ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- The Ruhr Valley, in north-west Germany, is an industrial coal-mining area. And because of that kilometre-deep mining, parts of it have sunk, the drainage patterns have changed: and now, if the pumps of Emschergenossenschaft ever stop, quite a few towns and cities will end up flooded.
Filmed safely in September 2020: www.tomscott.c...
REFERENCES:
www.derwesten....
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-- and of course, my interview with the team from Emschergenossenschaft
Edited by Michelle Martin / @onthecrux
Thanks to Bela Lempp and Daniel Fischer for the suggestion.
(Alternate title: "Iffen Pumperschtoppen, Der Deutschehabitaten Unterwasser". Alternate video: • Feuerherz - Wer kann d... )
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This was, of course, filmed back when some inter-European travel was possible, following all the Covid-safe guidelines. (Standing on top of a windswept hill helps with that.)
FROM THE PAST
Or is it??
third
3 days ago? Omg
3 days ago what?
Grey hoodie Tom season officially started. Red t-shirt season sadly over.
It's his winter plumage like a Robin.
@@jtbwilliams Robins don't have winter and summer plumages
Rip brighter red t-shirt
@@davidharris2517 🤦♂️
As an American, it actually blew my mind that the coal company was paying for the damage it caused. What a novel concept.
Taxpayers have been subsidizing the coal industry for decades. In this sense, the taxpayer is at least partially bearing the costs of these plants. And if coal production is completely stopped, the taxpayer will continue to pay the costs in full.
In Europe they are way more creative to make it look like corporations pay all of their dues, so the plebs remains calm while its tax money is being drained indirectly.
@@Ganiscol true
To be fair: the US have a lot more landscape to be damaged by their coal companies...
@@huckleberryfinn6578 not that your "indirectly by tax" is false, but your " the taxpayer will continue to pay the costs in full" is false as these things usually get covered by financial endowments. Which means an untouchable sum is set up to generate a return, which is covering the running cost and future replacements. Not that this is bulletproof, but such endowments can work and have worked for over a hundred years in some cases without burden to taxpayers/future generations, even when those who set them up are long gone. Some endowments can even succeed so far that they generate a profit flowing back to whoever is named beneficiary, especially as going into the future means that the cost managing the damages can significantly be reduced by technological development and invention.
"The coal mining company had to pay for this cause they caused the damaged"
A revolutionary thought in some other countries....
😂 lmao
Murray or Massey Energy would have told the people to get (bleep)ed.
It's considered quite controversial in Germany as well. Sadly. And they are not even consistent about it! The state for example pays for the cost of nuclear waste.
I mean there is still a debate whether the coal mining companies have paid enough. They put it in a foundation which from now on will pay for those "Ewigkeitskosten" (eternal cost). The foundation will invest the money and the profit will pay the running costs. But it is hard to foresee the future and how long it will cost howmuch. Based on current calculations it should just be enough.
But there are some damages which are disputed, e.g. some people have issues: e.g. in one case their terrace is broken every few years and so they try to get the money back from the coal company, which claim that the foundation is the one who has to pay, but the foundation says that this is "imminent" damage and therefore not an "eternal cost" therefore the mining company should pay.
I, a German, was thoroughly surprised by this! Normally coal gets extremely heavily funded through taxes here
"haha, those wacky Germans and Dutch, choosing to live in flooded places, or places below sea level!" - me, an American, trying to hide New Orleans behind me
I suggest you keep a close eye out for NY and Florida. Especially with the rising sea level, you might need to hide more then you think ;-) (or the sea will soon do it for you).
@J Navarro please dont polute the atlantic with the Trump Tower.....its understandable....but no...
Next big dutch project: a dam closing the channel and a dam between norway and Scotland
Don’t forget the over half a million people living in the Salton Sink in California. And that’s not even including the 1 million people living in just the city of Mexicali, Mexico. Granted, Salton Sink has almost an infinitely lower potential for flooding than New Orleans, but the point still stands that there are many many people living below sea level here in the US.
@@onnovanknotsenburg1177 vinice italy + new york city = something in the futre
This seems like a contrived mechanism for a supervillain to hold hostage, where if the city doesn't pay a million dollars they'll deactivate the pump and flood the city
It's not just one city, but many and the Ruhr area is actually the most populated region in Germany.
Don't give them ideas.
Sounds like the next ransomware target.
Who, entirely coincidentally, would have an accent identical to the German engineer guy in this video.
I was thinking similar - this seems like a vulnerable spot to terrorist attack. All anti-terrorism efforts seem to be focused on air travel, making sure nobody brings more than 3 ounces of water aboard a plane, but there's so much critical infrastructure terrorists could reasonably easily take out if they really wanted to mess stuff up.
Local here. We still have random events where old, unmapped tunnels that have not been properly filled in collapse and take streets or entire houses down with it.
Another strange thing: Due to those same pumps and all the rest of it, you can't really have wells in many parts, because groundwater is artificially held mega low.
My condolences. Let’s hope we can get to a better world soon.
Damn that sucks. People really need their wells.
I hate it when I travel through the Ruhr Valley and are forced to stay thirsty because my well has a bad connection.
This is definitely not a metaphor about hotel wifi. I actually do have a portable well.
