Daily on Energy: Dulles and Dominion break ground on huge solar farm. Then watch what solar farms can do to birds.
(www.washingtonexaminer.com)
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Ok, first of all, I agree it's mostly a scam, but the idea that the Appalachian mountains have been "getting smaller for ages" so we should just tear them down is ridiculous. It takes 100s of millions of years for any noticeable reduction of height to occur in mountain formations.
Second of all, mountain top removal is unpopular because it's rarely done properly. 99% of the time it's cheaper for the mining company to just pay a fine than to do it properly, so that's what they do, which results in contaminated water for the locals and all kinds of problems involving the waterways and tributaries that feed most of the major rivers in the east (most of which originate in the Appalachian mountains).
Thirdly, mountain top removal is, generally speaking, an outdated mining method. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti coal. Quite the contrary, I'm VERY pro coal. But mountain top removal is basically useless in the modern mining industry.
Underground mining and highwall mining/strip mining (where you basically just deforest the side of a mountain and use something kind of like a massive auger to cut out the coal from the side of the mountain seam by seam, thus leaving everything else intact.) are much more efficient thanks to modern mining technology.
In fact, mountain top removal is pretty much never done anymore by anyone except people who buy a bunch of old 50+ year equipment on the cheap and try to start a mining company (happens more often than you'd think). Everyone else in the game has moved on to more efficient methods of mining that basically minimize the amount of "earth removal" since that's the biggest cost in mining.
The coal mining country in Ohio is just beautiful. No one would even know that coal had been mined, the land has been so remarkably reclaimed.
I will not argue which method is / was best. Mostly . . . was.
Only to note that: coal has had a purpose in the development and sustainment of human life and civilization. Mother Nature did not let out a primal scream when her coal was taken to be used for . . . perhaps the reason it was intended.
Human beings have some hubris, though, to dictate NOW that the environment in THIS TIME has to be PRESERVED at ALL COSTS.
By methods which do NOT EVEN preserve the present Nature!!, but do indeed destroy it: they use mining, but different mining!! and the killing of birds! to implement their flawed short-sighted policies.
WHO SAYS this nature at this point in time is the best nature? Mother Nature doesn't, who put land under seas and then under glaciers, that we now can live on!
They claim to preserve this Nature of this particular point in history, and proceed to the mining of rare minerals to their obvious depletion! (and we are NOT running out of hydrocarbon fuels!), destruction of the environment for the massive land fields needed for solar and wind to even begin to replace coal, oil, gas, and nuclear.
They are actually NUTS! They want to save the planet and put the rest of us into slavery, by destroying vast components of the earth they are claiming to save and preserve?!?
Doesn't pass the logic test. It is propaganda.