Yeah, David over at Grist already beat us to the snarky headline, but it would appear that mountaintop removal mining has a lot more wrong with it than just blowing up mountains. Crazy, but it's true. 

It turns out a bunch of scientists donated their time, studied the issue, went through the entire peer-review process, and determined that MTR is far worse than we thought. 

Obviously there are the water issues, from the destruction of entire waterways to the pollution of drinking water supplies. 

There's the loss of the physical mountain space. 

And there's the loss of massive amount of forest land that captures carbon. 

Basically, it's lose-lose-lose, and for the folks living with the issue in Appalachia, even moreso. 

The upside is, what was a small regional issue five years ago has blown up on the national stage as a true scourge. Obviously, we -- and thankfully thousands more -- will continue to work to have the practice of mountaintop removal mining banned.