Great example for this right now is the A44 Autobahn Interchange in Witten. There were plans to built something there (don´t know what right now) but while digging for the construction the builders found 10m deep holes beneath the interchange from old coal shafts. NoNow they are pumping tones of concrete in these holes to fill them up.
And if you don´t have sinking whatever you can find an WWII bomb while building, right now one is being defused in my city. There is so much inherited waste im Pott.
But I love living here.
@@Kyle-gw6qp Pumps, do tend to that!
As an American I hear "Corporations must pay for the damage they cause." and think "Huh! Alien idea. Sounds nice though!"
I wonder what happens if the coal companies go out of business though.
Stolen comment word for word
Why would they pay for the damage, when it’s cheaper to pay for the politicians?!
(Kidding.... they’re not though.)
@@szninc7315 nahh
CERCLA of 1980 states that companies responsible for the production of hazardous waste are liable for the remediation and clean up costs of said waste
The TH-cam algorithm has a sick sense of humour
Like always
same so true
For those wondering in the future, a flood in Germany just killed over 100 people and had over 1000 go missing
@@mica_55 in this valley ?
@@Omidion by some parts. North-rhine westfalia has been struck by heavy rain and probably, since this area has rivers nearby this place was no exeption. I also live in this state, but was away for vacation. Luckily my area was not affected.
(edit: the ruhr-valley is part of north-rhine
westfalia)
"Massive pumps that prevent a part of Germany from flooding"
Me, a Dutchman: "you've seen nothing yet"
A whole country.
Yea, your see wall is very impressive
I think that if someone jumps into the see at the dutch coast it will flood
"The province of Zeeland will never be flooding in 1953 due to a storm"
@@harsh3624 ~half, but yea
Me a German guy getting educated about Germany by a British guy on the internet...
...and just because the youtube algorithm thought you are uneducated
ja geht mir auch so....
@@DarthZackTheFirstI That hurt. And hit home. True though, same here 🤷♂️
I went to that power station and I didnt get to know that.
Guck dir die RAG und deren "Ewigkeitskosten" an, erklärt alles sehr gut
Imagining living in a house that's at any point only a few days away from flooding without active government intervention is stirring up a little doomsday prepper anxiety I didn't know I had.
I used to live in the Haarlemmermeer polder in the Netherlands (you know the place, it's where Schiphol airport is). Without pumping the polder would be submerged quite quickly up to around 5 meters at the deepest point. I had a groundfloor appartment .... I am VERY glad we had/have good engineers :)
@@BuzzinsPetRock78 So that's why you leave your neighbors alone! Your engineers are too busy devising ways to keep you all from drowning, to bother with engineering way to sink your neighbors!
Does it count as "government intervention" if it's done by private mining companies?
@@seneca983 well if those companies went bankcrupt, the government would have to start doing it.
@@seneca983 I don't think the companies volunteered to spend money on giant pumpstations to keep an area dry they don't use anymore
Plot twist: the guy in red on the bike at the back at 1:12 is Tom From The Past checking up on Tom In The Present.
It's like Harry Potter & the gang in Prisoner of Azkaban.
Most likely recording a video about effects of public accesible time travel
@@mikoajczechowicz1652 yee
As you can see, all of the engineering was done by the SciCraft server.
haha i get this.
Had a good laugh on this.
Prototech noises
As you can see Germany is just run by SciCraft
lmao
"And because of this" - Ein Klassiker jeder Englischarbeit.
I don't get it.. diese Wortfolge ist mir in einer Englischarbeit noch nie über die quere gekommen..
@@ILO5T Viele aus meiner Klasse und anscheinend nicht nur aus meiner, haben diese Wortfolge benutzt, da sie nicht andere Vokabeln für "weil", "darum", "daraus folgt"... kannten und "bacause of this" immer geht.
Xd
It's common in all languages
Henceforth
What Tom doesn´t mention is that there are other pumps too. The mines themselves also flood and when they flood the tunnels can collapse and create sinkholes up above. So the empty mines have to be kept dry to prevent whole urban regions from dissapearing underground.
@@thiccchungusexe8964 - he’s talking rubbish mate, once the shaft is capped they monitor and in some areas occasionally pump depending where the strata is, but they don’t continue pumping out of the roadways and tunnels, they’re bricked up and sealed off at the sump before the shaft is filled or capped.
@@project182r3 That may be true in some cases but there are mines that have pumps going 24-7, with backup pumps because a failure would be dangerous to a lot of urban areas. Seen them with my own eyes so don't talk s#!t ;)
@@thiccchungusexe8964 German mines had two types of "tunnels". The more permanent ones (Strecken) - those are build more closely resembling a subway tunnel with heavy metal rings as re-inforcements and even spray-on concrete shells. And the ones where the coal is cut (Strebe). These are either given a "controlled collapse" or they are actually filled during production
When they stopped mining the strebe where filled after removing the heavy equipment. The strecken (as Project 182R said) where sealed and allowed to flood.
In some cases the maximum level of flooding in a mine shaft is kept below the concrete plug in the shaft due to ground water issues (The water is often "contaminated" with washed out iron ore and mining residues) but that is for water protection.
@@project182r3 yes and no.
In coal mines there is refilling and controlled flooding.
Under central lower saxony for example (area around Hannover and Braunschweig) there has been extensive salt mining over the decades.
