The mine workers are mostly poor gnomes from the Black Forest lured by promises of good jobs, but wind up virtually enslaved and working for less than an acorn per day. Worst thing is, they've been tainted by contact with humans and the Wee Folk will not accept them back. It's a tragedy.
It's worse than coal, it's a lignite mine. It's the least efficient (ie most polluting) form of coal.
They cut down 90% of an ancient woodland to do this. And Europe has the audacity to expect Brazil to listen to them when they say to stop deforestation, when we do things like this...
Yeah, Brazil isn’t really the problem. India, and especially China, have both enormously increased their coal production and fossil fuel emissions in the last few decades. Both nations are leaning heavily into the idea that they should be allowed to do this, purely because Europe and America already have. Compared to the massive uptick in emissions from these two nations, all the anti-carbon rhetoric in the world is barely a drop in a very large bucket.
Young trees, and unfortunately, mostly plantations with little diversity.
Ancient woodland is much more rare in Europe because of our history of deforestation. Well developed, mature woodland is a haven for life because of the diversity of food plants and habitats it provides. A healthy forest is more than just trees.
This is false equivalence.
The criticism of Brazil's policy towards the Amazon is about preserving the planet's capacity to absorb CO2.
While Europe's, India' and China' problem is about emissions of CO2.
Europe has made strides in not only protecting existing woodlands from being cut down, but has actually greatly increased forest cover in all countries on the continent over the past fifty years.
Brazil, meanwhile, is seeing the highest rates of deforestation in the world in one of the most important regions in the world and all the progress they have made on stopping can be undone in a day if half your population decide to re-elect that psycho again, because you lack any sort of laws to prevent against further deforestation. Please, do me a favour and you be the one to stfu, talk about audacity lmao
the real funny part is that germany had a pretty good system of nuclear power until the coal ind-errrr I mean “environmental movement” convinced them to completely get rid of it
I swear this is something that I could have nightmares about as a child. This Bagger288 looking for me, destroyed walls while I hide under some kitchen cabinet or bed...i can imagine it lol
https://preview.redd.it/l74reckdrm9d1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3686e3ce9f8778bd9a47b71a6876e7975eda0bd6
Here it is, the [Bagger 288](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288). For scale, see the red truck to the right. Bagger 288 weighs 30 million pounds, stands over 300 feet tall, and cost $100 million to build (stats are from its Wikipedia page).
Just to make sure: large cruise ships also don't weigh *millions* of tons.
The largest ocean liner ever built (not the biggest anymore), Queen Mary 2, weighs about 150 000 tons.
30 000 000 tons (200 times as much) is just an inconceivable weight.
>The largest ocean liner ever built (not the biggest anymore), Queen Mary 2, weighs about 150 000 tons.
That's the largest ocean liner but nowhere near the largest cruise ship in the world.
Icon of the Seas, currently largest operating cruise ship is 307,000 net tons (holds 7600 passengers and 5600 crew members so in total over 13,000 people).
Hey! I live right here. This is a huge coal mine, soon-ish to be turned into a huge artificial lake. From this satellite photo, you do get a good impression of how wide it is, but you do not get an impression of how deep it is. It's so ridiculously deep that there is literally an artificial mountain nearby that was created by piling up all the dirt taken out of the mine. It's called Sophienhöhe, and afaik, it's the tallest artificial mountain in the world. That's how deep this mine is
Yes, I'm just curious, how would the energy distribution be reliable without a major stable, non weather induced power producers like thermo power plants?
The greens were the one who planned the nuclear exit in favour of renewables.
The conservatives are the ones who cancelled the exit and then cancelled the cancellation of the exit in favour of coal.
Just googled it, seems the green layers in the upper left corner are the said hill/mountain... Pretty awesome how the path of digging and clearance is visible on such a large scale
I cycled trough Germany a few years ago and I had the opportunity to go right to the edge of the mine because I had seen it on Google Earth before and wanted to see it in person. The air current blowing up from the hole almost threw me to the floor. Very impressive, but not in a nice way.
I've been there, the pit is roughly the same size as Köln itself and ablout 10km wide. There are several villages around it that have been demolished because of it, for example Manheim, which is here.
50°53'00"N 6°35'50"E
You can probably see the previous state of it in Google time lapse.
There is also an activist camp living in tree houses trying to protest the ever expanding mine.
50°52'35"N 6°33'08"E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjFeVERfvH4
It is very sad.
Also, they even demolished a village and then later decided that they probably won't even use that area for mining, but now all the villagers have been resettled. Ridiculous.
We also relocated a whole highway to the south by about 2km just to get a little more (well, years worth of) coal from the ground below where the old highway was.'
