Bad Math: Scott Pruitt Wildly Exaggerated Growth of Coal Jobs by 49000

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Bad Math: Scott Pruitt Wildly Exaggerated Growth of Coal Jobs by 49000

June 7th, 2017

Awake Goy

Bad Math: Scott Pruitt Wildly Exaggerated Growth of Coal Jobs by 49000

Susanne Posel ,Chief Editor Occupy Corporatism | Host of Hardline Radio Show

Scott Pruitt’s math was tremendously off on coal jobs during a recent interview NBC’s Meet The Press.

Pruitt claimed that as of last month, the coal industry gained “almost 7,000 jobs” and that was based on 50,000 jobs in the fossil fuel sector; an element representing just 0.03% of the economy as far as employment.

In reality, since October of last year, the coal jobs added have totaled 1,000, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. There have been an estimated 50,000 mining jobs added to the fossil fuel industry, but the majority of those jobs have nothing to do with coal because they are positions in natural-gas.

That means that from July to November of 2016, coal mining jobs grew by a thousand, and then had another thousand added between January and May of 2017.

Pruitt took the mining jobs that have nothing to do with coal and added more just for good measure – coming up with the magic number 7,000.

The BLS numbers also shows that as of last month there was an increase of only 400 jobs in coal. Puritt’s claim was 5000% over the actual tallies.

Increase in coal production as of the latest data from the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, has been at 17.6% higher than last year’s figures.

The dangers of continued coal use is clear. In 2013 the Environment Massachusetts Research & Policy Center (EMRPC) released a report stating that “power plants are the largest contributors to global warming pollution” and that carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by reducing the coal – power plant (CPP) footprint.

Ben Hellerstein, co-author of the study and field associate for EMPRC said: “The fact is that there are steps that the owners can take to reduce their carbon emissions, but at the end of the day, they are still burning fossil fuels, they’re still burning dirty sources of energy, so we definitely would encourage them to adopt any and all measures to reduce their emissions, but over the long term, we need to be transitioning to cleaner sources of energy, like solar and wind.”

Hellerstein equated global warming to power plant usage: “What these plants are doing right now is making an outside contribution to global warming, which is putting communities across the state of Massachusetts at risk. So we need to put the safety and the health of our communities above the profits of the fossil fuel companies. And I would say that’s the message of our report, is we need these nationwide standards to limit carbon pollution from CPP in order to keep our community safe.”