News & Observer, Associated Press, August 26, 2017

MILL CREEK, W.Va.– A coal miner who died on the job in West Virginia was the brother of one the 12 killed in the Sago Mine disaster of 2006.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that authorities identified the miner found dead Friday as Owen Mark Jones, a fire boss at the Pleasant Hill Mine. The surface mine is located near Mill Creek, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Charleston.

Jones’ brother, Jesse, was among those killed when an explosion ripped through the Sago Mine, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Mill Creek. The brothers had worked together at the same mines for 17 years.

On the day of the 2006 explosion, Owen Jones headed a second crew that followed his brother’s group into the Sago Mine. His crew was about 10 minutes behind the others because they needed to switch to a larger vehicle, and they made it back out.

Jones was among the men who tried to reach the 13 trapped miners, only one of whom survived. “It was like watching your brother falling off a cliff and not being able to do anything about it,” he said at the time.

Jones later returned to work at Sago, but ultimately asked for a transfer. “Every single noise, you jump,” he said. “You’re on edge all of the time.”

Jones, whose great-grandfather also died in a mine explosion, said at the time that the pay was the main reason he returned to coal mining despite the dangers.

“My wife and kids don’t want me to ever go back, but what are you supposed to do? You either work in the woods around here or in the coal mines or you work for Hardee’s or McDonald’s or something like that, and then you don’t make enough money to live,” he said.

Jones, 51, is survived his wife, two children and five grandchildren. Gov. Jim Justice’s office called the death “especially heartbreaking” because “this family has been devastated twice in the last 11 years by losing loved ones in the mines.”

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration confirmed the fatality Friday at the Carter Roag Coal Co. mine. No other information about the circumstances of Jones’ death was immediately released. Carter Roag is owned by Metinvest, a mining and metals firm headquartered in Ukraine.

The federal agency said it’s the sixth coal mining death in West Virginia this year, up from three killed on the job last year. Twelve coal miners have been killed nationwide so far this year, up from eight in 2016.

Source: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article169547547.html

From an Essay by Joe Romm, Think Progress, August 23, 2017

Trump thinks clean coal is when workers mine coal and then actually ‘clean it’

How off the rails was President Donald Trump’s rally speech in Phoenix Tuesday night? He spouted utter nonsense on clean coal, and it didn’t even make CNN’s story, “Donald Trump’s 57 most outrageous quotes from his Arizona speech.”

Trump appears to believe that clean coal — which, it must always be pointed out, doesn’t actually exist — is when workers mine coal and then physically “clean it.” That does not happen, but facts have never stopped Trump.

“We’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal, and it’s just been announced that a second, brand-new coal mine,” said Trump, “where they’re going to take out clean coal — meaning, they’re taking out coal. They’re going to clean it — is opening in the state of Pennsylvania, the second one.”

There are many misstatements or outright lies in those brief lines. First and foremost, “clean coal” is a fantasy. You can’t “clean it.” In terms of carbon pollution, coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels, so you couldn’t clean coal unless you could remove or capture all the carbon and bury it.

The phrase “clean coal” refers to expensive and mostly non-commercial technologies that reduce pollution and capture carbon dioxide when coal is burned. Even Robert Murray, CEO of the country’s largest privately held coal-mining company, doesn’t believe in that. “Carbon capture and sequestration does not work,” he said last month. “It is neither practical nor economic.”

Coal CEO admits that ‘clean coal’ is a myth

Second, there never was a “war on coal.” Indeed, as we reported last month, a leaked draft of the Department of Energy’s electric grid study concluded that factors like environmental regulations and renewable energy subsidies “played minor roles” in the shutdown of big coal plants.

Instead, coal has simply become uneconomic. “[Coal] plants that have retired are old and inefficient units that were not recovering their operations and fuel costs, much less capital cost recovery,” the draft report says.

Finally, Trump’s “second, brand-new coal mine” in Pennsylvania is actually a renovation and reopening project for a metallurgical coal mine. The increase in the metallurgical coal market is largely being driven by China’s steel industry, not by any policies from Trump, as the Washington Post fact checker explained in June. The mine project will create, at most, dozens of jobs.

Trump’s trade rhetoric was key to his campaign. Now it’s totally incoherent.

The Post gave Trump three Pinocchio’s for lying about the first coal plant back in June. These new statements deserves a lot more.

Source: https://thinkprogress.org/trump-thinks-clean-coal-is-when-workers-mine-coal-and-then-actually-clean-it-b56a2d4317bc/?utm_campaign=crowdfire&utm_content=crowdfire&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter#350509998-tw