US coal production

American coal production fell through the floor between 2007 and 2022 while YouTube's upload firehose climbed toward the stratosphere, and the inverse correlation (r = -0.958) tells a particularly 21st-century energy transition story. One kind of combustion declined; another kind of attention combustion took its place. The kilowatts moved, but they didn't disappear.

US coal production fell from about 1.15 billion short tons in 2007 to under 600 million by 2022, displaced first by cheap natural gas after the fracking revolution and then by utility-scale wind and solar. YouTube uploads grew from roughly 15 hours per minute in 2007 to over 500 hours per minute by 2022, carried by smartphones, algorithm-driven recommendation, and the quiet monetization of everything. The electricity that used to heat an American boiler now largely powers a server farm encoding vertical video, and the net draw on the grid remains stubbornly similar — one kind of extraction was replaced by another, and the job count is smaller and paler.

A mine closes in West Virginia. A data center opens in Virginia. Watts still move, still produce heat.