In the 70´s there has been some flooding of some areas wich then, because it is salt, collapsed, leaving major sinkholes over the whole region
he mentions there being 180 pumps
Keep in mind, that the Rhein-Ruhr area is one of the most densely populated areas in Europe
At least they take care of their pumps
@Bill Telfer What is in Bradford?
@@Dethleffff I dunno, what *is* Bradford? Only time will tell.
It's hilarious to me, people always seem to live in precarious areas that have a conditional destruction thing going on. Like who in the right mind, sees the sheer fact that the entire area they live in could be gone in under 5 hours, and says "yes, perfect place to raise my family and live". It's baffling.
@@Zalgo-hr6qc Its the other way around. People have been moving to the area for more than a hundred years, because of the available jobs. These jobs (not the Jobs, but the companies, i dont blame the people) are what created these conditions.
Now imagine doing this for a whole country! Oh wait, we don't have to
hi taran
Yo Taran, didn't expect to see you here
Get back to work, taran :)
Can't you write some macro's to control all those stations from 1 central desk?
NEDERLAND
At some point in the future, the amount of energy spent on those pumps will be higher than the energy that was gained from that coal.
Given enough time...
Yes. Except *something* happens and it doesent matter anymore.
Yea, but by then either the cockroaches or our robot overlords will be the ones running the show.
I suspect once coal mining stops, they will find ways to rechannelled the rivers and work on more permanent solution, at the moment it just cheaper to keep the pumps running.
@@DavidKnowles0 They already closed all mines in the area.
People of the Ruhr: We are sinking, we are sinking!
German engineer: Wat are you zinking about?
Underrated
It's a coal mine, not a Zink mine! /s
@@DeJayHank so that is why they stored coal in the basement... house flotation device! /s
Totally wouldn't work with Zink
@@DeJayHank Ryan Zinke is conflicted about all of this...
@@DeJayHank You don't have to coal him out. It was just a joke.
Tom Scott in Bottrop, what a time to be alive!
In 2020 the apocalypse.
On Halde Haniel to be exact
I know, right? Kinda makes me excited haha
Gives a nice rhyme.
"The coal mining companies are paying for this."
Confused American noises.
@@commiedog425 1 in 8seconds
@@TheFalseShepphard 310 in 25 minutes
@@edlasso congrats 1 like in minute
Confused Republican noises*: Educated Americans know and believe mining companies should actually be accountable for the damage they cause.
@@ellisthomas8981 no likes in 25 seconds smh my head
I live here in the Ruhr Valley and I have to add something: It's not only rain water they pump into the Rhine. In past times it was too expensive to remove the equipment like machines a.s.o. from the mines and in addition waste was disposed there. There is already water that filled the mines ("Grubenwasser").But because of all that industrial waste and left equipment it became toxic. This water must not touch ground water level, otherwise the whole area of the Ruhr Valley might become toxic as well. In order to avoid that, the larger amount of those pumps are operating 24/7 forever. That ,too, is why the mining industry here has to pay for that.
That's terrifying.
Du sprichst ja wahrscheinlich deutsch wenn du von hier kommst. Der Bergbau hat hier seit Ewigkeiten kein Geld mehr verdient. Was meinst du wer der RAG das Geld für die Pumpen in die Hand drückt?😂
@@nurderbvbabernurderbvb dafür gibt’s die RAG-Stiftung, die investieren Geld, das die RAG hatte, um Gewinne zu erzielen, mit denen dann wiederum die Ewigkeitskosten bezahlt werden.
Dang. That's...that's terrifying.
Especially in a day & age where catastrophe seems to be lurking around every other corner
my dad was a coal miner and i actually live in the ruhr area. from time to time the ground just cracks open here and there. doesn't happen too often, but indeed it does. this is called 'tagesbruch'. it's fun! you can actually see the buildings sink into the ground and they get cracks in their walls over time. but at least, these artificial hills he's talking about are very beautifully added to the nature. the biggest coal mining company in germany has a 'duty for eternity'. this is the literal translation of it. this means, they will take care of the problems caused by them for, literally, the eternity.
Here in the UK IIRC in the Sheffield area they accidentally build a house or two over the top of the mineshaft. In one or two places houses have "sold" for £1 as who would ever want to risk buying a house like that.
sure they will....until the insolvenzverwalter flips the switch
@@MrMP-en7vf Jipp, hasst'e Recht 🤣
@@MrMP-en7vf i don't think the Insolvenzverwalter will flip the switch
Have they ever thought about filling the mining tunnels back up with the material that's now creating those hills?
In Germany we call that "Ewigkeitskosten". Eternity costs.
The costs you have to calculate when opening up a mine or a nuclear power plant. ;)
Nuclear plants don't have eternity costs, compared to coal, wind and solar, their upkeep and damage to the landscape is very minimal. Still, you need ore in order for a growing population to survive and thus mining is a necessity.
The fact your idiot leader shut down nuclear's in favor of more toxic and more expensive coal shows how much more the landscape costs are going to continue to climb.
@@Predator42ID Tell that to the Ukrainians and the Japanese...
@@Quotenwagnerianer I am the Ukrainian and I understand what you mean. I was born 12 years before Chernobyl catastrophe, 130 km from that infamous nuclear power plant. I spent about 6 months in hospitals in the year of catastrophe (1986): months in, month out... heart problems, bronchitis... no official radiation related diagnose, however....
