This just the latest, reported in the last hour:
(Reuters) - Turkish rescue teams found 28 dead in a coal mine in the northern Black Sea province of Zonguldak on Thursday, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said, three days after an underground explosion caused the mine to collapse.
Unfortunately, there's more below....
First more from Turkey:
An investigation has been launched into a rash of mining accidents in recent months that have killed more than 60 people.
Mining disasters are common in Turkey. The worst, at Zonguldak in 1992, killed 263 workers.
http://uk.reuters.com/...
And in today's news from China:
BEIJING - The strong economic recovery has partly pushed up the death toll from coal mine accidents in the country in the first quarter of the year, a senior work safety administrator has said.
Huang Yi, spokesman for the State Administration of Work Safety, told China Daily that fatalities resulting from coal mine disasters were 592 in the first three months of this year, up from 509 a year ago.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/...
While in Russia this week:
May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he’ll assert more control over Russia’s mining industry to avoid repeating the accident at the country’s biggest underground coking coal pit that killed 90 people this month.
The ratio of mine deaths per 1 million metric tons of coal production declined to 0.18 last year (54 dead per 301 million tons produced) from about 1 in the early 1990s, Skryl said. Russian coal producers invested almost $12 billion during the last 10 years in mine development, which resulted in increasing safety, Skryl said.
Every year about 8,000 people die in the global coal mining industry, which employs 9 million people, according to Federation Council member Sergei Shatirov.
http://www.businessweek.com/...
And here in the U.S.:
Massey Energy (MEE), which ran the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia where 29 miners died last month, is now facing a Justice Dept. criminal probe. Justice is looking into possible "willful criminal activity" at the mine. The probe joins an ongoing Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation into bribery at the mine and a pending civil case by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/...
The head of Massey Energy Co. can expect the worst when he testifies before Congress on Thursday about the coal mining disaster that killed 29 of his employees last month.
Coal is proving hard to kill mostly because it's so entrenched. In spite of high hopes for harnessing the power of wind, sun and atom, half of America's electricity still comes from coal. As a practical matter, it will be needed for decades.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
And of course:
WASHINGTON – Ditching their past cautious tone, the nation's top scientists urged the government Wednesday to take drastic action to raise the cost of using coal and oil to slow global warming.
The National Academy of Sciences specifically called for a carbon tax on fossil fuels or a cap-and-trade system for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, labeling global warming an urgent threat.
http://www.dallasnews.com/...
I have not much to add to any of this, other than it seems lately there has been a global epidemic of these mining disasters. Maybe there are no easy answers to safe, clean, abundant energy, but we need to do better than this.