>>Coal is not ever going to come back - it's days are done.

There's always some need, especially with the steel resurgence: you need top quality coal for smelting because it's about the only fuel that gets hot enough.

>>It's kinda like the buggy whip -- everyone needed one and everyone bought them. Then along came the automobile....kinda put the end to the buggy whip business. Sure there are a few makers of buggy whips -- but it's days are over.

Except that coal is a gigantic cheap resource that may be a cleaner option one day. Just as Fracking made natural gas cheap enough to challenge coal. Things change.

>>"wash the beautiful coal to make it clean, so we have clean coal because they take the dirty coal and wash it". f_ing idiot.

Yes I saw that attack... but is that his actual words or the usual vicious paraphrase? FWIW, they do actually wash some coal to make it burn cleaner. I think the issue was that environmentalists use "clean" to mean carbon capture while it has quite a few meanings in the coal industry. "Clean coal turns out to mean largely whatever one wants it to mean” according to Professor Rubin who spent most of his 50 year career on coal technologies.

>>As for those loosing their jobs - like the coal miners - sure you have to worry about them too. I would think that if I had to choose between going down into a dangerous dark hole and getting black lung disease at a coal mine vs working in nice clean factory above ground making solar panels I would take the latter of the two.

So would I. Problem is that you can't eat hopes for a better future or buy shoes for your kids. Maybe if the jobs existed, they'd have the option.