Maybe the adjoiner wants a better view or signal and that big mountain is in the way?

Maybe the top of the mountain is worth millions?

Maybe no one wants the new energy of coal. No middle eastern oil.

Bank of America is doing a lot of stupid things lately. Assuming they manage to survive the takeover of MBNA's toxic credit card division, and Merrill Lynch's $1.6 trillion in bad derivatives bets doesn't do them in, they'll be looking for ANYONE who can afford to pay back the loans they DO make.

I hear Detroit could use a few credit lines. Maybe BAC should send the coal money there, since they've been throwing money away of late.

The very idea that humans could be so cavalierly willing to wreck that much irreversible devastation to the face of the earth simply for a consortium of Scrooge McDuck fat cats to make a couple of bucks is the very definition of obscene and is a fair indicator of why I believe our species will NEVER make it to the stars.

There are those moments when the idea that Mad Max was, in fact, a training film--doesn't appear so wacky after all. End times, indeed.

Cool.

Interesting that you folks who oppose this type of mining instead favor a method that threatens human life and quite frequently results in the deaths of miners, deaths that could be avoided by the type of mining the Bank of America no longer will finance.

Well, some foreign lender will finance a good deal with a prospect of repayment in American dollars, when our currency is increasing in value as it's a safer storehouse of value.

Why are some of you folks so unmindful of human safety and welfare? We recently had a mine collapse in my area. Some miners were killed in the shaft, and then those attempting to rescue them were killed. Open pit mining could have avoided this tragedy and attendant heartbreak. But I suppose your aesthetic sense has a higher priority for you all than the value of the lives lost due to shaft mining. I can understand this although my choice might differ.

These "drama queen" postures by businesses are so irrelevant. I wouldn't be surprised if some foreign subsidiary of the BofA undertook to finance open pit mining.

And along comes a dinosaur to prove my point about the assured demise of our species. Oh! me and my deadly aesthetics.

...simply for a consortium of Scrooge McDuck fat cats to make a couple of bucks is the very definition of ...

#3 | Posted by dutch46 at 2008-12-04 10:28 PM | Reply

Enjoying that coal-powered computer? How about the lights and TV?

The majority of the electricity you use every day comes from coal.

And you thought it was just magic from the wall.

My grid is powered by the Scattergood Power Plant in El Segundo. It's a natural gas powered facility tasked specifically to ensure LAX will always have power. With the exception of the nuclear station in San Onofre, most of the power stations in Southern California are natural gas. We don't burn coal here for power. Wrong yet again, Bwana Vern. Your streak is unbroken. Thanks for playing, and here's your lovely parting gift.

And you thought that brown stuff on your hands was chocolate.

Fuck them, let's put all US energy companies OUT of business. Time to outsource All baseline energy out of the country, before they need gov TARP monies, and replace them with.......

wind and solar.

"And you thought that brown stuff on your hands was chocolate."

Newsworthy or funny?

Funny or newsworthy?

Decisions, decisions.

Hans

"Johnson you are unbelievable."

Hardly.

Ignorant fools like "johnson", vermin, and davethewog are in abundant supply.

"The very idea that humans could be so cavalierly willing to wreck that much irreversible devastation to the face of the earth simply for a consortium of Scrooge McDuck fat cats to make a couple of bucks is the very definition of obscene and is a fair indicator of why I believe our species will NEVER make it to the stars."

#3 | Posted by dutch46

No doubt this very line of thought rattles though your mind every time you roll up to the gas pump to fill 'er up, flick on the tele, fire up the sound system, power up the PC, or turn on the furnace to warm your butt cheeks.

"My grid is powered by the Scattergood Power Plant in El Segundo. It's a natural gas powered facility tasked specifically to ensure LAX will always have power. With the exception of the nuclear station in San Onofre, most of the power stations in Southern California are natural gas. "

#9 | Posted by dutch46

Puh-lease. You act as if your piece of the woods is on some other planet (though SoCal does seem rather like Alien Nation).

There's a reason why they call it "The Grid." It's all interconnected. They all sell power back and forth across the country. Doesn't matter the source: nuke, coal, water, natural gas, wind, solar, or squirrels.

Don't even attempt to negate your participation in the general degradation of the planetary ecosystem because you just for the time happen to live where you obtain the majority of your electricity from a natural gas-fired power plant.

"wind and solar."

#10 | Posted by DavetheWave

Wind and solar are at best supplements. Neither, even combined, can supply the entire demand of the nation.

Neither are, nor can be, 24x7 power generators, thus requiring storage: massive battery arrays, which in turn need their own massive manufacturing and recycle/disposal system.

A combination of nuke (fission), coal, water, natural gas, wind, solar, tidal, and squirrels is what must be done until can come up with something better: nuke fusion and orbital solar power arrays are in the future.

"No doubt this very line of thought rattles though your mind every time you roll up to the gas pump to fill 'er up, flick on the tele, fire up the sound system, power up the PC, or turn on the furnace to warm your butt cheeks."

The discussion is about mountain top removal.

And like ethanol from food sources, mountain top removal causes far more problems than it solves.

"The discussion is about mountain top removal.

And like ethanol from food sources, mountain top removal causes far more problems than it solves."