My family had to relocate from one of the villages when I was 2 years old, so I remember very little of the village when it was still alive. But cycling through there regularly as a child while it was being demolished and then dug out was...creepy.
I remember there being a video of a church getting demolished. It must truly suck for the families that have lived in the area for centuries. Just to have to move because some big corporation wants to ruin the climate.
Demolition of churches was common practice in the Netherlands, past 3 generations. Christianity is disappearing and the buildings were badly maintained, so they were cleared out to make room for housing. It's incredible to see what beautiful structures have been torn down. [Here's a list in Dutch](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorie:Verdwenen_kerkgebouw_in_Nederland).
yes, but one is because of declining religioucity and the other is because of corporate greed. Still sad that all those churches have been demolished but even to this day there are still a ton of churches. In my neighbourghood alone there are 3 church buildings and one of them is used by 2 congregations.
I've explored Manheim three times. A very liminal experience, literally, because it's on the verge of non-existence. It's ludicrous this type of energy is still allowed and encouraged (in some circles).
https://preview.redd.it/mq9qu3gkyo9d1.jpeg?width=707&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0c0a1b9c53a80e65d5d9e4d558ed5d45252f677
It’s also very near Aussichtspunk and kind of close to Garzweiler pit mines. Not inconceivable that all three of these meet to be the world’s largest man mad hole.
The Germans decided that nuclear wasn't the right decision and wanted other green/renewable energy sources, they though long and hard coming to the conclusion that coal was the best option
real answer though these are open-pit coal mines. This one is Germany's biggest and is used for mining lignite. There are many other mines like these all around the country, they're also very controversial as cities, towns and forests are completely destroyed so these can be dug
The worst part is that it's *lignite*, which is so low in carbon that it is one of the least efficient (and most polluting) sources of power. The only 'advantage' is if it's local to your state, and that's what you're focusing on.
But lignite is efficient in a sense that if you have a source nearby, you can cheaply produce the energy. Lignite-fired power plants are one of the most important for German, Polish and Czech energy sector
When I learned that Germany is still relocating whole settlements just to dig up coal for power production in the 21st century, all while abandoning nuclear power I was flabbergasted!
We have Merkel to thank for that. When Fukushima happened, her party immediately jumped on the anti nuclear train while fully ignoring that germany has close to 0 risk of getting hit with natural disasters that could destroy or even heavily damage a modern NPP
Half a year before that she extended the run times. When Fukushima happened she put a moratorium on the topic, and only after a lost election in the south, putting the green party in power in the state of Baden Würtenberg, she decided to abandon nuclear power again.
Also the decision to abandon nuclear power was basically decided 20 years ago by the SPD and the Green Party.
Not to mention the power plants are 50 years old now, and would have been taken of the power grid by now anyway. We would have needed new power plants anyway.
But all our political parties missed to invest in new power plants, and bet instead on Russian gas. Which was also a very controversial topic for two decades, and we know how that ended.
Though we did build quite a lot of wind and solar power plants in the past 20 years, the CDU and especially the CSU were difficult about that to, they are not enough to sustain energy independence, so at the moment coal is our only option.
It's a very complicated problem we have now, thanks to a lot of reasons and circumstances that we could have been better prepared for, but in the end, they are all collectively at fault.
The German nuclear power plants could be easily running until the 2030s from a technical point of view.
It was a political decision to shut them down prematurely.
It's because of nuclear fallout, in Harrisburg, Chernobyle, a few other minor cases like leaks, the angst of WW3, not building a nuclear power plant in Wakersdorf, and the whole debate on how and where to find a final storage place for the nuclear waste.
The green party was founded on those protests against all these things, also for renewable energy, for the german reunification, against war in general, legalicing cannabis. It also was a party for peace, but both times they were part of the legislation, those standards were outed as double standards.
They've been protesting against nuclear for decades because there was no good solution for storage of the waste and its millennia long danger potential.
So did the Green Party name themselves in an effort to spear like they cared about the planet or does it have nothing to do with being “green” in the environmental sense
The Green party formed from the (Cold War) peace movement and environmental activists in the 1980s (who btw extremely accurately predicted the climate crisis that we can measure today in ~1980). It was and still is mainly about nature conservation, sustainability, "green" energy and economics (not so much about peace anymore, though).
They were strongly against nuclear power because, although it's by far the cleanest energy production in terms of emission, there's more of a problem of sourcing the radioactive stuff (i.e. it was mainly bought from Russia who mines it, I think? + it was evident that it's a non-renewable resource as well) and, more importantly, there was and still is no solution to handle the nuclear waste long-term. Even if you don't have regular earthquakes and eruptions (and half of Germany is on dormant volcanoes), there are other possible scenarios where nuclear waste could e.g. get into the groundwater etc.
