
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step back on January 16, 2006 - 6:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

sasquatch's image -click to see bigger version
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Nate Hagens on January 16, 2006 - 8:05pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
ok heres my first shot at html image linking:
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