What does Professor Rutledge conclude?
Professor Rutledge and his team re-estimated how much coal is left using updated methods. A similar re-estimation of coal was done by Dr. Werner Zittel and Jorg Schindler of the Energy Watch Group in a report entitled Coal: Resources And Future Production (630KB pdf). In both cases, they concur with the assessment of the National Academy of Sciences that the current coal reserve numbers are fundamentally too high. As it looks now, we will reach peak coal between 2030 and 2040. Professor Rutledge demonstrates that even if we were to burn all the coal, atmospheric CO2 should not go above 460ppm. Based on these lower numbers for coal and other hydrocarbon sources, none of the 40 IPCC emission scenarios considered in the Fourth Assessment Report for future atmospheric carbon concentrations can be supported. As more researchers examine peak oil/gas/coal, we should get future confirmation of this basic point. Note that Professor Rutledge did not explicitly focus his attention on positive fee
