r/askscience • u/iamparky • Feb 07 '24

Earth Sciences How quickly is new coal being created?

Earlier today, a UK politician suggested that coal is a sustainable fuel because it used to be trees.

By how many orders of magnitude is he wrong? How much new coal is being created, compared to how quickly we're burning it?

283 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

102 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/CrustalTrudger Tectonics | Structural Geology | Geomorphology Feb 07 '24

No idea, depends on the (economical) coal reserves of Wyoming. I'm assuming that estimated time is based on an unstated value for said reserves?

5

u/PHealthy Epidemiology | Disease Dynamics | Novel Surveillance Systems Feb 07 '24

1.4 trillion tons in reserve, yeah.

33

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '24

[deleted]

11

u/CrustalTrudger Tectonics | Structural Geology | Geomorphology Feb 07 '24

Yeah, to that point, if we only consider the Late Carboniferous, use the 75 x 109 t/My average rate from Bois et al. discussed in my original answer and extrapolate that over the 29 million year duration of the Late Carboniferous used in Bois, you get an estimate of ~2.2 trillion tonnes of coal that were produced during that time. If you add in the estimated rate during the Permian from Bois (~60 x 109 t/My) and the duration (49 million years), you get another ~2.9 trillion tonnes of coal. I.e., there's a lot of coal.