Though I would like to point at another aspect of fakeness of the claim “damage to landscape is very minimal”. Mining of Uranium requires digging out millions of tons of so called Uranium ore (actually ordinary stone with very low Uranium concentration in it). Then this stone needs to be ground down, with its portion of environmental damage. Then Uranium needs to be chemically (and environmentally very unfriendly) separated from millions of tons of other minerals, before a nuclear plant can get some “eternitically priced at zero” Uranium...
@@alekrudy5993 Still worth it.
@@Predator42ID And you need to build shelters to store the nuclear waste in which are not exactly cheap but indeed not comparable to long term coal mining. Furthermore beside the car industry the coal industry still holds a lot of influence on politics etc. here in germany, the coal industry inside and outside since a lot is imported. I get the vibe around here that nuclear is still considered very dangerous by a majority of the population and with a democracy the leaders don´t really have a choice on that, but that sadly seems to be the case in a lot of places. Also I wish for example solar would be a better alternative, but solar sucks in germany and wind only has a few good places. Please do your research if you don´t believe me, but getting energy from coal for (might be 20) 10 years does less harm to the environment than setting up solar panels on your house. All the lithium etc. mining is incredibly damaging and germany is not only rather far from the equator it´s also rainy and at least here foggy a lot. I sadly see no way out of this in the near future except for things like clean energy imports and as much as I agree with your comment it would be lovely if you could be less derogatory and over-simplistic, since trough such manners other people seldom change their mind, which is what we most need with for example the nuclear issue.
"this is the Ruhr Valley in germany"
*me building it for japan in civ 6: "huh?"
omg same
@James Lundberg same
oMg SaMe GuYs EcKs DeE
Time to have a theater square with a amphitheatre beside it
That wonder adjacency bonus must be great for the theater square holding that amphitheater tho
"The coal mining companies are paying for this" Holding businesses accountable for their actions, what a novel concept.
In America, corporations would blame the people who live there for living there
@B real you clearly didn’t watch the video. I’m not talking about places like New Orleans. I’m talking about places like in the video where corporations destroy the landscape
@B real Those cities you are talking about have existed for way longer than humans knowing about ocean levels rising. Building cities on the coast facilitates trade and allows for control of important waterways which is why so many coastal cities were founded. So shut up, noone alive today is at fault for coastal cities being threatened by flooding.
@B real Which experts are buying houses on the coast? Give examples, of individuals. Also what is your response to my previous post? Either ur trolling in which case not the worst i ever saw or you really are just a dipshit. In both cases, i am dissapointed.
@B real Tell that to the people of Bangladesh. I am sure they'll be releived to hear that they are just imagining the floods growing worse and worse year after year. Or New Yorkers who are currently in the process of streghtening the coastline to combat the ever worsening storm surges and rising sea level.
@B real how uneducated can you possibly be?
Interestingly, a new word has been created for the ongoing cost. "Ewigkeitskosten" means "Eternal Costs", and was not previously used in German language ...
Also known as paying until Sanktnimmerleinstag
Soo 🔥🔥🔥 Check out my Music
🔥🤮?
Another commenter brought up a good question about this in another thread, what would happen if the coal mining companies ran out of money/closed/otherwise stopped paying? I may be just a dumb American but if their last mine closed in 2018 they obviously wouldn't be sitting on an infinite supply of cash, thus it's an "eternal cost" paid for with a non-eternal source. Would the German government just start paying then?
@@szninc7315 No one cares
@@cpufreak101 There are quite complex laws as to who pays what if a company that has debts to pay files bankruptcy in Germany, and since this situation was probably brought on by a judgement in court it would be even more complicated. It also depends on the type of the company, they differ in regards to liability in case of bankruptcy. So I honestly have no idea. It's possible that the matter would go to court again, I guess. I wish I could say the coal companies are going down in Germany, but it doesn't look like they will. Our government is simping for the industry quite a bit, even though this case may make it appear differently. So no direct threat of bankruptcy anyways :D
Well didn´t know about that.
I will add it to my list of things that would happen in a apocalypse.
"Der Ruhrpott wird zu einem See"
*oder Sumpf.
The apocalypse in 2020?
@@harsh3624
Well, let's see how the remaining two months turn out...
It would be an upgrade, though.
So at least there's one thing to look forward to during the apocalypse.
I love hearing someone explain something perfectly in what is obviously not their native language, a sign of true intelligence.
or just that he whent to school
@@crazydinosaur8945 unlike you.
@@crazydinosaur8945 I hate to tell you that, but as a German, who has visited the USA, I can tell you that Germans (at least with a higher education) tend to be much more apt at using a language other than their native, than people in the (unless their native language wasn’t English).
@@jennyh4025 i don't understand, i agree with what you say, but i just stated that speaking english as a second language, most likely (in the west) isn't "a sign of true intelligence.", but just that they learned it from a young age. in school...
This channel is like one of those books I’d read as a kid with neat facts about the world. Glad to see we still get this kind of stuff.
Isn't it the material removed (mainly coal) that lowers the landscape, rather than the mass of the material put on top?
Tom speaks like he's narrating a British nature show
general purpose david attenborough 2.0
The David Attenborough of random facts
Tom seems to be taking his cadence and tone from an old BBC show that's much in the same vein as this.
