>>>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.

True -- for now anyways....but that doesn't change the fact that less and less of it will be used.

>>>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.
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>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.

I do not see how coal could be a cleaner option that solar or wind someday...and natural gas is cheaper than coal and has been for quite sometime. I'm for sure not a fan of fracking though for all the reasons I'm sure you've heard about :)

>>>"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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGbZ84PqHgI
..he's said it more than once before - that was just one example -- and yes I'm making it sound worse that it is -- but needless to say Trump is 100% clueless as to what 'clean coal' means or is.

>>>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.
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>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.

Yes it's a rough one for sure. If the coal mine is already closed and your job is already gone - well now what? It would be nice if solar panel manufacturing companies simply opened up plants in the coal mining towns were all the jobs have been lost. Sure it SOUNDS like a nice idea -- but I have no idea if that is practical location for such a manufacturing company or not. I would assume the costs to get the property and build the plants would be low, and employees would be easy to find. That is no doubt just a small piece of the puzzle though. For example where do the materials needed to build the solar panels come from? Does transporting the materials from far away (if necessary) make it less viable to put in such locations? etc etc Seeing how the current administration has zero interest in looking into such things and would rather just 'bring back coal' we're kinda stuck for now.

EGbZ84PqHgI