I don't see exactly how coal is "unreliable".

I've had more power outages with the switching to green energy production than I ever had whilst coal was king.

The 'coal is unreliable' narrative comes from the fact our power stations are 50 years old. Not that the resource or the method to extract energy out of it is unreliable.

Well the article links to a source of the unreliable claim. You read the article right?

The coal is unreliable narrative has existed for many years because coal plants break down and have mechanical issues at higher rates than other sources, renewable and otherwise. Coal is less reliable than natural gas and oil based power, nuclear, to say nothing of the comparison to solar, which obviously doesn’t need mechanical repairs. The method of converting coal to power is actually less reliable because it’s more mechanically intense, and has more moving parts which makes it more fragile and repair prone.

If you google this, you’ll find that statistically across coal plants, they’ve historically had a reliability of 70-90% of target capacity due to mechanical issues.

Solar is reliable.

60% of the time it works every time.

> I've had more power outages with the switching to green energy production than I ever had whilst coal was king.

Bit of a correlation not causation, no? Rise of renewable energy has also been during the rise of energy usage overall and suffering overall infrastructure. Not only are power stations old, but many of the transmissions line are too, which is probably going to have a bigger impact on power outages than power plant issues.

Here's a non-smug, non-flamebait source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/climate/trump-coal-plants...

I have never heard the NYT called "non-smug". The kinds of people who would use the word "smug" almost universally consider the New York Times to be "smug".

Another whopper of an idea from the trump administration

Next up - lead back in petrol to lower IQs

You joke maybe but I just read an article that people in the ER are refusing tetanus shots.

Tetanus isn't contagious, right? Natural selection.

If it's adults choosing to win a Darwin award, I'm all for it.

But if they're killing off actual children, rather than potential children, I'd rather have that power taken away from them. Kids should not have to suffer just because their parents are monsters.

The Stanley Steamer runs very reliably on coal, wood or even paper ballots!

Maybe if we start pushing coal again, we'll get some new Silent Hill games.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

See: https://www.historyandheadlines.com/may-27-1962-the-real-sil...