Using Google Earth to See Destruction 194
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."
yamato! (Score:5, Funny)
What a letdown. By "special interactive layer", I was expecting shared control of an orbiting laser cannon.
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Re:yamato! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:yamato! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge/kmzgenerator.php [noaa.gov]
(I knew that had georef images, but I didn't know they had this)
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Live weather radar would be cool in Google Earth.
You can do this with NASA's World Wind...
The link is http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov].
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Only Firepower Will Save the Earth (Score:2, Insightful)
How can we save the earth?
Google should arm leftist guerillas in key areas with high-value ecosystems: e.g., the rain forest. In exchange for arming the guerillas, they agree to help the environments by killing poachers and blowing up companies that rape the environment.
Suppose that Google gives 10 shoulder-fired
What's the range on that? (Score:3, Funny)
Those would be some sort of impressive shoulder-fired missiles, to hit Korean fishing vessels from Peru...
Unless those Koreans are really going out of the way to get their fish, that is.
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Those would be some sort of impressive shoulder-fired missiles, to hit Korean fishing vessels from Peru...
Unless those Koreans are really going out of the way to get their fish, that is.
You might be aiming for funny, but yes, Korean and Japanese fishing vessels really go out of the way to get their fish, they devastate the areas just outside the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones of most countries (see: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea).
Here's a really neat collection of links on the subject of overfishing I found while searching for this:
http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/~sumner/Teaching/GE L116f00/overfishing.html [ucdavis.edu]
It recommends a book by Carl Safina: Song for
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That being said, the parent post said Google should arm leftist guerillas in key areas with high-value ecosystems: e.g., the rain forest. In exchange for arming the guerillas, they agree to help the environments by killing poachers and blowing up companies that rape the environment.
The problem is when My daughter gets kills for playing in the street that becomes the battleground for the leftist, they have done evil. If the leftist gue
Re:yamato! - not just from StarCraft (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_motion_gun [wikipedia.org]
(hey, I didn't make the reference; I would have compared it to the James Bond "Golden Eye" movie)
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The GoldenEye weapon caused an EMP blast, which, in the movie, knocked out any electronic gear in the radius. It didn't directly cause actual physical destruction of the landscape (The whole plan was to use the EMP as cover to steal cash money from the british financial system, not nuke the place from orbit)
the mountains are our future homes (Score:4, Funny)
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The solution is easy. (Score:4, Funny)
The real story (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real story (Score:4, Funny)
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hydro [bfccomputing.com]
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Well that's a value judgement, I guess. If you want to read 4 minutes into the Cringely article to find out that Google is building next to hydro because it's a UPS, that's great. But not everybody cares to.
You could have posted your whole summary here
Yeah, and if was paid to be here that might be a good plan. Copy and pasting a URL was the fastest way for me to share some information (for free). Feel free to not follow any of my links if it's entirely too much work for
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hydrogen (Score:5, Interesting)
So we'll probably burn coal to make Hydrogen that we can than use to power our cars.
Actually reforming [hydrogen.co.uk] natural gas makes a better source of hydrogen than coal. The best way to produce hydrogen though may be using algae [zetatalk.com] to produce it.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
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hydrogen and PV (Score:2)
Would you say that algae farms that photosynthesize sunlight and produce hydrogen to burn to get energy is a more efficient energy path that soaking up the sunlight's energy directly with solar panels? I think not.
Ce depend, it depends. Though they are improving in efficiency solar PVs, photovoltaic, panels aren't really efficient. The best ones I've heard of are only about 22% efficient. They are good at the point of use, but if the place the energy derived is not local then an energy carrier such as
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I believe the original Diesel engine could run on these things too but couldn't switch easily between different fuels because the pressure needed to ignite the different fuels change with the fuels and you cou
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If you were able to produce energy from renewable sources at prices that were less than non-renewable sources, only a fool would keep using the non-renewables. Now, it might in fact happen, that once everyone had switched over to the new, cheaper, renewable energy source, energy consumption would actually increase, because with it being cheaper, suddenly things that weren't practical before, would be. That's all pretty straightforward capitalism-in-action.
The problem, is that
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Bull. Markets are not natural laws like physics, they're created by legislation. E.g. property and contract law. Policy can greatly impact markets. The trillion-dollar subsidy of oil happening in Iraq right now will never be fully reflected in the pump price of gas. The costs of building levies to keep Florida and New York above water will certainly not be paid by today's oil companies and
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Then there's the environmental impact of coal strip-mining. Even deep mines will have problems with sinkholes and where to put the tailings. The stuff's awful when burned, much dirtier than even diesel fuel, unless you gasify it first.
