5 ms·

The scale of the scars on the earth here is pretty staggering: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hambach+Forest/@50.8999971,6.1530726,74969m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5

by jfk13 7y ago

The scale of the scars on the earth here is pretty staggering: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hambach+Forest/@50.8999971,6.1530726,74969m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47bf5c94fc8fe1af:0x34d898611d7c9285!8m2!3d50.9!4d6.4333333 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hambach+Forest/@50.89999...

roenxi 7y ago
Impressive, aren't they? The industrial muscle keeping people warm and happy. I assume Germany has a modern program of mine rehabilitation, so you're only able to see the parts that are currently part of the active mine. The historic mine footprint of an old mine is probably twice or thrice what is visible; much larger but invisible from satellite because it has been rehabilitated. Eg, the area just north-west of Tagebau Hambach is probably mine rehab; you can tell because it is a deeper green than the surrounding farmland and if you look closely the massive contours of the waste emplacement areas might be visible.
- quibbler 7y ago
  If it can be rehabilitated, is it really so bad? Some are also coverted to lakes, in the hopes of creating attractive leisure destinations.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    Forests take time to grow and mature. Animals that live in these forests often have nowhere to go when these are cut down. Especially smaller species may not have the ability to flee when the saws come. Also, forests in Germany often are reduced to unconnected patches separated by open fields. Large connected forests are rare.
  - hannob 7y ago
    Rehabilitation won't reverse the CO2 emissions. So yes, it's really so bad.
  - namibj 7y ago
    It was the last old forest in Germany. Like, it was a forest for 12000y, basically since the last ice age. Individual trees are only a couple hundred years old, but the ecosystem you get from many generations of trees growing in a mostly unmanaged forest is rather unique and due to the time scales involved irreplaceable.
  - cleansy 7y ago
    And this can take decades, until swimming in the water doesn't impact health. Let alone the fact that the additional water to maintain the water level in an unnatural lake like that may be needed elsewhere. What many people forget is that during the excavation all kinds of metals and materials are uncovered leading to red water for the first couple of decades until everything is settled. I am from a german region (Lausitz) where all of that happened and believe me when I say that I'd rather have some out-of-the-job miners than big patches of land filled with lakes instead of "home towns".
- nisa 7y ago
  Here is an area in eastern germany with lot's of opencast mining in the past (much bigger than what RWE did) - the lakes are former mines but there are some serious problems especially regarding quality of water and water levels https://goo.gl/maps/2r1ZhDMHZVHf21ug8 https://goo.gl/maps/2r1ZhDMHZVHf21ug8
- wnkrshm 7y ago
  It is rehab, I've been there and had to drive around it to get to the vantage point. Edit: The pit looks like some lunar surface from one of the vantage points - it's wide enough to be larger than your field of view. Also, I'm not sure whether rehab is the right word for it, it's an area they built out of the non-coal material they had to dig out. IIRC the pitch for the pit was to turn it into an artificial lake.
- Kliment 7y ago
  That's correct (I live nearby). What you also don't see was what was in the way of the mine before it got there. It was populated space, all the towns got cleared out. Normally when someone blows up thousand-year-old cultural monuments we call it terrorism, but not when it's RWE (the mine operator) doing it. The compensation people get is nowhere near proportional to the damage - they get paid based on a fictional estimate of the value of their home. And they don't get to choose whether they get evicted or not. RWE recently bulldozed a centuries-old church and surrounding town. They get away with it because of a fuckup by local politicians a while back. RWE was supposed to pay for the right to exploit that land, and local councils agreed to an offer to pay them in shares instead of in money. Now local council budgets are dependent on RWE dividends and therefore although technically they co-own RWE, in practice RWE owns them. The saddest thing is that lignite mining is not even commercially viable anymore - so these mines only continue to operate because of state subsidies (federal subsidies, which then partially end up in local councils via said dividends). The terrorists operating the mines claim that it's critical to keep them running because of the jobs that would be lost, but a couple years worth of the subsidy would be sufficient to pay the entire workforce (around 20k people nationwide work in that industry) their salaries for life. Meanwhile solar subsidies got cut for being "too expensive", shrinking that sector by 4x as many jobs. The fuckers now want to accelerate the pace of extraction because they have to shut down by 2038.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    I cannot agree more! The only ones profiting from coal subsidies are RWE and company while evryone else pays for it. It would be much more worthwhile, even for RWE themselves, to just use the coal subsidies and plaster all active and potential strip mines with solar farms. But then we are talking about old German politics and corporate culture, so that won't happen anytime soon.