In a nice way though
Sounds good and satisfying
A solitary killer, the firetruck stalks its prey.
They need to get Nestle in there, they are good at sucking up bodies of water.
Omg word!
i think a small river's worth of water flowing into a larger river probably has some consequences if this smaller river was sucked away
Gottem dirty
Savage but truuuue
The milk company?
German guy is the kind of person you ask ‚do you speak English?‘ - he says ‚just a little bit‘ and then he explains you in perfect English, extremely detailed how all this stuff works
The Ruhr area is colloquially known as "Ruhrpott" or just "Pott", so I would like to suggest a new series:
Tom Scott's Pott spots!
Or a best of compilation: Tom Scott's top Pott spots
@@666Xeres ahhahahahhahaha nice :D
I prefer to do pot on my back porch or my kitchen.
A new sponsor for Two of These People Are Lying.
@@vaclav_fejt Exactly!
Germany: The companies are paying for this because it's their fault.
America: What?
And the companys signed the contract with the words 'eternity costs' in it
Leider zahlt Deutschland jedes Jahr mehrere Milliarden um das Wasser das durch die Kohlemienen läuft davon abzuhalten sich mit dem Grundwasser zu vermischen. Das Wasser ist hochgiftig und würde die Trinkwasserversorgung gefährden. Das zahlen die Betreiber leider nicht.
Too bad the whole cole industry is funded by government money (= tax money) because it hasn’t been a profitable business for decades, yet the energy lobby has our politicians so deep in their pockets they don‘t have to worry about making any losses.
Companies in the United States usually do have to pay for the damages they cause.
For example, PG&E had to pay about $11 Billion after they caused massive fires in California.
America: *files class action lawsuit against the world* YOU didn’t tell us that could happen, it’s your fault...
"and because of zis, ze landzcape zunk down"
I'm allowed to, I'm german 😂
I am german too and i am not mad about it 😂😂
@@benjamin-vx1uv lmao
@@benjamin-vx1uv me too but i manage to speak fluent english with the american accent
@@benjamin-vx1uv same
I'm not mad about it and my grandmother is German.
Wait.... The tetrahedron only gets 4 seconds of air time!?!? What the hell!?!! It seems amazing!!!!
When I saw that I immediately thought "Oh! It's that thing from Control!"
@@julietgrabinski6429 I thought "Oh it's that thing from Pathologic!"
For me it's that thing that reminds me why i hate long stairclimbs! Sure i know there's other paths because i was there for a visit on rarely occasions but I'll still prefer the "Halde" for over viewing the landscape (As you can see in the Video here)
Cause there's almost no obstructions and multiple hiking paths around the area that are easy to traverse with a bicycle (If the weather doesn't get in the way cause in some occasions entire paths can transform into a swampy pool)
I know nobody cares but my house is literally 10 minutes away from there.
That's cool! Is the amphitheater operational? (Did they do shows there pre-covid?)
I care! Have a nice day 😃
Me too!
that's cool, thanks for sharing! :)
Always cool to have great TH-cam channel show clips a short way from where you live.
I had it last week, when suddenly «Daily dose of Internet» had a clip 120 km from where I lived: I felt like shouting: I was there 30 days ago. Nobady cared probably.
I work as an independent work safety consultant in that area and have to stress just how insanely industrialized it its. I was once on a worksite for overhead lines next to a coal plant. There were no buildings next to it, only fields, but that thing was so massive and almost monolithic it dwarfs whole city blocks. And if you happen to come across one of the open pit mines, depending on the weather you won't see the other side of it. It's crazy how the industry transformed the whole landscape in the valley.
And y^ôu never ever truly leave civilisation. It is very hard to find any place where you can't see some building and the next smaller city is always just a few kilometres away. The larger industrialised areas are so packed that you could walk through city streets for days and not leave them.
It's sad how the rivers are just reduced to cement-lined sewage chutes.
“[Then], the pumps must run.”
_”The spice must flow.”_
Every minute.
"On this planet, you will die. We have seen it, many times."
As we say in the Netherlands: "money must rolling"
"I shall not fear....Fear is the mind killer."
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's brain went there.
I'm german myself and live in the Ruhr area and trust me when i say: i never even knew about this... for some reason they don't even teach this at schools here wich they absolutely should!
Hör halt zu, mir wurde das mehrmals gezeigt und wir haben bestimmt 3 Ausflüge zu Zechen gemacht
@@marius632 Entschuldige, aber nicht jeder wurde mit dem Luxus verwöhnt, mit seiner Klasse regelmäßig Ausflüge zu machen. :P :D
Wusste ich auch nicht, obwohl ich aus dem Ruhrgebiet komme, mich dafür interessiere und mehrere Touren in Zechen gemacht habe 😅
It's wild how different European societies value their land. Living in West Virginia where over a million acres of land was stripped for coal mining, people here still praise it like it's the greatest thing in the world. Even the limited reclamation is sloppy and unnatural looking.
According to Wikipedia West Virginia has a population density of about 29 people/km² vs. the ruhr valley with 1152 people/km² ... might factor into this difference aswell^^
I imagine its a space vs people thing.
The US is enormous, they can afford to just leave all that land behind and go somewhere else. Europe not so much.
