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+11 +1
Global Coal Boom Ends As China And World Wakes Up To Reality Of Carbon Pollution
There was a true global renaissance in coal starting around the year 2000, thanks primarily to China. But it is now stalling, thanks again to China.
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+16 +1
Coal Miners Struggle to Survive in an Industry Battered by Layoffs and Bankruptcy
Shrinking exports and America’s growing reliance on hydraulic fracturing and renewable energy have left coal producers in deep trouble. By Clifford Krauss.
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+14 +1
Rare African plant signals diamonds beneath the soil
Geologist discovers first botanical indicator for diamond-bearing rock
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+9 +1
The Next Great Gold Rush Won't Be Taking Place on Earth
here's a new gold rush heating up, but the hunt isn't for oil, gas or tech stocks — it's for asteroids. There are more than 10,000 near-Earth asteroids shooting by at any given moment, and many of them contain valuable resources like water, platinum and iron. While water and iron don't seem worthy of a gold rush by Earth standards, their value skyrockets due to their scarcity in space and the challenge of extracting them. If private companies can figure out a sustainable way to mine...
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+16 +1
Tears of the Sun
The gold rush at the top of the world.
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+10 +1
Scientists Want to Mine Our Poop for Gold
Every year, Americans are flushing a fortune down the toilet. Literally. More than 7 million tons of biosolids—treated sewage sludge—pass through US wastewater facilities annually. Contained within our shit are surprisingly large quantities of silver, gold, and platinum. But our days of wasting human waste may be numbered, if Kathleen Smith of the US Geological Survey has anything to say about it. She’s leading a new research program that’s examining the feasibility of...
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+8 +1
Salina Turda - Romanian Salt Mine
The Turda Salt Mine is now a veritable history museum of salt mining. The excellent state of preservation of mining and machinery used to transport salt, together with the cautious work carried out for prepararing the mine to become a tourist attraction, have made history and legend meet harmoniously here.
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+19 +1
William 'Burro' Schmidt and His Tunnel to Nowhere
When his six brothers and sisters had all died of consumption in his birthplace of Providence, Rhode Island, William "Burro" Schmidt escaped to the desert of California to begin his life's work.
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+12 +1
Mining the moon becomes a serious prospect
With an estimated 1.6 billion tonnes of water ice at its poles and an abundance of rare-earth elements hidden below its surface, the moon is rich ground for mining. In this month's issue of Physics World, science writer Richard Corfield explains how private firms and space agencies are dreaming of tapping into these lucrative resources and turning the moon's grey, barren landscape into a money-making conveyer belt. Since NASA disbanded its manned Apollo missions to the moon over 40 years ago..
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+16 +1
How to Mine an Asteroid
This year a group of aerospace veterans and investors—including Google's Larry Page, filmmaker James Cameron, and X-Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis—announced an audacious venture: a company, Planetary Resources, dedicated to mining asteroids. Here's the full story on their futuristic quest.
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+13 +1
18 Miners Trapped in Coal Mine Accident in Turkey
Surging water trapped at least 18 workers Tuesday in a coal mine in Turkey, officials and reports said — an event likely to raise even more concerns about the nation’s poor workplace safety standards.
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+18 +1
16 killed in northwest China coal mine collapse
A coal mine shaft collapsed in northwestern China, killing 16 miners, an official said Saturday, highlighting the persistence of safety problems in the industry despite a leveling off of demand. Another 11 miners were injured in the disaster, which struck just before midnight Friday in Tiechanggou township outside the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi.
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+27 +1
The companies vying to turn asteroids into filling stations
Private companies want to mine asteroids for fuel, and build filling stations in space. A bill now in front of the US Congress would help by allowing them to own what they discover - but it might, if passed, meet stiff international opposition.
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+19 +2
With China Coal Ban, Has Australia's Luck Run Out?
Australia missed the Great Recession. While economies in other developed countries swooned as Lehman Brothers went under, the Lucky Country kept expanding, thanks largely to the apparently endless appetite in China for Australian iron, coal, and other minerals. China is the country’s top trading partner, accounting for 36 percent of Australian exports. In 2009, when the U.S. economy contracted nearly 3 percent, Australia grew 1.8 percent, and last year the Aussie economy expanded 2.4 percent.
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+23 +2
$1 Trillion in Rare Minerals Found Under Afghanistan
Despite being one of the poorest nations in the world, Afghanistan may be sitting on one of the richest troves of minerals in the world, valued at nearly $1 trillion, according to U.S. scientists.
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+15 +1
Will Mines, Tunnels and Drilling Scar Earth Permanently?
The future will know us through our mines. Unlike many of the changes humanity has wrought on the planet’s surface, which will disappear in geologic time, some of our underground doings have left permanent scars. So argue the authors of a new paper examining such human impacts on Earth.
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+19 +1
Deep sea mining licences issued
Vast new areas of the ocean floor have been opened up in an accelerating search for valuable minerals including manganese, copper and gold.
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+17 +1
17 coal miners trapped underground in west China
Rescuers on Sunday worked to free 17 miners trapped following a gas explosion at a coal mine in western China, the country’s official news agency reported. The blast at the mine 120 kilometers (70 miles) from Urumqi, the capital of the sprawling Xinjiang region, happened on Saturday evening, according to the Xinhua News Agency. It said three other people working inside the mine at the time had been rescued.
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+21 +1
Rescuers free 3 trapped Honduran miners, 8 still missing
Rescuers freed three miners on Friday who had been trapped by a landslide at an illegal gold mine in southern Honduras, but eight more remained unaccounted for as the search moved into its second day. The workers were trapped when the entrance to the mine in San Juan Arriba collapsed on Wednesday. Officials said the mine, 70 miles (110 km) south of the Central American nation's capital Tegucigalpa, had been ordered to close a few months ago because it was unsafe.
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+14 +2
How the Chilean Miners Survived
Deep inside Chile’s San Jose Mine, the collapse hit the miners as a roar of sound, as if a skyscraper were crashing around them. A single block of granite-like stone, as tall as a forty-five-story building, had broken loose and was falling through the layers of the mine. It was later estimated to weigh seven hundred thousand tons, twice the weight of the Empire State Building.
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