Chuck wrote:
>Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 12:16 PM
>My guess is that the first evidence of the impact of a decrease in oil will
>be a sharp reduction in air travel: trains can run of electrical energy and
>ships can go back to using coal, if necessary. But it's a bit of a stretch
>to think of coal-powered 747s. ;-)
>
There is a process to turn coal into a diesel-type fuel. The Germans used it
to run their war machine in WWII. However, the anthracite coal deposits of
the US are at the end of their Hubbert curve so that coal is not there.
Bituminous coal is somewhere prior to Hubbert peak but I have heard some
worrying reports about the useful energy we will get out of it by 2040 being
less than what it costs to mine it. Don't know if those reports are true or
not.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 20 2002 - 15:51:25 EST