Our coal supplies

David Roberts, again, has the breakdown. I haven't read it yet (deadlines and such. More articles to come!) but in the meantime, I did read the Times' explanation of it and I wound up nice and pissed!

With domestic production of oil, gas and uranium far below peaks, coal has been promoted by elected officials and energy experts as the only bright spot in the national fuel supply picture. But as Congress considers billions of dollars in aid for projects to make gasoline and diesel substitutes from coal, and to build coal-fired plants that would capture their own carbon emissions, the study said that estimates of coal reserves were unreliable.

Honestly, nobody who's not a free market hack, a global warming denier, a coal industry representative, a politician from a coal state, or a combination of these things "promote" coal as a "bright spot" in anything. I don't see how it makes any sense in 2007 for a reporter to disentangle an issue like coal from an issue like global warming as if mining coal were the environmental equivalent of farming sugar cane.