I bet it's an engineering marvel though.

We make logging companies "replant forests" (yes it's not at all the same as the old growth but it's something). Why do we let mining companies completely rape the land and replace nothing? It doesn't even look like they backfill with the unused debris, much less restore topsoil or plant anything.
- Here in the UK I know of lots of old mines and quarries that, because the ground is inherently unstable once the mining has finished, the land gets reclaimed as a nature reserve. Think nice walks, wildflowers, native trees, marshlands etc. A lot of effort goes into making habitats for insects, birds and animals.
  Whether or not it is all paid for by the mining companies, I don't know.
  
  It isn't. I guarantee it.
  
  That's how we do it here in the US if they're operating near an urban area. My understanding is that they are required by law to do that in exchange for the permits or something.
  
  Underground mining and strip mining are very different in the possibilities to recover.
  Both underground mining and strip mining will devastate natural and urban areas in Germany for centuries. For the former black coal and iron mining areas they basically have no solution except to keep the pumps running indefinitely as the flooded underground mines would collapse, causing sinkholes and eating the houses on top. For the strip mining, these will be scars on the earth until geology has taken care of it in a few million years.
- Well, not 100% on this, but maybe because we're an overaged society that elects corrupt politicians rather than accept that change in lifestyle is necessary? Or maybe it is the brainwashing of the Springer-press that continues to vilify the Greens. Maybe a mix of both.
  
  Or maybe it is the brainwashing of the Springer-press that continues to vilify the Greens
  The German greens are the greatest insult to ecology and progressivism in the history of Earth. Born out of the antinuclear movement and immediately coopted by fossil fuel lobbies, the only thing they've done is to encourage MORE coal plants to be opened (due to pushing for the closure of nuclear plants), and supported every single neoliberal anti-welfare budget and every military intervention (think bombing of Yugoslavia, bombing of Libya, invasion of Iraq). They're seriously one of the worst parties in the EU.
- They do backfill, but they obviously lose quite a bit of volume in the process, so they cannot completely fill the hole. The remaining part is usually flooded.
- Where I live they are required to rehabilitate the land afterwards, but usually that's after the mine has been running for like 30+ years and by the time they shut down, they do some weird financial trickery and declare bankruptcy despite having made millions in profits the previous decades and then they just walk away and tax payers need to clean up.
  
  Honestly, that's on the government for not either levying the industry, or making them set up a fund to pay for that.
- It will be turned into a giant lake once they are done mining. You burn a lot of volume and filling it wil soil again is just not possible
  
  Except they actually do backfill it and plant trees; it's still an ecological horror though
- Why do we let mining companies completely rape the land and replace nothing?
  The government spend billions to brainwash people and turn them complicit. Check out the "germany rearming" threads to see how even on lemmy plenty of people are happy with the raping.
- Tbh there is a lot done do make the Land usable once the mining process is through
  
  And not nearly enough because no human activity can realistically cover some 100-200 million years of geological processes.
  In most places they just want to flood the hole. These artificial lakes then become a toxic hole because the Iron-Sulfide exposed during mining oxidizes into Iron-Sulfate, leading to these lakes being diluted Sulphuric Acid for decades if not centuries.
  Also the groundwater cannot recover a century of pumping it out in less than multiple centuries. Then the water used for flooding is diverted from rivers, which already are running low in these region and the artificial lakes are evaporating a lot of water, further drying things out.
  Oh and of course the holes tend to be sold to some smaller private investors by the end of their lifetime who do not have nearly enough funds to be held liable for renaturization. So the tax payers will be looking at dozens if not hundreds of billions of damages to front over the next centuries while the profiteers moved their money elsewhere.
- Wait until you hear about mercury contamination from gold mining practices
- Check out what they did/are doing with the Eden Project and it's successors.
  https://www.edenproject.com/mission/origins
- There are time lapses of this machines movement from satellite / aerial photography and you will see that the soil becomes green again.
- Most of the forests in Germany aren’t truly old growth tho. Instead it’s basically all wood plantations
- In the former mining pits there is a great deal of biodiversity.
  
  That must be amazing, I wonder how much biodiversity there is in the mining pits before they were mined, who could ever know
  
  Source, cause every old abandoned mining pit I came across life gave it it's space.

Bagger 288! Bagger 288!
- Bagger Bagger!
  
  The Bagger 288 is there to safeguard all mankind.
  The Bagger 288 wreaks total utter devastation.
  The Bagger 288 contains an artificial mind.
  This mind is full of hatred, violence is its sole vocation.

Being destroyed by a giant machine is terrible but it did file the proper paperwork first so what can be done at this point?
- Just enjoy the hyperspace bypass, I expect.
- There’s a lot to be said about dotted eyes and crossed teas.
- I hate so much how accurate this is as a metaphor for how many politicians deal with the fascist AfD.

Uhm no bagger-288 was created to protect mankind from godzillas and doom robots from the future.

BAGGER 288 BAGGER 288
- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ok I hate coal and fossil fuels, but this thing is so cool

Alternatively, build a flying machine with TNT duplicators
- [ilmango intro music] 🥭🥭🥭
  
  Do you know what happened to him? I miss his content
- Like Docm's world eater from HermitCraft season 9.

You can see it from space
- Those photos are from planes.
  
  Probably, but the entire idea of "you can see it from space" is stupid anyways. Its only meaningful if its with the naked eye and the distance is specified. You can see anything from space if you have enough optical zoom...
  
  Planes? I had always assumed it was satellites.
- You can see people's backyard trampolines.
- No, you can't. This is what earth looks like from space... https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ most of google maps uses airplane aerial shots.
  
  Literally, yes you can, on that specific website's satellite imagery. Bloody thing's over 10 km wide, it's the size of a large city. I can still easily spot it on my screen if I zoom far enough out to also include Edinburgh and Riyad!
  The only way not to see it from space would be to look in the wrong place or when it is cloudy.
- I counted 8 of them on site.

This is very real and has been an issue for years. I remember when I was younger, watching public TV, and I saw a news report about an elderly lady who was forced to sell her home along with the rest of her village so that they could dig up the entire area for coal. At the time it was a big deal, because she took so long to agree, which got media attention. It was incredibly depressing. It felt dystopian.

It's crazy watching a time lapse of these massive holes move across the land https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz4a2WyAG68

It is an engineering marvel, indeed, as it is the biggest mobile machine of the world.
- Bagger 288
  
  Ahh, you just beat me to it!
- Bagger 288 (and its sibling, Bagger 293) are probably the biggest machines which move freely on soil. They're about 225 m long, 96 meters tall and weigh 14 200 tons.
  In the length category, the F60 overburden conveyor bridge (which moves on rails) is (was?) several times bigger, at 502 m length. It weighed less, however, at 13,600 tons.