Climate 411

How much coal does the U.S. have?

By Jeffery Greenblatt / Published: July 10, 2007

The author of today’s post, Jeffery Greenblatt, Ph.D., is an expert on low-carbon energy technologies at Environmental Defense.

The U.S. may be short on oil and gas reserves, but the one energy source we thought we had in abundance was coal – enough to last 250 years at current consumption levels. Or so we thought.

A few weeks ago, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a new report saying that U.S. coal reserves may last only another 100 years, or even less. That’s a big difference. How did we get this so wrong, and what are the implications for U.S. energy policy going forward?

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Posted in Energy / Read 1 Response

Part 4 of 4: Green Technologies

By Bill Chameides / Published: March 28, 2007

This is the fourth installment of a four-part series published each Wednesday on Action Needed to Stop Global Warming.

1. How Warm is Too Warm?
2. Worldwide Emissions Target
3. U.S. Emissions Target
4. Technologies to Get Us There

In Part 1 of this series, I defined the global tipping point as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which could cause sea levels to rise 20 feet. In Part 2, I showed that to avoid this tipping point, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) must start to decline around 2020. In Part 3, I showed what the U.S. must do to help the world meet these targets.Meeting these targets will require significant changes in how we produce and use energy, and this makes many people nervous. They worry that the cost will wreck the economy, and they’ll have to give up their cars and air conditioning. Not true!

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Also posted in Basic Science of Global Warming / Read 11 Responses