Ecologists are horrified at the destructive nature of the practice known as mountain top removal mining, which involves the destruction of the summit ridge of a mountain, in order to extract raw materials from the rocks, often with devastating consequences for the natural beauty of the area concerned.

It is normal practice for coal seams in their entirety to be removed from mountain tops, hills or ridges by simply removing all of the rock above them, and though, theoretically, the removed rock is repositioned to approximate the original feature shape, the reality of this mining method is anything but eco-friendly.

Not only is the clear cutting of native hardwood forests in these areas an affront to all environmentalists, but the subsequent use of dynamite to destroy hundreds of feet of mountaintop, followed by waste dumping in nearby valleys  makes the blood of protesters boil, and rightly so.

Families and communities close to such mining sites have not only the environmental devastation to bear witness to, but must also put up with continual noise pollution from blasting as close as 300 feet from their homes, often going on 24-7.

On the US coalfields of Appalachia at this moment one of the worst environmental and human rights catastrophes in US history is ongoing, whole communities driven from homes and businesses by mountaintop removal coal mining causing flooding and landslides along with the din of the blasting.

A growing body of evidence is demonstrating the awful truth ot this type of shows mining destroying Appalachian forests, as well as and dangerously polluting vital headwaters, because spoilage laden with toxic mining by-products gets dumped in so-called valley fills.

Recent studies are damning, in that they show all too graphically how serious the environmental impacts are of mining this way. Lost natural habitats and bio-diversity which can neither be reversed or repaired, along with unseen adverse human health threats..

Even if the human race desperately needs man resources obtained in this way, the price in environmental terms is far too high for any of us to truly find acceptable. Those with a real concern for nature, wildlife and the future of the planet must work together to put a stop these mountaintop mining disaster before we take it that one step too far, if indeed we have not already done so.

This article is not about facts, so I apologise if someone has come here looking for data, facts and figures to support arguments, or even an intelligent outline of what has happened in New Zealand and how the people are coping. There plenty of other places online you can find the information you may be looking for. Here I am simply writing from my heart, pouring out my feelings on what my small country, often referred to as Paradise down under, is going through. Surely we have suffered enough for now.

It all started with the Pike River Coal Mining disaster last year, where 29 lives were needlessly lost. The court hearing is currently in progression, bringing out a lot of information that hurts to hear. A whole community suffered from this event and will do for a long time yet. It is hard to accept that so many lives were lost because of possible money saving measures.

Then came the Christchurch earthquakes, the first in September 2010. The next in February this year was of a lesser magnitude but created more damage. The earthquakes continue, the poor people of Christchurch and Canterbury are yet to go to sleep at night feeling their city has stopped rocking and rolling. The major part of a city has been flattened, lives lost, jobs no longer existing for many and still many years to come of cleaning up and rebuilding ahead. Many have moved away from the rocky Canterbury region, not able to cope with the constant quakes and after shocks. Others have bravely chosen to stay on, where they feel they belong, to be part of the rebuilding of a magnificent city.

Now one of our beautiful coastlines is being destroyed by what has been called New Zealand’s worst environmental disaster. Just over a week ago the container ship Rena ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef just offshore from Tauranga, one of New Zealand’s most beautiful beach resorts in the Bay of Plenty. Oil is spilling into the ocean and washing up on the beaches and locals have joined the fight to save birds and other wildlife, as well as their beaches.

This has happened as New Zealand looks forward to summer. Not only is the oil spill an environmental disaster, but will also be a financial disaster for many living in this part of the country. This is the third event having major impact on much of New Zealand in the last twelve months.

One wonders how much destruction and pain the people of a small country can suffer. I know there are other countries in the world where ongoing suffering through wars, political regimes, weather extremes and other events impose even more hardship on people than I have just written of. My heart also goes out to the people in those countries.

For now, I’m sure the people of New Zealand would like some time to mourn, clean up, and to rebuild their lives and their country. New Zealanders are a hardy breed. So many people are doing wonderful things here for fellow New Zealanders. A true community spirit has united people throughout the country. But, wouldn’t it be nice to have a rest from disasters for a while.

New Zealand Earthquake

Just after the 7.1 scale earthquake, on the Richter scale, New Zealand is hit with another earthquake and this time at one their CDB Christchurch.  Christchurch, as seen on the map, is located in the South Island of New Zealand along the eastern coast. This earthquake occurred on 12:51 pm local time on the 22nd of February Local time just 5 kilometres deep and ten kilometres south of Christchurch with a 6.3 on the Richter scale. Although the new earthquake is New Zealand has been less powerful in terms of the Richet scale, unlike the other earthquake in September which hit suburban areas this one hit a CBD.

