Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain

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Teachers, librarians, and parents should have an above average understanding of energy issues before selecting books on the subject. These issues are going to have a staggering impact on the lives of the target audience, young readers. It’s long past time to sit down with youngsters and have a highly embarrassing birds-and-bees discussion about the fact that the abundant energy bubble is going to turn into a pumpkin during the lifetimes. Preserving their ignorance seems cruel.

This is an extremely important issue — energy returned on energy invested (EROEI). The book doesn’t mention this. EROEI is also highly relevant to oil. Rubin and others note that in the good old days of high-profit gushers, it was common to invest one calorie of energy to produce 100 calories of oil (100:1). By 2010, typical EROEI was about 17:1, and some are predicting 5:1 by 2020.

From the bestselling historian and acclaimed broadcaster

There is overall sympathy for the workers and the exploitative owners are shown in their true colours. The horrors of the early days in the pits comes over vividly and the various catastrophes that the workers had to endure, and that the owners walked away from with the tiniest slap on the wrists, is described in such a way as to make the reader sad and angry. I found the writing style to be generally readable although the economic bits were a little dry and there were some odd figurative phrases. Paxman's trademark acerbic observations, particularly of politicians, are in evidence. The book includes notes, illustrations and an index. The subject is petroleum, from history to the search for alternative energy sources. Many little-known facts are included. For example, during WWII only the US had developed 100 octane fuel, which gave a decisive advantage to Allied fighter planes. Fred Cahir tells the story about the magnitude of Aboriginal involvement on the Victorian goldfields in the middle of the nineteenth century.

A Bank Street College of Education’s Children’s Book Committee’s Best Children’s Books of the Year (2023) Readers learn about renewable energy, like wind, solar, and hydro. See Ted Trainer’s book, Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society . Learn about the significant shortcomings of the various types of alternative energy. Discover why no combination of them will ever come anywhere close to replacing the energy now provided by fossil fuel. Discover why we will not enjoy a smooth and painless transition to a sustainable, renewable energy future. In one sense, Scargill was right. The government and the National Coal Board (NCB) were going to close pits. But they would have been closed more slowly if it had not been for the strike, which also had an odd effect on the way in which the history of mining is seen. It came to loom large in the collective imagination of the Left, and I suspect that the number of historians working on this single event is now greater than the number working on all other aspects of the history of British mining. The NUM often seemed – like the French army after the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 – to be building its identity around the celebration of what had, in fact, been a crushing defeat. I also recall, whilst in college, the miners strike of 1984/5. In my youth I didn't understand politics or sociology and was an immensely privileged, obnoxious right winger who was firmly on the side of the government in that struggle. Suffice it to say I owe to miners in general, and Scargill in particular, an apology. My world view is 180 degrees away from that I held in my 20s and I now deplore conservative ideology in general, and Thatcherism in particular which has led, pretty directly to the decline in public sector services and general social infrastructure currently afflicting the UK, exacerbated by BREXIT of course. But I digress. In this new work of nonfiction, the author has provided everything from the very beginnings of oil to how this substance has saved lives, taken lives, and how the future looks for the next generation as oil takes over as the hottest property anyone can possibly own. Deadly sins have come from oil - jealousy, envy, even hate - yet without this particular ‘find’ there are millions of machines and innovative devices that wouldn’t exist. So…what’s worse?It takes seven gallons of gasoline per person -- man, woman, and child -- to run the country each day.