[Vision2020] What I learned (aka thinking v. self-deceipt)
Chris Storhok
cstorhok at co.fairbanks.ak.us
Mon Jan 30 13:08:47 PST 2006
Phil,
I am agreement with you that, hopefully, Sago will convince Congress
and the Administration to revive the USBM. The value of research performed
by USBM far exceeded the trivial cost to taxpayers. USBM work on mine
safety, environmental remediation, mineral exploration, mineral and metal
processing, and other research was cutting edge and the lack of this type of
research from the US in the last decade is starting to affect the industry.
As you are aware, the US is rapidly falling behind and as we saw at Sago
lives are being lost.
The death of USBM directly triggered the demise of schools of mining
at several universities such as UNR, Mich. Tech, U of I; unfortunately US
colleges and universities cannot fill the current need for mining,
metallurgical, geological and environmental engineers. Pego mine, just east
of Fairbanks, has been advertising for months for qualified engineers and
have yet to find suitable candidates.
I hope that this trend of cutting higher education programs,
especially engineering, soon reverses itself before permanent damage is done
to our nation.
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Nisbet [mailto:pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 11:08 AM
To: cstorhok at co.fairbanks.ak.us
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] What I learned (aka thinking v. self-deceipt)
Chris
A lot of my friends lost their jobs when the USBM closed its doors. The
original proposal was Bruce Babbitt's and you are correct that Gingrich
signed up for it after we tried with might and main from 1994-1996 to save
it. The action was sponsered by both those who wanted to hurt mine
regulators and by those who wanted to hurt the mining industry, so they
ended up with both Democrats and Republicans on board with it. It was as
silly a move as closing the College of Mines here at the U of I was. All
shutting the USBM's down did was hurt mine safety and the $100,000,000 in
supposed savings is something we will pay for through having to buy overseas
mine safety technology and in lost lives and slower regulatory change.
So Newt, Babbit and Ivins, three of my least favorite people in this world,
managed to convince Congress and the Executive branches to wipe out the
USBM. Its one of those a pox on both your houses deals as far as I am
concerned. If Sago does anything, I hope like Heck its to get the USBM
reopened so that America can get back its cutting edge in mine safety. Heck
the life that is saved just might be my own.
Phil Nisbet
PS I did mention the GOP's role in the original post that Jim Meyers was
commenting on. It is one of the areas that the Republican Party always
seems to spite its nose on, to whit government research and development
especially in safety.
>From: Chris Storhok <cstorhok at co.fairbanks.ak.us>
>To: 'Phil Nisbet' <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com>, m1e2y3e4 at moscow.com
>CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] What I learned (aka thinking v. self-deceipt)
>Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 10:38:42 -0900
>
>Phil,
>To lay the egg of the closure on the Bureau of Mines squarely on Bill
>Clinton is a bit disingenuous to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich who in
>his "Contract with America" proposed and carried out the execution of the
>BOM. The BOM was killed by the simple act of (HR1977, 104th Congress)
>non-appropriation budgeting thus eliminating its 2200 employees, eight
>research centers, and moving the mine health and safety office's to the
>Department of Energy, Pittsburg. Unfortunately from there this office has
>migrated to its final resting place deep within the unproductive bowels of
>the US Department of Labor with some research activities also found within
>the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control
>and
>Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
>Naturally, Secretary Babbitt, and President Clinton went along with the
>plan, but really Phil, you know as well a I do that this was one of Newt's
>ideas and you really do him disservice by crediting Clinton with it.
>
>Chris
>
>
>Here is a partial list of BOM accomplishments:
>· Technologies that contributed to reduction of fatalities in mine
>disasters
>by 97 percent, from 3,000 in 1907 to 98 in 1993.
>· Self-rescue equipment to allow miners to continue to breathe when caught
>in underground disasters.
>· Low-cost methods to extract radium for cancer treatment.
>· Production processes for titanium, which is critical for aerospace and
>automobile manufacturing, and zirconium, which is essential to nuclear
>naval
>vessels.
>· Techniques to recover strategic and critical minerals, such as cobalt and
>chromium, to reduce U.S. vulnerability to import blockages in international
>crises, especially during the Cold War.
>· Construction of manmade wetlands to limit pollution of waterways by acid
>mine drainage from nearby mining and mineral-processing operations.
>· Methods to minimize damage from subsidence, the sinking of the surface of
>the earth above underground mines.
