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The latest in W. Va. adventures

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This week, Gabriel Pacyniak and Katherine Chandler are traveling throughout southern West Virginia to report on mountaintop removal mining (MTR). They'll be visiting coalfields with abandoned and "reclaimed" MTR mines, and talking with residents, activists, miners, mine company officials, local reporters, and politicians.

We'll publish their reports throughout the week.

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Tom White's directions to Yeager Airport instruct us to follow the signs outside of town, turn right at the first fork, and take the road straight up to the top of the hill. Like many of the instructions that we have received, he tells us, "And if you think you've gone too far, it's probably just a little bit farther up." The airport is, in fact, on a flattened mountain overlooking the city of Charleston, a location that shows how difficult it is to find flat land in the area.

Tom's business card reads "In deep? WHO YA GONNA CALL. Contract lawyer for hire ... former newspaper reporter, author, commercial pilot." He's also passionate about the environment, so he is a perfect fit for Southwings, a non-profit conservation organization that links volunteer pilots with journalists and researchers studying conservation issues in the south. It's a pretty crucial service for anybody looking at mountain top removal mining (MTR). On the ground, you can drive up a hollow all the way over the mountain and never know that just beyond the trees the mountains have been mined away.

A mine site with valley fill in Mingo and Logan counties. (photo: Katherine Chandler)

On cleaning up the catalog industry

ForestEthics, one of the most effective orgs fighting to save forests, is looking for ideas for their next campaign. Help them out -- more productive than reading blogs anyway ...

From the Boston Globe, the dirty truth about ‘alternative energy’

Referring to high oil prices, the billionaire airline magnate Richard Branson recently declared, "Thank God it’s happened … A high oil price is what we needed to actually wake up the world" to the reality of climate change. (This from a man who openly pines for a techno fix that will allow us to burn […]

Sea levels may rise much faster and higher than predicted

Popular Science has published a terrific article, "Konrad Steffen: The Global Warming Prophet," about one of the world's leading climatologists. Steffen has spent "18 consecutive springs on the Greenland ice cap, personally building and installing the weather stations that help the world's scientists understand what's happening up there." The article notes:

Water from the melting ice sheet is gushing into the North Atlantic much faster than scientists had previously thought possible. The upshot of the news out of Swiss Camp is that sea levels may rise much higher and much sooner than even the most pessimistic climate forecasts predicted.

What is going on in Greenland? Steffen explains what he and NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally figured out from their study of fissures in the ice sheet (called moulins -- see figures above and below):

We Like Piña Coladas (and Getting Caught in the Rain)

Dole will make some tropical-fruit distribution carbon-neutral U.S. residents have a heckuva hard time finding a local pineapple (Hawaiians respectfully excluded, of course). But now you can nosh your tropical fruit with less guilt; Dole Food Co. has pledged to work toward offsetting 100 percent of the CO2 emissions that its subsidiary produces from growing […]

The Climate Changed and All Norway Got Was Everything

Norway contemplates far-north drilling, melting ice reveals new islands As climate change alters the landscape of the Arctic, Norwegians are having a rough go of it. They face a more hospitable climate, an even better financial situation, and more land. “It’s very challenging for a very wealthy nation, knowing this will be a positive change,” […]

Overlooking Ahead

Are we too obsessed with climate change? Climate change is getting heaps of attention these days — and it’s about time. But with the spotlight focused on the climate cause, are other eco-issues being ignored? Issues like pollution, biodiversity loss, waste, resource use, and habitat protection used to be the focus for enviros, but they’re […]

Economists say that only the largest ethanol producers will survive

Of all the arguments in favor of government backing for corn-based ethanol, only one seems even remotely reasonable to me: that it could lead to real economic development in depressed areas of the Midwest. The theory goes like this: When farmers pool resources and build their own ethanol plants, they’ll capture much higher profits than […]

Cool Runnings

Effluent would be used to cool power plants in an innovative Maryland project Charles County, Md., is poised to be the first area in the U.S. to use treated sewage to cool down power-plant towers. A proverbial “win-win” scheme, the proposal would conserve groundwater, which is usually used for power-plant cooling, and would cut down […]

We Put the Unclear in Nuclear

Potentially deadly uranium spill in Tennessee kept secret As part of its model for a newer, more relevant form of democracy in the 21st century, the U.S. government in 2004 clamped down on the public’s access to information on all things nuclear, for so-called national-security reasons. Hidden in the big ol’ nuclear hidey-hole: news of […]