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By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Sat Jun 2, 12:45 PM ET
WASHINGTON - America may spew more greenhouse gases than any other country, but some states are astonishingly more prolific polluters than others — and it's not always the ones you might expect.
The Associated Press analyzed state-by-state emissions of carbon dioxide from 2003, the latest U.S. Energy Department numbers available. The review shows startling differences in states' contribution to climate change.
The biggest reason? The burning of high-carbon coal to produce cheap electricity.
_Wyoming's coal-fired power plants produce more carbon dioxide in just eight hours than the power generators of more populous Vermont do in a year.
_Texas, the leader in emitting this greenhouse gas, cranks out more than the next two biggest producers combined, California and Pennsylvania, which together have twice Texas' population.
_In sparsely populated Alaska, the carbon dioxide produced per person by all the flying and driving is six times the per capita amount generated by travelers in New York state.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
This was indeed a surprising read. I figured Pennsylvania would be the leader on this one.
My father-in-law works for the Boilermaker's Union, and he says they are building coal power plants like mad here in PA so I wouldn't be surprised to see PA move up a slot or two over the next 5 years or so.
I do know the 4th biggest coal polluter in the US is not far from where I live, as it was often the site of numerous Greenpeace "protests".
I know a few people who live upwind of this power plant, and they tell me every so often they used to wake up to their cars covered with white soot.
Fortunately, about a year ago, several of the locals joined together and sued Allegeheny Energy and forced them to put "scrubbers" in it's stacks, in order to cut down on the pollution.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Due to the efforts of dubya when he was governor, there are more coal fired power plants in Texas than in pennsylvania and, due to his hand picked replacement jerk in the governorship, they are a-fixin to built more and burn higher sulphur coal
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Sad.... IMO coal should be the LEAST relied upon source of power. The worst part is, it isn't just burning the coal that makes it so ugly. I lost count of the number of properties that have been strip mined here over the last few years because of the increase in the price of coal and the number of coal plants being built all over the US.
Sure, it isn't like the old days where they just leave the property totally devoid of life and never refill the holes where they took the coal from, but each piece of earth that is stripped will NEVER be the same afterwards, no matter how good of a reclamation they do and still leaves an obviously ugly scar for at least 5 years.
Problem I have, is everybody out here is either a coal miner or their dad or grandfather was/is a coal miner. You bring up getting rid of coal and suddenly the "natives" aren't too friendly anymore.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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And the coal interest work hard to keep 'em ignorant and uneducated, so they can be assured of their vote at the polls.
" each piece of earth that is stripped will NEVER be the same afterwards, no matter how good of a reclamation they do and still leaves an obviously ugly scar for at least 5 years"
And acid water draining into every creak and river downstream for decades and more, killing off EVERYTHING that once lived there.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:And the coal interest work hard to keep 'em ignorant and uneducated, so they can be assured of their vote at the polls.
Coal miners out here are all Union, and vote what the Union tells them. You would think that after seeing first hand what mining coal does to the environment, (i.e. their homes), they would brighten up... But, at least around here, nobody seems to care. Perhaps because it has been this way for so long that it seems normal. To me, being raised out west, it was a total shock.
Perhaps also it's because mining coal has been many a Pennsylvanians livelihood since the mid-1700's, so to give up mining coal is to put themselves out of a job...
quote:And acid water draining into every creak and river downstream for decades and more, killing off EVERYTHING that once lived there.
Yeah it's sick. I am almost afraid to step in some of the creeks and rivers around here with my shoes on. I once watched a gas company run a line across a small creek that was just like you said, TOTALLY devoid of life because of acid drainage. The entire bottom was covered with a disgusting orange slime that stuck to everything. According to DEP, the gas company was required to replace the dirt removed with clean stone. Within 12 hours the clean stone looked exactly the same as the rest of the stream bottom.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I used to fish a creek that wandered off to the SE from the Black Warier river maybe 30 miles below Bessemer Alabama. One winter, they stripped the timber from several thousand acres along the drainage of the creek and opened that cleared forest land to strip mining coal. The next spring there were no fish.....or worms or bugs or frogs or anything but a rusty reddish slime that coated everything, which even creeped into the flow of the Black Warier for a quarter mile down. Next winter, one of my favorite places to set out a stool of duck decoys was useless and the situation was the same years later when I left Alabama.
