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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.
Yes, I understand that. What is being done to correct those voids?
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.
I don't think you are comprehending the storage and capacity requirements in the very plausible scenario I outlined so let me explain again. Suppose your max demand is 1 GW, you can supply that indefinitely with base load, intermediate and peaking plants. 1 GW of solar capacity is more expensive to operate but for arguments sake we'll say that it's equal cost.
To meet that with solar you first need mother nature to cooperate and lets suppose she cooperates for one day and you get 8 good hours of sun. Since you have 16 hours left in the day you capacity requirements just tripled to 3GW and you need the means to store the energy generated from 2 GW of capacity. If mother nature is not going to cooperate for the next two weeks?
Your capacity requirements are completely up in the air because you have no idea how much mother nature is going to cooperate and provide you sun and what type of weather she is going to throw at you. Where I live it's been unusually cloudy almost the entire winter..... There is no number here and at the end of the day you are gambling.
One could suggest keeping on demand plants powered by coal, natgas and nuclear around to meet these demands when solar or wind cannot meet that obligation however that is very costly idea. Those plants are very expensive to build and make a a very large part of what you pay for electric.
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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 are certainly not heating PA because we provide energy across the board to many states; coal, gas and electric. Even anthracite coal is shipped to your state for home heating.
Natural gas has not been cheaper than coal, those plants do have greater efficiency but that is going to change.
Yes, I understand that. What is being done to correct those voids?
Those mines are from 70+ years ago going back to the turn of the last century and many of them existed before the housing was built over them. My Uncle told me a story of visiting his girlfriend in Hanover and you could hear them working in the mine. There is nothing you can do about them, that would not occur today.
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.
Oh look a rant based not on reality, but the assumed result of the future that seems to fall right in line with the political rant.
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.
So, we are clear you have no point and are now throwing a tantrum acting offended to avoid dealing with the point.
Typical activist. You bring a claim, facts are presented in rebuttal and you get offended to avoid dealing with he facts.
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.
This program is for abandoned properties that existed before they were required to reclaim the land. If you recall the EPA debacle in Colorado with that gold mine, the primary funding for that came from active coal mining.
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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.
You can expect funding to be used to clean up those properties in the future. They prioritize them based on safety and heath concerns. Here in PA in the anthracite region they are utilizing those banks for energy because there is often a lot of coal left in them. They burn it in special plants designed for refuse coal and then use the ash to fill mining pits, the entire area will be capped with top soil at some point. These plants were endangered of being regulated out of existence under Obama era regulations.
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- while many of the people of the Appalachian Mountain coalfields struggle to live decent lives,
The average salary of US coal miner is about $75 to $80K. You can expect to start around $45 or $50K and make over 3 figures with enough experience.
The thecoalman has made some excellent points. Solar and wind energy are great but the current technology around those can't sustain US energy demands. That includes for companies be they involved production of cars or social media. Places people work at a collect paychecks from. On a more urgent and daily life saving need, hospitals require consistent and reliable sources of energy. Even people in hospitals hooked up to computerized machines feeding their viens x dosage of pain medication, need the electricity in hospitals to stay on.
I think it would be like us in the city that buy our food and stores demanding all farms be shut down in the United States, and let that land be recovered in thick forestry again. We might assume the Democratic Party and scientist will be able to feed us all on a regular daily basis. But we would find out we are wrong.
Larry Gibson, an Appalachian native, looking over the mountaintop removal of Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, and an aerial shot of the destruction at Black Mesa, the center of Navajo culture and spirituality.
The story these articles tell is now being replayed by Big Oil, who has finally made its way into the highest levels of the U.S. government.
I don't care which party you belong to, every American should be protesting this ongoing immoral destruction of our land, and insisting on investment in alternative energies and job training.
So, in other words, you want to shut off everyone's electricity?
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