Bureau Of Land Management Gives Us A Lump Of Coal, But Just Temporarily.

The federal Bureau of Land Management's web site had
this photo of a giant coal seam on its home page Thursday,
prompting outrcry and suspicions that the federal government
is all about coal, coal, coal

The United States Bureau of Land Management, as the name implies, manages public lands across the nation.

Most of the land they manage is in the western half of the United States, but it does make up about one eighth of the land mass in for the country.

Most of that land is wilderness and conservation areas, national monuments, and trails and rivers. A little bit of this land is also used for oil and gas drilling and coal mining.

Of course, all you hear from the Trump administration is coal, coal, coal!  Contrary to what he says, coal is not going to make a comeback it's not going to make America great again, and all those coal miners relying on Trump's promise that they'll work in the mines again an make good money are in for a disappointment.

But the Trump administration perseveres any chance it gets. That even affected the web site of the Bureau of Land Management.

Until Wednesday, the BLM's home page had a nice picture of two boys with backpacks gazing out at scenic, hilly terrain.

The BLM home page Thursday had an image of..... a coal seam.

Yep, just a dark, unphotogenic expanse of dark gray coal. A coal seam, by the way, is a nice big mass of coal that's accessible for mining.

I guess this illustrates perfectly the Trump administration philosophy on public lands. If it's pretty, but worth money, make it ugly and take the money.

The  Bureau of Land Management said the coal photo was
just going to be part of a rotating series of photos on its home
page, depicting various aspects of federal lands By Friday,
the coal has been replaced by this image of a fly fisherman.

However, the BLM says the coal picture was not a literally dark vision of how the U.S. government would look at federal lands going forward.

The BLM said they would rotate photos on their home page to reflect different aspects of the agency and the lands they own. Or, more accurately, we own.

They said that by Friday, the picture will have changed again, and that many of the photos would reflect the natural beauty of federal lands.

True to their word, the BLM website's home page late Friday had a nice photo of a young man fly fishing in a fresh, clean looking river.

Phew!

Australian River Bursts Into Flames

A river ablaze in Australia due to methane seeps. Some blame
nearby fracking operations, while others say this
is naturally occuring.  

I thought rivers that caught fire were a legacy of intense 1960s and 1970s pollution. Remember the Cuyahoga River in Ohio burning way back in the late 1960s.

It turns out, a river was just set on fire in Australia.

Last month, an Australian MP named Jeremy Buckingham went up the Condamine River in Queensland, came up to a area where methane was bubbling up, and set the river ablaze.

The video is at the bottom of this post.

Buckingham, a member of the Green Party, blamed the seeping methane and the fact he was able to set the river on fire on fracking nearby.

CBC News reports Buckingham said a nearby coal gas seam, or CGS, operation is to blame. In the video, he says, "This area has been drilled with thousands of CSG wells and fracked. This river for kilimeters is bubblilng with gas and now it's on fire."

Buckingham and the Green Party are trying to ban fracking in Australia.

CBC says there have been reports of methane seeps in the Condamine River since 2012

A scientific analysis firm said there could be a number of reasons for the methane bubbling. It could be the fracking or other similar activities, or it could be caused by drought and the recharging of acqufers after floods.

Coals is near the earth's surface in the area, so it's easy for gases to rise to the surface from the coal seams.

For its part the local coal and fracking companies say that they are not to blame, that naturally occuring gas seeps occur and can be lit on fire, but they pose no threat to the public.

In any event, burning rivers are probably not a good thing.

Here's the video: