PIKEVILLE, Ky. — Here in the heart of central Appalachian coal country, an economic experiment is underway inside an airy renovated Coca-Cola bottling plant. Most days, Michael Harrison, a former mine electrician and “buggy man” who once drove trucks 700 feet underground, can be found hunched over a silver laptop, designing websites for clients like the Pikeville tourism board.
Mr. Harrison, 36, is one of 10 former mine workers employed at BitSource, an internet start-up founded by two Pikeville businessmen determined to prove a point: that with training and encouragement, Kentucky miners can learn to code. ...
keyplyr
8:35 pm on Aug 17, 2016 (gmt 0)
What comes after coal?
data mining?
Marshall
10:14 pm on Aug 17, 2016 (gmt 0)
What comes after coal?
Diamonds.
LifeinAsia
4:26 pm on Aug 18, 2016 (gmt 0)
What comes after coal?
coala, according to the dictionary.
blend27
4:27 pm on Aug 18, 2016 (gmt 0)
What comes after coal?
Lung Cancer
bwnbwn
10:35 pm on Aug 18, 2016 (gmt 0)
weeks you might not be around I know I want but a very good question.
Energy is what gives us our ability to live as we do. Replacing coal (BTW has been used for thousands of years) is becoming outdated. Solar energy if used correctly can replace a large % of the energy used by coal Several small countries have done this and it will work. There is energy sources yet to be discovered. I won't discover this you won't but they are there.
My grandmother watched the evolution from the horse to the car. She watched landing on the moon (in her childhood a myth). As we evolve as humans so will the energy we need.
There will be a cleansing of the world population before this. It is a fact you can only support so many life forms per square mile and humans need the most. Just look at history many regimes has already started this process it will continue. Not in my lifetime but in the ones I do leave behind.
I guess you mean for employment in the coal producing region in general rather than what will replace coal as an energy source? They can be retrained as infrastructure installers and maintainers.
There's a company (originating from Moscow, Russia and branched into Woodland, WA, United States) developing wireless electrical energy technology based on Nicola Tesla's research. I'm not 100% sure of the principles but I think they're harnessing nature's ambient magnetic fields. Looks like very promising clean and free energy ... well free to tap anyway. Like everything else I imagine there will be delivery-to-market and infrastructure maintenance costs if it's implemented as a hub and spoke grid.
From my point of view it would be ideal as an independent distributed system rather than a hub and spoke grid. Ideally they would produce low-cost personal use "capture" infrastructure to give everyone the ability to tap their own. I'm not sure if it's their intention. Their public literature is claiming an immense transformation in the world's energy supply within 10 years.
