[defrost]

> Natural gas and oil could last for about 50 years, uranium for around 100 years, and coal reserves

Out of interest, what common basic error is being made by Jaroslav Kores, Ph.D. from your link, aside from not showing his working or sources?

It's something worth getting on top of.

Here's an alternative link regarding Australia; https://www.ga.gov.au/aecr2025/uranium-and-thorium

couple of extracts:

  Australia’s uranium resources are expressed as Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR), Subeconomic Demonstrated Resources (SDR) and Inferred Resources. Refer to Appendix 3 for definitions of these terms and further information on the National Classification System for reporting of Identified Mineral Resources.

  Based on 2023 production rates, Australia’s uranium reserves have an estimated life of 71 years.

What's all this fuss about words? What are resources, what are reserves? Do we really only have 71 years worth of uranium in Australia?

[leonidasrup]

For example better discussion about oil reserves: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/how-much-oil-is-lef...

I just wanted to signify that there is so much available hydrocarbons and coal underground that humanity will run out of atmospheric CO2 budget before it runs out of hydrocarbons.

[defrost]

> humanity will run out of atmospheric CO2 budget before it runs out of hydrocarbons.

I agree that is very much all that's needed to be said.

I confess to a shuddering dislike of statements of the form "we only have {x} left", a dislike exceeded by my revulsion to statements of the form "we have {X} amount left in the crust or ocean - we can just use that".

Call it a side effect of a couple of decades of geophysical exploration work across the globe :/

[joe_the_user]

The reserves of any mineral are basically the amount someone spends the effort to find and document. And spending that effort is an economic decision. There's little economic incentive to find reserves beyond a certain period of time so the reserves of any mineral are going to be only fairly limited amount of years out.