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Here is the threshold you need to meet. It's 0 degrees out in the Northeast, cloudy, no wind and utilties are hitting record demad at 7AM. It's going to be like that for the next two weeks.
When you can explain how wind and solar will meet that demand we can have a discussion.
I am surprised that you seem to be unfamiliar with solar batteries, which have vastly improved in recent years and will continue to do so.
Why should my beautiful Kentucky mountains be destroyed to heat the Northeast (actually, Kentucky coal is going to China, not New England these days), when gas is cheap and available, and alternative energy sources are becoming more and more feasible?
You dont get to leave the land all pulverized any more. You will get less jail time accidentally killing someone while drunk than leaving the land like that picture earlier in this thread..
Wish this were true. Sadly, it's not. If you can't visit or fly over the Appalachian coalfields, Google maps will provide a good idea about the devastation and its extent. It's horrifying, and all done for the almighty dollar. Or yen, nowadays.
Terrible, oh the horror!!! What we will ever do with all this destruction!!!! Oh MY!!!!! AAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!
You forgot to include a picture of what that mountain looked like BEFORE mining. It didn't resemble either of the two pictures you provided, I can guarantee you. It had trees, wildflowers, clear-running streams with lots of fish, notably trout, and waterfalls, birds and wildlife. It was beautiful and it was diverse.
Those mountains had been there longer than any other mountains in the world.
Mountains are not improved by having their tops blasted off, nor are the ethics of those who blast them.
Here is the threshold you need to meet. It's 0 degrees out in the Northeast, cloudy, no wind and utilties are hitting record demad at 7AM. It's going to be like that for the next two weeks.
When you can explain how wind and solar will meet that demand we can have a discussion.
It can't and will not be anytime soon. The ugly truth is that solar requires more fossil fuels to make the panels, wiring, electronics, mounts...etc. than the actual panels can recoup in more than 10 years.
Another problem (the left don't want anyone to know) is that even though we are swimming in oil, NG, and coal... we are still forced to buy 16% of our electricity from Canada and Mexico. If something interrupts that, we would be screwed... no, we would be S C R E W E D !!
Only Texas is completely energy self-sufficient.
Thanks to the Obama madmen our national security is at risk.
No, I question everything. And I won't apologize for it. Until you have had the ground sink under your home or that of a loved one, you couldn't possibly know the stress such worries cause.
Firstly as I already mentioned that is from voids left in underground mines, secondly mining underground populated areas now just isn't going to happen.
I am surprised that you seem to be unfamiliar with solar batteries, which have vastly improved in recent years and will continue to do so.
To which kind of batteries are you referring? Lithium ion? Lead acid?
Most batteries have big problems with longevity: they simply wear out over time. A car battery lasts 5 years if you're lucky. Lithium ion batteries lose capacity quite rapidly as they are cycled (as anyone with a laptop or smartphone knows).
We'd need a massive amount of batteries to store enough energy for a week's worth of electricity demand (in case of a lack of wind and sunshine). A physicist from San Diego has run done some preliminary calculations: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/...sized-battery/
As much as it would be nice to have most of our electricity needs supplied by wind and solar, it will probably be decades before it is economical. Someone will probably need to invent a totally new kind of battery: one that is dirt cheap, extremely reliable, with a 30 year service life.
Last edited by Freak80; 02-21-2017 at 02:09 PM..
Reason: 5 years, not 10
You forgot to include a picture of what that mountain looked like BEFORE mining. It didn't resemble either of the two pictures you provided, I can guarantee you. It had trees, wildflowers, clear-running streams with lots of fish, notably trout, and waterfalls, birds and wildlife. It was beautiful and it was diverse.
Those mountains had been there longer than any other mountains in the world.
Mountains are not improved by having their tops blasted off, nor are the ethics of those who blast them.
OGM TREES? You mean we can't plant trees there anymore? (pretty sure we can) WHAT WILL WE DO!!! OH MY, the HORROR, THE TRAVESTY!!!! How insensitive of us to use the resources of the earth to better our lives, we should have made sure that the TREES!!!!!! that were there before are still there!!!
PLEASE SOMEONE!!! GIVE ME A GUN SO I CAN BLOW MY STUPID BRAINS OUT!!!! OMG THE HORROR!
/sarc
By the way there... why don't you show us a picture of it there before.. please?
They are required by law to reclaim the land and need to be bonded for it. In addition to that there is thousands of abandoned mining sites across this country some of which are more than 100 years old; coal, gold, silver, ore etc. It's active coal mining that is funding those recovery efforts.
If you want an analogy here it would be like requiring the big 3 to clean up abandoned car factories from the hundreds of bankrupt companies at the turn of the century. On top of that we we'll also have them pay for cleaning up RR and shipyards.
It's good a good program and one that I support.
Glad you support it, but in a just society, there would be no need for such a program, as destroying mountains would never be considered a good way to mine coal.
