Monday, April 22, 2013

Opposing mountain top removal


Then you have the people who oppose mountain top removal. They have points when telling about the effects of mountain top removal. With mountian top removal the drepee would contaminate the drinking water, forceful blasting, increases flooding and unsafe  sludge and slurry impoundments. The areas where mountain top removal occur experience high attrition rates turning  communties into ghost towns. The created tensions in communities, turning neighbor against neighbor. Lets not forget the coal slurry which is a byproduct of washing and processing coal with water and chemicals. It is highly toxic and can leach into groundwater supplies. There is sixty different chemicals are used to wash coal, not to mention the heavy metals naturally present in the coal.
Then comes blasting that is required to removal the mountiantop . It is often a annoying part of events to residential dwelings all the time. It causes the air to  be cover in coal dust and some gets destoryed buildings like houses and bridges . Then comes the most rist of Sludge impoundments that is filled with coal sludge throw the empty valley and protect by one big bridge to keep it away from the residents homes, however if the bridge would have break the entire communties can be wiped out in a matter of minutes - buried underneath a wave of toxic sludge. Making the reasong of why so many people wanting to stop the coal mining industry to digging and blasting around their homes .
Hyper link: Http://appvoices.org/end-mountiantop-removal/community/

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Favouring Mountaintop removal


Here are the favouring of mountain top removal would have to say. With their high pride and understanding the market value of collecting the coal many of them makes a point the mountain top removal is more efficient and safer than underground mining. This also brings them to have the knowledge of the free market economics that would be available. This adds a question of "What if someone can't afford the basic necessities ?" as a response to a person who favours would say that the goal of making available basic necessities in inextricably tied to the free market and taking advantage of our nature-given resources. As for the dramatic changes of the ecosystem, favourers would stick their noses up in the air and say that to adapt to changing environments all the time and when compared to the actual benefits of this form of mining, the impacts are worth taking . Moreover, in a free market setting, most , if not all, externalities created by these disturbances in the local ecosystem could be handled through litigation and the court system.

Favourers puts emphasis that a coal company would only invest in a mining venture if both the expected marginal benefits of doing so exceeded the expected the expected marginal costs  of any other potential mining operation. Do they actually know that ? Well of course because of the opportunity cost. Any wise entrepreneur weighs the expected profits for any investment against all other opportunities and will choose the most profitable . Ending with their decussion.
Hyper link: Http://www.thedaonline.com/

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

formations of coal

Coal haves different formations. The formations are peat, ligniten bituminous, anthracite, and coke.
Coal is forn=med from the remains of swamp plant from 300-400 million years ago which dead plants and animals become buried in the swamp. Since there was no oxygen the plants didn't rot which formed a peat.

Peat is a slowly decaying plant matter found in bogs moors and muskegs.  Acidic and anaerobic conditions prevent it completely decaying. In most rural aera people of the rural Europe use peat as a heat souce which very low value compared to coal.
 Lignite which sometimes called "brown coal" are found in Alaska and some Western stateshaves low carbon concentration and low heat value.
Bituminous is the most common form of coal. The carbon value is highly variable and heat value ranges from 10,000-15,000 BTU/lb.
 
 
Anthracite is the results from the netamorphosis of bituminous coal. It is the highest carbon content and heat value. Most anthracite comes from Northeastern Pennsylvania. It haves a low smoke and high heat values makes anthracite popular for home heating in the northeastern U.S.
 
Finally coke, coke it when bituminous coal is heated to 2000 in the absence of oxygen. Water tart gas and other volatiles are driven off to leave a high carbon fuel. The by-products of coking are collected for energy production. Cike is primarily used as a heat source in the steel industry.
 

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Different types of mining

Thoughout our history i society develop from living to caves to developing transportation,  from gardening to coal mining. We start five methods of underground mining, so we can use for energy source for the time. Those methods are :
Drift mining & Shaft Mining



Room & pillar mining and continous mining and longwall ming.



Room & pillar mining: is nearly half the coal is left behind to support the mine roof. The pillars can "squeeze" putting pressure on adjacent pillars leading to roof collapse.

Continuous Mining: Is a machines use that can be used with drift or room & pillar mines. One miner can operate it to a rotating steel drum with tungsten carbide teeth to mine 5 tons of coal per minute
Shaft Minging: Is a common method accessing a coal seam in which elevators provide access to mines.
Continuous mining machines are paired with conveyor systems to transport the coal from the mine as it is mined


Longwall mining: (a.k.a retreat mining) is highly effecient. When coal is removed, the machine retreats allowing the roof to fall behind it. It extract much more of the coal than room & pillars mines

Excel conclusion graph



Monday, February 4, 2013

Climate Change

Predict what the effects of aerosols may have on climate change


Dramamtic changes on climates has been developed to noticeable changes to the world. Temperatures are warm in the winter and the summer becomes more hotter than it is. Creating more heat waves thoughout the summer. Many scienctist believe that aerosols are the reason why the climate temperatures are higher while others believe it is not, but what causing the climate temperatures to change are the greenhouse gases. To explain which one is causing the climate change, a person must know what each one does and their effects.

