CHAPTER ONE A PORTABLE CLIMATE IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE WHAT HUMANS FIRST THOUGHT OF COAL It looked like any other rock But on further inspection it turned out to be something much better Like wood it burned Inside those black rocks was a reserve of energy collected some 300 million years ago Like a genie in a bottle its energy was just waiting to be released Hot and steamy That was the weather report from the Carboniferous period Conditions were perfect for trees and The late Carboniferous period featured swamp forests ideal for producing coal 6
plants to flourish in the swamps and bogs that covered large portions of the planet Like all living things this vegetation consisted mainly of carbon an element packed with energy When these plants died their leaves and branches sank into the water Sand mud water and rocks buried them These remains were not exposed to air so the carbon did not react with oxygen to become carbon dioxide Instead over time heat and pressure built up on this plant material These conditions pressed out any remaining moisture to leave behind slabs of black carbon-rich material coal Imagine a huge peanut butter and jelly sandwich That’s what coal seams look like inside the earth These seams range from a few inches to many feet thick There are several different types of coal Anthracite is the rarest It is very hard and contains the most carbon Anthracite is difficult to ignite but once it catches fire it burns the hottest of all the types of coal It produces more heat per pound but makes the least pollution Next on the scale are bituminous and sub-bituminous coal Bituminous coal has the higher carbon content of the two and it burns better However sub-bituminous coal has less sulfur one of coal’s most dangerous pollutants Lignite ranks at the bottom of the coal scale It has a low carbon content is softer and its color is more brown than black Unlike other fossil fuels such as oil a lot of coal is found closer to the surface of the earth It’s easy to reach so people have used it for centuries Scientists have discovered that people living 6,000 years ago during Coal seams can be up to 90 feet 27 4 m thick and 920 miles 1,481 km long 7
the Stone Age used coal to fuel their fires In ancient China people used some coal but they still depended mostly on wood for heat especially when they were working with metal Coal contained too many impurities and made too much smoke to be used for making iron However by the 11th century the Chinese had used up too much of their forestland and needed another power source They figured out that coal could be purified by pre-burning it to remove some of the pollutants The result was a substance called coke Coke burned hotter than plain coal and made less smoke It was much better for operating ironworks A similar pattern was followed several centuries later in Europe In the late 1500s the population was growing in what is now the United Kingdom England Northern Ireland Scotland and Wales As people burned more wood the supply started shrinking But coal was everywhere It was even visible atop the ground and sticking out of seaside cliffs Britons then turned to coal to fuel their fires The scenario repeated in the United States in the 1800s American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson observed Every basket of coal is power and civilization For coal is a portable climate It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle For centuries families the world over carried coal to their homes for heat and light 8
Newcomen’s design enabled the pumping cycle to repeat 12 times per minute One invention almost single-handedly turned coal from an available fuel source into an entire industry In 1698 English inventor Thomas Savery built a steam engine and received the first patent for the technology His design was then refined by another Englishman Thomas Newcomen In 1712 Newcomen’s steam engine was installed at a coal mine Mines were vulnerable to flooding but the steam engine could pump out the water That made it safer for miners to go underground and allowed them to go deeper than they could before Not only did the steam engine make mining easier but the machine itself was powered by coal and it was made of iron that had been forged over a coal-powered fire Half a century later James Watt a Scottish inventor improved the design of the steam engine even further It went on to power the coal industry for two more centuries At the turn of the 19th century the way people lived in Europe and the U S started to change For centuries most 9
