As usual, frackin' Republicans/rightwingers attack the wrong thing/person for their self-created problems.
Straighten your skirt, your ODS is showing-----again!
coal-mining-jobs-on-the-rise-under-obama/
By
John Upton
10 Apr 2013
<snip>
From the Appalachian Voices report:
appvoices.org
From a
press release put out by Appalachian Voices:
“These numbers show pretty clearly that the purported ‘war on coal’ is an utter fabrication,” says Matt Wasson, director of programs at Appalachian Voices. “Even as this administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are making some important steps toward controlling coal pollution — from mining, burning, and burying the waste — the job numbers nationwide have been growing.”
While the data show some variations among coal-producing states, each of the top ten has had more mining jobs on average under the Obama administration than under the Bush administration. Nine of those states saw higher coal mining employment in 2012 than at any point during the Bush years. Â…
“We continue to hear industry’s cries that environmental regulations are unfair and costly. The fact is, the costs have always been there, only they’ve been borne by the people living in coal-impacted communities who can’t drink their water, who are breathing polluted air, who are suffering from cancer and heart disease,” says Wasson.
To all the coal companies out there complaining that rules and regulations are making life hard for you, please, cry us a river.
No, seriously, cry us a river please. YouÂ’ve ruined many of ours and we would like some of them back.
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Gee, I wonder why the Appalachian Voices would say that. Oh, that's right, "Appalachia".
And look at what I said, 85,000 and you show a chart that's around 85,000. Guess you showed me.
Coal-dependent businesses fight to hold on, as industry shrinks - CSMonitor.com
LMAO @U - I post an article that backs up your number and you get all pissy about it? -pewsh!-
The point is; as usual the ODSers have been duped then-----then attack the wrong target. The coal industry job decline happened during the Reagan, HW Bush and Clinton administrations then-----then recovered slightly under GW Bush and that recovery has continued during the Obama administration but-----but mountaintop removal and high tech mining were the greatest reasons for job losses during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations now-----now fracking will...
Triviia: In KY during the 2012 election, Obama was so unpopular because of his "job killing" coal policies that Obama lost KY by 23% and yet-----and yet only 0.6% of Kentuckians work in the coal industry and more Kentuckians were employed in the coal industry in 2012 then there were when GW Bush left office...WTF?
new-energy-paradigm/coal-country-s-decline-has-a-long-history
By
Patrick Reis
October 31, 2013
<snip>
The president's regulatory push has left him and his party deeply unpopular across the region: Bill Clinton won Kentucky and West Virginia in both of his presidential elections; Obama lost both states, twice, in landslides.
But for all the rage over Obama's environmental agenda, mining jobs began disappearing in the region long before he entered the White House, for reasons that have nothing to do with regulations now coming out of Washington.
In fact, coal mining jobs in Appalachia fared far worse under the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton, administrations than they have under Obama.
According to employment counts from the Mine Safety and Health Administration, from 1983—the earliest year for which MSHA had data—to 1989, combined coal jobs in West Virginia and Kentucky fell from 79,000 to 64,000.
In the following four years under the first President Bush, coal jobs in the two states fell to 56,000. And by the final year of the Clinton administration, the states' combined total of mining jobs had fallen to a nadir of 33,000.
By comparison, West Virginia and Kentucky coal-mining payrolls have been relatively stable during Obama's first four years in office: In 2009, there were just under 43,000 coal miners in the two states combined. In 2012, the latest year for which MSHA has final data, the count totaled just over 41,000.
So what's driving the decline? First and foremost: changes in the industry.
Despite mining employment being cut nearly in half since 1983, the two states' combined coal output has basically held steady, dropping from 245 million short tons in 1983 to 240 million short tons in 2011.
Advances in mining technology have made miners more efficient.
Indeed, the traditional images of coal mines—dark holes filled with men swinging pickaxes and pushing carts—are no more. Today, it is machines that are ripping coal from the mines' walls, and then automatic conveyor belts whipping the fuel back to the surface.
And much of the production has moved above ground entirely, thanks to a practice known as mountaintop-removal mining, in which miners use controlled explosions to open mountains and mine the newly exposed coal seams.
For the miners and other industry employees who still hold jobs, the increased productivity has paid off. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nominal average annual coal industry employee wages in West Virginia sat at $54,000. By 2012, the average employee was taking home nearly $85,000.
The starring role of mechanization, however, does not mean that federal policies have no effect on the number of coal jobs.
The region saw its fortunes reverse under President George W. Bush, who in 2002 relaxed rules on mountaintop-removal mining to give companies more leeway to dump their leftovers into the region's waterways. From 2001 to 2008, West Virginia and Kentucky's combined coal industry experienced a mini-revival, adding an average of about 1,000 mining jobs per year.
But as industry officials argue they could experience another such revival, they face a new hurdle that had not yet fully taken off in the early 2000s. Today, they face stiffer competition from natural gas, which is both more abundant and less expensive due to the fracking boom.
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