Via McClatchy, this story on surface coal mining. The Feds (more power to them) are considering rescinding the regulation that lets the companies bury streams and valleys under the dirt and rock produced by "mountaintop removal". If you've never seen the aftermath of one of these mining operations, you may have a hard time imagining the terrifying scale of the destruction.

All coming soon, to a planet near you.

Twenty years ago, June of 1988, Jim Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute presented the first sound data showing human involvement in changing the Earth’s climate. Since then all of his predictions, from temperature rise to melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers, have come true. With new data, a more comprehensive understanding of the feedback mechanisms and better modeling, he sees much worse to come: sea level rises that will displace hundreds of millions of people, floods and drought on a scope and scale far beyond anything known in human history, extinction of half or more of the species on the planet and collapse of entire ecosystems.

Not to worry, though; we still have twenty years before it all spirals hopelessly out of control.

Maybe.

Coal Boss: If You Take Photos, 'You're Liable to Get Shot'

"If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot," the chairman of one of the country's biggest coal mining companies, Don Blankenship of Massey Energy, told an ABC News reporter before grabbing the reporter's camera.

The incident this week, in the parking lot of a Massey Energy office in Belfry, Ky., is just the latest chapter in the saga of Blankenship's controversial relationship with the West Virginia Supreme Court, which is hearing appeals that could cost his company hundreds of millions of dollars.

Why isn't this man in jail for killing nine coal miners who died in the Crandall Canyon mine (so far this month)?

Perhaps because he's a heavy contributor to the GOP?
More details are at TexasKaos.