Polluted America

[mobbsey]

Get over your pompous self, and in future try to write 1,000 words a day, each of then a polished diamond, rather than your usual verbal diarrhoeia (or your case, dire rear).

Off to Scotland with you -- find that camp-fire as quickly as possible!

[vtsnowedin]

Nice rant there Mobbsey.
Here is my local man made scar on the mountain.

http://maps.google.com/maps?rlz=1T4ADRA ... CBsQ8gEwAA
The small ponds and lakes your looking at are abandoned granite quarries. At one time the two largest were the largest and deepest working granite quarries in the world. When they become unprofitable they turn off the dewatering pumps and they quickly fill up with ground water seeping through the seams in the bedrock. Pan around and you can see large piles of groat or waste rock that have been cast aside to get to the monument grade stone. Some of these piles have been in place for over a hundred years. Efforts to remove them and use the stone for road aggregate gets resistance from nearby residents as loading out the stone displaces the snakes that den in the piles and they end up in peoples back yards. There are no poisonous varieties here but half a dozen four foot spotted adders in the yard is a bit much for some people.
Pan a little to the northeast and your looking at the crushers and stockpiles of the local paving company, (owned by an Irish corporation by the way). They make good use of the waste granite but have had their own problems with noise and the snakes. They have moved some of their operations to the other side of town to get further away from residential neighborhoods and down off the hill the quarries are on.
My point is that any mining operation of any size leaves a visible scar on the landscape no matter how benign the material being moved is. A hole is a hole and a big one looks like a disaster from the air. But as a percentage of the total landscape these are tiny disturbances to the overall picture as you can see if you just zoom out a bit.
Polluted runoff from mining heavy metal ores is another matter of course and there is plenty of work left to do on that front even after three decades of the clean water act.
As to the photo shopped pics I expect he used a liberal amount of filters to enhance the color spectrum in those images. A fully documented publication of those pics would include camera and film specs. giving f-stop and filter numbers as well as lens info. If he has left that out he is being less then forthcoming.

[An Inspector Calls]

I've done a number of jobs with communities on Teeside, and Tyneside and other similarly "depressed" areas in the North, and they're not so desperate for work that they're prepared to take any crap job that's going. They're not as stupid as the media or the business world take them for -- they know the score. They know how crap their lives are made by companies such as Able UK, and the know that whist outfits like this can buy-off local political/development lobbies they won't see any significant change in their local circumstances soon.

On the other hand, the local wheeler-dealer businessmen of the North East will take any crap they can lay their hands on if it means making money -- and they don't give a damn about the consequences because if the worst comes to the worst they can move to Surrey. This process isn't enabled by the poor who need jobs; it's enabled by the rich who want to exploit the region in order to enlarge their wealth. And attitudes like yours, which put greater emphasis on employment than on the way that employment/occupation fits into the economic and ecological state of the nation, will keep areas like Teeside in perpetual depression -- because it plays into the agenda of the exploiters of areas such as Teeside (note that's not simply an anti-capitalist statement -- I think 'New Labour', and Mandelson especially, are equally responsible for what's happening on Teeside).

Just checked the Able website and it looks as if they're booming, doing a great job on the health and safety aspects of ship-breaking. Great news: the lads deserve all the jobs they can get. Perhaps they're not as job-shy as you make out. Perhaps you should check the web pages out and give your prejudices a spring clean?

[mobbsey]

Great news: the lads deserve all the jobs they can get. Perhaps they're not as job-shy as you make out.

Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?

Perhaps you should check the web pages out

Actually, I looked at their waste licence and environmental statement some time ago on behalf of some local organisations. It was a load of cac. Essentially they're taking the money to strip and bundle-up the toxins and then pass the liability to landfill/incinerator operators across the region -- whilst keeping as much of the cash for themselves as possible. You might crow about the economic advantages now, but what about in a few decades time when all those dry tomb landfills around the area, which take the hazardous wastes from the ship breaking process, either have to be maintained with constant pumping and leachate treatment, or allowed to leak their content into the environment of Yorkshire.

