Coal Production In The US Is Dying. Listen Closely You Can Hear It.
January 30, 2017 9:47 AM   Subscribe

A sonification of coal production data in the U.S over the last 30 years InsideEnergy takes a look at coal production in the U.S which is at a 30 year low. The last two years have been particularly hard. By sonifiying the data, IE allows you to listen to the merry melody of coal production through the years and hear its tragic fall off a cliff in 2016.
posted by yossarian1 (34 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Well, I'm not sure that mining less coal counts as a tragedy, really. That we don't have jobs or a better safety net for coal miners who've lost income as a result of decreasing coal production is the tragedy.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:55 AM on January 30, 2017 [29 favorites]


I think Shostakovitch wrote a fugue based on that melody.
posted by straight at 10:18 AM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


Played in a miner key.
posted by hal9k at 10:23 AM on January 30, 2017 [38 favorites]


Thanks Geology!
posted by Artw at 10:27 AM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


Notably absent: the number of coal mining jobs as opposed to production numbers.

Remember all that talk we've had lately about automation? Coal mining, like all mining, has been hard hit by automation. Productivity has soared (until 2015 that is), but the number of actual mine workers has plummeted.

There were only around 70,000 coal miners in the entire country back in 2014 when production was at its peak.

Not that the loss of those jobs is good, not that the economic pain of those unemployed is good, but it's also small potatoes compared to the rest of the US economy. On average during the Obama administration over 150,000 jobs were created **PER MONTH**. We literally made jobs equal to twice the total number of coal miners every month.

And yes, getting those jobs is not easy. Moving to where they are (because they are not in coal country) is not easy. But the death of the coal industry does not need to be the death of the people working as coal miners.

What we need, more even than job training, is a program for helping people move to where the jobs are. Because mostly they aren't in rural areas any longer, and moving to an urban area for a job is not cheap.
posted by sotonohito at 10:57 AM on January 30, 2017 [13 favorites]


Or a program for making jobs happen in rural areas. Telecommuting. (Yes, not at all the same jobs. But as per the melody, the same jobs no longer exist).
posted by nat at 10:59 AM on January 30, 2017 [5 favorites]


Remember all that talk we've had lately about automation? Coal mining, like all mining, has been hard hit by automation. Productivity has soared (until 2015 that is), but the number of actual mine workers has plummeted.

Go back deeper in time and this trend began decades ago. The coal mining companies have been eliminating coal mining jobs, probably more than any lost to recent regulation.
posted by Atreides at 11:00 AM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is it easier to perceive visually, or sonically? (Maybe different people respond to different presentations.)
posted by Baeria at 11:32 AM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Coal mining is almost the ultimate Randian idiocy as a policy. By shifting emphasis to coal production, it floods companies with profits, creates effectively zero jobs, and destroys the environment.

Pretty much a summary of the entire political mantra of many politicians.
posted by petrilli at 11:44 AM on January 30, 2017 [12 favorites]


Is it easier to perceive visually, or sonically?

I'm sure it varies somewhat for different people, but I do feel like a sonification like this is somewhat wasted on a dataset like this that only plots one thing. Ideally, you'd have something more like a chamber quartet with additional instruments representing coal jobs, coal-related injuries/deaths, and coal company profits. Or some other set of relevant data that would be interesting to hear plotted against the raw coal production amounts but would be difficult to put on a visual graph due to axis scaling or general clutter issues.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:25 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Coal is never coming back.

Coal plants are big, expensive and take forever to build. In contrast natural gas plants are smaller, cleaner, cheaper which means that energy producers can tailor plant production to match demand with a much greater level of granularity.

And now you have renewables coming onto the scene at or below the rates that coal and natural gas cost and that's before the Chinese start pouring billions into improving the efficiency of renewables in an attempt to wean themselves off of coal.

Maybe some of these guys could get trained to install and maintain solar facilities or wind facilities but the idea that there is going to be a role for coal as existing plants get phased out or converted to Natural gas facilities is ludicrous.
posted by vuron at 12:36 PM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


Natural gas production keeps growing, and with natural gas prices remaining relatively low, it is expected to surpass coal as the primary power source for electricity generation.
posted by Kabanos at 12:43 PM on January 30, 2017


There were only around 70,000 coal miners in the entire country back in 2014 when production was at its peak.

Just in the past year, the solar energy industry added 73,615 new jobs to the U.S. economy, while wind added a further 24,650.
Forbes: Solar Employs More People In U.S. Electricity Generation Than Oil, Coal And Gas Combined.
posted by Kabanos at 12:48 PM on January 30, 2017 [9 favorites]


Or a program for making jobs happen in rural areas

We already did this. It was called 1950-2000. Turns out it was an environmental catastrophe and just as uncompetitive as it was arbitrary.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 12:53 PM on January 30, 2017


We already did this. It was called 1950-2000. Turns out it was an environmental catastrophe and just as uncompetitive as it was arbitrary.

