Most impressive to me is that you can spot the hole even if you zoom out satellite maps to view of near full europe. It is the white dot south-west of my yellow marker location.



Luckily, tmo has a non politics policy making it easy to say i am undecided on the whole matter.
Still your question about location and implication of woods being "saved" makes me want to report what i experience living in the area.
The sober view most people here share, is that Rheinbraun got a concessions as a state company in the 1970 (by a social demokrat gov) and everyone knew since then what is going to happen and had years and years to cope with this democratic decision.
The guys i know that needed to move are quite happy to got financed new homes.
Having lived in Elsdorf for 5 years i can tell people are actually proud about peoples achievements and their mighty hole The Elsdorf/Bergheim region markets itself as "Energy capital of europe".
I have no grime against the activists, only i do not really see the point in saving exactly that spot of wood, now, after all those years.
On the photo, Hambach forest is on the left. On the right the "Sophien Höhe" a hill made of the 1:6.2 ratio soil left after extracting the coal, with its huge recultivated artifical woods.
To put the remains of Hambach forest into perspective, it is the lighter green area on the south east (humbly exaggerated since only half of it is worth to call woods still). The darker green in the west is recultivated. Red is my POV.


As sad as it is to cut down any part of nature, at least we are left with a grand recreational area with re-cultivated woods as large as the cut down areas and one of the largest lakes in europe by 2050.

I would not mind if the digging stopped, but i hoped the main "win" for humanity was learning from such a decision made a long time ago in a completely different mindset and overcome to make better decisions for future projects.

Hello Elon, i can show you huge wastelands in germany where a giga factory would not hurt at all but cost for Tesla would be much higher and prestige much lower, deal?
Also, would you mind to guarantee to leave a recreational area once you decide to eventually close down?
(Sorry for trolling and border-lining politics still...)

At least it is not as bad as Berkeley Pit in Montana that filled with water that turned pH 2.5 acidic. So acidic that they have to employ rangers with guns whose main job is to scare birds away from landing on the water.



It would not be enterprising Americans if they didn't turn it into a business opportunity, built a viewing platform and charged an entrance fee. I guess somebody has to pay for those rangers

Here's a non-entry I post for fun:



DSC00079

It is taken by me, with a camera phone (Sony Ericsson K550i), and could be shoehorned into the theme, as it's a photo of the Earth, the waters that flow upon it, structures built on it and illuminated by its one natural satellite (which could have once been part of the Earth depending on which formation hypothesis you like best). It was not, however taken in the current month, but over 11 years ago.

I say for fun, since we've had an interesting wikipedia tour of the western part of Germany and its energy producing region and this moonrise is taken somewhere over the Rhine, I believe from the date a little bit upstream. Also fun since the K550i was the phone my N900 replaced.

Still trying to pick a good representation of "Earth" taken this month.

And wow, that giant hole in the Earth is something! I'm curious how filling it with water can be used to store energy. From the wikis, it's considerably below sea level, at least at the bottom. For us in the slow class, where's the potential energy? As the kids say, "I am confuse."

Thank you!

Consider its function like a battery.
The main disadvantage of renewable energy sources is the night gap or even longer "draughts".
If you now use some energy during day to pump water "up" somewhere, you can just let it flow down through turbines again and convert energy back if you need it.
Yes, the loss is enormous but according to studies it is still efficient enough to be done here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped...droelectricity

@robthebold, on your photo, Hambach is ~40km behind you. I took that ship tour at least 10 times already being booked (most memorably by Deutsche Telekom (wtf ~10years ago) after which evening i can not stand karaoke anymore) for "Team-Events".
The place you shot is like half way to the turning point back to cologne. You can see you have not yet turned since you go on the right (and right/correct imo) side of the rhine

Hm, why is that?
Wouldn't it be OK just to let the birds drown in the lake? Eventually the ones left would learn to avoid it.

Gosh, i love nordic pragmatic thinking

Roald Amundsen ate his sled dogs . . .

I visited one in Wales. Twice. It is open to public, with guided tours. They said they use 4 units of power for every 3 units generated, but it is worth it because they use the power when energy is abundant (and hence cheap) and generate when in short supply (and thus expensive).



But wouldn't they only learn if they saw others dying an excruciating death? Which assumes being within a small distance, both space and in time. All others would be doomed to repeat the same mistake. Unless they are born with an instinct not to sit on water that to all intents and purposes looks like any other.

Hi, here is my contribution to this February collection.

N900, fcam's jpeg, uncropped, unedited.

Taken on 9 February 2020.

Here you can see a car roof bar. Or at least the last visible part of it. The remaining (bar and other side with its lock, and the car which was attached to it) is already back into the ground.

"Earth eating back human's hardware"