That's the whole point about strict liability. By ensuring that those companies/nations who produce the waste deal with it, you ensure that the political and economic imperatives of production/manufacturing feedback into better regulation/industrial processes. By externalising the problem such pressures are removed from the company/state.

We've already seen the same process happen with dodgy industries in other areas, such as South Wales. E.g. the Nant-y-Gwyddon tip took waste from local export oriented "waste treatment" contractors, but now those activities are being run down the community has no work AND they have the expensive toxic legacy to manage for the foreseeable future -- and the health effects it has already created.

...and give your prejudices a spring clean?

Are you recommending that with prior authority?

[An Inspector Calls]

It appears you can't fault Able's licence - I'd be surprised if you could. So now it's the landfill site operators? Make your mind up.

The problem with your concept of product liability in waste disposal is that it's a moving target. What might have been an acceptable substance 40-50 years ago isn't now. So what do you do? Tackle the problem or simply bury the ships at sea. All you seem to be able to do is rant from your self-made hill of righteousness against any efforts to tackle the problem.

[mobbsey]

It appears you can't fault Able's licence

How did I say that then -- I thought I called it a "load of cac".

Tackle the problem or simply bury the ships at sea. All you seem to be able to do is rant from your self-made hill of righteousness against any efforts to tackle the problem.

Do I have to get this over to you with hand puppets and flash cards?

"You make it, you break it".

If the Americans made a ship, they should break it up and dispose of the contents. Then, the next time they build a ship, you can bet that they'd design-in features to reduce the toxic components and make the system easier to reuse/recycle in order to save money.

By exporting the problem to the UK they export the liability for it -- and consequently they don't have to change their ways because there is no political, economic or environmental pressure on them to do so.

The same goes for other consumer goods. If Panasonic make a gadget, they should take it back for "disposal". Right now an awful lot of our plastic and electronic waste is being exported back to China, for recycling or incineration (plastic is cheaper than coal and has a higher calorific value). The point is, if they had to take it back you can bet they'd design it to minimise the costs of disassembly and disposal.

Your whole supposition is that the present economic process can continue because there's no problem with energy and resources; the reality of our situation is the opposite. To address that we need to minimise resource and energy -- and extended product liability is one of the best methods to implement those changes within manufacturing/production very quickly.

This thread has looked at the effects humans have had on the landscape -- as depicted in some recent images in a newspaper. Most of those impacts are related to resource production. To put that human struggle with our environment into context, look at the conclusions of an Australian government funded study into ecological limits, carried out by CSIRO --

As shown, the observed historical data for 1970-2000 most closely matches the simulated results of the LtG 'standard run' for almost all outputs reported; this scenario results in a global collapse before the middle of this century"... contemporary issues such as peak oil, climate change and food and water security resonate strongly with the feedback dynamics of 'overshoot and collapse' displayed in the LtG standard scenario.

[An Inspector Calls]

And how can I get it over to you that you need to consider (a) the impact of changes to pollution legislation (or are you going to make all manufacturers accept retrospective legislation) and (b) the impact that the users of the product upon the contamination of the product?

Or even: an assembler of common parts makes a new machine. One of the components is subsequentyly deemed highly dangerous. Who has the responsibility: the assembler or the component manufacturer? A prime example might be the various nasties held in modern batteries and generators. Worse: you build your own house and incorporate some new building material (e.g. the asbestos flue pipes of yore) later deemed dangerous? Who cleans up? Getting 'messy' isn't it?

You clearly have no experience of how modern industry works (thought I'd throw that in as a kick back for your 'you clearly don't understand the concept of design life' - as if!), nor have you thought through what you 'propose'.

And then
'Your whole supposition is that the present economic process can continue because there's no problem with energy and resources'

Frankly, that's bollocks: I make so such claim.

[mobbsey]

You clearly have no experience of how modern industry works

Actually, I do. I worked in the plastics industry until the factory went to Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 90s. And as a consultant from 1991-2003, my expertise was in demand by manufacturing industries, looking at/auditing their processes, the waste industry and waste/manufacturing trade associations.

And then 'Your whole supposition is that the present economic process can continue because there's no problem with energy and resources'

Frankly, that's bollocks: I make so such claim.

So what is your position on resource depletion then -- please, enlighten me!