    - freeflight 7y ago
      You are forgetting the part where RWE is also paying the income of a whole lot of miners, who would suddenly be without a job if the mines where to be closed. That is the biggest political hurdle here, it's not solely RWE being greedy, a lot of it has to do with nobody being able to offer these miners any job alternatives once their mines are closed. Yet these miners make up a substantial part of the population in certain German states, thus the result that majority of Germans want to exit coal but in those places where coal actually matters there's vehement opposition to closing them down [0]. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/kohleausstieg-mehrheit-der-deutschen-will-schnellen-ausstieg-a-1249937.html https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/kohleausstieg-meh...
- maze-le 7y ago
  Yes, there is such a program. There is a region in eastern Germany, that was known as the 'death triangle' during the DDR -- the region between Bitterfeld, Halle and Borna (https://www.google.com/maps/@51.364936,12.2644447,63124m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.364936,12.2644447,63124m/dat...). The region was dominated by coal mining and chemical industry -- greyish-black snows and acid rains were not uncommon. If you look at the map today, there are lots of lakes where there were extensive coal mining projects in the past. Nowadays they are a popular tourist destination.
  - mc32 7y ago
    That has echoes of the “Siberian Maldives” [1]. An ash lake that has turquoise waters, due to toxic pollutants, where lots of people go to take selfies ignoring the warning signs posted to not go in the lake... but people still do. [1]https://time.com/5623538/toxic-waste-dump-selfies/ https://time.com/5623538/toxic-waste-dump-selfies/
    - maze-le 7y ago
      I was barely alive at that time, so I only know these stories from my family members. But I've seen photographs of the time, that confirm it happened, albeit I doubt that it happened on a regular basis.
- brazzy 7y ago
  Nice guessing, but nope. Old earth movements of that scale are anything but invisible on satellite pictures. Here's a map that shows the area before mining began in 1978: https://www.bund-nrw.de/fileadmin/nrw/bilder/Braunkohle/1975_Tagebau_Hambach_Struktur_vor_Inanspruchnahme.jpg https://www.bund-nrw.de/fileadmin/nrw/bilder/Braunkohle/1975... So the rehabilitation area is in fact only the very prominent forest directly to the northwest of the active mining, a third to half its size rather than twice or thrice.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    I'm a mining engineer with previous experience as a rehabilitation planner in a coal mine. Technically I suppose I am guessing when I say that is a hill and it is not natural. However it is an extremely educated guess. I assure you, it is a hill and it is not natural. It is clearly mine rehabilitation. I've been responsible for a very similar looking hill, in fact. Not quite as nice looking from a satellite photo I must admit, they've got a better shade of green.
- anotheryou 7y ago
  Sure, could always be worse. But coal is probably the worst form of gathering energy. The only benefit is the quick ramp-up enabling them to jump in to gaps where e.g. atomic power ramps up to meet demand.
titzer 7y ago
Thanks for the link. It's staggering. This is happening in Eastern Germany, too, near Spremberg. If you turn off labels and zoom out a bit, you can see spot them in several places. Impossible to hide global destruction like this. It's interesting (and scary) to watch us gobble up the Earth. Have a look at Merauke in Papa New Guinea and the surrounding ~100km. Mostly the jungle getting turned into farms, but there are also huge palm oil plantations that are cropping up in the middle here and there. They are huge too.
athenot 7y ago
That reminds me of the "mountain top removal" going on in the Appalachians. Bring up google maps for West Virginia, zoom out so that the entire state is visible in the browser window, and you can see all the scars. https://www.google.com/maps/place/West+Virginia/@38.1864602,-81.6009849,294485m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x884a54a5d4cb0945:0xbb00c768decd3a43!8m2!3d38.5976262!4d-80.4549026 https://www.google.com/maps/place/West+Virginia/@38.1864602,...
ekingr 7y ago
Thanks for the link. What's most crazy is when you compare it to the nearby city of Köln (1+m inhabitants). It's almost the size of the city center!
anotheryou 7y ago
Indeed, you can have all of germany on screen and still see it.

