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The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#41

Post by namibj »

quibbler wrote: post #5
roenxi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Tag…

If it can be rehabilitated, is it really so bad? Some are also coverted to lakes, in the hopes of creating attractive leisure destinations.

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.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#42

Post by VBprogrammer »

ganesh7 wrote: post #36
VBprogrammer wrote: post #13

For someone who has been to Germany the scale and number of windturbines is amazing. It seems odd that they only account for 14% of their electricity production. By comparison I can't remember seeing any solar power infrastructure and yet that accounts for 7%.

In this context the ecocide caused by the construction of windturbines is especially alarming

Do you mean the death of birds due to wind turbines? As best as I can tell, that is dwarfed by the birds killed by domesticated animals.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#43

Post by namibj »

Kliment wrote: post #18
lake99 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what the German protesters are proposing as an alternative? Germany banned nuclear, brown lignite is bad, extensive mining destroys forests, wind power destroys forests and is bad for birds, Germany is not a good candidate for solar, and so on. So what's next?

Germany is actually an excellent candidate for solar (though not nearly as much as places like Spain). It has an enormous solar installed base that produces a sizeable amount of energy, and had the buildout incentives not been cut a couple years back solar would be the second biggest electrical energy component today. Meanwhile coal is still heavily subsidized, to the tune of 4 billion euros yearly.

Also you can easily put solar over e.g. car parks, in which case you don't even need a proper roof if you funnel water from the panels towards the gutters without splashing the users walking to the cars. The cost should be within 30% of the panel price itself for a decent-size parking lot, less if you can get economies of scale through standardized modules that are placed next to each other to form rows for the cars.

A bonus would be that the cars don't heat up as much/get packed with snow.

And the land isn't wasted, because there is no reason not to have a roof over a paved parking lot other than the fact that a roof costs money to build and maintain, which isn't an issue with solar. You already can't use the land for plants/nature, so you might as well put your solar there instead of some open field/grassland that can be used for something else.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#44

Post by Nimelrian »

cipher_system wrote: post #39
Kliment wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 es…

The jobs at risk are not only those in the coal industry but also the jobs powered by the coal. You can't run a business without electricity. So if coal makes up about a third of the power then about a third of the jobs in Germany could be lost. Of course coal can and should be replaced by something better but thats gonna take a while and Germany has chosen to phase out nuclear before coal so this is a consequence of…

The jobs at risk are not only those in the coal industry but also the jobs powered by the coal. You can't run a business without electricity. So if coal makes up about a third of the power then about a third of the jobs in Germany could be lost.

That is one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever heard.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#45

Post by DocTomoe »

freeflight wrote: post #38
hef19898 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ce…

> 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.

In all fairness, Germany lost about four times as many jobs when we destroyed our solar industry.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#46

Post by roenxi »

Nimelrian wrote: post #44
cipher_system wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jobs at risk are not only those in the coal industry but also the jobs powered by the coal. You can't run a business without electricity. So if coal makes up about a third of the power then about a third of the jobs in Germany could be lost. Of course coal can and should be replaced by something better but thats gonna take a while and Germany has chosen to phase out nuclear before coal so this is a consequence of…

The jobs at risk are not only those in the coal industry but also the jobs powered by the coal. You can't run a business without electricity. So if coal makes up about a third of the power then about a third of the jobs in Germany could be lost. That is one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever heard.

Why do you think people mine coal? To upset environmentalists?

It is mined because it enables people to do things. It creates material wealth. It is completely reasonable to say that there are ramifications to shutting down coal. Germany has not increased their access to electricity through the Energiewende [0]. Apparently that is intentional, which shows remarkable political will; I can't see it flying in most countries. Wouldn't want to be poor in Germany.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#47

Post by hef19898 »

freeflight wrote: post #38
hef19898 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ce…

20k, roughly. Subsidies directly paid to them for just staying home would be much, much less then they are now for RWE and co. And honestly, 20k ain't that much in country of 80+ million people. Alao the problem would be much less severe if we hadn't countinued to actually train new miners until abcouple of years ago. Just keeping the existing ones employed until a very well earned early retirement would have avoided that 20k affected people. But hey, then the utilities and mining companies would have earned a lot less in subsidies.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#48

Post by Shivetya »

ntzm wrote: post #7

[flagged]

I am asking for it, I know it.

Capitalism saved the planet if not the people on it and has will continue to improve the lives of everyone it touches?

why, because it an economic system based on private ownership over means of production and profit. by that reasoning it implies your right to your own person is guaranteed.

how is that important, well the easiest way to understand it is that anywhere in the world where private and personal property rights are not respected by the government the people are put at risk. go look where the greatest tragedies of our current world are and you will see that.

can capitalism lead to some bad outcomes, yes, but overall it is the basis for many forms of governments with good outcomes. it has reduced death by starvation and disease simply by the abundances created.

when you respect the rights of your people it is far easier to respect the rights of the Earth you live on.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#49

Post by blablabla123 »

golergka wrote: post #32

> "It's heavy to see how your home just gets destroyed," says Omo. "The treehouse that you built and where you lived and where you spent so much time. And then you see hundreds and hundreds of cops running through your home. It's a heavy thing to see." I'm astonished by this hypocrisy. Not only have they squatted on someone else's property, they did it not just to live in a forest, they did it as activists: with the…

Actually squatting is legal within its limit. One might also bring the counterargument that RWE legally squatted other people's properties and evicted them - while creating immense cost for the tax payers. [1] Not everybody was so comfortable with moving away.

'The old Immerath is ... demolished for the Garzweiler II opencast mine. Since 2006, the former residents have been partially relocated to the newly formed village. ... "When I was at the construction site, everything was in ruins. That was a shock. A man from outside approached me and said why we gave up the village without a fight. We resisted for years. People should not think wrong. "' [2]

[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#50

Post by chokma »

cipher_system wrote: post #39
Kliment wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 es…

The jobs at risk are not only those in the coal industry but also the jobs powered by the coal. You can't run a business without electricity. So if coal makes up about a third of the power then about a third of the jobs in Germany could be lost. Of course coal can and should be replaced by something better but thats gonna take a while and Germany has chosen to phase out nuclear before coal so this is a consequence of…

Last year Germany exported about 9% of its electricity. So the country could reduce their use of lignite (~ 24% of total energy produced) by at least this amount.

And I think the math is off there - if Germany cuts 24% of its energy production over a couple of years, energy may become more expensive, driving away the factories using extreme amounts of electricity[1]. It would not result in losing a lot of jobs, and may even force some industries to become much more efficient (thus generating an advantage over competitors).

[1] eg, Aurubis in Hamburg using 1 billion kw/h per year with less than 7000 employees to refine copper

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