Now, I don't wish toblame it all on the coal mine, as to the south of Tuscaloosa Alabama, I watched them clearcut a huge plot of the National Forest and saw similar destruction of the surface waters there (wonder what test of the ground water around those places would have revealed?
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I wish I was kidding.... and I haven't even mentioned what happens to the coal after it gets burned up.. It's called "fly ash" and it, and it's "disposal", are yet another ugly facet of the whole "coal to energy" process.
P.S.
Friendly Tip:
If someday you happen to drive your vehicle across a pile of fly ash for whatever reason, make sure it isn't going to rain or you won't be leaving any time soon.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Yeah, that's how I felt when I first moved out here a few years back. Granted, PA, especially Western PA, is probably the worst of the worst when it comes to environmental damage due to coal, the damage is the same everywhere coal is mined, except maybe not as widespread and on as large a scale as it is here.
Strip mining is common here because the coal is so close to the surface and that makes it cheaper to mine. From what I have seen, it is the most damaging way to mine coal, but underground mining has it's hazards too.
I've seen a few places around here where old underground coal mines have filled up with ground water over the years, and a steady stream of yellow acid drainage pours straight out of the mine entrance. Any time we get heavy rains, the fresh water percolates down into the mine and pushes the stagnate acid water into the light of day....
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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I spent a good hour or two looking through my personal photo archives today, but interestingly I couldn't find any pictures of streams ruined by acid drainage..... Probably because I try to take pictures of the beautiful things in nature around here. In the future I will try to take some so that I can show others the damage that coal really does to the environment.
Just so you can get an idea though, here is a picture I found on the web that pretty much looks the same as the stream I told you about earlier.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by NaturalResources: Jon Clogger,
I spent a good hour or two looking through my personal photo archives today, but interestingly I couldn't find any pictures of streams ruined by acid drainage..... Probably because I try to take pictures of the beautiful things in nature around here. In the future I will try to take some so that I can show others the damage that coal really does to the environment.
Just so you can get an idea though, here is a picture I found on the web that pretty much looks the same as the stream I told you about earlier.
That picture doesn't half show how bad it really looks, but it probably reflects as much as any picture can. In these situation, a picture hasn't any hope of matching a thousand words. (The damned places can stink too!)
And I still believe, because I have seen the effect from clear cutting forest, that maybe coal isn't the problem, but the denuding of the strip mined area inevitably will bring the acidification in those areas where acid soils are prevalent.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Thank you for your post NaturalResources. I am blown away. There would be a major protest and riot if any of California's streams looked like that.
I still can't wrap my mind around how bad it is. I'm used to seeing stuff like this in the third-world, but not the good-ol USA.
Especially with the EPA. One of my friends who owns a machine shop was cited by the EPA for some of the aluminum shavings that spilled in the parking lot.
I was there, there might have been 25 small chips. Not even an ounce!! He had to pay $3500.00
So are these guys political money hungry a$$ clowns? What a double standard if there are streams full of acid like this. Shame.
Posts: 602 | Registered: Aug 2005
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the EPA seems to be very hit-or-miss.... here in MS? the growers burn their fields after harvest... they recently cut the winter wheat and are burning, we just had a big truck accident on the hi-way from the smoke blinding them... even tho we are in drought condition...
i am talking about 100-200 acre burns being small ones too.... you can see them for 20plus miles... this smoke is full of the residues from whatever they sprayed on the crops,
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by jon clogger: Thank you for your post NaturalResources. I am blown away. There would be a major protest and riot if any of California's streams looked like that.
I still can't wrap my mind around how bad it is. I'm used to seeing stuff like this in the third-world, but not the good-ol USA.
Especially with the EPA. One of my friends who owns a machine shop was cited by the EPA for some of the aluminum shavings that spilled in the parking lot.
I was there, there might have been 25 small chips. Not even an ounce!! He had to pay $3500.00
So are these guys political money hungry a$$ clowns? What a double standard if there are streams full of acid like this. Shame.
