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How many opioid overdoses happened among the unemployed coal miners and their families?

by jmpman 7y ago

gizmo385 7y ago
A lack of programs in place to aid unemployed coal miners is not an argument against shutting down coal mines.
CameronNemo 7y ago
How much did the Purdue family make by selling Oxycontin?
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
How many opioid overdoses were prevented by now employed natural gas miners. Its a ridiculous statement to begin with since opioid overdoses are almost entirely the fault of a few corporations overmarketing them.
adventured 7y ago
As a direct result, likely not very many compared to 26,000 lives saved. The lives saved figure will continue to increase considerably over time. There are a total of ~50,000 coal mining jobs left in the US. In 2005 there were around ~75,000 coal mining jobs in the US. So a similar number of lives have been saved - by the estimate - than jobs lost (and obviously a small fraction of job losses will have led directly to opioid deaths). Presently US wages are rising the fastest - at about 2x the rate - for the bottom half of workers versus the top; US wages are hitting new all-time adjusted highs; and the U6 unemployment rate is somewhere around a real 50-60 year low, matching the floor in year 2000. Further, there has been a massive boom in natural gas and oil in the US over that time, including in eg the Appalachian coal region (natural gas) which was hit hard in spots by the coal industry erosion.
- jmpman 7y ago
  “In total during this period, the shutdown of coal-fired units saved an estimated 26,610 (5%–95% confidence intervals (CI), 2,725–49,680) lives.” - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5 Notice that the cited data, do not include any health statistics. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN The cited github does not exist. https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition Searching for user jaburney in github also comes up empty. It’s hard to validate her health claims, but let’s say that her low end number of 2725 is valid. At 25,000 coal miners, and let’s say 25,000 coal plant operators (250 plants * 100 employees per plant) for a total of 50,000 employees impacted. If each of those employees is in a 4 person family, then 200,000 people could have been impacted. If just 3% of those people died due to addiction, the numbers are equal. Please don’t interpret my compassion for the unemployed coal miners, coal plant operators, and train engineers as a dismissal of global warming. The transition to carbon neutral power needs to happen, but in the process there will be people left behind, including people who are significantly economically impacted, leading to divorce, addiction, homelessness etc. My comment obviously touched a nerve as many people don’t want to consider the real impact to the workers. And no, they’re not just going to take another bus across town to another plant. They’re not going to relocate. They’re not going to learn to code. They’re going to suffer. When people question global warming, maybe they’re asking - Are you sure, because people are going to die in the transition? Maybe more people are dying due to unemployment than are being saved due to lower pollution? Maybe the people who were counted as dying due to pollution were 95 and didn’t make it to 96? While, the 22 year old addict lost over 50 years of their life. Regardless, these people dying is a fact everyone should be conscious is happening. You vote to close coal power plants, you’re voting to kill these people. There are real consequences.
  - philipkglass 7y ago
    I contacted the author about the missing github repository. It's is available now. The initial push failed because some data files are too large for github. She's presently separated the data files from the plain code in the repo and put the data on dropbox.
cyorir 7y ago
If we're going to start asking non sequitur questions, I might as well join in. How many unemployed coal miners could have used unemployment insurance until they migrated to a new city to find employment in a different sector and thereby support their families?
rurp 7y ago
If your goal is to create more make-work programs, how about picking an industry that doesn't have massive negative externalities?

How many opioid overdoses happened among the unemployed coal miners and their families?

by jmpman 7y ago

How many opioid overdoses happened among the unemployed coal miners and their families?

gizmo385 7y ago

A lack of programs in place to aid unemployed coal miners is not an argument against shutting down coal mines.

CameronNemo 7y ago

How much did the Purdue family make by selling Oxycontin?

Polylactic_acid 7y ago

How many opioid overdoses were prevented by now employed natural gas miners. Its a ridiculous statement to begin with since opioid overdoses are almost entirely the fault of a few corporations overmarketing them.

adventured 7y ago

As a direct result, likely not very many compared to 26,000 lives saved. The lives saved figure will continue to increase considerably over time. There are a total of ~50,000 coal mining jobs left in the US. In 2005 there were around ~75,000 coal mining jobs in the US. So a similar number of lives have been saved - by the estimate - than jobs lost (and obviously a small fraction of job losses will have led directly to opioid deaths). Presently US wages are rising the fastest - at about 2x the rate - for the bottom half of workers versus the top; US wages are hitting new all-time adjusted highs; and the U6 unemployment rate is somewhere around a real 50-60 year low, matching the floor in year 2000. Further, there has been a massive boom in natural gas and oil in the US over that time, including in eg the Appalachian coal region (natural gas) which was hit hard in spots by the coal industry erosion.

jmpman 7y ago
“In total during this period, the shutdown of coal-fired units saved an estimated 26,610 (5%–95% confidence intervals (CI), 2,725–49,680) lives.” - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5 Notice that the cited data, do not include any health statistics. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN The cited github does not exist. https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition Searching for user jaburney in github also comes up empty. It’s hard to validate her health claims, but let’s say that her low end number of 2725 is valid. At 25,000 coal miners, and let’s say 25,000 coal plant operators (250 plants * 100 employees per plant) for a total of 50,000 employees impacted. If each of those employees is in a 4 person family, then 200,000 people could have been impacted. If just 3% of those people died due to addiction, the numbers are equal. Please don’t interpret my compassion for the unemployed coal miners, coal plant operators, and train engineers as a dismissal of global warming. The transition to carbon neutral power needs to happen, but in the process there will be people left behind, including people who are significantly economically impacted, leading to divorce, addiction, homelessness etc. My comment obviously touched a nerve as many people don’t want to consider the real impact to the workers. And no, they’re not just going to take another bus across town to another plant. They’re not going to relocate. They’re not going to learn to code. They’re going to suffer. When people question global warming, maybe they’re asking - Are you sure, because people are going to die in the transition? Maybe more people are dying due to unemployment than are being saved due to lower pollution? Maybe the people who were counted as dying due to pollution were 95 and didn’t make it to 96? While, the 22 year old addict lost over 50 years of their life. Regardless, these people dying is a fact everyone should be conscious is happening. You vote to close coal power plants, you’re voting to kill these people. There are real consequences.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  I contacted the author about the missing github repository. It's is available now. The initial push failed because some data files are too large for github. She's presently separated the data files from the plain code in the repo and put the data on dropbox.

cyorir 7y ago

If we're going to start asking non sequitur questions, I might as well join in. How many unemployed coal miners could have used unemployment insurance until they migrated to a new city to find employment in a different sector and thereby support their families?

rurp 7y ago

If your goal is to create more make-work programs, how about picking an industry that doesn't have massive negative externalities?