Fisk Generating Station: Coal-fired power plant, Chicago, IL, 2007. Photo from Creative Commons by Señor Codo/flickr
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/may/12/eco-elephant/John J. Simpson in a Letter to the Editor of the New York Review of Books, May 12 edition, in response to an article by Bill McKibben:
"In the global warming debate it is seldom discussed, and is not in Bill McKibben's interesting article ["Resisting Climate Reality," NYR, April 7], that the primary fossil fuels, oil, natural gas, and coal, are finite resources. They are collectively being consumed at a rate equivalent to the burning of 10,000 million tons of oil (abbreviated Mtoe) per year and this rate of consumption is growing (BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2010)...."
"...in less than fifty years the present known reserves (about 770,000 Mtoe) will have run out. The burning of fossil fuels will come to an end....
"...Surely it would be prudent to reduce fossil fuel consumption rapidly and substantially, both to reduce the speed of global warming increase and to husband fossil fuels over the long time needed for alternative energy sources to be developed and deployed..."
Original article by Bill McKibben: Resisting Climate Reality, NYR, April 7
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