No amount of shuffling bits will make coal any more abundant or easier to mine. At the end of the day there is way too much hype relative to the actual results. The modern economy, including AI, is propped up by access to cheap energy. Once those energy sources dry up, the whole house of cards will fall apart. Excerpt below on the real material reality of the fossil fuel economy.
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The Scale of Stored Energy
The geological process of fossil fuel formation represents an almost incomprehensible concentration of ancient biomass. The energy density that powered the Industrial Revolution and modern civilization is a direct result of this multi-million-year process of collection and compression. An analysis by Carnegie Science provides a stark quantification of this energy subsidy: to produce the precursor organic material for a single U.S. gallon (3.8L) of gasoline required approximately 90 metric tons of ancient plant matter. Scaled up to a global level, the numbers become even more staggering. The total amount of fossil fuels burned in the single year of 1997 was created from ancient organic matter containing 44e18 grams of carbon. This is more than 400 times the net primary productivity (NPP)—the total amount of new biomass created through photosynthesis—of the entire planet's current biota, both terrestrial and marine, in a year.
This reveals a fundamental truth about our energy system: industrial civilization is not running on a "current account" of solar energy, such as that captured by modern plants, solar panels, or wind turbines. Instead, it is liquidating a vast capital reserve of ancient sunlight that the planet took geological eons to accumulate. This also explains why these fuels are, on any human timescale, non-renewable. The specific conditions and immense time required for their formation mean that the Earth is not producing any significant new deposits. We are, in effect, draining a finite reservoir.
measurablefunc•3mo ago
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The Scale of Stored Energy
The geological process of fossil fuel formation represents an almost incomprehensible concentration of ancient biomass. The energy density that powered the Industrial Revolution and modern civilization is a direct result of this multi-million-year process of collection and compression. An analysis by Carnegie Science provides a stark quantification of this energy subsidy: to produce the precursor organic material for a single U.S. gallon (3.8L) of gasoline required approximately 90 metric tons of ancient plant matter. Scaled up to a global level, the numbers become even more staggering. The total amount of fossil fuels burned in the single year of 1997 was created from ancient organic matter containing 44e18 grams of carbon. This is more than 400 times the net primary productivity (NPP)—the total amount of new biomass created through photosynthesis—of the entire planet's current biota, both terrestrial and marine, in a year.
This reveals a fundamental truth about our energy system: industrial civilization is not running on a "current account" of solar energy, such as that captured by modern plants, solar panels, or wind turbines. Instead, it is liquidating a vast capital reserve of ancient sunlight that the planet took geological eons to accumulate. This also explains why these fuels are, on any human timescale, non-renewable. The specific conditions and immense time required for their formation mean that the Earth is not producing any significant new deposits. We are, in effect, draining a finite reservoir.