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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."

4 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 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."

    2. 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.

  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...