By Staff and Wire Reports
Published: 4/30/2010 2:25 AM
2 killed in coal mine owned by Tulsa firm
A Kentucky coal mine where two workers were killed in a roof collapse has been cited at least six times this year for using too few supporting bolts in the roof, state records show.
With the 29 miners killed at the Upper Big Branch mine 3 weeks ago, this brings the total to 31 coal miners killed so far this year.
So let's tally up the score:
Number of deaths this year per energy source:
31
11
The Occasional Bird
ZEROSo, explain to me again why we can't have renewable energy? Because it's un-American?
2 comments:
If I can believe what I have been told. The reason we don't have renewable energy in this country is in part due to our terribly outdated patchwork energy infrastructure. The areas which can easily be turned into giant solar farms such as the deserts of the southwest are not located near enough to populated areas in need of energy and the loss of energy in transmission over the distance is too great to make it an economically viable solution. And the scale to which they can be built near or within populated areas aren't viable either.
Wind power faces similar problems and additionally I have some small ecological concerns. Wind plays a vital roll with a number of factors of reproduction of plant life. Broadcast of pollen and spreading of seeds. I know my physics well enough that by generating energy from the wind we reduce its energy. I'd hate to find out that in doing so at a much larger scale than we currently are, we reduce the ability to procreate in key members of ecosystems. We once thought burning coal was totally awesome and without its drawbacks, I'd hate for us to jump on a new power source without thinking it through.
Solar has the drawback of, by absorbing the suns rays for energy instead of allowing them to reflect off the planet and heat the atmosphere as they naturally would we will have a less warm planet. Which, inconveniently, currently isn't a problem for us.
So basically, we don't have renewable energy because we don't have the infrastructure (and to some extent) the technology for long distance transmission of electricity from the places where renewable energy can most easily and economically be drawn. So we are forced to use sources which can be physically shipped, still retaining it's full electricity generating potential, to be burned where human settlement is.
Why hasn't the development of super grid technologies been given proper attention by the government? I hate to sound paranoid, but I'd likely blame the amount of influence the oil and coal industry have with politicians. The reason why morons chant "drill baby drill".
Well, the sun does kill people via skin cancer, but I see your point.
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