#16 | Posted by Dave

True and true.

But the "mountains" (hard to call those hills mountains) are being razed because the coal is needed for energy production (or home heating).

This is hardly something new under that Appalachian sun.

Take a look some time at the huge open pits being created in Canada to get to that oil shale:
oil shale which represents 25% more or less of US foreign oil imports. Coming soon to a Rocky Mountain state near you.

Here is a link that shows images of the various types of surface mines across the planet.

Pretty smart move by the group, and very effective. Beats laying down across roads or chaining yourself to a tree

This will really piss the Bush cabal off. West Virginina's poor should be grateful that someone cares about them, because our GOvernment doesn't give a fuck.

That lame duck worthless piece of shit that has run the country and its military into the ground will soon be out of office.

There is no justice in this world unless he faces the world court in the Hague.

Soon MTR in Appalachia will be irrelevant because no human will be able to survive there; I suspect this has been the goal of the industry from the start. Simply make the area uninhabitable for all life, and then no one will notice the toxic dump you create.

Over the last 15 years the mining industry has scaled back employment by 60% and increased production. It doesn't take a lot of people for a strip mining op, just big equipment, ammonia nitrate and diesel fuel. Strip mining/MTR isn't used because it is safer for workers or the environment or because it is quicker--it is just cheaper. Cheap because you don't have to pay as many people to destroy their home land.

There is no such thing as "clean coal". It is a made-up term intended to trick people into thinking some breakthrough has taken place in coal burning. Nothing could be further from the truth. Clean coal is dirty coal, the only difference is that "clean coal" has taken an acid bath and a few harmful agents that would have been burned and put into the air have been "washed" into slurry ponds and allowed to leak into ground water. We have exchanged clean water for clean(er) air, and the people near mines are dying as a result. Consequently, because some of the harmful agents in raw coal have been removed by a deadly toxic process before shipping the "clean coal" out to power plants, the mining company can charge power plants more for the coal they buy. Thank the industry-approved Clean Air Act for this fiasco. It basically gave the coal industry free reign to fuck up the water supply so long as its carbon emission is slightly less.

So BoA will stop financing. Fine. Some other bank will step up. The need is not going away.

#17 | Posted by ZOT

One that isn't in trouble.

I have seen strip of these hills where this type of mining had occured and I couldn't even tell it had been done there. It was full of trees and looked completely normal.

However, I'll admit I am a total novice at this so I'm not justifying it.

"There is no such thing as "clean coal"."

There ain't no such animal as clean energy.

Zot...relax...Vern was being a dick so I squeaked the meme a little. But I doubt any energy gleaned from scraping the entire state of West Virginia down to the bed rock will find it's way to the sockets in my humble little abode. And my statement still stands...unless we stop trying to meet our energy needs with no regard to the consequences, we will not survive as a species. I'm not selfish enough to make the children of West Virginia live in a decimated environment just I can keep my wrinkly old butt cheeks warm. I have Mistress Heather for that.

"However, I'll admit I am a total novice at this so I'm not justifying it."

There ain't no such animal as clean energy.

Really? The combined output of man-made energy since we started building camp fires pales in comparison to what the sun produces in one second(about 386 billion billion megawatts). The amount of free clean energy that surrounds us every day is staggering; however it can't be conveniently packaged and sold by the kilowatt. Should it become easy to capture this free and clean energy, the fossil fuel industry would dry up.

The idea of free and clean energy is like a lifetime light bulb, it can be done but people can't make trillions of dollars off it perpetually. We won't have clean energy until all the profitable energy has been used up.

Mountain-Top Removal Mining is an Abomination! It should be outlawed! I don't know how anyone who has any regard or reverence for nature and of how it sustains us can support such destructive and irreversible thing!

There is more to life than just cheap energy! There are things of much greater value to human kind than perpetuating an unsustainable and wasteful habit

"Bank of America is doing a lot of stupid things lately."

And the above response by the regular wingding just further illustrates that there isn't anything on this earth more important to some than making easy, quick money ------ damn the future!

Does anyone really care if the retarded inbred children of West Virginia croak? Maybe their extinction would clean up the gene pool (and eliminate a few votes for the GOP too).

Energy over-consumption is one of the leading problems in America. Virtually every source of energy is problematic or has negative, unintended consequences. The ever-expanding thirst for energy, driven by the blind consumerism of the American population, continues to decimate the globe in ways that we can scarcely imagine. All of the visions of the future that include an excessively-optimistic view of the future are flat-out wrong. The future of humanity is more like something from Braveheart than the Jetsons. Per-captia energy consumption must decline before the world's resources are completely exhausted. The only sustainable lifestyle for humans is that of 16th century Europe -- farm-based communities that rely on manual labor.

So BAC won't make the loan..SO WHAT? there are plenty of other banks in America, some of which might loan the money.

Ahhh BAC they bought countrywide...how's that doing for them? They will open accounts for illegal aliens and help send money to Mexico, how does everybody feel about that?

As for MBNA that was a good purchase for bac and has paid for itself since that occurred. Oh and btw if you didn't like BAC and mbna merging, tell it to Joe Biden's son who lobbied his dad, and others, to approve the merger....