Jon Clogger,
I too grew up in California and like you, was in total shock after the first few weeks after I moved out here to PA. My job as a land surveyor involves lots of hiking to "off the beaten path" locations and so almost every day I see this type of thing first hand. Many of the heavily polluted areas are not in locations normally viewed by those just passing through.
I think part of the reason why it is so bad here in PA is because a lot of the coal mining that occurred went on long before there were things like reclamation bonds and the EPA. Coal has been taken from this area since the mid 1700's. Most people who now own polluted properties such as these cannot be held responsible for the acts of those before them, and even if they were, most, if not all, could not even begin to afford the costs required to even attempt to "fix" the damaged areas.
There are some programs, both state and federal, that are providing money for reclamation projects in some of the worst areas, but they are lacking in funds and even if they had the money needed, IMO it would be decades before reclamation work would be finished in all the effected areas and maybe even centuries before the environment in the damaged areas returned to "normal".
According to the EPA, more than 66,500 documented sources of coal mine drainage in Appalachia have polluted an estimate 17,000 km of streams and watercourses.
While pollutions controls and coal miner accountability have increased dramatically since the 1970's when the EPA was created, coal mining, both underground and strip mining continue to be a source of pollution and destroyer of the environment. Even with EPA oversight and reclamation bonds, strip mining not only changes the local topography, it destroys the entire surface of the area mined, thus the entire ecosystem or habitat that existed above the coal seams.
A even more dramatic form of strip mining that is practiced in both PA and WV is called 'mountaintop mining' ( http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/007/ ). This involves removing the entire top of a hill or mountain to get to the coal underneath. Overburden is simply piled into the nearest ditch or gully, blocking what ever streams or drainage ditches are there and polluting ground water that percolates through it.
Fortunately, many of the locals in WV, where it is more common, have become fed up and are trying to make changes to have that particular type of mining banned. ( http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06057/661362.stm )
Perhaps to some, I may seem like I am going on and on, but after living here for 3 years and seeing what I've seen, I just cannot stress enough that coal is an archaic source of energy, and is not worth the environmental damage that results from its recovery, use and disposal.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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Like any job, it has both good and bad aspects to it.
The Bad: -Exposure to the elements -Feuding neighbours or hostile landowners who "know" where the boundary is.. -Bugs and Poison Ivy and Oak -Long hours and little recognition or appreciation -Barbwire fences, dogs and snakes -Lots of very expensive, heavy equipment to carry around
The Good: -Being out among nature and not trapped in a cubicle -Decent Pay -Challenging -Often a new jobsite every day -Using maps, deeds and math to find that pin in the ground that was set 30+ years ago and hasn't been seen since.
I could probaby type up paragraphs about what it is like to do my job every day, but instead I will just post a few pictures from my personal archives (I carry a camera with me almost every day), since they will probably say more about what it's like to be a land surveyor than I ever could using words.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
True, but we have plenty of bears to make up for the lack of 'gators.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Oh MAH GAAWWDD!!! Those pictures are awesome!! You may have missed your calling in photography NR.
Thank you, thank you! Yes, your place in this world exceeds what I expected. You are fortunate in spite of the downside. I would love to trade places for just one week.
Your career is noble, altruistic, and full of purpose (unlike most cubicle jobs). Your influence will certainly outlive your presence.
Posts: 602 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
looks like you stumbled across bambi's hangout. cool pics
-------------------- "Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over." Herbert Hoover 1930 Posts: 678 | From: currently in hiding due to investigation | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by turbokid: looks like you stumbled across bambi's hangout. cool pics
Interestingly, I had one other close encounter with a young deer in my outdoor treks, and fortunately had my camera ready.
Often times when surveying as the "gunman", one must stand in the same place on a known point for 10-15 minutes while the other person the "rodman" looks for information on the ground needed for the survey.
It so happened that during one of those times, I was standing silently and heard a rustling in the bushes nearby that was getting closer and closer. It was fairly loud and I knew whatever it was, it must be bigger than the squirrels or wild birds one usually hears rustling in the woods.
I pulled out my camera hoping that I could at least get a good shot of whatever popped out of the brush before it saw me and ran away, or in the case of a bear, mauled me to death.
