HS Environment Coal users warmed up by burning an ancient forest where dinosaurs had traveled

Is not not long since British cities and towns woke up on winter mornings to the stubborn rattling of stoves, heaters, and grills, not to the roaring of a rooster or the beeping of a cell phone.

The fireplaces would be filled with dust, which was not soft and light wood ash but gray ash crumb that had once been coal.

Coal was the king of the winter home. Its arrival was an autumn ceremony, when bumpy sacks were thrown from the truck platform onto the shoulders of strong men, behind bare and dusty cheeks.

The coals were poured into the basement or garden bunker, accompanied by a rumble and a cloud of soot, and then the door was closed again. Behind it, the coal could feel waiting for its moment.

As fuel coal was ancient and strange. Its scent was salty and spicy, like something deep in the ground.

It had originated in sediments during the Coal and Permian periods, and was then excavated by miners who had been excavated semi-naked. The Finnish giants and tall ancient trees had been strongly compressed for so long that they turned into stone.

Coal users did not warm up by any of the logs but burned the prehistoric forest where the dinosaurs had roamed.

Coal there was a wide variety, from proudly shiny anthracite to lousy lignite, suitable only for power plants. But burning any coal was clearly different from burning wood.

The wood produces a playful, living fire, while the coal ignites slowly, first melting the lighters and old newsprint until the gases and tars are gone. The coal then opens its hearts, revealing purple magma lakes and glowing ore.

Robert Louis Stevenson saw armies on fire, and many children could imagine them marching in a fiery war landscape where the red mountains sank into lava and ash plains. On the other hand, a coal fireplace is calmer. It won’t spark unless it’s swarmed. Instead, it spits out small, mysterious blue breaths as signs of life.

The coal fire will not crackle or sing. It burns slowly, thoughtfully, occasionally sighing and settling down.

Read more: In Ireland, peat has traditionally been used to burn peat. Read the HS report on Ireland.

When Sherlock Holmes sitting in his favorite armchair at Baker Street 221 B, repeating the cases he solved, he sometimes reached for the carbon hatch. He kept his cigars there and watched the coals move as the riddle in Holmes’ mind followed one another.

Holmes ’time was the golden age of coal in Britain. In 1913, the country’s households and industry burned a total of 287 million tons of coal, most of which was produced in more than 1,300 mines. By that time, every chimney in the cities of London, South Wales and the North had been bubbling with coal dust for decades.

Carbon made the weather like Charles Dickens said Kolean house in the first chapter. There was fog everywhere.

Upstream of the Thames it hovered over green islands and meadows, and downstream it was stained with shipping and large, dirty cities … Fog in the swamps of Essex, fog in the highlands of Kent … Fog in the eyes and throats of Greenwich seniors as they coughed by the fireplaces of their shelters.

Britain’s coal reserves were so on the surface that the invading Romans used it to forge their weapons, little by little searching from the surface.

Coal was also so abundant that the country became much more industrialized than the rest of the world. Already Elisabeth I irritated by the taste and smoke of carbon floating in the air.

The carbon tax was so lucrative that Christopher Wrenin two-thirds of the churches in London planned for it were paid with carbon tax revenue.

In 1888, a centner (51 kg) of coal, enough for a family for a week, cost a shilling and two pennies, less than a week’s worth of flour or fruit. But it was based on a diabolical deal.

The widespread use of coal as a fuel produced, and China, India and America still produce, just the cheap energy our lifestyles demanded.

It also poisoned the air and upset the climate balance. When one fireplace produced gratifying heat, they blamed their thousands of pollution everywhere. The gentle singing of the miners also filtered through the deadly black dust.

Read more: The coal dispute has no “significance” for Finland, because coal can be phased out even faster than targeted: “It alone will no longer warm any home”

Published in The Economist’s The World Ahead 2022. InPress © 2021 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.