What's the matter with Jim Justice?

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Atlas Dems are anti-coal and thus anti-miner and perhaps anti-worker. Plus Justice didn't vote for Obama and is leaving the presidential part of the ballot blank this year.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

What's right with Jim Justice?

Your party is in denial. While I agree the while "Didn't vote for Obama and Hillary" thing is anathema to the base, but if your party just became pro-coal, it would pick up a lot of votes in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, while losing basically no one.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

What's right with Jim Justice?

Your party is in denial. While I agree the while "Didn't vote for Obama and Hillary" thing is anathema to the base, but if your party just became pro-coal, it would pick up a lot of votes in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, while losing basically no one.

Actually, the Democratic Party has probably lost those voters forever, and if they were to go pro-coal, could easily lose swaths of people who, you know, actually care about the environment. Maybe, just maybe, we're more concerned with combating climate change.

In this case, the Dems and GOP will have the same position on coal. So unless anti-coal folks are going to stay home or vote Green, they'll vote Dem. Ultimately I think the overwhelming, overwhelming majority will still vote dem.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

^ The mining community wasn't turned away from Dems over Abortion, they voted for the pro-choice Bill Clinton twice. The reason they didn't vote for Al Gore was because he was ardently anti-coal. That's the issue that converted them to the GOP, and it's what will convert them back if the Dems are willing to become pro-coal again.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Wulfric, why don't you care about the environment?

I just see it as very hypocritical to be for creating jobs, but to want to destroy an entire industry of jobs.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

A pity Atlas wasn't around in the early 20th century so we couldn't hear Wulfric rage against the "Horseless carriage" costing buggy manufactures jobs.

In 2015, Wyoming produced 41.9% of the coal in the US, but only accounts for 10% of coal mining jobs.  Wyoming is the #1 reason for loss of coal mining jobs in Appalachia over the last 30-40 years.  So, Wulfric should direct his rage at Wyoming.

Just as they say all politics are local, so are energy politics and the jobs that can come with them.  States that have adopted wind and solar are states that have the great energy potential (wind=great plains, solar=desert southwest).  These states have little to do with the coal industry and generate income and jobs locally from alternative energy, so they don't give a rats ass about coal mining jobs.

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_14_b

Note that Texas alone produces more wind energy that all the states east of the Mississippi combined and the only state east of the Mississippi in the top 10 is Illinois.

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_17_b

Again, solar skews to the Southwest though some brain states east of the Mississippi (MA, NJ, NC) have been early adopters of solar.  Overall, solar does not yet have anywhere near the impact that wind does. 

So, if wind and solar are primarily used in regions of the US that don't get Appalachian coal, what's costing Appalachia all these coal jobs (besides Wyoming)--natural gas.  Ten years ago, if you wanted to run a power plant on NG in PA or VA or NJ or OH, etc... you have to pipe it up from Texas or Louisiana.  That's alot of pipe.  Now it's right in your backyard.  Plus the NG Combined Cycle power plant runs circles around any coal plant in cost and efficiency.  Ten years ago PA produced 10X the electricity from coal than NG, this year NG has surpassed coal and another four NG power plants are under construction.  The last two coal plants in NJ failed in the most recent capacity auction (meaning other power plants underbid them) so they are shutting down.  VA, NC and MD are all in whole hog on the NG train.  OH (home of the Utica) is lagging a bit, but the state recently refused to subsidize coal plants and several NG plants are under construction, plus the 2nd largest coal mine in the state will close this year, not because of Obama or the EPA, but because it's run out of coal.  Even Louisville, KY replaced their coal plant with a sexy new NGCC plant.  I could go on and on, but the tiny brained people out there aren't going to grasp this.

One state that isn't jumping on the NG train is of course WV (even though part of the state is in the Marcellus/Utica).  Local politics prevents anything from disrupting King Coal.  Of course, WV lacks one thing all the other states around them have--people.  So, WV is doomed to it's shrinking backwater status, producing coal for itself, but finding states they used to send coal too have moved on.  There is one caveat for WV in that it's the largest of met coal, which is a higher and rare grade of coal used in steel making.  It's subject to global busts and booms, but should provide WV with a basic base of jobs for at least the next couple of decades. 

By comparison, Eastern KY has very little met coal and has been totally eviscerated by NG.  The state of KY provides incredibly comprehensive current and historical info on the state coal industry and has amazing graphs and maps to illustrate the decline of coal in EKY.

http://energy.ky.gov/Coal%20Facts%20Library/Kentucky%20Coal%20Facts%20-%2016th%20Edition%20(2016).pdf

Overall, coal employment in Eastern KY has fallen from 15,000 when Obama took office to around 3,500 today.  It'll probably bottom out around 2,000.

So thrust of your post is: Coal Jobs will be replaced by additional jobs in Natural Gas. Okay, but I'll believe it when I see it for WV  given how heavily WV depends on coal for its livelihood.

Oh, and I should remind you that 20 or 30 years from now you'll suddenly want to eliminate the natural gas industry as well because it too is a pollutant. What will replace that? Wind and Solar are notoriously unreliable, people freak out at nuclear because of the associated risk, Biofuels requires extensive deforestation overtime, Geothermal can be a pollutant, Hydroelectric has the possibility of severe environmental consequences......