The orange color means you have filled 75% of your storage for that resource (so you should be ready to spend them, otherwise you'll be wasting time and/or food). Kittens are considered resource by the game so it will always be orange colored
catpower and science have different color but they do not have any real meaning, they're only there to help you differentiate themselves from other resources. Later on you'll find a ridiculous resource when hunting, that will have orange color AND glow
There are three main ways to get coal. The first two you'll get are the Coal Furnace and Deep Mining upgrades at the workshop. These will let you get small amounts of coal for each mine (0.003 per tick, 0.015 per second) and running smelter (base .005 per tick, .025 per second).
But, by far the best source of coal, is unlocking the Geology technology, and assigning Kittens to the Geologist job. Geologists are worth .015 coal per tick , equivalent to three smelters, or five mines. And kittens can improve at their jobs; a Master Geologist is earning about 0.026 coal per tick, which is over 0.1 coal per second each.
There are also quarries, which each give a +35% boost to mineral production, as well as another 0.015 coal per tick. They won't improve on their own the way Kittens improve their skills, but they still help a lot.
There are also several upgrades at the workshop related to coal which can help. Pyrolysis will increase coal gains by 20% from all sources. The Geodesy will increase Geologists' base coal per tick to 0.0225, making even a Dabbling Geologist worth four and a half Deep Mining mines. It also allows Geologists to produce a small amount of gold while they work.
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The Question from your Title: The Magneto Boost Ratio boost the boost of the Magneto. The Magneto boost the Global Production by 2% per building and a Steamwork boosts this effect by 15%.
But the Steamwork can more!
With different Upgrade it can produce things like Manuscript. A Full list is here