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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."

6 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. yamato! by User+956 · · Score: 5, Funny

    On Monday, an environmental advocacy group [Appalachian Voices] joined with Google to deliver a special interactive layer for Google Earth.

    What a letdown. By "special interactive layer", I was expecting shared control of an orbiting laser cannon.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    1. Re:yamato! by NewNole2001 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:yamato! by maxume · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.
  2. 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 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.

  3. genocide by ridl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.