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Using Google Earth to See Destruction
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."
Live weather radar would be cool in Google Earth.
It's not google earth, rather MS Virtual Earth, but check out weather.com. They're overlaying live weather radar on virtual earth. It's really cool.
Have not tried it:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/kmzgenerator.php
(I knew that had georef images, but I didn't know they had this)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
A smarter and better option is to increase R & D into renewable energy. My employer's father (and the company founder) converted internal combustion engines to run off coal during WWII out of sheer necessity. Not a minor engineering feat. Performing this on a widespread scale carries far less insight than developing new technology, such as hydrogen.
As I understand it, the coal was pushed up when the tectonic plates collided. In the past, they would dig into the mountain and get it through the mine, but it is easier, cheaper, and requires fewer workers to blow off the top of a mountain and surface mine it. http://www.crmw.net/campaigns.php
The problems we have with coal are a big issue, but if you would prefer the United States rely on old dirty power sources so the coal companies can make more money instead of investing in new, cleaner technology, then you should be concerned about the people who are being affected in the area. http://www.crmw.net/campaigns.php?camp=mfe
True self sufficiency should be achieved through sustainable methods that do not harm the property of individuals and their communities. Mountain top removal harms more than the environment.
You've obviously never seen the devastation caused by slurry "dams" breaking and flooding valleys with the muck. Or never had to deal with the dust generated by the mining or the pollution to the groundwater. I can guess you've never had to meet a coal truck on small country road at night in a blind curve. And we haven't even gotten to mud runoff from bare mountains yet. Forget Google Earth. If you've never seen the ugliness left behind by mountain top removal up close and personal, then you can't truly understand how bad it really is.
The problem that most people don't get is that many of the people who stand to feel the negative effects from this type of mining are those that actually live there. On the average, they don't have any clout or power to do anything about it. Even worse--they often make their living from it so that it is needed as much as it is hated.
Want to extract energy from Appalachia? Heck, if you're willing to turn the beautiful mountain views into a wasteland, just stick lots and lots of windmills on top of the mountains. 50 to 100 feet off the tops of the mountains, the wind blows quite strongly virtually all the time. At least that way the people in the valleys can still drink their well water.
I won't be surprised if there's a follow-up posted here in a few months about Google Maps and/or other similar services being strong-armed by government/industry (likely under the guise of "protecting homeland security") into censoring environmental damaged areas from public view.
Ron
So we'll probably burn coal to make Hydrogen that we can than use to power our cars.
Actually reforming natural gas makes a better source of hydrogen than coal. The best way to produce hydrogen though may be using algae to produce it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
the flippant nature of the conversation so far kind of disgusts me. I worked for some of these campaigns in West Virginia a couple summers ago, and what's going on down there is terrifying and, in my mind, evil.
The term isn't strip mining. This is worse. They call it Mountaintop Removal Mining, although really they destroy entire mountain ranges, then shovel the rubble into what were valleys, destroying thousands of miles of freshwater creeks. The work takes a crew of no more than a couple dozen, whereas traditional "deep" mining needs hundreds, so the jobs that the Appalachian hill culture depends on have disappeared along with drinking water, wildlife habitat, and resident's health. The destruction is complete. The mountains, their ecosystems, and the cultures they support will never return. Dirty King Coal, meanwhile, reaps unprecedented profits.
Remember, energy from coal is anything but clean. Coal plants push massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating the mass extinction we all are witness to.
What's happening in Apallachia, one of Project Censored's 25 most censored stories of 2005, is a crime against humanity and the planet. I applaud Google for helping to bring attention to it. If any of you feel like helping in this struggle, www.climateaction.net/mjsb is a good place to start.
Environmentalism has overextended its welcome in the public mind and it's time people talked about
the issues _behind_ environmentalism, instead of picking up a cue sheet of things to moan about from
your local environmentalist outfit.
Man-made or naturally occuring CO2, the latest science shows that neither are the cause of global
warming but a symptom. Looking at the data first the temperatures go up and _then_ CO2 lagging after
the temperature curve of hundreds of years. I suppose they prefer to talk about 470 mountains and
hills instead. Those are obviously man-made.
Don't believe me, go and watch this BBC documentary titled "The Global Warming Swindle" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU
Dr. Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace makes an appearance in that documentary so you might
want to hear it from the mouth of the horse itself.