Breaking: NASA GISS Dr. James Hansen – arrested yet again

For those of you who like such things, here’s the write up in our local paper of the Newcastle protest (see photo in Anthony’s post above):
http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/activists-shut-down-newcastle-coal-exports/1952319.aspx
The comments are interesting since our area is strongly unionised and left wing (very safe Australian Labor Party seats generally), but also a big coal mining area. The ALP’s two biggest local wings are progessive leftists who are AGW supporters and unionists who are coal miners.
My local representative is Mr Greg Combet, ex (coal mining) union boss who is now our new national Minister for Climate Change. I will be watching with interest how he manages to walk between these incompatible positions.

Doesn’t this Hansen bloke have a day job? I’d hate to think I’m paying his salary.

Hmm, definite mix up of professional ethics (or lack thereof) with protesting about environmental issues. Hansen should have the professional integrity to quit his job. He is not an academic with tenure talking on his area of expertise to the public; he is a civil servant whose job pure and simple is to focus on GISS – doing anything else is an insult to the tax paying public and an insult to the integrity of NASA; an organization for whom I used to have a lot of respect, but this Guy single handedly is making me really wonder if that respect is misplaced.
Anybody got contacts on the funding committees from which NASA GISS gets its money and remit? They need to be shown what they are actually funding at the end of the day… Also do FOI’s operate in this domain? Be interesting to the see the time sheets from his previous outings.

If his detention continues for a month, he has to miss a big ceremony scheduled on 27 October:
http://www.af-info.or.jp/blog/b-info_en/2010-blue-planet-prize-commemorative-lecture.html
when he is to be awarded with about $ 600,000 by a Japanese company.

There’s no shortage of “mountain” tops, and there’s surely no shortage of rocks. Whatever local eco system, which could conceivably be displaced by this type of mining, will be supplanted by a new local eco-system just like the mountains themselves replaced the previous terrain. People will be outraged by someone taking off a mountain top, but won’t even think twice about a huge quarry or open pit mine. They’re all just ways of excavating rock.

Drilling holes into the ground is better than open pit mining? Okay. If Hansen is really wired to protest against such a practice let him put his livelihood where his mouth is (after he gets his head out of his nether parts): since it is my opinion he will soon be for want of a job, let him work in a drilled mine for a while. Then let him drive one of those big rigs in an open pit. Tell him that he then has his choice of these two positions. If he takes the open pit job, he should be tarred and feathered. If he takes the drilled mine job, he can have it.
Put Americans back to work, fire Hansen. Now that’s a stimulus package I would vote for.

I am a mining engineer and have designed mountaintop removal (MTR) projects as well as other projects running the gamut of surface coal mining methods not to mention metals, tar sands . I have been disheartened by the several comments from recognizable commenters buying into Hansen’s unsupportable protestations of the harmful effects of MTR. Hansen I can deal with – the first technical book published by printing press – De Re Metallica (Agricola, 1556)- warned about city types fussing over the blasphemous raping of goddess Gaia by means of mining (if not in so many words). Agricola noted that fortunately mining tends to occur in mountainous territory at a distance from the city and its nervous inhabitants. So anyhow Hansen is not a new phenomenon. But now the environmentalist is coming to the mountain. We don’t need to buy him a ticket.
Mining in general is the highest possible use for land – more wealth per unit area is created through mining than any other economic activity (oil is technically a rock). Other uses are not even close. So mining causes less disturbance to the environment per unit benefit than other activities. Of course if you figure that humans are a cancer that should be extirpated from Gaia’s longsuffering body maybe economic benefits are moot. Maybe the feminists are right- men just want to mess with goddess’ bodies!
But as to MTR, it arose in Appalachia as a lower impact mining method that would recover all the resource in a hill instead of the earlier contour mining that followed the outcrop around a hill, effectively sterilizing the resource in the center of the hill – rendering it uneconomic to mine for all time. So MTR is actually an example of good stewardship of resources. The coal in the center of the hill may be mined through even though uneconomic in order to recover the whole resource. Believe me that mining professionals and particularly engineers work for the greatest efficiency and the least harm – actually the fun is taking an ostensible harm and turning it into a benefit. Like the end result of MTR which creates a usable plateau or flatland in hilly areas where level ground is frequently rare and valuable. Terraforming anyone? In distinct opposition to the artsci enviro types (take a bow, Hansen) engineers work with reality and are responsible for their results.
As to the allegation of water contamination, MTR waste rock is typically placed in the head of a valley which has been carefully prepared to control water through drains and deflection and impermeable layers of clay. This is to prevent the formation of acid mine drainage (AMD) caused when water and oxygen reach sulphur bearing rock,which it frequently does in Appalachia. Mining project approvals can include cleanup of adjacent historical mining works to modern standards and eliminate any AMD- much more feasible when you’ve got the equipment there and in the course of a long term project that actually makes money. This stuff is engineered and regulated by people who are able and who care but what is more, carry the responsibility. Good results in the real world is the only standard. Reclamation and control of potential environmental risks is all performed to plans drawn up and approved well in advance of mining operations. When screwups happen they are fixed. All in the light of public scrutiny. But Hansen says MTR is destroying the environment.
I have described a bit of how the real world works when scientists engineers and business join to get stuff done in mining. It is similar in other fields of endeavour. It works and it is better than we think. Why should Hansen’s cries of disaster be given such a hearing here when he has already been so thoroughly exposed in the CAGW debacle?
There is one unplanned benefit of environmentalism for mining – the creation of environment departments has brought more girls to the mining camps!