@@orngjce223 We all know what happened when Germany started looking for places to live elsewhere...
to be fair, the US has just a "little" more land to care about than Germany
Hey Tom maybe u wanna make a film about the slowly disappearing island “Sylt“ in Germany too where they have to get sand from the Ocean on the beaches because else it would just descent into the ocean over time
The whole North Frisian Island region is very interesting. The entire area was shaped by an apocalyptic flood 660 years ago, and people have been working since then to keep the remaining inhabited places habitable. All the mud is still shifting and trying to settle into the new coastline. (Though local engineers try to prevent that.)
Wo ist da ein Ozean?
let it sink I say, only the worst rich people there
@@amende
Die Nordsee gehört zum Atlantik.
@@scwfan08 und die Ostsee und das Mittelmeer gehören auch zum Atlantik?
This moment when Tom Scott visits you city and you don't even get the chance to meet him :(
Been there
Is natürlich belastend
Who’s watching this after the flood going on in Germany?
It also gives +20% production in the city
and +1 production for each mine and quarry in the city.
Compared to the city being flooded? I think that would give you a bit more than just +20%.
Just don’t play with apocalypse mode turned on
Being an American I almost forgot that other countries actually hold their companies responsible for the damage they cause. How refreshing that must be.
I am wondering why the company can't just declare bankruptcy or something of that sort
@@James-un8io not sure in these situations, but it may be that they are still functioning and operating, or have enough assets to make it worth while. or if you were opening a new one now you'd be asked to get a bank-guarantee that would pay for remedial works when you disappear.
It might be curious idea to the American mind, but the mining companies had to put money aside (while they were making profit in the past) for these so-called eternity costs.
@@mralistair737 I guess that's why I tried looking for articles and news stories about this settlement but I couldn't find any.
Its currently a multi billion dollar company
@@NikolausUndRupprecht wow can like me articles or anything related to it so that I can learn more
When Tom said Ruhr Valley, my Civ6 sense immediately tingled.
Would you be interested in a trade agreement with England?
@@MagyarGaben I denounce you!
My china main ass took a whole 3 mins to remember that Ruhr valley was in civ 6
@@MagyarGaben That's CIV5, but yes
Who here is coming back to this video after that big german flood to see if it’s related?
Straight up, and glad to see I'm not alone in that!
The flood is not excatly in that area its 100 - 150 km down south
@@leoj. no not really, down below bottrop, where tom was in this video, is essen - which was affected by the floods, and just down below essen the devastation begun.
oh that’s weird. I looked at the area and immediately recognized it. I grew up around the area but moved to the US as a kid. My dad always mentioned the coal mining but I was too young to understand. Thank you for teaching me something about my own history!
Your "tour" through germany right now is so interesting for someone who lives near these places you showed in the last videos. Love to read the comments and see what others think about it. :)
I'm American and never had the chance to leave my hemisphere of the earth, but my grandmother had been to Germany many times before for vacation. It's always interesting to me to see stuff in the rest of the world as I otherwise would never get the chance.
@@cpufreak101 This is one advantage of the internet. You can see the rest of the world, even when you can't visit them. I wish you luck to be able to travel on your own in the future.
That German accent makes me feel like I’m learning something extremely difficult. Like Einstein is teaching me about waterpumps.
this accent makes me extremely uncomfortable...
BTW I am German
@thomas caarls hahah your vids
@@vor_ben all germans hate their English accent
@@PhillipAmthor ai dont sink so!
Germanys approach:
"We take the water and move it somewhere else"
Meanwhile in the Netherlands: We want land! *builds Flevoland*
I'm German, saw the title and thought: "Interesting... never heard of it!" xD
I am from Bottrop and never heard of it :D
We learned in school about
@@compphysgeek Das meinst Du hoffentlich nicht ernst?
@@mweskamppp doch, beides. Leider
@@compphysgeek Ohauahah.
Finally a Tom Scott place I've visited. Live in. Am in risk of getting flooded.
Correction - just checked the projected map of damage - I would live a few km from a beach.
From the land side or the water side?
@@tand0r Haha His nickname is not Aquaman so land side.
Me: * turns off the pump to not waste water *
Everyone here:
Welp, I've gotten this recommended after the current flooding-issues in north-rhine westphalia... I'm a bit worried now tbh😅
Nordrhein-Westfalen
"Iffen Pumperschtoppen, Der Deutschehabitaten Unterwasser"
I thought I had a stroke for a solid minute and a half there
(and yes, I do speak german)
What are you referring to?
Never mind, I've found it! Listening to it now and LOVING it :D
heaviest rickroll I ever experienced....
Jetzt muss ich duschen gehen! :(
@@FarfettilLejl i still dont get it... please post a timestamp :D
@@alberthofmann420 it's not in the video, you need to expand the description under it
Ah, it's been a while since I've seen the Emschergenossenschaft.
"Come on Kids! Let's go visit the Emschergenossenschaft" I'd say.
The place where syllables come to life
@Seb Ba GERMAN WORD, SED MASON, WHAT DO THEY MEAN!¿
I'm from Germany and I have never heard about this before! (granted, I like a long way from the Ruhr Valley but still)
Mining companies prefer people not too worry too much about the massive scale of destruction they have brought to Germany.
