11 million tons a year
(Note: I've moved this one back to the top of the heap because of one additional bit of information which I wasn't aware of when it was originally posted, or when I reposted it three months ago. The new info is this little statement from the Wikipedia entry about Wyoming's Powder River Basin.)
The mines in the Powder River Basin typically have less than 20 years of life remaining.
Twenty years! Then what??? Anyway, end of insert and update; back to the original caption ...
Yeah, that's right -- 11 million tons of coal a year. I took this photo a few years ago but thought it worth resurfacing, if only as a reminder. It's a reminder of what it takes to feed our insatiable appetite for electric power, and all the conveniences which that energy source provides.
As I noted when the pic was taken (2007), Plant Scherer, located south of Atlanta GA, burns the amount of coal carried by nearly 1,300 coal trains a year -- which works out to 2,000 miles of coal cars, or as writer John McPhee put it, "twelve million tons of the bedrock of Wyoming." The quote is from McPhee's wonderful two-part series of articles in the New Yorker. The trains he wrote about pass through Huntsville -- day and night -- on their way to Plant Scherer. And that's where this one was headed.
11 million tons a year
(Note: I've moved this one back to the top of the heap because of one additional bit of information which I wasn't aware of when it was originally posted, or when I reposted it three months ago. The new info is this little statement from the Wikipedia entry about Wyoming's Powder River Basin.)
The mines in the Powder River Basin typically have less than 20 years of life remaining.
Twenty years! Then what??? Anyway, end of insert and update; back to the original caption ...
Yeah, that's right -- 11 million tons of coal a year. I took this photo a few years ago but thought it worth resurfacing, if only as a reminder. It's a reminder of what it takes to feed our insatiable appetite for electric power, and all the conveniences which that energy source provides.
As I noted when the pic was taken (2007), Plant Scherer, located south of Atlanta GA, burns the amount of coal carried by nearly 1,300 coal trains a year -- which works out to 2,000 miles of coal cars, or as writer John McPhee put it, "twelve million tons of the bedrock of Wyoming." The quote is from McPhee's wonderful two-part series of articles in the New Yorker. The trains he wrote about pass through Huntsville -- day and night -- on their way to Plant Scherer. And that's where this one was headed.