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Comment by johnofthejohn | Hacker News Reader

I am disappointed that human beings can be so bored as to find money and time to do that useless nature massacre.

They have a FAQ for that:

"Is the hole bad for the environment? No, this was just a bunch of empty land. Now there’s a hole there. That’s life."

Edit: Lol, I'm not endorsing their answer. Just pointing it out.

Burning gasoline for useless digging actually is bad for the environment. And it might not be amazonian rain forest that we're talking about, but an "empty land" is better left untouched than slaughtered like this.

I can guarantee there isn't any gasoline being burned there.

Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted, those three vehicles are burning diesel...

Haha good point :-)

Burning fuel for NASCAR and Formula 1 is also useless to a first approximation, and surely the land used for racetracks could be used for other stuff. But millions of people find it entertaining, and occasionally useful stuff comes out of it, like innovations in engines or telemetry or safety equipment.

How is this any different? It's entertaining plenty of us, it's less fuel than a race and less land than a racetrack, and maybe we'll learn something in the process. Maybe innovations in moderating the futility of online comment systems. ;)

There is no such thing as empty land. From the billions of microbes to the insects, worms; the fungi, the grass... something just lost their home or food

Will someone please think of the grass!

The critique of society will probably provoke enough people into making different choices to justify the loss of a few square meters of topsoil.

The pedants will say it is actually cubic metres of soil... ;)

I think thats the emotion this is meant to evoke.

In what way is this a "nature massacre"?

They're going to find an aquifer any minute. Plus, some nice flowers were previously approaching the general area. All a bit noisy too.

Is there any proof they're going to find an aquifer? Do we know the location they're at actually has wildlife to be disturbed by that noise?

I mean, if the only loss is some flowers and a mound of dirt I don't really see how it's a "nature massacre".

Massacre is a pretty strong word...

It was probably native dirt, so you may have a point.

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