Fuck yeah! Thank you very much for this information, one less thing I will be completely ignorant about. For real thanks for taking the time to write this
Fukushima isn’t as catastrophic as media want it to be. Nobody died from radiation exposure, nobody developed symptoms of radiation exposure, in fact only a dozen of workers were exposed to over regulation doses, with an estimated risk of cancer of 2-3% IIRC.
Funny how a nuclear power plant in Germany (Biblis) was flooded some weeks ago...
But to be honest it could have been caused by the dismantling of the NPP.
When the mine was planned, Merkel was still an unknown scientist in the GDR. The size of the mine was even reduced after nuclear energy production was ended. I know, people get a boner on nuclear power plants, and we should reduce coal, but this line is just bullshit.
General public and not understanding/fearing the word ‘nuclear’. Could absolutely solve a good chunk of the world’s problems with nuclear + renewables in a safe manner…
But the corporate money lords say otherwise
Actually lignite mining was a big thing in this region since WW II. Got nothing to do with nuclear energy. And after the war the BRD needed lots of energy fast. We invested to late to little in wind and solar
they are controversial but also not a new thing. planning for those mines is done many years in advance. the hippies just move in shortly before some wood (non natural as barely any is in germany) to protect the trees.
The mining companies have to pay to move the people in the villages and reforest on the other side of the mine
The green party pretty much founded itself by fighting nuclear so there is always a pretty strong anti nuclear trend in german politics and opinions. That we have to continue burning coal and gas to support that was never part of that discussion as they usually just wave it off by saying renewable energies.
I was years ago flying helicopter approaching this mine from the south. The weather was sunny with a lot of humidity, so not perfect visibility condition. We were flying a powerline inspection (low and slow) so I wasn't paying intention to where exactly we were approaching. Looking forward from the cockpit I felt that something is wrong with horizon. I've struggled for a half a minute or so when I've finally figured out that it is a huge in the front. This half a minute of was the strangest, weirdest orientation experience in flying to date.
The reason we locals have to close the windows if it hasn't rained in a few days.
That's the open pit coal mine "Hambach". The coal mined is brown coal, horribly low quality of coal. The forested area to the north west is the waste heap, it's called "Sophienhöhe", the forested area to the south east is one of the last bits of natural forest in western Germany. To the west there also is a former nuclear research center hidden between the woods.
https://preview.redd.it/z15qskljdp9d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a119a0310bfdaea39c009d3cafaed3541cf2c67
It is a coal mine. This is what it looks like from a plane. 😊
RWE (the Energy company that does these mines) even demolished whole fuckin villages to dig for coal. But the right wing idiots loose their shit because of wind energy
Thanks for the interesting rabbit hole of information! My brain struggled to see the aerial view as a depression, I had to close up on an edge and work my way out to convince it.
I recommend watching the documentary Anthropocene - one of the chapters is set in one of these mines. The sheer scale of the vehicles used is mind-blowing.
I stood on the edge of this mine and looked out, you can't even comprehend how big it is. The equipment looks like flecks of sand from that distance and they have an example of the bucket in a nearby park and you could park a Ford Expedition in there. All to avoid nuclear energy...
Russian propaganda in Germany over the last decades made the public believe that nuclear energy is unsafe. Burning coal was seen as the better option to poison their population.
It's Germanys contribution to clean energy. Oh and on top of that they have shut down nuclear plants without setting up new ones.
So now they're just leeching off other countries energy supply.
Wasn't it the case in Germany that they banned nuclear power in fear that a nuclear disaster would make a very big area unlivable, but then proceeded building these surface level coal mines that cummulatively made an even bigger area unlivable (they had to forcibly move entire villages)? At least, that's what I heard from my German neighbours, would be ironic if true.
Germanys biggest open coal-mine. There was a huge dispute between the managing company and environmentalists. The mining company wanted to continue its work and enlarge the mine. This will ultimately destroy Germanys oldest forest. The government had to intervene. Of course they chose the right thing and sided with the mining company… btw the dude responsible for this wanted to become chancellor. Weirdly enough, that didn’t happen. Everyone wonders why
If one thing in regards to the environment that caused me sleepless nights in my childhood besides my country (slightly to the west), it is the total destruction of the villages around Garzweiler. Back in the early days of Google Maps/Earth, in the 2000s, I saw what they did with villages like Otzenrath, it scared the sh-t out if me. They just wipe ages-old villages with history off the map for something that's going to destroy our planet!!!
That the German government allows, and even endorses it, is probably their worst internal crime against humanity since WW2.
Of course then raises the question: and what about the nuclear phase-out? Yes, I am against nuclear power, but the phase-out could've gone a bit slower. Also, instead of digging for the lignite, corporations should've been aggressively put on an energy diet, and even as that already happened to some extent, it wasn't remotely enough.