Then, a young deer, probably a few months old appeared and looked up at me. Then to my surprise, instead of turning and fleeing, it stood completely still. I looked at it, and it looked at me for about 30 seconds before I realized I had my camera in hand.
I snapped a picture thinking this would be the closest I would ever get to a deer in the wild... But then, (and this will sound unbelievable), this deer started walking closer. I snapped pictures as it approached. I crouched down to make myself smaller and extended my hand out in front of me. The deer came closer and closer until it stopped a few feet away and just stared at me. I couldn't believe this was happening. It was like something out of a movie. At this point, I decided to see if I could bridge the final gap, and touch this wild creature that had walked up to me without any fear.
Unfortunately, I was unable to, because just as I closed within a few inches of it, the "rodman" yelled out "I found it!", (the pin for the property corner), from a few hundred feet away and startled the deer, which ran off in the woods, never to be seen again.
My hands shaking, I shared the story with the "rodman" who had walked back over to me, and of course he thought I was full of it, but I told him I would prove it the next day when I downloaded the images from my camera.
All day I couldn't stop thinking about the whole incident and how my pictures would turn out. When I finally got home, I was a bit disappointed because I guess my hands were so uneasy that the pictures were pretty blurred, but still, here they are. It may sound corny, but I will never forget that incident as long as I live.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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Those pictures were taken right around the begining of June.... I only assumed it was a few months old because it was very small, yet didn't have spots, and seemed not to fear me, which I have heard is common with deer that are very young and haven't yet learned to stay away from humans.
-------------------- One is never completely useless. One can always serve as a bad example. Posts: 2430 | From: CA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
In Texas there is an early deer season for bow hunting and I was out about 30 miles west of Austin in the Hill Country. There isn't much winter in Austin and this was well before that. I was sitting in the shade of a live oak with my back against the trunk. The warm sunny day had its effects and I fell asleep after about an hour on my stand.
I must have been asleep for about an hour when I felt a warm breeze on my right cheek. What wind there was that day was from the south and as I was facing west, so I knew something was there. I opened my eyes and a young fawn was sniffing at my feet. Behind him, I saw maybe a dozen more mixed fawns and does about 15 yards away, watching intently. But even closer and the source of the warm breeze that woke me, working its way over my head and shoulder, sniffing and curious, was the nose of another doe that I could only make out peripherally.
I sat motionless for about ten minutes, trying not to even blink or move my eyes. The doe continued smelling and investigating and two others broke from the group out front and stepped carefully up to join the investigation. These two made a circle about me and the tree trunk sniffing and snorting, stiff and unsure, then ambled back to the heard. Finally, I decided to move.
"Do I smell good enough to eat or are you just gathering data?" I said calmly and not too loudly. The fawn that had never moved from where he had sniffed my feet popped to attention and backed up all the way to the herd, starring at me the whole way, but the doe only stood erect and stopped her sniffing. The herd of does and fawn now got edgy and alert and began milling about. I turned my head to the right and looked directly into the does eyes and said, "We can't keep meeting this way, you know, I am a married man.
That still didn't get much reaction from the doe by my side, but the herd began backing away with their tails high, the white underside away from me. when they were around 30 yards away, finally, one barked and turned and trotted away. The rest, except for the doe by my side, trotted off behind. She stomped the ground and snorted, not an alarm call, more like a challenge, paused maybe 5 seconds to see what I might do, then went through the same sequence twice more.
I didn't intend to, but that sight made me laugh out loud, which did get a reaction form the doe. She pranced to where the herd had stood watching, turned and did her challenge routine again, then finally trotted off to join the herd somewhere over the hill.
These were not pet deer. It was toward the end of the bow season and those deer in that valley had been hunted pretty hard that year. I have no idea what that doe might have been thinking. Who knows, it was female, maybe it was having a blonde moment.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by NaturalResources: Glass,
Those pictures were taken right around the begining of June.... I only assumed it was a few months old because it was very small, yet didn't have spots, and seemed not to fear me, which I have heard is common with deer that are very young and haven't yet learned to stay away from humans.
posted
You may quite possibly have the best job ever. I thought I had the best job when I brewed beer at Anheuser-Busch, and worked the hops recipes, but coming within inches of a deer? Kudos.
Posts: 602 | Registered: Aug 2005
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