Re:The real story (Score:4, Insightful)
Ignoring environmental causes will "sell our independence and liberty down the river" quite thoroughly, thank you.
And I think you have it backward: others are saying "screw the US" because we have said, so often, "screw you."
Re:The real story (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
uranium mining (Score:3, 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
Have you ever seen what uranium mining does? Many of those who live where it is mined are opposed to the mining, such as the Diné or Navajo [sric.org] and those in Saskatchewan [accesscomm.ca]. Aboriginals in Australia have fighting mining since before it started
Re:uranium mining (Score:4, Insightful)
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Buddy, if we could find some way to turn Roses into the most efficient fuel known to man, there would be people opposed to having rose-plantations near their house. It's called "NIMBY", and you'll find that a case of it exists for any project worth pursuing.
Just because NIMBYism exists doesn't mean mining for uranium isn't envornmentally distructive. And in some cases, such as the ones I cited regarding the Diné or Navajo and the aboriginals of Australia, it's their land that's being mined without
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And the real indian population is little better. The romanticism of the "wise old indian with wind blowing through his hair" bears little resemblence to the "unemployed alcoholic living off the government teet and beating his wife in a trailer on a broken-down reservation" reality.
taking land (Score:2)
You'll never catch ME going out and suing the government to get back land that my great grandparents were too stupid to not trade for muskets.
Would you feel the same if government killed your relatives then took the land they lived on? How about if your city hall condemned your land and gave it to someone else so they could build a multimillion dollar plant as in a case the USSC heard last year about a case in New Jersey where a city condemned some people's homes to give to a multinational corporation t
Taking Land (Score:2)
If the government were trying to take ANYONE'S land now, without at least the decency to pay them the market value of the land plus some despotism surcharge and the requirement of making a "the survival of our society depends on thi
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There is a gargantuan difference between asserting that the government has no right to take what is mine, and asserting that other people have no right to keep what was once in the distance past owned by my ancestors.
So then it's alright if the government takes the land you own when you die and give it someone else instead of you giving the land to your inheritors?
FalconRe: (Score:2)
gifts and taxes (Score:2)
the government can still take a goodly chunk of it (in the form of income taxes if nothing else -- nearly all gifts qualify as income).
As of a couple of years ago what a person could give as a gift or inheritance tax free was $600,000. It was only amounts over this that was taxed. Though I'm no expert I know of this because I was told it by my sister who is a Certified Public Accountant, CPA [wikipedia.org], and her husband who is a Certified Financial Planner [wikipedia.org], CFP. Actually at this tyme of year, she works 16 hours
Land bridge (Score:2)
Oh, I missed this when I posted my first reply, which is okay as it is a totally separate issue:
We'd probably have to dredge up some Siberian or Mongolian farmer who just happens to be the closest living relative to the very first people to cross the landbridge, and give all of North America and South America to him.
Maybe you don't know but the first inhabitants of the Americas DID NOT cross the Siberian, Alaskan land bridge from Asia to the Americas. The Americas had populations of people before the
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I fully agree that people should be free to dispense their estate however they like. What I don't agree with is the notion that their children have a right to that estate. They don't have ANY right to ANY of it
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I fully agree that people should be free to dispense their estate however they like. What I don't agree with is the notion that their children have a right to that estate.
I phrased it wrong, what I meant is that people should be able to decide for themself who their inheritors will be, whether it's their children, charity, the government, or someone/thing else. I'm not married and don't have children but even if I did if I were to die wealthy I'd either have a foundation setup much as Bill Gates did or
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Re:The real story (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Not that logging trucks aren't a problem because they often run on many of the same roads that coal truck drivers do, but based on what I've seen up close, coal trucks pose a much greater road hazard due to the dust on lights and reflector
Thank you, may I have another? (Score:2)
Boy, you'd think so, but we got kicked hard in the balls and now we're funding both sides in the war on terror, and not building any new fission energy plants.
Re:The real story (Score:4, Insightful)
We've been too busy worrying about Linux vs. Windows to worry about old-fashioned buzzwords like Freedom, Liberty and Independence.
We are reaping what we are sowing. Most Americans care more about movies about comic book heroes, Latte coffee drinks, and purporting to be holy while cursing the latest football/spectator sport game. We don't have time for silliness like, OUR FREEDOMS and WHAT THEY WILL HAVE MEANT WHEN THEY ARE GONE.
So, who's up for a game of WoW?