by jfk13 7y ago

roenxi 7y ago

Impressive, aren't they? The industrial muscle keeping people warm and happy. I assume Germany has a modern program of mine rehabilitation, so you're only able to see the parts that are currently part of the active mine. The historic mine footprint of an old mine is probably twice or thrice what is visible; much larger but invisible from satellite because it has been rehabilitated. Eg, the area just north-west of Tagebau Hambach is probably mine rehab; you can tell because it is a deeper green than the surrounding farmland and if you look closely the massive contours of the waste emplacement areas might be visible.

quibbler 7y ago
If it can be rehabilitated, is it really so bad? Some are also coverted to lakes, in the hopes of creating attractive leisure destinations.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  Forests take time to grow and mature. Animals that live in these forests often have nowhere to go when these are cut down. Especially smaller species may not have the ability to flee when the saws come. Also, forests in Germany often are reduced to unconnected patches separated by open fields. Large connected forests are rare.
- hannob 7y ago
  Rehabilitation won't reverse the CO2 emissions. So yes, it's really so bad.
- namibj 7y ago
  It was the last old forest in Germany. Like, it was a forest for 12000y, basically since the last ice age. Individual trees are only a couple hundred years old, but the ecosystem you get from many generations of trees growing in a mostly unmanaged forest is rather unique and due to the time scales involved irreplaceable.
- cleansy 7y ago
  And this can take decades, until swimming in the water doesn't impact health. Let alone the fact that the additional water to maintain the water level in an unnatural lake like that may be needed elsewhere. What many people forget is that during the excavation all kinds of metals and materials are uncovered leading to red water for the first couple of decades until everything is settled. I am from a german region (Lausitz) where all of that happened and believe me when I say that I'd rather have some out-of-the-job miners than big patches of land filled with lakes instead of "home towns".
nisa 7y ago
Here is an area in eastern germany with lot's of opencast mining in the past (much bigger than what RWE did) - the lakes are former mines but there are some serious problems especially regarding quality of water and water levels https://goo.gl/maps/2r1ZhDMHZVHf21ug8 https://goo.gl/maps/2r1ZhDMHZVHf21ug8
wnkrshm 7y ago
It is rehab, I've been there and had to drive around it to get to the vantage point. Edit: The pit looks like some lunar surface from one of the vantage points - it's wide enough to be larger than your field of view. Also, I'm not sure whether rehab is the right word for it, it's an area they built out of the non-coal material they had to dig out. IIRC the pitch for the pit was to turn it into an artificial lake.
Kliment 7y ago
That's correct (I live nearby). What you also don't see was what was in the way of the mine before it got there. It was populated space, all the towns got cleared out. Normally when someone blows up thousand-year-old cultural monuments we call it terrorism, but not when it's RWE (the mine operator) doing it. The compensation people get is nowhere near proportional to the damage - they get paid based on a fictional estimate of the value of their home. And they don't get to choose whether they get evicted or not. RWE recently bulldozed a centuries-old church and surrounding town. They get away with it because of a fuckup by local politicians a while back. RWE was supposed to pay for the right to exploit that land, and local councils agreed to an offer to pay them in shares instead of in money. Now local council budgets are dependent on RWE dividends and therefore although technically they co-own RWE, in practice RWE owns them. The saddest thing is that lignite mining is not even commercially viable anymore - so these mines only continue to operate because of state subsidies (federal subsidies, which then partially end up in local councils via said dividends). The terrorists operating the mines claim that it's critical to keep them running because of the jobs that would be lost, but a couple years worth of the subsidy would be sufficient to pay the entire workforce (around 20k people nationwide work in that industry) their salaries for life. Meanwhile solar subsidies got cut for being "too expensive", shrinking that sector by 4x as many jobs. The fuckers now want to accelerate the pace of extraction because they have to shut down by 2038.
- hef19898 7y ago