You also forgot to mention the "orphan banks", formerly strip mines, where the coal company owners absconded or simply declared bankruptcy then changed their names and continued to mine irresponsibly. Those orphan banks are still largely unreclaimed in Kentucky and West Virginia, and the former company owners go scot-free, while continuing to build their wealth at the cost of the land and the people who live there. Look into the ownership and management of such coal companies, and their associated businesses for some very eye-opening info. Occasionally a coal state will slap a small fine onto them, but the amounts are miniscule compared to the wealth of such companies - while many of the people of the Appalachian Mountain coalfields struggle to live decent lives, and the mineral wealth escapes the states with little less behind.
Came close to encountering my senator Mitch McConnell earlier today, which certainly raised my focus on mountaintop removal and stream protection and the EPA, but Mitch ran like a scared rabbit when he saw the 1,000 or so folks who'd come out to try to talk to him about their concerns. Never saw a car with darkened windows take a corner so far.
And those who paid to hear him talk, at a luncheon sponsored by the Lawrenceburg, Ky Chamber of Commerce, were locked in. Yes, that's right - the entirely peaceful and tidy protestors were kept across the parking lot, which was fine, while Mitch and those dining with him had the metal gates or the parking lot surrounding the small building where the event was held were closed and padlocked while he was speaking.
A very large portion of the protestors were older women - 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s.. Not a demographic I had expected to see in such numbers at such an event, but there were the grandmas, nicely dressed, holding their diverse handmade signs and American flags. Many of those signs referred to environmental issues, and this being Kentucky, mountaintop removal and stream protection were prominent among those signs.
Never underestimate the grandma generation. These ladies got their protest chops well established back in the 1960s, and they know just what to do to put them to good use again.
OGM TREES? You mean we can't plant trees there anymore? (pretty sure we can) WHAT WILL WE DO!!! OH MY, the HORROR, THE TRAVESTY!!!! How insensitive of us to use the resources of the earth to better our lives, we should have made sure that the TREES!!!!!! that were there before are still there!!!
PLEASE SOMEONE!!! GIVE ME A GUN SO I CAN BLOW MY STUPID BRAINS OUT!!!! OMG THE HORROR!
/sarc
By the way there... why don't you show us a picture of it there before.. please?
You can do it!
Let's see you plant a 300 year old chestnut tree. Or if you can't do that because of the blight, then an oak, hemlock, tulip tree, maple, beech, umbrella magnolia, walnut, yellow buckeye, locust, Fraser fir, or any other native Appalachian tree you like that's the same age.
What's that?? Your local nursery doesn't have any? Well, that's just too bad, isn't it? They all used to be there...not at your nursery, but where nature put them: in the southern Appalachian Mountains, the oldest in the world.
I am unable to send photos with my old computer, but search for Lilley's Woods, one rare survivor of ancient virgin forest in southeastern Kentucky. It was all like that once.
You can also hunt for the Joyce Kilmer Forest in western NC - not coal country, thankfully, or it would very likely be gone, too. There are a few corners of virgin woodland in the Red River Gorge, but I'm not telling where they are. Too many idiots trashing the Gorge and drunkenly falling off the cliffs as it is. There are a few more virgin Appalachian cove hardwood forests left in and around the Great Smoky Mountains. Seek, and ye shall find. Just not as readily as you might have before.
And no, trees do not grow well in what's left behind after mountaintop removal. Those nice green non-native-grassy mountaintops are fertilized very, very heavily and look verdant the first season - after that, not so much so. Might be the poisoned ground-waters have a lot to do with that, along with taking off every bit of topsoil and shoveling it into the valleys that run between the peaks. That's called "valley fill". It ruins the valleys, just like the lost mountaintops.
I do not exaggerate. It is exactly this bad, and worse. Family cemeteries have been buried beneath hundreds of feet of debris and fill, and small children have been killed by being crushed by boulders crashing through their roofs and into their little beds, the direct result of mountaintop removal coal mining operations. It is a filthy business, almost any way you want to judge it. And it's all done out of greed, not need.
What is the value of a mountain? What is the value of a child's life?
Maybe you think such practices "better" your own life - I beg to differ when it comes to mine. I expect that little four year old child who was crushed by a rolling boulder in his home in western Virginia, along with his big brother and his parents, didn't think so, either.
Last edited by CraigCreek; 02-21-2017 at 02:34 PM..
You are just mouthing of meaningless talking points. I showed you where we used the land to our needs and returned it to a natural state and you argued subjective means of that state. You have no argument, you are simply mouthing off your activist propaganda and this is why you are resorting to pointless no substance responses rather than dealing specifically with the facts of the discussion. You activists do this consistently, and it is due to extreme ignorance on the topic because you subscribe to the "movement" out of an emotional need to feel like you are special and part of something more than it is of a logical and practical means to achieve a viable objective.
I saw many of you types when I was growing up. Working in the forestry service as a volunteer, we cleaned up after you folks who partied and polluted the camp sites with your environmental meets to promote the environment. You always showed your true understanding of nature and your true dedication to the cause. If it was standing around mouthing off, trashing and tearing up crap, you people were front and center... when it was cleaning up, and actually putting your words to action, you were nowhere to be found.
Shame on you.
This will be my last post to you on this thread.
To put it bluntly, you have not a ****ing clue who I am or what I do IRT environment, cleaning up litter, raising children who understand the importance of respect for our environment. NOTHING.
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