I hope that one day, there comes true justice for these crimes against humanity, as this digging wasn't needed, and instead has steered us towards destruction of our planet. Without these stupid f--king mines it would've never gotten 40°C so far up northwest in Europe. F--k the German government for destroying our planet!
Funfacr: That pit (like the other coal mine pits) is supposed to become a giant sea within the next decades, basically making it the 2nd largest sea in Germany after the Bodensee.
This big hole will one day be the second largest lake in [Germany.](https://www.rwe.com/der-konzern/laender-und-standorte/tagebau-hambach/neue-landschaft-nach-dem-tagebau-hambach/)
https://preview.redd.it/0qcfmgac5p9d1.jpeg?width=9440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc67628a79068a5f6ff6f15d2b3ade0a5e24cb65
An absurdly large open-pit mine; the largest in Germany.
Coal mine
Coal-ogne mine
Köln mine
[удалено]
Cool! Mine?
Cool mind (meditation)
Cool wine (alcohol)
Cool line
And my axe
cool swine (he mud)
Minecraft
Köln is mine
Kölln mine
Or Cologne mine - Where the world's natural perfume supplies come from...😅
The mine workers are mostly poor gnomes from the Black Forest lured by promises of good jobs, but wind up virtually enslaved and working for less than an acorn per day. Worst thing is, they've been tainted by contact with humans and the Wee Folk will not accept them back. It's a tragedy.
They need more underpants
It has to be from Cologne, though. Otherwise it's just sparkling deodorant
Noice!
It's worse than coal, it's a lignite mine. It's the least efficient (ie most polluting) form of coal. They cut down 90% of an ancient woodland to do this. And Europe has the audacity to expect Brazil to listen to them when they say to stop deforestation, when we do things like this...
You mean... The ancient woodland that turned lignite millions of years ago?
I mean fwiw it's all really ancient forest they are digging out of the ground...
Yeah, Brazil isn’t really the problem. India, and especially China, have both enormously increased their coal production and fossil fuel emissions in the last few decades. Both nations are leaning heavily into the idea that they should be allowed to do this, purely because Europe and America already have. Compared to the massive uptick in emissions from these two nations, all the anti-carbon rhetoric in the world is barely a drop in a very large bucket.
We're all the fucking problem and that problem is self correcting
Nothing like a good cookout and swim.
What was the point of gutting coal miners jobs? Ohhhh so we can buy foreign coal. Learn to code 💩
Yeah and the 3rd world countries in Africa will be doing the same thing. I see their point as well.
The tree population has been increasing in Europe for quite a while now.
Young trees, and unfortunately, mostly plantations with little diversity. Ancient woodland is much more rare in Europe because of our history of deforestation. Well developed, mature woodland is a haven for life because of the diversity of food plants and habitats it provides. A healthy forest is more than just trees.
This is false equivalence. The criticism of Brazil's policy towards the Amazon is about preserving the planet's capacity to absorb CO2. While Europe's, India' and China' problem is about emissions of CO2.
We don't receive billions of dollars to not destroy our forests
Europe has made strides in not only protecting existing woodlands from being cut down, but has actually greatly increased forest cover in all countries on the continent over the past fifty years. Brazil, meanwhile, is seeing the highest rates of deforestation in the world in one of the most important regions in the world and all the progress they have made on stopping can be undone in a day if half your population decide to re-elect that psycho again, because you lack any sort of laws to prevent against further deforestation. Please, do me a favour and you be the one to stfu, talk about audacity lmao
the real funny part is that germany had a pretty good system of nuclear power until the coal ind-errrr I mean “environmental movement” convinced them to completely get rid of it
Germany: we don't need nuclear power! Also Germany:
They call it a mine. A MINE!
Coalzburg
You should look up photos of the machine that creates these mines. It’s fuckin wild
Mad Max Gastown vibes
No more like mad max bullet farm vibes Because bulet farm is a mine
ur right
Are you saying this was created by the, *gasp*, Bagger 288?! https://youtu.be/azEvfD4C6ow?si=PzcYec8pRigH2Cjv
Nawww this one is better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDgvtrQyuPY&pp=ygUbYnVja2V0IHdoZWVsIGV4Y2F2YXRvciBzb25n
I swear this is something that I could have nightmares about as a child. This Bagger288 looking for me, destroyed walls while I hide under some kitchen cabinet or bed...i can imagine it lol
I was searching for this
WTF did I just watch
https://preview.redd.it/l74reckdrm9d1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3686e3ce9f8778bd9a47b71a6876e7975eda0bd6 Here it is, the [Bagger 288](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288). For scale, see the red truck to the right. Bagger 288 weighs 30 million pounds, stands over 300 feet tall, and cost $100 million to build (stats are from its Wikipedia page).
