Airdale,

Ah yes, I can always spot a fellow Kentuckian or a West Virginian, the only people in America who seem to know that mountaintop removal blasting even exists.

Former Vice President Al Gore is astounding to me...the man who can go into fits of hysteria about every yard of arctic ice, but seems completely blind to what is happining in a border state of Tennessee to one of the most (formerly)beautifully diverse ecosystems in the world.

Unlike the constant theoretical debates about climate change and global warming, the blasting away of mountaintops and the destruction of ecological diversity is anything but theoretical. All you have to do is look at photographs of the region, both from the ground and from satellite, to see the constant march of the destruction.

Mountaintop removal blasting is a horrific crime, but hey, wind and solar has "low EROEI" doesn't it?...depending on who is doing the counting, and what all is included, and how you factor the life expectancy of the hardware, and developments in energy storage, and developments in solar panels wind rotors, and, and, and...your right, solar and wind are too much trouble, blow off another mountain.

RC