Friday, March 5, 2010
Hargrove Startling NASA Images: A Dynamited Mountaintop Time Lapse
Posted by Brantley Hargrove on Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 11:31 AM
Mountains aren't a renewable resource. Well, they are if you're referring to plate tectonics and the process of subduction and mountain formation, which takes eons. But by then we'll all be dead, unable to enjoy newly minted vistas. Maybe that's why we shouldn't blow up the Smokies. Or any other coal-bearing geological formations, for that matter.
NASA took some pretty disturbing satellite images over the last 25 years of a mine in West Virginia where coal is extracted by blowing up the mountains. As you click through images taken every few years, the mine grows incrementally, like a gray, rocky chancre on the green forested slopes. The mine is required to reclaim the areas that have been exhausted, but that usually amounts to little more than piling the blasted rock into a sort of ruinous approximation of what a mountain should be, which is to say it looks like no mountain at all, and hollows, streams and valleys are filled in.
After the jump, check out an image of the same mine in 2009.
Comments (12)
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We don't have ANY mountaintop removal coal mining in Tennessee so therefore we don't need a law banning it. (We do at one site in East Tenn., apparently not quite as bad as this.)
Hmmmm.
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Conservationist/Environmentalist hand wringing and nay-saying has become a constant accompaniment to every discussion about the extraction of earth-bound energy sources. None of which seems to take into account utter dependence upon ever increasing demands for electricity in our modern, civilized life style. If suddenly the power went off, money would immediately dry up. Food would disappear. Homes would over-heat, or freeze up, depending upon the season. Long-standing political stability, ours for long enough now so that it has become a birth-right, would become a bitter memory.
Modern twenty-first century mankind, at least here in the USA and in much of Western Europe, no longer possesses the skills necessary to live self-sufficiently. Hunting (impossible without firearms), growing food and digging or cutting our own fuel supply, are no longer things 'civilized' mankind understands. Most of us have become slaves to the burning of fossil fuel. Take the fuel away and our vaunted civilization will go away shortly thereafter.
So, if instead of confusing, initiative destroying strife, why is it not possible for us to realistically decide how to go about doing things like digging coal, and drilling for oil every place it awaits us? (Which includes the Arctic Reserve and lower 48 stateside mountain tops.) If our energies were devoted to extraction in the least obtrusive way, and – development of wind, solar, fusion, fuel cell, etc. with all deliberate haste, would it not substantially improve our quality of life? I think it probably would.
I am as unenthusiastic as anyone about drilling for oil in a pristine place like the Arctic. However, when the size of the site is that of the Baltimore Airport within many hundreds of thousand acres of reindeer pasture and grizzly country, it seems to my humble mind to be relatively inconsequential. And while I am as distressed as anyone over a scar on the landscape like as to the satellite images above, it also seems to me to be necessary to our way of life. We all do turn on the lights and operate our computers, do we not? So why not apply our collective minds to reasonable problem solving and forget about letting strident blather and finger pointing get in the way.
"Maybe that's why we shouldn't blow up the Smokies. Or any other coal-bearing geological formations, for that matter."
If you don't want any "coal-bearing geological formation" to be blown up, then get out your checkbook and buy the property.
Then you can do what you want to with it.
Otherwise, the owners of it can do as they please.
That's called private property rights.
One more thing, all you eco-socialist wackos who don't want any coal burning for electricity can go sign a legally binding contract with the electric company that you will pay the entire differential in cost between coal generated electricity and the non-fossil fuel sources you love (all of which are more expensive) so that the rest of us won't have to pay for your nonsense.
Gilbert, you remind me of Lyndon Johnson. (Don't get puffed up about it. I'm not being complimentary.) Ole' Landslide Lyndon tricked almost everybody into the belief that he was driven by a massive social conscience. You don't appear to have one at all. On the surface this creates sort of an inverse similarity.
Truth is, we have a true similarity here, 'cause LBJ really didn't have any social conscience either. His pragmatism was total. Bowing only before his intent to gather power to himself. You are curious to me because I haven't yet figured out just what direction you come from.
Keep running your literal mouth and I'll get you figured out yet, Gil. Each outburst exposes just a bit more of your real self.
Our Millionaire Tennessee Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey is protecting mountain top removal, more particularly, strip mining by coal companies so that these mining operations such as United Coal Company - now owned by the Ukrainian industrial giant Metinvest) can extract higher quality Appalachian coal reserves in Tennessee and then export this coal to Eastern Europe and South America...
Yup...Lt. Governor Ramsey's part in Tennessee mountain top removal is helpng to create jobs - particularly if you are looking for work in the East European based ore and steel businesses.
Metinvest purchase United Coal Company just this past year (2009) and have located the United Coal Company World Sales Office within Ramsey's Sullivan County Senate District.
I am also thinking that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Atoms for Peace movement and the owes Tennessee Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey a huge debt of gratitude as Metinvest sells high grade steel to Iran and Metinvest needs Tennessee coal for the production of high grade steel.
There is no such thing as a "social conscience", Sammy.
It's just another lefty euphamism for socialism.
Anyone who professes to have some altruistic motivation for attempting to force someone else to do something (or refrain from doing something) or to pay for something is a flat out liar.
And that's all there is to it.
It is difficult to find knowledgeable people on this topic, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks.
I'm always searching for stuff about topics that I don't know of. It is hard to search things that you do not know of, because what do you look for? ;) Your blog was right up my alley regarding something new to me. Awsome read! Thank you.
I am always searching into things on topics that I do not know of. It is not an easy task to look for things that you don't know about, because what do you search for? ;) This was right up my alley regarding something new to me. Awsome read! Thank you.
I read on internet land that NASA decided to do a manned mission to Mars by August, 1982, but the fact that the Viet Nam war was so expensive. This type of mission could have been a drop within the fiscal bucket, compared to the military spending back then. When you compare the value of a manned mission to Mars to that of slugging it out in Southeast Asia, I vote Mars, entirely. We lost Viet Nam; what a waste. We lost our early mission to Mars; what a waste. Now, we now have financial woes and budget cuts. Again, Mars can take the back seat just to fall out of the vehicle. What can we do avoiding strike three?
I read anywhere that NASA decided to do a manned mission to Mars by August, 1982, but that Viet Nam war was too costly. This sort of mission would have been a drop inside the fiscal bucket, when compared to military spending back then. When you compare the value of a manned mission to Mars to that of slugging it out in Southeast Asia, I vote Mars, entirely. We lost Viet Nam; what a waste. We lost our early trip to Mars; what a waste. Now, we now have economic woes and budget cuts. Once again, Mars usually takes the back seat only to fall out of the vehicle. What can we do to prevent strike three?
