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Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

Or until you don't need to buy oil at all. China has reduced its consumption by 1.5M barrels/day this year alone.

To nitpick, much of that is probably due to halting refining for export and drawing down reserves. But of course the point stands that they are rapidly electrifying and expanding renewable generation.

Also tons and tons of coal. Hopefully just a stopgap.

Yeah, until they run out of coal.

China has large coal reserves, enough for many decades.

"China, the world’s largest coal consumer, has domestic reserves of coal to last the next 50 years, according to annual reserves data from the Ministry of Natural Resources cited by Bloomberg.

At current rates of domestic production, China also has crude oil reserves that could last for at least 18 more years, according to the ministry"

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Say...

https://www.mining.com/web/china-has-enough-coal-reserves-to...

Wow. Only enough reserves to be measured in decades? Once it's gone it's gone. Genuine Carboniferous coal, one day a thousand years from now, might be a rare museum item!

I have a habit of thinking about history in very long terms, and that just does not sit right with me. That kind of thinking (oh we have enough for decades, let it rip!) happens, and the decades pass, and time inevitably is less kind to the descendants of such decision makers.

growing up (in the 70s/80s), the first time I was shocked at the exponential destructiveness of human civilisation was when I learnt that we had polluted the oceans. the second was when I found out that ubiquitous natural resources like oil could be completely consumed. I feel like either one would have been unthinkable even as late as 1900.

(incidentally the latest such shock was sometime this decade when I learnt that an aquifer could not only be depleted, but that that depletion would compact the soil so that it would thereafter be unable to hold water, and thus never (at least on our timescales) be able to be replenished. I think I'm still not over that!)

There is an interesting passage in Moby Dick where they talk about whether whaling could make whales go extinct, but the concern is brushed away as human hubris. How could humans completely destroy something that God created?

It's really shame that in 21st century humanity is burning stuff to produce energy.

Also, this means that if we let MBAs destroy this civilization, there won’t be any future advanced civilizations as we will have consumed all the easily usable resources they will need to jumpstart their technology tree from zero again. Even if the knowledge survives it could be useless

In addition to this China imports about 10℅ of its coal consumption. Could it increase the imports?

In historical terms, it took about 60 milion years to form this coal layers. Humanity will burn them in few centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

From the point of view of energy. The conversion of solar energy into coal is very inefficient, tree need energy to reproduce, only a part of plant is converted into coal, other organisms consuming plant matter, etc.

Oil will only become more and more volatile. The supply chain is both complex and fragile to geopolitical nonsense. China is betting on stability and reliability, environmental concerns is just a bonus.

China is drawing down reserves it's been building over the last three years, not using less petro from a decrease in demand.

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