@@booketoiles1600 Rubbish, where did you get that idea? Mining companies are obliged by law to reclaim their workings - I should know, I work in mining.
@@importedmusic Thats not a global thing.
@@importedmusic German here, 100% of repair of the landscape after (brown-)coal ends in 2038 is being paid by with taxes. Next to that, the companies get funds of billions of Euros because 'the 20.000 people working in the coal industry' (and their jobs) are more important than the nearly 8 billion people on earth that will go down with climate change. Capitalism sucks.
i live right on top and i didnt know..
Me sitting in Bochum right now; and have never heard about it. Keep 'em pumping!
You can find maps online where the valley would flood. Bochum is mostly fine i guess. But Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Bottrop, Marl, Gladbeck and many other cities would be submerged. Big parts of them at least.
Countryman of yours here, but I like your thinking.
The one part you forgot:
"Keep 'em pumping, or else saufe ich ab!" :D
Germany: We need big pumps to prevent flooding
Netherlands: Hold my Gouda
Or hold my Grolsch!
It's actually right next door.
Well, completely different situation...
😂😂 👌🏻
I smile to myself in happiness every time a video like this gets released.
"and then theres the tetrahedron! a giant floating tower that cannot be, suspended above the ground via unknown means and constructed partially from its own blueprints"
I bet if you look hard enough you could see the factory in the distance!
Was looking for this comment :D
I bet if you listen closely you can hear the Twyre whisper
?
Pathologic!
I'm from Holland. We're pumping since forever, since half the country is below sea level. There are still even steam pumps doing the job (not to mention the wind mills).
I live in the Ruhrgebiet, remember the struggle of flooded basements since i was a child, heavy rains automatically came hand in hand with floodings of both , basments and lower street parts. Also lots of soil were dumped in local forests, there were hundreds of unregistered mines / mineshafts in the area .
This has never been more pertinent.
"pump must run forever or part of germany floods"
2020: I can milk that
2020: WRITE THAT DOWN, WRITE THAT DOWN! xD
this just in: on December 27th, 2020, the operators of all of the pump stations got food poisoning at the yearly pump-operator-convention, thus having to call in sick and nobody was able to run the pumps. Theres now a giant lake where the Ruhr valley once was.
TERORIST: Oh now we are getting idea!
2020 is over and it didnt happened
How awfully convenient it's now a featured video
A map showing the flood zone would have been interesting to see.
Everyone: Talking about the absence of the red shirt
200 IQ people: There is a red shirt inside the hoodie
You can clearly see it at 0:56
I thought it would be below the hoodie and not inside it, but what do I know
And inside that red shirt? A second red shirt.
galaxy brain: the return of the grey hoodie.
Schroedinger's t-shirt. So long as he's wearing the hoodie, Tom's shirt could be both red and not red.
Thanks algorithm, good timing...
Family friends of ours live in this area and their house is directly next to a railway. They told me, when they bought the house some decades ago, the railway was on the same level as the entrance of the house. Now due to the ground sinking it is on eye-level when you are up at the third floor.
damn imagine coal companies actually paying for the damage they’ve caused. as a gen z, i think that would be nice. maybe we should make them do that more.
Plenty of groups where holding companies accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do is part of their belief sets. Raise your voice with them and try to contact whatever politicians you can to tell them that you are yet another person who would like to see that sort of thing happen. (Typo)
They must be held accountable for their actions until they go bankrupt and the government pays for it then.
Not sure where "here" is but how confident are you that they're not paying for damage they caused? Something about this comment makes me think you haven't spent a lot of time looking into this.
And the government for letting the fires break out because they refuse to do control burns and manage the land right.
The little mountains are called Halden and the specific one where you are standing in the beginning is literally my favourite place in my hometown, sad thing I wasn't there to meet you :(
Germany : Build a pump to pump out an entire river to prevent flooding
India : just wait for the flood to come, then wait for the water to go away.
hmm to let you know some of the water flows out of indian dams to Bangladesh flooding them also and making them wait also what a cycle it is flood come wait it goes and on and on
Did you realize that, when buying property in this area, you have to make sure there is no "Bergschadenverzicht" in the land registry? Some mine shafts were not being recorded anywhere, and the following generations may have built residential housing on unstable ground. It is extremely rare, but possible for a house to cave in. If that happens, the company that did the digging - or their legal successor - has to reimburse the owners. Except if the land registry contains this "Bergschadenverzicht", in that case, it's your own problem if your house begins to sag and crumble ...
German interviewee with german accent finishes.
"Just to make that clear..."
0:50 Oh that’s a nice little hill.
0:52 Oh wait
0:55 HOLY SH-
Quite a few spoil heaps like that where I live in South Yorkshire in the UK.
Holy Schleswig-Holstein?
Power: turns off
Germans: well f...
as if a little power outtake would be enough
Sometimes I like the tendency of Germans to overengeneer things...
For example I never had to cope with a power outage for more than an hour.
On the other hand I live in a different part of Germany - 500km away and 250m higher.
This won't happen, the power stations are also run by German engineers
I experienced two power outages since I was born in germany. They were like 10min max.
The Netherlands: “amateurs!”
You seriously think Dutch and German hydraulic engineers would call each other amateurs? What a sad perspective on the world.
@@koelnkorrekt r/woooosh
@@koelnkorrekt I guess you are really fun at parties...