One must know that one of the effects of most of the change is because of the urban heat island effect. The urban heat island effect is when temperatures are a few degrees higher in cities than they are in their  surrounding rural areas. Studies from Environmental Protection Agency found that in U.S. cities the temperatures are 10 degrees fahrenheit higher making that a few degrees can make  a huge difference. Since temperatures are 10 degrees higher the demand for air conditioning rose in dramatic percentages of 95% higher in the summer time which cause higher energy bills. The energy of power plants being transfered  to cities  increases the greenhouses gases.  The effect of urban heat island effect concerns when objects can absorb  and reflect light. It depends on the color of an object of what kind of light it reflects such as a green object reflects a green light and absorbs  all the visible colors of light. The color of the green object will reflect the green wavelength of color back to our eyes.As for darker colored objects become excellent absorbers of light. They absorb  almost all the light. When objests absorb light it converts that light to thermal energy and emits  back out as heat. Making that darker colored objects that absorb more light produce more heat. As for wearing a white t-shirt on the other hand, will help reflect the sunlight and keep a person or an object cooler.

With that in mind, many scientist develop ways to reduce the urban heat island effect. One of the ways is changing to roof coloring and also adding grass and plants on the roofs. The roof coloring would be known as white roofing. The experiment of white roofing  was develop in New York City when they found out the results that with the white covering on most buildings  measured at 42 degress Fahrenheit cooler that the traditional black roof. Remarkable it lowered most of the temperature of New York. The testing of white roofing was promoted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his efforts  to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emmissons by 30% in 2030.  Proving that whte roofing surface reduce peak rooftop temperature to a typical black roof by 43 degrees fahrenheit.

Now about aerosols, aerosols are tiny particles that suspended in the air. They originate from volcanos, dust, storms, forest, grassland fires, living vegetation and sea spray. Also humans play a role of creating aerosols also by burning fossil fuels  and tge alteration of natural surface cover.  10% is completely made by humans in the most concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, especially downwind industrial sites, slash and burn agricultral regions and overgrazed grasslands. Aeroslos become very important to our understanding of what they do.  Many scientist that care about aerosols and disagree about the warming about the climate is aerosols, would know that aerosols tend to cause cooling of the Earth's surface immediatelybelow them than warming it. Most aerosols reflect the sunlight back into spac. They have what is called a direct cooling effect by reducing  the amount of solar radiation that reaches the surface. Its like a matheical equation compostion of aerosols particles leads to refective properties of the underlying surface. IT is believed  that aerosols are "indirect" effect on the climate by changing properities of clouds. However it is ver difficult to form clouds without small aerosol particles acting as "seeds" to stat the formation of clouds droplets. The contretation increases with in the cloud , the water in the cloud  gets spread over many  more particles, each of which is correspondingly smaller. Smaller particles fall more slowly in the atmosphere  and decrease the amout pf rainfall. With smaller droplets it will reflect more sunlight and since clouds last longer. because it takes more time for small drops tp coalesce into drops that are large enough to fall to the ground. Both effects increase the amount of sunlight that is reflected to space without reaching the surface/

So forth, the arugment will continue in if aerosols warm the Earth, but what can you do, they are scientist, they know everything right .

Cite:
McGrath, Jane. "What Is the Urban Heat Island Effect?" HowStuffWorks. DiscoveryCompany, n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2013.

"Reducing the Urban Heat Island Effect: Bright Is the New Black as New York Roofs Go Cool." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 07 Mar. 2012. Web. 04 Feb. 2013.

Hardin, Mary. Kahn Ralph. "Aerosols &Climate Change"

Monday, October 15, 2012

Aerosols


Along with the Ozones there are the mother nature mixture of what makes the Earth as it is. Aerosols are a minute particles suspended in the atmosphere. Its source is a mixer of sea salt, primary particulate inorganic emissions ( like gas, yucky stuff that humans made), Primary particulat organic emissions (its from the Earth ) and water vapo. It is sort of like a mist that hangs above a city , but it doesn't have the same effect as the ozones.

It doesn't effect Earth's climate in a bad way. Instead Aerosols cooldown the  Earth than warming the atmosphere as like ozones does. Making like effect or destory Earth's people resources and other items not get destoryed.