by theluckycountry » Thu 17 Jul 2025, 16:24:12
Why the world cannot quit coal
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')en years after the signing of the Paris climate accord, demand for coal is still growing — largely because of India and China — and shows no signs of peaking. On the day the Paris climate pact was signed, nearly a decade ago, it seemed as if world leaders were finally on the same page. They agreed to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C, in an effort to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
Reaching that goal would require rapidly curbing the use of coal, the single most polluting energy source. And in the years that followed, one world leader after another pledged to quit coal entirely. It was not only the politicians who felt that way. Energy economists also believed coal use was in structural decline, due to its pollution impact and the falling cost of renewable energy. Unfortunately for the plan to fend off climate change, those statements could not have been more wrong. Ten years after the signing of the Paris accord, demand for coal is still growing — and shows no signs of peaking.
“Coal is like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going,” says Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Cicero Center for International Climate Research.
“All the models agree strongly that coal has to go out first, and fastest,” to curb global warming, he adds. Comparing what “should” have happened with coal with what has actually happened shows that “it is completely divergent”, he says. “This is a big unanswered question. Why has coal kept going?” Today the world burns nearly double the amount of coal that it did in 2000 — and four times the amount it did in 1950...
https://www.miningday.com.au/why-the-wo ... quit-coal/The article continues and is a good dip into reality. It completely smashes all the delusional hopium of the climate change alarmists and the rebuildable fanboi, who "still" talk shrilly that windmills and solar are supplanting coal, even as huge wind projects are cancelled one after another across the globe.
I don't have to voice an opinion on AGW, though I have one. It's pointless because 15 years of screaming and taking action on that topic hasn't changed a single thing, we are still living in the 20th century and any hope we had of leaving that behind becomes more and more pitiful as our societies collapse into ruin because of the loss of cheap fossil fuels. A world of flying battery cars and fusion power? In your Dreams. Or should I say, in a Hollywood movie.

Coal underpinned the Industrial Revolution and it seems it will see it out as well. Probably the last people to be using it will be future cave dwellers taking the magic rocks out of old tailings to cook their diners on. Such is the cycle of humanity.
The remains of Hadrian's wall in Britain
A reconstructed section showing what it looked like before the locals cannibalized it to build homes and fences.

We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.