Malarkey. If it takes "decades to effectuate", it will also take decades for those job losses to happen. And in the meantime, new jobs in completely new industries now practical due to lower energy costs will be appearing. Just building and installing new engines in the existing transportation infrastructure will generate new jobs in vast numbers.
"Sure, the price of coal will drop ~ and what that means is NO COAL AT ALL. You'll have to find some really cheap way to mine it to get that carbon you think new industries will use."
You think the existing mines are just going to disappear?? The investment in them has already been made...the only costs to keep them going will be labor and maintenance. Opening up new mines will be problematic, though
? "Same with oil."
Nope. There are plenty of things made from oil that will keep the industry going. Pretty much everything that moves needs lubrication, and oil is still the likely best source for that stuff.
With coal mines heavily mechanized (if not quite automated although that's probably not that far off), coal has to sell at a sufficiently high price to pay for the electricity and capital costs ~ and the machinery requires a CREW, not just a miner with a pick and shovel.
It's easy to see virtually every coal mine in America falling out of use as the price of coal drops like a rock.
These price collapses will occur BEFORE there are sufficient numbers of cold fusion units to replace their energy output.