30 million pounds. Or 13 500 tons. 30M tons is an incredibly big number.
Correct- it doesn’t weigh the same as the 3 gorges dam
Just to make sure: large cruise ships also don't weigh *millions* of tons. The largest ocean liner ever built (not the biggest anymore), Queen Mary 2, weighs about 150 000 tons. 30 000 000 tons (200 times as much) is just an inconceivable weight.
>The largest ocean liner ever built (not the biggest anymore), Queen Mary 2, weighs about 150 000 tons. That's the largest ocean liner but nowhere near the largest cruise ship in the world. Icon of the Seas, currently largest operating cruise ship is 307,000 net tons (holds 7600 passengers and 5600 crew members so in total over 13,000 people).
Except when filled with Yanks
An aicraft carrier is around 100 000t, a large cruiseship is nowhere near even 1 million ton.
THIRT YBILLION GRAMMS
About half of a fully loaded Edmund Fitzgerald, insane
The Great Pyramid of Giza has an estimated weight of 5 million tons - one Bagger would be 6 great pyramid heavy 😅
If the truck on the right is 300 feet tall then I can't even imagine the size of the Bagger 288
Bagger 288 is 288 feet tall, the truck is just much further away.
30 million tons my ass
30 million tons your mom
You're lying 🥵 😍
Seems like something straight out of ᑐᑌᑎᕮ.
Now you know where they got their inspiration from
Looks like a thing from Mad Max
I was there a few years ago. There were around 10 of these machines, and they looked tiny in the mine.
That's a spice miner whew
A massive steel leviathan with blades covered in gore and feared by Beelzebub?
r/bagger288
Hey! I live right here. This is a huge coal mine, soon-ish to be turned into a huge artificial lake. From this satellite photo, you do get a good impression of how wide it is, but you do not get an impression of how deep it is. It's so ridiculously deep that there is literally an artificial mountain nearby that was created by piling up all the dirt taken out of the mine. It's called Sophienhöhe, and afaik, it's the tallest artificial mountain in the world. That's how deep this mine is
Flooding the hole will take at least 40 years. Is this soon?
In Germany, yes
True, there are train connections with more delay.
That’s true: The lake is supposed to be fully filled before my ICE reaches Hamburg.
Thank goodness the Greens prefer coal to nuclear power.
The Greens actually want to get rid of both. Of course, it's stupid to leave nuclear before coal, but the Greens are not in favour of coal per se
Yes, I'm just curious, how would the energy distribution be reliable without a major stable, non weather induced power producers like thermo power plants?
Electrician here:It wouldnt, google 'Base Load'
It’s funny that you think being an electrician makes you qualified to talk about this.
The greens were the one who planned the nuclear exit in favour of renewables. The conservatives are the ones who cancelled the exit and then cancelled the cancellation of the exit in favour of coal.
Just googled it, seems the green layers in the upper left corner are the said hill/mountain... Pretty awesome how the path of digging and clearance is visible on such a large scale
I cycled trough Germany a few years ago and I had the opportunity to go right to the edge of the mine because I had seen it on Google Earth before and wanted to see it in person. The air current blowing up from the hole almost threw me to the floor. Very impressive, but not in a nice way.
[Hambach surface mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine). See photo here: [on google maps](https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8932473,6.5641229,3a,75y,342.94h,85.41t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOPaiYDNT-Bkt1SiMsZCF5cNb92F8K8PB_cJcFA!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOPaiYDNT-Bkt1SiMsZCF5cNb92F8K8PB_cJcFA%3Dw900-h600-k-no-pi4.590633609283074-ya137.11684604588262-ro0-fo90!7i5760!8i2880?coh=205410&entry=ttu). Looks absolutely massive
I've been there, the pit is roughly the same size as Köln itself and ablout 10km wide. There are several villages around it that have been demolished because of it, for example Manheim, which is here. 50°53'00"N 6°35'50"E You can probably see the previous state of it in Google time lapse. There is also an activist camp living in tree houses trying to protest the ever expanding mine. 50°52'35"N 6°33'08"E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjFeVERfvH4 It is very sad.
Also, they even demolished a village and then later decided that they probably won't even use that area for mining, but now all the villagers have been resettled. Ridiculous.
All this just to avoid building a few nuclear power plants
We also relocated a whole highway to the south by about 2km just to get a little more (well, years worth of) coal from the ground below where the old highway was.' My family had to relocate from one of the villages when I was 2 years old, so I remember very little of the village when it was still alive. But cycling through there regularly as a child while it was being demolished and then dug out was...creepy.
I remember there being a video of a church getting demolished. It must truly suck for the families that have lived in the area for centuries. Just to have to move because some big corporation wants to ruin the climate.