Sigh, since mining is one of my sub-specialities, thought I would chime in on mining in general, and on mountain-top mining. Basically, for any mine, the plan of mining has to include: where waste is going to go (for the environment’s benefit), how product is going to leave (without comtamination), how workers are going to be protected, and lastly a reclamation plan that will make sure the environment is as good as it was before the mine was there if not better. (Just a simple explanation, its obviously more complicated then that.)
In most cases, the area around the mine is made better then it was prior to the mine. Even with strip mining this is the case with our laws on the books. I do not claim any mining method is right or wrong in general, just that our federal government is supposed to make sure the plans are followed correctly through the various agency’s and to make sure the reclamation plans are followed through with correctly. (and to make sure the land is made at LEAST as good as it was prior to the mine going in..)
This means that unless you have emotional attachement to the way the land looked prior to the mine existing, any environmentalist should love having a mine in their area. For this type of mining, this allows more efficient development which HELLO means that less land will be used overall for development which saves MORE land for other uses including wildlife. Sometimes this land is set aside as nature preserves as well. It really depends on who owns the land, because with mining a lot of companies lease the land in the first place and the original owners get the land back anyway, so whatever happens to the land after the fact is up to the land-owner (not the evil mining company.) Again, this is just a side-note, and it really depends on the company. But for the most part, the environement is improved with better water control, and better ecological effects factored into the reclamation plans.
The fact that this is being protested by “one of the largest environmentalists in our country” just goes to show how out of touch with reality this man really is. I did not read anything online that stated what he has against this type of mining except for environmental harm which he is vague on and like I said just sounds emotional. If there is an actual environmental issue, I would be happy to hear it addressed…
There are mistakes made, do not get me wrong. But like I said, I am not sure what this type of mining does that other types do not…its just an emotional attachement which is stricly speaking…not something that really makes sense to me, just like the entire emotional global warming argument. Not to distract from the article, but I just thought it might be better to make it clear what I thought: that man can do good to the environment without hugging trees and otherwise becoming a hunter-gatherer.

By Shamokin, Pennsylvania is what’s often said to be the world’s largest man-made mountain, a culm bank, specifically the Glen Burn Colliery Cameron Culm Bank (pictures). As such happens with them, assorted flora and fauna have populated it, I’ve driven by and seen trees and deer on the top and sides.
And now it’s going away. Technology has made the burning of this mix of fine coal bits and shale efficient and profitable, so now the mountain of colliery waste is getting surface mined. I’ve seen the little tiny dump trucks and earth movers on the top and moving along the sides, working it down.
This is now an established habitat, nature has been claiming it as its own. In time it’d just be a normal part of the environment.
So who’s protesting the removal of that mountaintop?

Bruce Cobb says:
September 28, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Hansen’s concern here is a false one. MTR is simply a convenient wagon to hitch his anti-C02, anti-coal circus act to.
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Bingo.
-Chris

Couldnt agree more Dennis N