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This catastrophic earthquake has caused the death of 1455 people and over 200 people are still missing. The cause of this earthquake had been the clash of the Indo-Australian and Pacific plate which was another reason for the huge amount of damage is that most of the buildings destroyed were older than fifty years and they were not earthquake proof. Also the newly discovered fault line near Christchurch which caused the earthquake was unknown. A lot of New Zealand’s seismologists say that the newly discovered fault line was cleverly hidden and could not have been discovered without extensive research.

The many consecutive events of the New Zealand and Australian natural disasters have caused an increase in the cost of living.

“It expected a $NZ3.5 million after-tax hit.” Said Tower managing director Rob Flanagan.

According to Miyamoto International the overall loss of the earthquake and its aftershock will be at least $12 billion dollars.

There is no doubt that the cost of living will go up but by how much is still a question because many of the buildings destroyed were partially destroyed by the first earthquake.

Mr. Higginbotham, structural engineer, says that the city will take five years to rebuild and that one in ten buildings was destroyed and the other damaged buildings could be re-built probably.

After the earthquake of September which had a death toll of zero, the tourism in New Zealand was considerably low. Now after the second earthquake in five months it will take a miracle for New Zealand’s economy to pick up. Tourism will most likeably be, as said by businessweek.com, hammered and since the country was on the verge of recession it will take a long time for New Zealand to recover. It seems almost unbelievable that on the morning of the earthquake it had seemed like a good day for New Zealand’s economy as the wages of milk and dairy product farmers went up by over fifty percent.

The effect on natural environment has been obvious. Liquefaction, where very wet solids start to act like liquids, has occurred across the widespread soil. Many cliff faces have fallen off from the violent shakings and pollution has increased because of all the debris and waste.

Information on death toll and people missing is from 26th of February

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The many consecutive events of the New Zealand and Australian natural disasters have caused an increase in the cost of living.

“It expected a $NZ3.5 million after-tax hit.” Said Tower managing director Rob Flanagan.

According to Minamoto International the overall loss of the earthquake and its aftershock will be at least $12 billion dollars.

There is no doubt that the cost of living will go up but by how much is still a question because many of the buildings destroyed were partially destroyed by the first earthquake.

Mr. Higginbotham, structural engineer, says that the city will take five years to rebuild and that one in ten buildings was destroyed and the other damaged buildings could be re-built probably.

After the earthquake of September which had a death toll of zero, the tourism in New Zealand was considerably low. Now after the second earthquake in five months it will take a miracle for New Zealand’s economy to pick up. Tourism will most like-ably be, as said by businessweek.com, hammered and since the country was on the verge of recession it will take a long time for New Zealand to recover. It seems almost unbelievable that on the morning of the earthquake it had seemed like a good day for New Zealand’s economy as the wages of milk and dairy product farmers went up by over fifty percent.

The effect on natural environment has been obvious. Liquefaction, where very wet solids start to act like liquids, has occurred across the widespread soil. Many cliff faces have fallen off from the violent shakings and pollution has increased because of all the debris and waste.

Information on death toll and people missing is from 26th of February

By Arjun

It was the funniest thing you can imagine, reading that the name of the ill-fated White Star liner Titanic should prove once and for all that lightning can strike twice, when Titanic II, a cabin cruiser owned by Mark Williamson, sank on the maiden voyage!

The thing was that, though the craft was new to him, the16ft boat was actually second-hand, and sported a six-inch square repair patch on the fiber-glass hull, which was obviously not up to much as a seal, because, after a successful fishing outing in Lyme bay, on re-entering the harbor, the patch gave way.

Having only recently purchased and collected the boat, Mark, in his forties, had towed it from home in Birmingham to Lyme Bay in Dorset, on the south coast, to take it out on a maiden voyage. Unfortunately for him, the prophetic name was lived up to, and he was left treading water as the little vessel rapidly began filling up with seawater, and sinking stern first

The local harbor master was obliged to rescue him from the distressed vessel, which did not actually sink completely, as an air-pocket inside the front of the hull prevented it from going down. People on holiday in the place could only look on as Mark tried pumping the water out but had to abandon ship because it was coming in too fast/

The jibes he got about nobody spotting the iceberg were all taken in good spirit, as were the comic comments about going down with the Titanic, which was later towed out of West Bay harbour. The boat had been worth about £1,000, but none of Mark’s efforts were of any use in saving it.