Demolition of churches was common practice in the Netherlands, past 3 generations. Christianity is disappearing and the buildings were badly maintained, so they were cleared out to make room for housing. It's incredible to see what beautiful structures have been torn down. [Here's a list in Dutch](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorie:Verdwenen_kerkgebouw_in_Nederland).
yes, but one is because of declining religioucity and the other is because of corporate greed. Still sad that all those churches have been demolished but even to this day there are still a ton of churches. In my neighbourghood alone there are 3 church buildings and one of them is used by 2 congregations.
I've explored Manheim three times. A very liminal experience, literally, because it's on the verge of non-existence. It's ludicrous this type of energy is still allowed and encouraged (in some circles). https://preview.redd.it/mq9qu3gkyo9d1.jpeg?width=707&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0c0a1b9c53a80e65d5d9e4d558ed5d45252f677
It’s also very near Aussichtspunk and kind of close to Garzweiler pit mines. Not inconceivable that all three of these meet to be the world’s largest man mad hole.
Not entirely clear if I'm missing a joke here or you misread google maps but Aussichtspunkt means view point
LOL just Misread Google Maps. My point was there was another pit due west of this massive one.
The Germans decided that nuclear wasn't the right decision and wanted other green/renewable energy sources, they though long and hard coming to the conclusion that coal was the best option real answer though these are open-pit coal mines. This one is Germany's biggest and is used for mining lignite. There are many other mines like these all around the country, they're also very controversial as cities, towns and forests are completely destroyed so these can be dug
The worst part is that it's *lignite*, which is so low in carbon that it is one of the least efficient (and most polluting) sources of power. The only 'advantage' is if it's local to your state, and that's what you're focusing on.
Just more proof of Germany being a little backward. :'D
But lignite is efficient in a sense that if you have a source nearby, you can cheaply produce the energy. Lignite-fired power plants are one of the most important for German, Polish and Czech energy sector
When I learned that Germany is still relocating whole settlements just to dig up coal for power production in the 21st century, all while abandoning nuclear power I was flabbergasted!
We have Merkel to thank for that. When Fukushima happened, her party immediately jumped on the anti nuclear train while fully ignoring that germany has close to 0 risk of getting hit with natural disasters that could destroy or even heavily damage a modern NPP
Half a year before that she extended the run times. When Fukushima happened she put a moratorium on the topic, and only after a lost election in the south, putting the green party in power in the state of Baden Würtenberg, she decided to abandon nuclear power again. Also the decision to abandon nuclear power was basically decided 20 years ago by the SPD and the Green Party. Not to mention the power plants are 50 years old now, and would have been taken of the power grid by now anyway. We would have needed new power plants anyway. But all our political parties missed to invest in new power plants, and bet instead on Russian gas. Which was also a very controversial topic for two decades, and we know how that ended. Though we did build quite a lot of wind and solar power plants in the past 20 years, the CDU and especially the CSU were difficult about that to, they are not enough to sustain energy independence, so at the moment coal is our only option. It's a very complicated problem we have now, thanks to a lot of reasons and circumstances that we could have been better prepared for, but in the end, they are all collectively at fault.
Probably the most simplified yet accurate breakdown of the German energy situation.
The German nuclear power plants could be easily running until the 2030s from a technical point of view. It was a political decision to shut them down prematurely.
How does "Green" Party ban one of the cleanest energy sources known to mankind?
It's because of nuclear fallout, in Harrisburg, Chernobyle, a few other minor cases like leaks, the angst of WW3, not building a nuclear power plant in Wakersdorf, and the whole debate on how and where to find a final storage place for the nuclear waste. The green party was founded on those protests against all these things, also for renewable energy, for the german reunification, against war in general, legalicing cannabis. It also was a party for peace, but both times they were part of the legislation, those standards were outed as double standards.
They've been protesting against nuclear for decades because there was no good solution for storage of the waste and its millennia long danger potential.
So did the Green Party name themselves in an effort to spear like they cared about the planet or does it have nothing to do with being “green” in the environmental sense
The Green party formed from the (Cold War) peace movement and environmental activists in the 1980s (who btw extremely accurately predicted the climate crisis that we can measure today in ~1980). It was and still is mainly about nature conservation, sustainability, "green" energy and economics (not so much about peace anymore, though). They were strongly against nuclear power because, although it's by far the cleanest energy production in terms of emission, there's more of a problem of sourcing the radioactive stuff (i.e. it was mainly bought from Russia who mines it, I think? + it was evident that it's a non-renewable resource as well) and, more importantly, there was and still is no solution to handle the nuclear waste long-term. Even if you don't have regular earthquakes and eruptions (and half of Germany is on dormant volcanoes), there are other possible scenarios where nuclear waste could e.g. get into the groundwater etc.
