Traces the history of coal mining in the United States from early times until 1920, and assesses the impact of working conditions on the miners' militant labor movement

This book is the 2nd edition of the Economics of the International Coal Trade. Coal is the single most important source of power on our planet and today accounts for 40% of electricity generation and 30% of primary energy. The world’s appetite for energy is still far from being met. Until 2050, an additional 6+ billion people will require accessto proper power. “Why Coal Continues to Power the World” introduces the reader to the global coal business; its importance; its source; its global demand, supply and trade; its use; its environmental impact; and its future. Despite recent price hikes, coal does not appear to be a popular subject today, which may explain the little attention it receives in the scientific community. Since writing the first edition during the commodity super cycle in 2006–2008, the world has changed. How has this impacted the global world of coal? This book is useful to energy economists, businessmen, politicians, university professors, high school teachers, students and anyone with an interest in how the world is powered. It is also helpful to anyone studying climate change and global warming. This new edition of the book includes previously not covered special sections on:* Coal analysis and sampling with a special section on moisture * A technical summary of all key coking coal characteristics in Appendix 2 * Coking coal, iron ore and the steel industry * Cement and petcoke markets * Global gas markets and the shale gas revolution in the US * Nuclear energy and the history of the oil market * Renewable energy and the German „Energiewende“ * Power plant technology and CO2 sequestration and processing * The role of CO2 and why man-made CO2 does not cause global warming Apart from giving an in-depth overview of the global coal business, in this book the author argues that coal is far from “dead”. Some of my key messages are contrary to popular beliefs: The importance of coal will further increase in absolute and likely even in relative terms for decades to come. Man-made CO2 has no effect on global temperatures and combustion of fossil fuels does not influence the weather. We cannot stop the advance of coal, we can only make this process as environmentally sustainable as humanly possible. Therefore, mankind needs to embrace coal as the “bridge” from the Oil Age to the Solar Age (through the “New Energy Revolution”). (4) Industrialized nations have to invest in coal and in all means to more efficiently burn coal in order to truly help the global environment and reduce global dust, SOX, and NOX emissions.

The fascinating history of how coal-based energy became entangled with American security. Since the early twentieth century, Americans have associated oil with national security. From World War I to American involvement in the Middle East, this connection has seemed a self-evident truth. But, as Peter A. Shulman argues, Americans had to learn to think about the geopolitics of energy in terms of security, and they did so beginning in the nineteenth century: the age of coal. Coal and Empire insightfully weaves together pivotal moments in the history of science and technology by linking coal and steam to the realms of foreign relations, navy logistics, and American politics. Long before oil, coal allowed Americans to rethink the place of the United States in the world. Shulman explores how the development of coal-fired oceangoing steam power in the 1840s created new questions, opportunities, and problems for U.S. foreign relations and naval strategy. The search for coal, for example, helped take Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan in the 1850s. It facilitated Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of black colonization in 1860s Panama. After the Civil War, it led Americans to debate whether a need for coaling stations required the construction of a global empire. Until 1898, however, Americans preferred to answer the questions posed by coal with new technologies rather than new territories. Afterward, the establishment of America's string of island outposts created an entirely different demand for coal to secure the country's new colonial borders, a process that paved the way for how Americans incorporated oil into their strategic thought. By exploring how the security dimensions of energy were not intrinsically linked to a particular source of power but rather to political choices about America's role in the world, Shulman ultimately suggests that contemporary global struggles over energy will never disappear, even if oil is someday displaced by alternative sources of power.

The flooding and subsequent closure of Scotland's last deep coal mine in 2002 brought a centuries long saga to an end. Villages and towns across the densely populated Central Belt owe their existence to coal mining's expansion during the nineteenth century and its maturation in the twentieth. Colliery closures and job losses were not just experienced in economic terms: they had profound implications for what it meant to be a worker, a Scot and a resident of an industrial settlement. Coal Country presents the first book-length account of deindustrialization in the Scottish coalfields. It draws on archival research using records from UK government, the nationalized coal industry and trade unions, as well as the words and memories of former miners, their wives and children that were collected in an extensive oral history project. Deindustrialization progressed as a slow but powerful march across the second half of the twentieth century. In this book, big changes in cultural identities are explained as the outcome of long-term economic developments. The oral testimonies bring to life transformations in gender relations and distinct generational workplaces experiences. This book argues that major alterations to the politics of class and nationhood have their origins in deindustrialization. The adverse effects of UK government policy, and centralization in the nationalized coal industry, encouraged miners and their trade union to voice their grievances in the language of Scottish national sovereignty. These efforts established a distinctive Scottish national coalfield community and laid the foundations for a devolved Scottish Parliament. Coal Country explains the deep roots of economic changes and their political reverberations, which continue to be felt as we debate another major change in energy sources during the 2020s.

This title discusses Welsh miners, American coal, and the construction of ethnic identity. In 1890, more than 100,000 Welsh-born immigrants resided in the United States. The majority of them were skilled labourers from the coal mines of Wales who had been recruited by American mining companies.