Dozens of tourists witnessed the sinking, Mark desperately holding on to the wheel, and pumping madly as the back of the boat sank. He ended up hanging on to the nose of the stricken craft, as the tide pushed it towards the quay. A rope was thrown to Mark, and the boat tied up, before the harbor master secured it on the slipway.

It is hardly a source of amusement to poor Mark that his new toy had such a short life-span, but then what else could he have expected, when it bore such an unwelcome name? Perhaps he should have thought twice, the first time he caught sight of Titanic II, because the previous owner had certainly seen him coming.

Three rivers were the main culprits for the series of flooding:  The Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Huai River.

The Yellow river inundated an approximate 20,000,000 acres between July and November 1931.  An estimate of 1 to 2 million people were killed in the flood.

The Yangtze river casualty reached 145,000.  The Yangtze, along with the Huai River flood washed away dikes near Gaoyou Lake and watermark reached at a level exceeding 53ft or 16m above normal.

2.  The 1887 Yellow River flood claimed an estimated of 900,000 lives.   Because of the rising riverbed and heavy rain, the dikes were overcomed easily, and water spread quickly, covering an estimated 50,000 square miles throughout Northern China.  Following the flood, about 2million were left homeless and lacking in basic essentials.  The pandemic after the flood claimed more lives as well.

3.  During the Ming Dynasty, in the year 1556, the Shaanxi earthquate or Jiajing earthquake rocked various provinces in China.  This earthquake is considered the deadliest one on record, destroying an 840-kilometre (520 miles) wide area and ending the lives of approximately 830,000.  Aftershocks continued several times a month following the quake for about half a year.

It is said that the earthquake broke 40 of the 114 Kaicheng Stone Classics in the Forest of Stone Steles and reduced the height of the Small Wild Goose  Pagoda by about 1.6 meters.

4.  On November 12, 1970, “The Bhola Cyclone”, a devastating tropical cyclone, struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the West Bengal of India, claiming the lives of up to 500,000 people, destroying crops and wiping off villages throughout the region.

It was the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, with an equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane.  The recorded winds of this cyclone at its peak was at 185 km/h or 115mph.

5.  The Coringa cyclone in 1839 delivered massive winds and a 40-ft storm surge on November 25 in the small village of Coringa, India.  The cyclone destroyed 20,000 vessels and killed an estimated 300,000.

6. In May of the year 526, a major earthquake killing approximately 250,000 people occurred in Syria and Antioch, Byzantine Empire (now Turkey).  Fires followed after the quake which destroyed most of the buildings left standing.  Base on the Modified Mercalli Scale, the quake measured VIII for Antioch and VII for Daphne and Seleucia Pieria.  An uplift of 0.7-0.8m has been estimated at the Port in Seleucia Pieria leaving it unusable.

7.  The Tangshan Earthquake (also knowned as the Great Tangshan Earthquake) strikes near Tangshan in Hebei, China on July 28, 1976.  Death toll initially reported was 655,000 but was changed to be around 255,000 approximate.  The Chinese government claimed the intensity of the quake at 7.8 on Richter scale, but other sources listed it at 8.2.  An aftershock of a 7.8 magnitude came 16 hours later, increasing the death toll.

8.  On December 16, 1920, in Haiyuan County, Ningxia Province of China, an earthquake at 7.8 magnitude hit.  Also called the 1920 Gansu earthquake or the 1920 Haiyuan Earthquake, this calamity killed over 73,000 people in Haiyuan and more than 30,000 people in Guyuan county.  It also buried the village of Sujiahe in Xiji County and was felt from the Yellow Sea to Qinghai Province and from Nei Mongol to central Sichuan Province.  Total casualty according to the United States Geological Survey reports 200,000.

9. A day after Christmas in 2004, an undersea megathrust earthquake strikes the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. This is named as the 2004 Indican ocean earthquake which caused devastating tsunamis along the coasts bordering the Indian ocean, killing over 230,000 people in fourteen countries, Indonesia being the hardest hit country, followed by Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

The quake registered a magnitude between 9.1 and 9.3 making it the third largest earthquake recorded on a seismograph.  It also has the longest duration of faulting, between 8.3 and 10 minutes.

10.  The 2010 Haiti earthquake took an estimated of 222,000 lives, injured about 300,000 people and left an approximate million people homeless.  The epicentre was near the town of Leogane, about 25km west of Port-au-Prince. 

