The 2016 election.

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 FreeEnterprise wrote:

Then you have the whole "war on coal" that liberals have pushed for the past 15 years.

I'm going to stop you right there. Seriously. You have no clue what you're talking about when it comes to coal and the decline and death of the industry outside of the typical "friends of coal" talking points which are out-and-out deceptive at best. 

Coal started dying post-WWII. For starters, the new technologies provided by the war meant that machines like continuous miners went into operation and cut the work forces in half (if not more) Two men and a machine could do the work of 10 men with traditional equipment in one-quarter the time. Add in modular conveyor equipment, high capacity loaders, and advance logistical systems and you no longer needed all the folks you did prior to the war to get MORE coal out of the ground. Nearly half of all coal mining jobs in the US were eliminated between 1950 and 1955. 

Once all the easily mined "high coal" was gone, strip mining started. In central Appalachia, that was in the 1960s. You need even fewer people to run a strip mine, the overhead is a lot less, and the safety regulations are easier to deal with. Again, with the advent of new types of mining and new technologies, jobs were cut in half again in the 60s. Meanwhile, production increased drastically per-capita. 

That trend continued up to and through the MTR process. Mountain Top Removal. Quite possibly the dirtiest, most harmful type of mining there is. MTR not only kills entire ecosystems, but it takes even fewer people to run than a traditional strip mine. See where this is going? None of these things were Government mandates. None of these advancements were made for the sake of SAVING jobs. It's always been about coal company execs getting their profits at the cost the worker, be it their safety, their health, their pay, or their livelihood. 

The entire coal industry was on life support for the past 50 years. Extraction became more expensive (it was always expensive in Appalachia, hence the horrid working conditions and lack of safety and security) demand continued to decrease, anyone who thought coal would survive the turn of the century was delusional. 

Here's the data for you:

Fifteen years my butt. No EPA regulations did this. Coal companies did this, technological progress did this. Coal is dead, it's not coming back. 

 rednekk98 wrote:

Are they not still using coal-derrived coke for adding carbon content? 

Very little if any. The vast majority of steel produced in the US is recycled steel anymore. That's why you don't see iron mining either. There's more than enough scrap to melt down and re-pour. Grading the scrap coming in allows companies to mix input to keep carbon levels in the proper range without having to add coke. What little they do need tends to come from specialty mines that employ very few people. The vast majority of the coal that went into making steel in the old days was thermal coal for firing the furnaces. Coke has only ever been a very small portion of the whole deal. Which just further shoots down FE's whole argument for coal. It's cheaper and more efficient to smelt with arc and induction furnaces. The electricity used to power those furnaces comes from inexpensive natural gas or nuclear plants (or in some instances, dedicated hydroelectric plants like Globe Mettalurgical's Alloy plant at Hawks Nest, WV) which brings the costs down even more. 