  I cannot agree more! The only ones profiting from coal subsidies are RWE and company while evryone else pays for it. It would be much more worthwhile, even for RWE themselves, to just use the coal subsidies and plaster all active and potential strip mines with solar farms. But then we are talking about old German politics and corporate culture, so that won't happen anytime soon.
  - freeflight 7y ago
    You are forgetting the part where RWE is also paying the income of a whole lot of miners, who would suddenly be without a job if the mines where to be closed. That is the biggest political hurdle here, it's not solely RWE being greedy, a lot of it has to do with nobody being able to offer these miners any job alternatives once their mines are closed. Yet these miners make up a substantial part of the population in certain German states, thus the result that majority of Germans want to exit coal but in those places where coal actually matters there's vehement opposition to closing them down [0]. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/kohleausstieg-mehrheit-der-deutschen-will-schnellen-ausstieg-a-1249937.html https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/kohleausstieg-meh...
maze-le 7y ago
Yes, there is such a program. There is a region in eastern Germany, that was known as the 'death triangle' during the DDR -- the region between Bitterfeld, Halle and Borna (https://www.google.com/maps/@51.364936,12.2644447,63124m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.364936,12.2644447,63124m/dat...). The region was dominated by coal mining and chemical industry -- greyish-black snows and acid rains were not uncommon. If you look at the map today, there are lots of lakes where there were extensive coal mining projects in the past. Nowadays they are a popular tourist destination.
- mc32 7y ago
  That has echoes of the “Siberian Maldives” [1]. An ash lake that has turquoise waters, due to toxic pollutants, where lots of people go to take selfies ignoring the warning signs posted to not go in the lake... but people still do. [1]https://time.com/5623538/toxic-waste-dump-selfies/ https://time.com/5623538/toxic-waste-dump-selfies/
  - maze-le 7y ago
    I was barely alive at that time, so I only know these stories from my family members. But I've seen photographs of the time, that confirm it happened, albeit I doubt that it happened on a regular basis.
brazzy 7y ago
Nice guessing, but nope. Old earth movements of that scale are anything but invisible on satellite pictures. Here's a map that shows the area before mining began in 1978: https://www.bund-nrw.de/fileadmin/nrw/bilder/Braunkohle/1975_Tagebau_Hambach_Struktur_vor_Inanspruchnahme.jpg https://www.bund-nrw.de/fileadmin/nrw/bilder/Braunkohle/1975... So the rehabilitation area is in fact only the very prominent forest directly to the northwest of the active mining, a third to half its size rather than twice or thrice.
- roenxi 7y ago
  I'm a mining engineer with previous experience as a rehabilitation planner in a coal mine. Technically I suppose I am guessing when I say that is a hill and it is not natural. However it is an extremely educated guess. I assure you, it is a hill and it is not natural. It is clearly mine rehabilitation. I've been responsible for a very similar looking hill, in fact. Not quite as nice looking from a satellite photo I must admit, they've got a better shade of green.
anotheryou 7y ago
Sure, could always be worse. But coal is probably the worst form of gathering energy. The only benefit is the quick ramp-up enabling them to jump in to gaps where e.g. atomic power ramps up to meet demand.

titzer 7y ago

Thanks for the link. It's staggering. This is happening in Eastern Germany, too, near Spremberg. If you turn off labels and zoom out a bit, you can see spot them in several places. Impossible to hide global destruction like this. It's interesting (and scary) to watch us gobble up the Earth. Have a look at Merauke in Papa New Guinea and the surrounding ~100km. Mostly the jungle getting turned into farms, but there are also huge palm oil plantations that are cropping up in the middle here and there. They are huge too.

athenot 7y ago

That reminds me of the "mountain top removal" going on in the Appalachians. Bring up google maps for West Virginia, zoom out so that the entire state is visible in the browser window, and you can see all the scars. https://www.google.com/maps/place/West+Virginia/@38.1864602,-81.6009849,294485m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x884a54a5d4cb0945:0xbb00c768decd3a43!8m2!3d38.5976262!4d-80.4549026 https://www.google.com/maps/place/West+Virginia/@38.1864602,...

ekingr 7y ago

Thanks for the link. What's most crazy is when you compare it to the nearby city of Köln (1+m inhabitants). It's almost the size of the city center!

anotheryou 7y ago

Indeed, you can have all of germany on screen and still see it.