😆
Different problems in Netherlands and Germany, different solutions. Bet they do collaborate!
"The mining companies are paying for this because they caused it."
*laugh-sobs in American*
America needs another revolution, with this as it's main topic
While this is technically correct, this does not mean they do so willingly in every case.
In some locations they tried the old „listen, we will pay everyone living here a couple of thousands but they can never sue us for damages, ever“. But everyone was like „Bruh....seriously?“
Stop blaming companies for your over-population problems.
@@Ranstone Extractive capitalism and externalized costs have nothing to do with "overpopulation", whatsoever.
@@Ranstone yes. We need to blame illegal immigration.
Or course this gets recommend now...
I live in the Ruhr Valley and it's got some of the most nostalgic-industrial places in Germany!
Lovely to see you wondering round my home turf Tom. Hope you got to see some of the other industrial heritage. I would point out that the area you were describing isn't actually the Ruhr valley but an area north of the Ruhr valley encompassed in the greater Ruhr region (Ruhrgebiet in German). The river Ruhr itself forms the southern border through a valley defined by steep hillsides upstream and slowly flattening out into the Rhine plains as it travels west. The main area of the Ruhr region was historically defined by the smaller river Emscher which has always flooded extensively and prior to industrialisation this area was well known to be a massive swampy landscape with few inhabitants. Obviously the sinking of the land both through tunneling out and piling up of spoil tips has significantly worsened this problem.
So this was a giant sponge drained and sunken in - the top soil in addition to the rock (includes the searched coal) underneath collapsing. By rock here I meand what got removed and placed on place like were Tom stud in that grey hoodie. All those supporting structures were only helping temporarily for miners and rott (wood) or rust (steel) and some "Verspressungsmaterial" litterally dirt and rock stuffed into cavities all together collapsing by the time.
Feels strange to see things I am so familliar with on such a high profile channel. I see the Tetraeder every time I drive to one of our customers, and I've worked for a variety of coal mines in the area as an automation engineer. I hope Tom spent a little more time here, as there are many interesting things to tell about our industrial past. And present!
I'm sure he visited more places, you can clearly make out in the video that one of the landscape shots is from Halde Rheinpreußen (looking towards the A42 bridge across the Rhine) at 3:12 which is otherwise not mentioned in the video.
So, in another video about gold mining in Canada Tom explained how the company left bankrupted and now the government had to maintain those200.000 tones of arsenic caused by the mining, frozen to avoid catastrophe... meanwhile in Germany they take the coal companies and say "you got the profit, you pay the expenses". Well played Germany, well played.
Well, they also would not be able to pay the expenses when the company goes bankrupt...
@@TMG-Germany They have a fund set up
So cool, cant believe you actually were in my home-region, so nice to see all your variation of tropics all around the world and hearing german terms pronounced by a native english speaker 😃
Greetings from Germany 🇩🇪
My family were coal miners in that area back then. My grandfather was the last one, working in the coal industry, although we wasn´t a miner but sold machine parts for mining machines
Welp, there that goes....
Goofy
Down the Drain!
Welp there goes my house
There goes the moon bear
How do you pick your topics? You are all over the place both literally and figuratively. They are all so fascinating. I thoroughly enjoy them.
This aged, well, not too sweetly.
New Orleans has a similar problem. Being a city in bowl, every rain drop that falls there has to be pumped back out.
I literally live 10 minutes away from that place
If there's any murderers out there you just screwed yourself
Ich auch
You shouldn’t give away such private Information to strangers on the Internet.
Oberhausen
can you swim?
As an American, it's amusing to hear him talk so matter-of-factly about, well, of course the coal company paid to help the communities, after all they caused the problems. I doubt that would ever happen here.
What I find most amazing is that their government actually did something to save those people's houses. In the US they'd just let it flood them.
It's not just the river being pumped up in that region, they're also pumping hundreds of cubic meters of water per hour up a few hundred meters out of the mines to make sure the ground water doesn't get contaminated.
It is also done because the water would make support structures inside the mines rott what could lead to sinkholes aka cave ins on the surface...
"The coal mining compagnies are paying for this because they had dug the coal and the landscape has sunk down."
Meanwhile in Canada : "We gave permission to this australian iron mining compagnie to destroy 11 lakes, 15 ponds and 25 creeks, in the Fermont region, so that they can dump their mining waste in them. All 1300 million tons of it, by 2045. Who's gonna pay for it ? Well, not the compagnie, that's for sure, or else THEY wouldn't be "profitable"... and they sure as hell won't "clean it up" when they leave.
So dumping enormous volumes of dirt and rock is waste now. Canada has a very small population relative to its size so odds are even when lakes and ponds get filled in, nature will adapt accordingly.
@@Predator42ID You’d be surprised how such a seemingly tiny thing can have such a drastic effect on ecosystems.
Sadly, in Germany everything is looking good on the surface, but when you scratch underneath, you can find the dirt. Sounds amazing that the mining companies are paying for their damages, right? Well, lets say they got and still get a lot of subsidies. The truth is, like in every country: No big company is paying for anything. Its always the middle class.
@@Gentleman...Driver Never a truer statement said.
Well really, they bankrupted all of our domestic industries. Can't pay for anything if you don't exist anymore.