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64 comments on The Universal Mining Machine

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ABC8 on January 23, 2008 - 10:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

See disturbing photos of Mountaintop Removal coal mines at:
http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/007/index.html

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costa rica Johns on January 24, 2008 - 1:39am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks for this link, I guess.

As some one who frequently camped in So. WV, it depresses the hell out of me to see this.

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ABC8 on January 24, 2008 - 9:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Know what you mean, I think.

According to Fred Mooney, an active member of Earth First!,

MTR [Mountain Top Removal] is an ecocidal mining practice in which greedy coal companies use millions of pounds of dynamite a day (three million pounds a day in the southwest Virginia alone) to blow up entire mountain ranges in order to extract a small amount of coal. [...] Then as if that wasn’t bad enough, they dump the waste into valleys and riverbeds [flattening entire landscapes]. The combination of these elements effectively kills everything in the ecosystems.

There are more shame-inspiring, logic-defying, melancholic stats, photos , diagrams at:

http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php

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SNOMM on January 24, 2008 - 2:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

They mine coal there, right?

With the coal you produce electricity, right?

So, when you bemoan the loss of the beautiful nature there, can you digest these facts (source):

- One demand at google takes as much electricity as 1 hour of an 11 Watt light bulb.

- One figure in "second life" needs (in average) 1750 kWh, which is more than needs an (average) indian citizen per year.

- The youtube servers today have as much band width, as the whole internet in 2001.

- The internet produces as much CO2 as the entire aircraft industry.

I think we will all see us in hell... :-(

SNOMM

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