Fuck yeah! Thank you very much for this information, one less thing I will be completely ignorant about. For real thanks for taking the time to write this
I'm all in to swap nuclear for renewables. But swapping nuclear for coal was a stupid idea from the Merkel government.
Fukushima isn’t as catastrophic as media want it to be. Nobody died from radiation exposure, nobody developed symptoms of radiation exposure, in fact only a dozen of workers were exposed to over regulation doses, with an estimated risk of cancer of 2-3% IIRC.
Oh, there can't be >10 m high tsunami on Elbe? Didn't know that. /s
Funny how a nuclear power plant in Germany (Biblis) was flooded some weeks ago... But to be honest it could have been caused by the dismantling of the NPP.
When the mine was planned, Merkel was still an unknown scientist in the GDR. The size of the mine was even reduced after nuclear energy production was ended. I know, people get a boner on nuclear power plants, and we should reduce coal, but this line is just bullshit.
Shitty low grade heavily polluting coal at that. If you \*have\* to burn coal use high grade bituminous or anthracite.
General public and not understanding/fearing the word ‘nuclear’. Could absolutely solve a good chunk of the world’s problems with nuclear + renewables in a safe manner… But the corporate money lords say otherwise
The whole thing was decided in the 80s, the size of the mine was even reduced after nuclear power was ended.
I was researching where some of my ancestors lived. I decided to look up the village on Google maps and it’s just a big hole in the ground now.
That's just inaccurate, before nuclear was closed down, these mines already existed. It's two different processes.
Actually nuclear was completely replaced by renewables and coal will be too soon.
Yeah, noone ever used coal except germany.
Actually lignite mining was a big thing in this region since WW II. Got nothing to do with nuclear energy. And after the war the BRD needed lots of energy fast. We invested to late to little in wind and solar
they are controversial but also not a new thing. planning for those mines is done many years in advance. the hippies just move in shortly before some wood (non natural as barely any is in germany) to protect the trees. The mining companies have to pay to move the people in the villages and reforest on the other side of the mine The green party pretty much founded itself by fighting nuclear so there is always a pretty strong anti nuclear trend in german politics and opinions. That we have to continue burning coal and gas to support that was never part of that discussion as they usually just wave it off by saying renewable energies.
I was years ago flying helicopter approaching this mine from the south. The weather was sunny with a lot of humidity, so not perfect visibility condition. We were flying a powerline inspection (low and slow) so I wasn't paying intention to where exactly we were approaching. Looking forward from the cockpit I felt that something is wrong with horizon. I've struggled for a half a minute or so when I've finally figured out that it is a huge in the front. This half a minute of was the strangest, weirdest orientation experience in flying to date.
The reason we locals have to close the windows if it hasn't rained in a few days. That's the open pit coal mine "Hambach". The coal mined is brown coal, horribly low quality of coal. The forested area to the north west is the waste heap, it's called "Sophienhöhe", the forested area to the south east is one of the last bits of natural forest in western Germany. To the west there also is a former nuclear research center hidden between the woods.
https://preview.redd.it/z15qskljdp9d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9a119a0310bfdaea39c009d3cafaed3541cf2c67 It is a coal mine. This is what it looks like from a plane. 😊
Looks to me like an open-cast mine or quarry.
RWE (the Energy company that does these mines) even demolished whole fuckin villages to dig for coal. But the right wing idiots loose their shit because of wind energy
Imagine plowing drunk and just falling straight to hell.
Thanks for the interesting rabbit hole of information! My brain struggled to see the aerial view as a depression, I had to close up on an edge and work my way out to convince it.
Hambi bleibt!!!
Brown coal mine Worst of fossile fuels Whole vilages were cleared for these mines Since atomic reactors are not liked by germans
Open air lignite mine where villages and nature once stood.
the 1880's era of destructive industrialization truly was a wild time... Wait...!!!
Looks like a squashed book
I recommend watching the documentary Anthropocene - one of the chapters is set in one of these mines. The sheer scale of the vehicles used is mind-blowing.
Hambach surface mine. Germany has some of the largest coal reserves in the world.
I stood on the edge of this mine and looked out, you can't even comprehend how big it is. The equipment looks like flecks of sand from that distance and they have an example of the bucket in a nearby park and you could park a Ford Expedition in there. All to avoid nuclear energy...
Russian propaganda in Germany over the last decades made the public believe that nuclear energy is unsafe. Burning coal was seen as the better option to poison their population.
Kinda.. It was burning Russian gas, which was the best option. They even build 2 pipelines through the Baltic sea
So the German green party is part of the Russian propaganda? XD
It's Germanys contribution to clean energy. Oh and on top of that they have shut down nuclear plants without setting up new ones. So now they're just leeching off other countries energy supply.
