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Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis

av Richard Heinberg

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281833,214 (3.25)Ingen/inga
Exposing the dirty secrets and hidden costs of coal--the not-so-cheap alternative to oil.
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While this is a good overview of the future of coal, the author spends too much time on less-relevant facts, and not enough time making a clear argument as to how to transition away from fossil fuels.

The first one hundred pages summarize a number of studies that attempt to identify the amount of coal reserves in certain countries (US, Russia, Australia, and China are the primary ones). Heinberg's thesis is that there just isn't as much coal as the mining companies say there is, thus putting us on the verge of "Peak Coal": when production and transportation costs begin to go higher as demand increases but the quality and quantity of "good coal" begins to decrease. But it would seem that even if we have hundreds of years of coal left, most of the higher-efficiency burning coal like anthracite and bituminous has likely been used, requiring more of the sub-bituminous type to make up for its lower energy content. While these chapters lend credence to the author's position that we might only have about 50 good years of coal mining left, the reports (and his arguments) seemed very duplicative.

In Chapter 7, Heinberg discusses some of the new coal technologies: coal-to-liquids, underground coal gasification, integrated gasification combined cycle, and carbon capture and storage. He clearly points out the general faults with all of them: by processing the coal differently, we're increasing the cost but lowering the efficiency. It sounds like he's resigned himself that we'll probably invest in one or two of these technologies, but he warns that all of them continue to feed our coal dependency.

Heinberg ends the book with three scenarios, two of which are fairly similar. The first is that we essentially do nothing, but continue to use coal at a rate consistent with current economic growth. The second slightly lowers the world's coal usage due to "government intervention." Both of these, Heinberg thinks, lead to severe production shortages, highly increased costs, and economic and political collapse of some countries. Obviously, with a major amount of coal being used for electricity, any limitations lead to brownouts, and then blackouts.

After those grim futures, Heinberg's third scenario requires massive government intervention and a push towards renewable resources (which the author does point out are much less energy-efficient than most of the fossil fuels available). Cars will give way for public transit; cities are redesigned. He even raises the possibility of limiting population growth. But these crucial, hard years are, he contends, much better than the alternative.

Unfortunately, his "solution" is fraught with problems. While increasing the efficiency of, say, a New York City or Boston subway or bus system, is a noble goal, what about the millions of people who live in rural areas, like in Appalachia or the Midwest? Can any government -- most of which are beset with economic issues with the recent world recession -- actually pay for a project on this enormous scale? How will non-participants be "punished" by the world community if they continue to use fossil fuels? Heinberg's short summation certainly points out a worse alternative, but he would have done much better in making this part of the book the longer argument. ( )
1 rösta legallypuzzled | Nov 14, 2009 |
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As oil prices climbed during 2007 and 2008, another and perhaps more serious energy crisis loomed -- one largely unnoticed by most Americans and Europeans.
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Exposing the dirty secrets and hidden costs of coal--the not-so-cheap alternative to oil.

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