Major damage in Port-au-Prince and Jacmel were reported.  Notable landmark buildings like the Presidential Palace, the National Assembly and the Port-au prince Cathedral were also severely damaged.

Ozone Depletion
The ‘Ozone hole’ in the Earth’s stratosphere, though diagnosed in the year 1970, tops the list of environmental problems of 2011. The polar regions have been affected much more than the other parts of the world. Destruction of ozone takes place by halogen compounds that are present to a large extent in chlorofluorocarbon (CFCs) compounds, halons and freons. These are notorious chemicals that cause gradual depletion of ozone layer. The ozone layer protects the earth from damaging ultraviolet rays in the range of 280 – 315 nm. UV light of this wavelength causes skin cancer like melanoma, basal and squamous cell carcinomas, cortical cataracts and overproduction of vitamin D.

Nuclear Catastrophe
The recent earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan has created considerable damage to nuclear reactors. Release of nuclear radiation had humongous effect on lives of human beings as well as marine species. Thus, protecting the population from dangerous consequences of radiation poisoning has become a serious environmental issue in the year 2011. Natural disasters causing nuclear catastrophes could be fatal to living beings as radiation causes cancer. The catastrophe in Japan is one such recent issue that has been included under the list of current environment issues.

Global Warming
Increase in temperature of the Earth is a consequence of global warming. This problem has been currently analyzed deeply and several measures have been implemented throughout the world to control elevation of atmospheric carbon dioxide. We are all aware of the fact that ice from polar regions has substantially melted due to rise of temperature. The temperature of Earth has been speculated to increase further in the near future if the measures are not strictly followed. Loss of biodiversity is also associated with global warming and extinction of species that are not capable of surviving under high temperature is inevitable. Planting more and more trees is a great solution for controlling global warming.

Apart from these, loss of natural resources, soil erosion, and destruction of coral reefs have also become an environmental issue. Now that you are aware of the environmental problems of 2011, you can make small efforts to protect our planet Earth. We should look into these problems individually and follow the rules given forth by the environmentalists to prevent further damage.

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    Did anyone notice how calm and polite the Japanese people were as they stood in line waiting for much needed food and water? Those people had just lost everything, including loved ones. Yet, there they were, patiently waiting with kindness and love for one another. What about America? Would we be as patient and kind? No, I don’t think so. You see, The United States of America has become a lazy, give me country. I’m sorry if I offend anyone with my words, but I am to speak the truth. The truth is the way to prepare for such an emergency if ever one comes this way. I pray that nothing as astronomical as the Japan earthquake ever comes this way, but we, as a nation, must prepare for what may come. The people in this country have become so dependent upon government handouts and the easy way of life our independence has been lost. Sure, most of us have  jobs, bills that get paid, a home, food to eat and clothes to wear. But that does not mean we are independent. Our households are full of electronics that we have come to depend upon. We watch television 24-7 and listen to propaganda, letting it control our minds. We come home from work and plop down in front of the television, at the same time eating our take out food that we did not have time to make for ourselves. Lazy or just plain tired? Maybe a bit of both.

    Many people now feel that they need to have the biggest house and the most expensive cars. The reason for this is the mind control and propaganda. Everything has to be the best, and in order to have the best you must make a hefty salary. But what of those that do not or can not afford to live the life of the so-called average American? Well, now, I guess those poor folks will have to go to their local food stamp office and receive government help. Or, they can rob those that do have it all. Yes, my friends, that is what the future holds for this country. If, and I say if, an anomaly were to happen in the U.S. as it did in Japan, do you really think that the average person will be so polite and kind? Or do you think you will be threatened and/or robbed? The threat already exists and this without a physical disaster. This country is full of mental disasters. I say this to help you open your eyes to the threat that is all around us. You must prepare, prepare, prepare. I can’t say this enough. My love for my fellow man goes beyond anything I have ever imagined. I have children and family that I want to be safe. I’m sure that you do, too.

    Are you awake yet? I am not trying to spread fear or paranoia, I just want to open the eyes of those that have been sleeping through this life. I am one person, I can not change the world or even make it a better place for anyone except myself and my family. But with the help of my  Earthly brothers and sisters, together we can make a difference. The earth and the universe are sending us messages each day. It is our job to pay attention and to be aware. I send each of you reading this love and light. My apologies for such harsh words, but would you have listened to stardust and faerie giggles?

Image by Jami Dwyer via Flickr