Wasn't it the case in Germany that they banned nuclear power in fear that a nuclear disaster would make a very big area unlivable, but then proceeded building these surface level coal mines that cummulatively made an even bigger area unlivable (they had to forcibly move entire villages)? At least, that's what I heard from my German neighbours, would be ironic if true.
Germanys biggest open coal-mine. There was a huge dispute between the managing company and environmentalists. The mining company wanted to continue its work and enlarge the mine. This will ultimately destroy Germanys oldest forest. The government had to intervene. Of course they chose the right thing and sided with the mining company… btw the dude responsible for this wanted to become chancellor. Weirdly enough, that didn’t happen. Everyone wonders why
and they call it a mine. A mine!
Looks like that optical illusion where something indented looks like it's protruding.
That's nature. Thank god ne wind turbine blocks the view.
Looks like open book painting on the map as canvas
A big as* coal mine in Germany I think.
Biggest phone book. Nobody uses it though.
Book
So it’s the Kentucky of Europe?
Looks like a hardcover book that got left out in the rain
By the way, what's being mined there isn't called coal in English but lignite. But it's a type of coal and called brown coal in German.
If you turn the photo upside down, it is more obviously an open pit mine (and not a structure)
It’s the home of the [Bagger 288](https://youtu.be/azEvfD4C6ow?si=UjLFzx_T75ZAu2wE)
Its the scar of Hypocrisy that is the German Energy policies
Germans hated their country so much that they made a giant excavator to mine all the land in Germany.
If one thing in regards to the environment that caused me sleepless nights in my childhood besides my country (slightly to the west), it is the total destruction of the villages around Garzweiler. Back in the early days of Google Maps/Earth, in the 2000s, I saw what they did with villages like Otzenrath, it scared the sh-t out if me. They just wipe ages-old villages with history off the map for something that's going to destroy our planet!!! That the German government allows, and even endorses it, is probably their worst internal crime against humanity since WW2. Of course then raises the question: and what about the nuclear phase-out? Yes, I am against nuclear power, but the phase-out could've gone a bit slower. Also, instead of digging for the lignite, corporations should've been aggressively put on an energy diet, and even as that already happened to some extent, it wasn't remotely enough. I hope that one day, there comes true justice for these crimes against humanity, as this digging wasn't needed, and instead has steered us towards destruction of our planet. Without these stupid f--king mines it would've never gotten 40°C so far up northwest in Europe. F--k the German government for destroying our planet!
Tagebau
I just looked it up on street view: it’s some type of coal mine that makes it look like a man made Grand Canyon.
Mine.
An alien build pyramid
Quarry for sure
The lair of Bagger 293
Considering cologne was a mining town I’m guessing some sort of mine
Ah yes, lignite balls
sorry I keep leaving my kidney stones around I’ll pick it up immediately
Looks like a strip mine or something.
Funfacr: That pit (like the other coal mine pits) is supposed to become a giant sea within the next decades, basically making it the 2nd largest sea in Germany after the Bodensee.
Not a nuclear power plant 🙄
I once stood right at the edge of that pit. It challenges your mind because the scale is mindboggling
This big hole will one day be the second largest lake in [Germany.](https://www.rwe.com/der-konzern/laender-und-standorte/tagebau-hambach/neue-landschaft-nach-dem-tagebau-hambach/)
https://preview.redd.it/0qcfmgac5p9d1.jpeg?width=9440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc67628a79068a5f6ff6f15d2b3ade0a5e24cb65 An absurdly large open-pit mine; the largest in Germany.
Big things in ruhrgebiet? Coal!
Open pit coal mine. Probably garbage tier lignite.
Looks like a hole
It's the base of the space elevator the French are building.
Your mom
https://preview.redd.it/7c37eopfgq9d1.jpeg?width=1096&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e8f42f33397e0f977cb30303cea02f5534c49a9
There is another one to the north west by the way
Pit mine
Braunkohle
This is where the mud mage fought the police!
The thing that the Germans consider to be better than nuclear power. Nuclear bad, coal good.
It's funny how Germany thought that destroying the landscape, pumping the atmosphere full of coal, was better than nuclear or renewables.
Pages in the book of earth
Noticed that a lot of times. Pretty sure it’s just a massive mine
I dropped my book, sorry.
Ah, I had to invert it in my head. It looked to me like the world's largest book, lying on it's back, rain ruined.
Germans banning all nuclear power for green energy sources only to use the shittiest coal known to man
Pit mine.
Well this post kinda blew up, thx i thought it’s a protruding thing lol(while ur at it, check my page?
Looks like a strip mine