Yabby wrote, "Roxby Downs has uranium that they did not even know about ..."

Of course it would be too much to expect of Yabby to acknowledge the sound moral and environmental case against uranium mining at Roxby Downs.

Who cares if it adds to the proliferation of nuclear weapons making nuclear war practically inevitable? Who cares if the recurrence of nuclear disasters in the mould of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are made practically certain? Who cares if future generations of Australians will have to face the legacy of massive tailings dams from which poisonous clouds of radioactive dust will be deposited by wind on eastern seaboard cities? Who cares if Australian Uranium will further add to the quantity of waste from nuclear power stations which will have to be cared for at least tens of thousands of years into the future?

As long a few Australians stand to gorge themselves today from the profits to be made from uranium mining, why give another thought to problems which that will be left to others to deal with?

---

Yabby ranted, "Our big problem today is that Aussies have had it too good for too long and many have lost the work ethic. blah, blah, blah, etc, ..."

Of course, Yabby. And you are obviously made of sterner moral fibre than that of which all those fellow Australians whom you despise are made.

The problems of which Tony has written are somehow not due to the fact that neo-liberals have been given virtually open slather in Australia for the last 30 years. Rather, it is all because so many Australians, who somehow were previously able to play dignified roles within our society, have suddenly become lazy.

The fact that so many Australians now go without basic dental care is, of course, because they choose to spend all their money on poker machines.

It has nothing to do with the fact that Howard and Costello needlessly and spitefully abolished Labor's Commonwealth dental program and never bothered to restore it even through all those years when their budgets were massively in surplus.

Daggett

I suppose the fact that social or environmental or humanitarian responsibility issues roll off Yabby like water off a duck's back, at least serves the purposes of demonstrating to other readers the true nature of globalisation supporters. Very alienating.

If I were a political science lecturer, I would be using this and similar sites as a learning tool. Sadly, few if any political science lecturers are not clones of Yabby and his ilk. This is hardly surprising considering that universities were the first targets of David Rockefeller and his UNESCO managers back in 1970, wherein healthy debate and analysis were exchanged for free market doctrines, simultaneously replacing family with state, and promoting any and all minorities above democratic electoral sentiment.

Daggett, AFAIK, mining companies need a rehabilitation plan, to restore things
after mining. Certainly that is the case with bauxite here, where a lot of money
is spent doing exactly that.

If you think that a mere 20 million Australians, are going to sit on huge piles
of resources, refusing to sell them, whilst the rest of the world runs out, think again.
You clearly know nothing about nature or history, for I assure you, they will simply
take what they need. Australia cannot live isolated from the global economy, that
is the reality. Resources is what people have fought wars over, throughout history,
when they get scarce, people fight. Our 3 planes and 2 ships are not going to stop
them either lol.

If Saudi Arabia cut the oil tap tomorrow, in order to preserve oil for the futue,
I can assure you, the Americans would move in fairly quickly.

Yes, the world faces a crisis, ever more people, nobody says boo. 9-10 billion
is accepted as a given. That fact is not even being addressed by the international
community. So most likely the planet will be raped in the name of ever increasing
populations. I have argued for 30 years about the population factor, people don’t
care. I have long ago learnt to stop worrying about the things that I cannot change,
so have no sleepless nights because of it.

Manufacturing does not have to be tiny at all. Specialised manufacturing can be
huge, as we see in counties like Switzerland, with no resources. But they are based
on intellectual property etc, not on trying to compete with the Chinese making
toasters. Or of course, building specialised equipment for primary wealth generators,
like farming and mining.

Last time I checked, the Australian coal industry claimed to have about 200 years of
reserves, with new deposits still being discovered. We are not about to run out
tomorrow.

If kids need dental care, there is enough money in the kitty to pay for it, generated by
the resources industry, not by Australian exports of toasters.

Once more, I see Yabby has displayed his considerable skill at dragging red herrings across the trail, changing the subject just at the point when the case he is putting is starting to unravel and adding noise and repetition to the discussion, rather than useful information.

The classic refrains of those who have contempt for the democratic rights of those who wish to to stop policies which are against the public interest are: we have no choice, everyone else is doing it, we will be invaded next week if we even stop to think about what is happening, etc, etc.

---

Yabby, how about we first of all reach a conclusion as to whether digging out our mineral wealth right now and poisoning this whole continent is desirable before we discuss whether we have any choice?

No red herrings Dagget, either you can think about the big picture
or you can't. Meantimes you continue to try and create strawman
arguments.

No evidence that the whole continent is being poisoned either.
No evidence that the Australian public are concerned about increased
mining either. It was not even an election issue, just a few fringe
dwellers like yourself think it is.

At present its actually the Rudd Govt pushing for increasing mining.
Some gas explorers had capped wells for the future and I note they
have been told that they should develop those resources or risk
losing the rights to them.

Of course its your democratic right to put forward your extremist
ideas, its my democratic right to point out that you are peeing
in the breeze.

Sulk all you want, the rest of us have moved on.

Yabby wrote: "AFAIK, mining companies need a rehabilitation plan, to restore things after mining. Certainly that is the case with bauxite here, where a lot of money is spent doing exactly that."

But we are talking about uranium mining and tailings dams. What's rehabilitation for bauxite mining got to do with this?

"No evidence that the whole continent is being poisoned either."

What about this:

"Bad Developers" at http://www.baddevelopers.green.net.au/Docs/roxby.htm (go to section headed "Recent spills at the Olympic Dam Mine")

"The Tailings Leak at Roxby Downs" at
http://www.ccsa.asn.au/nic/UMining/Roxbyleak.htm?

... or:

"Chronology of uranium tailings dam failures" at http://www.wise-uranium.org/mdafu.html

... or:

David Bradbury's Film "Blowin' in the Wind" at http://www.bsharp.net.au/htm/reviews.htm ?

David Bradbury is concerned that it may prove to be impossible to keep properly contained all the massive amount of toxic dust the tailings dams that are to store. "Over the lifetime of the uranium mine at Roxby Downs it is estimated that there will be a 30-metre high, 1000 hectare pile of radioactive tailings left. The Adelaide CBD covers 260 hectares." (http://www.baddevelopers.green.net.au/Docs/roxby.htm). Almost certainly, large amounts will be picked up by the winds and blown eastwards.

I would have though that Yabby, being the expert on Uranium mining in South Australia, would have been familiar with this.

---

"Last time I checked, the Australian coal industry claimed to have about 200 years of
reserves, ..."

As I said, Yabby, I think you need to give this issue a little more careful thought and not just accept your recollection of figures given by the coal industry with an obvious political vested interest in exaggerating the amount of remaining coal reserves. In any case, they invariabley base such cancluations on the assumption that coal will contiunue to be extracted at teh current rate. In contrast the figures given in the Final Energy Crisis (TFEC) are soundly based.

"... with new deposits still being discovered."

In fact, as the years progress estimates of reserves tend to go down. You will learn this from Seppo Korpella's article "Coal Resources of the World" in the second edition of TFEC due in September.

(tobcontinued)