@ green | July-August , 2021

Causes of imminent climate disaster and options for a Green future

A stamp issued by the United Kingdom recognising the coal industry .

A stamp issued by the United Kingdom recognising the contribution of Mathew Boulton , who , together with James Watt , improved the Newcomen steam engine design .

agree that the world ’ s coal deposits were laid down during the Carboniferous period , a time between 300 and 360 million years ago , about 75 million years or so before the first dinosaurs ’ evolution .

Human use of coal is traced to ancient China , with a coal mine known to exist over 3,000 years ago . By 200 BC , the Chinese were already using coal for heat . As a trading commodity , and by 120 BC , coal provided the heat necessary to support China ’ s flourishing metallurgy industry .

In Britain , the Romans exploited all significant coalfields ( except for North and South Staffordshire ) by the late 2nd century AD . The earliest known use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs ( in Mexico , from 1300 AD to 1521 AD ), who used coal to make ornaments .

As humans explored new worlds , they migrated further from known lands . As global populations grew , coal took on even greater importance . In the 1700s , coal provided the fuel that heated the homes and cooked the meals of the hundreds of thousands of Englishmen who lived in the cities .

At the time , London already had more than half a million people . This expanding city alone consumed more than a thousand tonnes of coal in a day . But the shallow seams of coal at the British mines were being quickly exhausted . Miners were having to go deeper .

Unfortunately , the more the mine shafts penetrated deeper into the ground , the more prone to flooding .

Innovative miners developed crude contraptions which harnessed horses at the surface to draw water out of the flooding mines . But these systems were inefficient , unreliable and relatively

The first steam locomotive designed by Richard Trevithick .

A stamp from Uruguay celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of the novel , " Moby Dick " - a story about the whale hunting industry .

expensive to operate . Mine after mine lost productivity . Some even shut down . Britain was desperate for a solution .

The First Industrial Revolution

In 1698 , Thomas Savery developed a steam-powered water pump for use in mines . His small pump units were reasonably effective , but the larger models were unreliable , prone to boiler malfunction and sometimes even spectacular explosions .

The first commercially successful engine that could transmit continuous power to the machine ( like a pump ) was the atmospheric engine invented by Thomas Newcomen circa 1712 .

On the site of England ’ s greatest coalfield , the Coneygree Coal Works in Staffordshire , Newcomen successfully tested a tool that would keep mines safe and enable coal to be mined deeper .

Over the next 20 years , more than a hundred Newcomen engines were built . It allowed many mines in Britain and Continental Europe to deliver vast quantities of coal to fuel the start of an industrial revolution .

Indeed , many believe that at that moment in Staffordshire , when his first atmospheric engine successfully started up , Newcomen not only enhanced the wealth of several investors . He actually changed the destiny of humankind .

Over the decades that followed , improvements were made to the Newcomen engine . But the next major step occurred when a Scottish Instrument maker , working at the University of Glasgow and assigned the job of repairing a model Newcomen engine , noticed its inefficiency . This Scottish Instrument Maker was James Watt ( who later lent his surname to the SI unit of power - the Watt ).

Watt ’ s improvements to the Newcomen engine were somewhat sporadically executed . Still , from 1763 to 1775 , with support from Mathew Boulton , Watt introduced changes that substantially saved fuel consumption in the generation of power compared with earlier designs .

The new Boulton - Watt design was commercially introduced in 1776 . The first unit being sold to the Carron Company Ironworks ( a manufacturer of canons ) located on the banks of the River Carron , near Falkirk , in Scotland . The introduction of this superior steam engine heralded the commencement of a particular period .

Future historians would later call these times the First Industrial Revolution .

By the mid-1780s , the Boulton - Watt machine was being integrated to power ships , but there was more progress to

Some of the beautiful steam-powered locomotive designs that were built in the United Kingdom and the United States .

A First Day Cover issued in 1947 celebrating innovator , Thomas Edison . follow . In 1802 , Richard Trevithick , an inventor and mining engineer from Cornwall ( in the southwest of England ), patented a “ high-pressure engine ” and created the first steam-powered locomotive on rails .

Initially , goods would be transported across continents in freight trains drawn by coal-fired , steam-powered locomotives . Still , soon passenger traffic was also to boom .

The cyclical huff and puff rhythms conjured by these sleek , steely hearth-throbs , painted in dashingly bright colours , only added to the romance of travel . Tourism soon became a viable and popular commercial activity .

Some of the beautiful steam-powered locomotive designs were built in the United Kingdom and the United States .

Steamboats began ferrying tourists along the Rhine in 1827 . The first-ever economically successful “ package holiday ”, created in 1841 by Englishman Thomas Cook , enabled some 500 teetotal campaigners to travel by train from Leicester to Loughborough to attend a temperance society rally . The “ all-inclusive ” package incorporated brass music entertainment , sandwiches and tea , as well as talks on the dangers of alcohol !

With the transport revolution that was taking place , an increasing number of destinations could be reached cheaply by rail by the latter part of the 19th century . In fact , it became a mark of social standing for the middle classes to go on holiday once a year .

By 1870 , the Rhine was the most frequented travel destination in the world . Just over a decade later , in 1883 , the elite would also luxuriously ride the exotic “ Orient Express ” ( initially from Paris to Vienna , and then later , to Istanbul ).

Coal did not only fuel the steam engines that drove trains , powered ships or worked the pumps at coal mines . Other commercially viable opportunities also emerged as a result of coal deposits .

In 1847 , James Young , a Scottish chemist , turned his attention to a natural oil-type seepage at the Riddings Colliery in Derbyshire in England . Young ’ s experimentation allowed him to distil a light , thin oil for use as lamp oil whilst also obtaining a thicker oil suitable for lubricating machinery .

These new oils came from coal shales and were commercially successful . But the supply of such oils from coal mines soon began to fall and eventually was exhausted in 1851 .

Shortly afterwards , Thomas Edison started to commercialise the supply of electricity . In June 1882 , the world ’ s first coal-fired public power station , the Edison Electric Light Station , was built in London , a project of Edison and his business partner , Edward Johnson .

In September the same year , Edison established the Pearl Street Station in New York , providing electric lighting in the lower Manhattan Island area . The station ran until destroyed by fire in 1890 .

The station used reciprocating steam engines to turn direct-current ( DC ) generators . Because of the limitations of DC distribution , the serviced area was small .

The Newcomen engine had made vast quantities of coal accessible by preventing the flooding of deep coal mines . Once vast amounts of this carbon-based fuel became available , energy - a key component of economic progress - was present and unknowingly at that time , so too was the pathway to irreversible environmental damage .

Damage was gradually occurring in two areas – in the atmosphere above and in the deep , unseen depths of the remote