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Using Google Earth to See Destruction

Posted by samzenpus on from the mr-peabody's-coal-train-has-hauled-it-away dept.

An anonymous reader writes "On Monday, an environmental advocacy group [Appalachian Voices] joined with Google to deliver a special interactive layer for Google Earth. This new layer will tell "the stories of over 470 mountains that have been destroyed from coal mining, and its impact on nearby ecosystems. Separately, the World Wildlife Fund has added the ability to visit its 150 project sites using Google Earth."

8 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. The real story by argoff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... should be that the US has a 200-800 year supply of coal, and if OPEC or anyone else in the world says "screw the US", the US can just turn around and say "screw you". Coal can be processed to make fuel too. We shouldn't sell our independence and liberty down the river for the sake of some enviromental cause. Even if we used all the coal, only the tiniest percential of mountains would even have noticable changes.

    1. Re:The real story by mdmkolbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Um ... Hydrogen isn't a renewable energy source. It is an energy storage mechanism. So we'll probably burn coal to make Hydrogen that we can than use to power our cars. (Hydro and wind don't yet scale up well enough, and most people are scared of nuclear.) Coal plants generally burn cleaner than gas cars due to efficiencies of scale so it's still a net win, but people need to stop thinking that Hydrogen fixes all our energy problems.

    2. Re:The real story by rubberchickenboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We shouldn't sell our independence and liberty down the river for the sake of some enviromental cause.

      Ignoring environmental causes will "sell our independence and liberty down the river" quite thoroughly, thank you.

      And I think you have it backward: others are saying "screw the US" because we have said, so often, "screw you."

    3. Re:The real story by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Coal CAN be extracted from the earth in a less destructive manner. It can even be burnt in a relatively clean fashion with minimal emissions, if one is willing to build plants that are marginally more expensive.

      Granted, nuclear beats coal on all of those counts and the US is VERY friendly with two of the nations with the largest supplies (Australia, and everybody's favourite exploiter of Yankee overpopulation, Canada). Still, with just a bit of effort and will, America could satisfy both environmental concerns and industrial concerns using coal. Nuclear power and America's bountiful wind and tidal resources just make the picture that much sweeter.

    4. Re:The real story by bergeron76 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Friend - we haven't sold our independence and liberty down the river. We've squandered it away to rich Oil Companies and knownothing voters.

      We've been too busy worrying about Linux vs. Windows to worry about old-fashioned buzzwords like Freedom, Liberty and Independence.

      We are reaping what we are sowing. Most Americans care more about movies about comic book heroes, Latte coffee drinks, and purporting to be holy while cursing the latest football/spectator sport game. We don't have time for silliness like, OUR FREEDOMS and WHAT THEY WILL HAVE MEANT WHEN THEY ARE GONE.

      So, who's up for a game of WoW?

      We must be the change we wish to see. -Ghandi

      --
      Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
  2. Organisations should make more use GIS like this by FromTheHorizon · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I think this sort of think is a great example of how Non Government Organizations (NGOs) can make great use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

    More NGOs should follow this example and use technology like Google Earth to show where they are working, and what they are doing. This gives people a better idea of where the money they donate is being spent. It also gives people a better idea of what work needs to be done, be it to protect the environment, or to reduce poverty (although the two are fundamentally linked) - this is how technology should be used to make the world a smaller place. What would be great if WWF included on the ground photos of their program activities, so people could take a virtual tour of what was being done.

    The next step is for NGOs to use GIS to help them with their work. A good example which I came across was in a refugee camp in Uganda, where they plotted to locations of Cholera outbreaks, and then compared this to the location of all the wells. Some of the wells showed high concertrations of outbreaks around them, indicating that they were contaminated - and so they were closed down. This is just a basic example, GIS could be used to make really interesting correlations between education, poverty and the environment.

    However I work for an NGO and know how slow they are to adopt new technology, but that's a whole different story...

  3. Re:uranium mining by c6gunner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Buddy, if we could find some way to turn Roses into the most efficient fuel known to man, there would be people opposed to having rose-plantations near their house. It's called "NIMBY", and you'll find that a case of it exists for any project worth pursuing.

  4. Re:Scary and revealing by c6gunner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Says a lot. "better people" -- are you saying that military people are better than civilians? That's funny because constitutionally, the military is subserviant to civilian rule
    Yes, I, as a man who offers his life for his nation, am subservient to the drunken bum sleeping in a puddle of his own feeces, and the college student who wants to turn my nation into a Communist Dream (tm). Just because they have power over me, doesn't mean that they're in any way better than I am. We GIVE you power over us precisely because we wish to REMAIN better men - we have no desire to turn into power-hungry tyrants ruling over a military dictatorship. Just don't for a minute imagine that these allocations of power somehow make YOU superior.