What is this supposed to mean?
posted by brennen at 1:10 PM on January 30, 2017


Is it easier to perceive visually, or sonically?
As someone else mentions, it probably differs from person to person. We're very used to visualizing data so it should be no surprise that people would prefer to see a graph rather than hear a signification (the article presents both). Time-series data like this are simple enough to represent in both formats so the audio production is pleasant but probably doesn't really add anything more than than a simple graph would.
posted by yossarian1 at 1:30 PM on January 30, 2017


Not true. President Trump is going make America coal again.
posted by pashdown at 1:43 PM on January 30, 2017


Compress the swamp!
posted by Artw at 1:50 PM on January 30, 2017 [12 favorites]


"What we need, more even than job training, is a program for helping people move to where the jobs are. Because mostly they aren't in rural areas any longer, and moving to an urban area for a job is not cheap."
Not going to happen.
1. Not glamorous. Retraining programs do not generate headlines.
2. It would be an "unearned handout". Just ask Paul Ryan.
3. The people do not want to move. They just want their high-paying coal mining jobs back.
posted by davebarnes at 1:54 PM on January 30, 2017 [3 favorites]


Forget production volume. Let's hear the sonic version of (1) jobs, (2) wages, and (3) workplace deaths and injuries from coal.
posted by heatherlogan at 2:11 PM on January 30, 2017


I think not wanting to move is entirely reasonable, actually. The equity that people have built up in their home is important, to say nothing of the social ties around these communities.

So I don't think "retrain them and move them out" is all that good of an answer here. Those who can move most likely already have. Whatever your answer is has to account for the fact that the folks left there are there for good.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:14 PM on January 30, 2017


Bury fake coal.
posted by Artw at 2:17 PM on January 30, 2017


The people do not want to move...

not wanting to move is entirely reasonable...

What is this supposed to mean?



What it means is:

- There's a political calculus to most jobs. People rarely consider this, but there's a reason why industries/companies pour so much money into DC. It's because the market is defined about as much by political action as it is anything else. The public investment in fossil fuels and highway infrastructure will be looked back on with strong criticism.
- A 'job' is never infinitely sustainable. The above calculus is happening in faster iterations, which causes labor market instability unlike we've seen in living memory.
- Outside of living memory many groups of people got used to having to move or change in order to find food and shelter. I'm sympathetic to these miners and their families, because change is hard, but don't believe for a moment that their entitlement is worth anything.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 3:30 PM on January 30, 2017


Coal Tattoo
posted by poe at 3:39 PM on January 30, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think you missed the "telecommuting" aspect of my comment. There are computer based jobs that can be done anywhere. Low cost of living makes it practical for some of these jobs to go to regions that are less populated. I don't think this was doable in 1950-2000, and it's only barely doable now. But it is doable.
posted by nat at 5:03 PM on January 30, 2017


telecommuting

Yeah, I didn't go into this, because it's kinda difficult to know what the future might hold. Tech and industries and even consumer needs are changing really fast. Right now, though, it's not looking good for the telecommuters.

- They're low paying jobs anyway that are unlikely to act as economic holding soil for even micropolitan areas.
- If they can be done in WY, they can be done in Bangalore at 1/4 the cost.
- Even if they were economically viable, it's still a dumpster fire from a energy usage and built environment point of view
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:21 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Subsidizing renewables and putting the factories right there would seem like a solution to me, but obviously not politically possible when increasing CO2 production is seen as a religious commandment by one side of the US.
posted by Artw at 5:32 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Subsidizing renewables and putting the factories right there would seem like a solution to me

Agreed, and a sensible country would have done this a decade ago.

At best, telecommuting will allow yuppies to move out to bumblefuck and maybe some small fraction of the kids already in bumblefuck will be able to get a slice of that telecommuting pie as well. It's a smart and perhaps vital component to any small town reinvigoration (bringing outside money into the community), but it still leaves the bulk of the workforce screwed.

Your average middle-aged coal miner or plant technician probably just doesn't have what it takes to learn JavaScript and get a web design gig. But they can be retrained from heavy machinery for coal production to heavy machinery for solar panel or wind turbine construction pretty easily, I bet.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:29 PM on January 30, 2017


> coal production

extraction, mining.

Just like energy oil, we ain't producing shit.
posted by anthill at 7:27 PM on January 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


The sonification of data in that article was interesting and vivid.

No tears for coal here. It's a harsh industry with terrible human and environmental costs. My own great-grandfather died in one--he'd taken a job as a miner as an act of abnegation after deserting his wife and children and had a heart attack underground.
posted by kinnakeet at 12:34 AM on January 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is it easier to perceive visually, or sonically? (Maybe different people respond to different presentations.)

I think that the difference here is that sonification imposes a time dimension on the data. You can achieve similar results by using an animation or video that makes people experience the data one point at a time. This is often used to bring home the precipitousness of global warming. A nice aspect of adding a temporal element to a data presentation is that you can plot more complex things and still get a lot of information, like this graph of temperature anomalies over the course of the year.

Graphs, charts, data presentations -- I wish people would more often think of their data presentations as telling a particular story, rather than just a stamp of evidence that says "we did the work." /science grouse
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 4:23 AM on January 31, 2017 [5 favorites]


Hmm. Deer farming?
posted by jon1270 at 5:14 AM on January 31, 2017


That would give them a taste of their own venison.
posted by Kabanos at 1:25 PM on January 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


Solar power is cheaper than coal in many places, and is only getting cheaper.

I live in Oakland, CA, and we're fighting to keep coal shipments from rolling through here, and leaving nothing but juvenile asthma clusters along the transport route.

Sorry, coal miners; being a diaspora in search of economic security sucks. The social disruption of close communities is a bastard.

But coal mining needs to end, the market for coal needs to end.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 1:45 PM on January 31, 2017


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