We must be the change we wish to see. -Ghandi
Re:Scary and revealing (Score:4, Insightful)
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actual link (Score:2, Informative)
http://ilovemountains.org/memorial_tutorial/ [ilovemountains.org]
When I saw the headline (Score:2, Funny)
blighted Internet link (Score:2)
Password required ___________________
I dunno, I didn't see much after that. Pretty ugly.
Far Out (Score:2)
not quite... (Score:2)
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Have you ever been to West Virginia? It's called mountaintop removal [wikipedia.org].
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The largest environmental concern, however, is the production of large amounts of slurry (a water suspension of coal, sulfur, and other minerals that is created as a byproduct of the mining and cleaning process) which
Fine, 'till they go bankrupt. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of finger-pointing when this happens, usually wherein management will blame astronomically expensive union employees and contracts, and the union negotiators and employees will blame mismanagement. (I suspect the truth is a combination of both, as usual.)
But the end result is that the company will
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Coal is not usually associated with mountains. (Score:3, Informative)
Coal is not usually associated with mountains.
Never heard of the Appalachia [wikipedia.org] and the Appalachian Mountain range then have you? Or Black Mesa [blackmesais.org]? Coal mining was extensive in both places and still is in Appalachia [coalcampusa.com].
FalconRe: (Score:3, Informative)
Conversely, surface coal (the stuff you get from strip mines) tends to be low-grade bituminous, or wo
There's coal in the Rockies (Score:2)
How did the parent get modded up, exactly?
The Google blog entry about this. (Score:2, Informative)
Next: Environment Damage Censored for Security (Score:2, Interesting)
Ron
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"Yeah. Using strong arm techniques makes sense with World Wrestling Federation."
Amazingly, I had a similar thought... except that the "strong arm" of the *other* WWF was political rather than muscular
Pictures can't convey (Score:2)
If you've never heard of mountaintop removal or don't see what the big deal is, then please do check out the overlays, but nothing compares to seeing it firsthand.
Any natural destruction: earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane Katrina, pales in comparison. In all these cases, the human community may suffer great losses, structural damage, but these can all be built back in time. In mountaintop removal, the very land itself is utterly destroyed;
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Organisations should make more use GIS like this (Score:4, Insightful)
More NGOs should follow this example and use technology like Google Earth to show where they are working, and what they are doing. This gives people a better idea of where the money they donate is being spent. It also gives people a better idea of what work needs to be done, be it to protect the environment, or to reduce poverty (although the two are fundamentally linked) - this is how technology should be used to make the world a smaller place. What would be great if WWF included on the ground photos of their program activities, so people could take a virtual tour of what was being done.
The next step is for NGOs to use GIS to help them with their work. A good example which I came across was in a refugee camp in Uganda, where they plotted to locations of Cholera outbreaks, and then compared this to the location of all the wells. Some of the wells showed high concertrations of outbreaks around them, indicating that they were contaminated - and so they were closed down. This is just a basic example, GIS could be used to make really interesting correlations between education, poverty and the environment.
However I work for an NGO and know how slow they are to adopt new technology, but that's a whole different story...
genocide (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [projectcensored.org]'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 [climateaction.net] is a good place to start.
Shouldn't that be -geocide- ? (Score:2)
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And before you hippies jump all ove
As a native of Appalachia (Score:3, Insightful)
Please note that I am FAR from an environmentalist. I believe that we need to be responsible with the environment, balancing that with the energy needs that we have.
Yes, we need coal (Score:2)
From an energy perspective, someone has already brought up wind. Once you chop off the top of a mountain, there isn't anywhere to stick a windmill anymore when the coal is all gone.
What the "new breed" of mining companies that practice MTR (Massey et al) are doing isn't necessary to provide us with energy. It's pure short term greed. They want to strip all the mountains they can before enough people wake
Useless link (Score:3, Insightful)
how about dropping that link right to something useful, not just another link site?
Another (slightly less glamorous) example (Score:2)
Link to the tutorial (Score:4, Informative)
Greenpeace founder debunks environmental myths (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [youtube.com]
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.
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You *do* know that has about as much legitimacy as an email from a nigerian prince don't you?
Let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story though... Martin Durkin never has.
See also:
http://www.badscience.net/?p=381 [badscience.net]
One final point. You'd better damned well hope that we are the cause of global warming. Because if we aren't then there's nothing we can do about it and we're all royally screwed.
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You mean the Channel 4 programme - I hesitate to say 'documentary' as it made Michael Moore look professional and honest - which has since been denounced [mit.edu] by one of the scientists the makers tricked into appearing?
the mountains are in our way (Score:2)
Thanks to the environmentalists (Score:2)
Well, in pennsylvania at least... (Score:2)
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(Apologies to the people who came up with that first)
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