Turow: Vast Polish coal mine infuriates the neighbours

[JustJohn or JJ]

Turow: Vast Polish coal mine infuriates the neighbours
By Adam Easton
BBC News, Warsaw
13 hours ago

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57484009

[Jaga]

it is a huge open mine of brown coal. It takes a huge area and it polutes a lot at Eastern Germany and czech reoublic

[pieter]

John/Jaga,

It is a fact that coal and brown coal are cheep sources of energy and that a transformation towards more renuwable energy sources cost time and are epxensive. I am talking about huge windmill parks, solar energy, hydrogen energy and other less pollutive sources of energy.

Windmill parks in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and other countries generate a lot of electricity


Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Windmill park animation North Sea Netherlands

[pieter]

North sea coast Belgium


Denmark

[pieter]

[pieter]

Not only Poland has vast coal mines





The Tagebau Garzweiler is a surface mine (German: Tagebau) in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite. The mine currently has a size of 48 km² and got its name from the village of Garzweiler [de] which previously existed at this location. The community was moved to a section of Jüchen with the same name.

The mine is located west of Grevenbroich and exploitation is progressing towards Erkelenz. Mining was originally limited to the 66.0 km² area Garzweiler I located east of motorway A 44. Mining in the 48.0 km² Garzweiler II sector started in 2006 and it will take until around 2045 to fully exploit both sectors. The lignite is used for power generation at nearby power plants such as Neurath and Niederaußem.

It is not yet known what effect the upcoming plan to phase out all coal-fired power plants in Germany by 2038 will have on the Garzweiler lignite mine system.

Motorways A 44 and A 61 crossing the planned mine area are also affected. The A 44 was closed in 2005, dismantled in 2006 and traffic rerouted to the widened A 61 and A 46 motorways. In 2017, as the mine expanded to the west, the A 61 was closed with traffic diverted onto a stretch of newly built A 44 to the east of its original route.




The Tagebau Garzweiler is a surface mine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite.

[Jaga]

Pieter, yes, this is sad - lots of land bought by big industry. Eastern Germany is losing population, young people go to West. They are even attracting Polish people with families just to keep the population in the vital age growing. The same happens all over Europe, villages are gone. In the US there are no villages at all, just big cities, small cities, hamlets...

[pieter]

Jaga,

I would love it if East-Germany in a natural way would get a majority of Poles who are billingual (Polish-German), because that would expand Poland and bring Poland closer to the Netherlands. The New Europe in general is different than the Europe of the fifties, thirties or the 19th century. Most of Western-Europe is multi-ethnic (multi-cultural) in the geographical sense. You have Western-European cities with North-African Berber, Arabic or Turkic enclaves (Berlin, Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Arnhem, Liège, Brussels, Antwerp, Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Stockholm [Sweden], Malmö [Sweden], Oslo [Norway]) enclaves, and next to these also African and Middle Eastern enclaves (the Arabic Sonnenallee, a street in Berlin, Germany, connecting the districts of Neukölln and Treptow-Köpenick. It is called „die arabische Straße“, "The Arabic street" in Germany. I was there in 2005 with a Dutch friend of Arnhem, and it was true, it was a long street filled with Sisha lounges = Arabic bars with hookah pipes, Arabic shops, Arabic butchers, grocery stores, coffee houses, butchers and Arabic cafeteria).

Poles do not dominate in Western-Europe, but there are a lot of them in the Netherlands (especially The Hague which has a community of 30 thousand Poles), Belgium, France, the UK, Germany, Ireland, probably the Scandinavian countries too. East-Germany has probably the largest Polish diaspora. Apart from the language the Poles are less different than the Germans than immigrants from Non-Western countries, so they will merge well into villages, towns and cities with Roman-Catholic churches and probably houses and buildings similar to former German territory Western-Poland (Pomerania (Polish: Pomorze; German: Pommern; Kashubian: Pòmòrskô); Szczecin (German; Stettin) and Wrocław (German; Breslau).

You see it in some Roman-Catholic area's of South-Eastern Netherlands. The Poles blend in very well in the Limburg Province and area, due to the Roman-Catholic atmosphere (despite secularisation, the culture is still Roman-Catholic Southern). In other area's they blend in less well, maybe due to the fact that these other area's are Calvinist Protestant or secular liberal, secular socialist (Social Democratic), secular conservative (Christian Democrats who are secular or just secular conservatives or conservative liberals) or secular National Rightwing Populist (Geert Wilders Freedom Party -PVV- voters, or people who vote for Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy party or people who vote for the Third National Rightwing Populist Party, JA21 of Joost Eerdmans and Annabel Nanninga). Poles in general aren't popular in Western-Europe, because many of them are low skilled workers in low paid jobs who live in poor (badly kept, shabby) apartment blocks or houses, and sometimes cause trouble (Alcohol intoxication, drugs abuse, domestic violence, conflicts between 2 or more Polish groups who fight with each other, or conflicts between Poles and Native European West-European locals).

The latter is a sad fact due to the poor housing of the Polish workers, that they often work under abominable circumstances in overcrowded shacks, flats, caravans or poor shabby apartments, pensions or houses. From one side employers and some colleagues are positive about the Poles from the other side there is a negative attitude of the locals and some Populist politicians against the Poles, because they are aliens, different (Western Slavic and not West Germanic), speak a different language and looks slightly different. From the other side in time they merge better than other migrant groups due to their European heritage. Xenophobia, subtle refined racism, Polonophobia ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Polish_sentiment ), Western-Europe vs Central-Europe/Eastern-Europe (political, social cultural and financial economical differences) play a role in the Western-European attitude towards Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Belarussians, Russians, Ukrainians and Moldovans.

Take into account that in Western Europe Regionalism and localism play a role next to Patriotism and Nationalism. National identities, regional identities and local identities (city, town and even village/hamlet identities), national languages, regional languages and local languages and dialects. In the Netherlands I can even sense that myself. I went to a rural area in my province of Gelderland today in the morning. I went to the village of Wekerom, very Calvinist, Dutch Reformed, Bible Belt area. I made a walk in the country side along farm lands, local Dutch Reformed Churches and farms. And the atmosphere was very rural, Calvinist Dutch Reformed (I heard church bells ringing), localist and regional. People I encountered didn't recognize me as a local and watched me passing by. It was interesting to be as an outsider in such a christian, Calvinist, local, regional communtiy. After my Ford Fiesta Titanium was fixed I drove back to Arnhem (about 15 miles).


My Second hand Ford Fiesta Titanium 2010 I just purchased. My first car. I always drove in company cars or rented/lease cars all my life. It is very well kept and the Ford looks and drives as a new car.


Cheers,
Pieter

[karl]

J.J. Pieter and Jaga

Thank you both for expanding my views to include of these valuable sources of energy from long past to the present. For your presenting of this very valuable source of energy is also a valuable source of chemicals we depend upon in our daily lives. For with this is many prospects of specific use such as saving even the worse polluters as sources of thermal storage units using molten salt as presented in the following url:

www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germany-thermal-storage-into-coal-plants

But of course the above is only suitable for specific applications.

Pieter, I do like your new/preowned Ford Fiesta Auto. It is a nice fit for todays traffic and will provide you with a great deal of enjoyment.

Karl