>· Improved recycling of metals, plastic and paper from municipal wastes,
>including a technology, now used around the world, to recycle municipal
>solid wastes.
>· Non-intrusive ways to recover minerals without disturbing the surface of
>the land.
>· Use of bacteria to remove arsenic and cyanide from waste waters on public
>and private lands.
>· Uncovering the world's largest deposits of lead and zinc at Alaska's Red
>Dog Creek, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in capital
>investments
>for mine development.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
>On Behalf Of Phil Nisbet
>Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 9:51 AM
>To: m1e2y3e4 at moscow.com
>Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] What I learned (aka thinking v. self-deceipt)
>
>I need to reply to something that is obviously directed at me. It
>interests
>
>me that Jim does not seem aware that I have been working in the minerals
>industry, including a not inconsiderable few years spent underground.
>
>Jim tells us;
>
>"Are you a thinking person? You know, the kind of person that is
>introspective enough to test his/her own thoughts and prejudices when
>confronted with a differing truth. Can you really THINK? "
>
>So Phil replies;
>
>Reading your response below I would have to question your ability to think
>and not to act in a highly partisan fashion that makes little or no sense
>when looking at facts objectively. As per your Emory study, your reward
>center must be lit up like a Christmass Tree when you ead a Molly Ivins
>article.
>
>Jim writes..
>
>"What I learned recently is that two die-hard Republicans on V2020 believe
>Molly Ivins is an idiot--as is anyone who would even consider her thoughts
>is an idiot, as evidenced by both their initial comments--"Are you
>kidding?"
>
>and then by their avoidance of addressing the questions Molly asks, and one
>of them even going so far as to put words in her mouth she didn't say and
>then discounting them."
>
>And I reply;
>
>Molly is a partisan who does not care for inconvenient truths. And I do
>have a name Jim, you can use it. And you would have nothing to write the
>rest of the post with had I not address the issue of Molly not dealing with
>the facts. Now care to tell us all what words were placed in Molly Ivins
>mouth?
>
>Jim then presents things he thinks are facts;
>
>"Well, here here are the facts about mine safety as I can discern them."
>
>I reply;
>
>Yes Jim, you have very little knowledge of mines or mine safety, which
>makes
>
>your discernment of the subject pretty weak and based upon research that is
>not very detailed.
>
>Jim Fact #1
>
>"--Under the Bush Administration, since 2001, fines have been routinely
>dismissed or diminished--one example is $450,000 being reduced to $3000."
>
>And the real fact
>
>Mine safety violation fines were reduced under Clinton as well Companies
>have often pitched such fines to their Senators, the most powerful of whom
>is Sen. Byrd of West Virginia. Total fines and violations have not
>decreased between the two administration What has changed is that under
>Clinton, the US Bureau of Mines was destroyed and the $100,000,000 a year
>in
>
>funding for mine safety research was taken with it. The USBM was the
>agency
>
>which came up with new mine safety devices and also with new mine safety
>regulations, MSHA was and is solely the enforcement group. So since 1996,
>there have been no new ideas in Mine Safety. St Molly of Fort Worth was
>the
>
>person who lead the charge to do in the US Bureau of Mines, something you
>seem to have conveniently forgotten.
>
>Jim Fact 2
>
>"--Under the Bush Administration, the requirement to have two shafts, one
>for the miners ventilation and one for the coal conveyor has been
>unenforced."
>
>The real facts
>
>First, please provide any evidence for your statement there. The
>requirement for a separate man way is standard. Care to provide any proof
>that MSHA did not enforce that requirement? If you are referencing the
>most
>
>recent mine fire, the conveyor was in a separate drift and there were
>numerous other manways. Frankly I doubt you would know a shaft from an
>adit
>
>from a decline from a drift or a crosscut or be able to tell stopes from
>longwall cuts. Further, ventilation is not something that shafts provide,
>shafts are the means of enterence and exit from a mine working and
>ventilation is provided most often by ducting in the various adits and
>shafts of a mine.
>
>Jim Facts 3, 4, 5 ect
>
>"--That it is considerably cheaper to pay for a dead miner than pay for all
>miner's safety. It costs $20 each for a personal pager sized device that
>can
>
>locate a miner in the mine. It is made in Australia, by the way. It costs
>about $800 for a text messaging device that can allow those outside the
>mine
>
>to communicate with trapped miners. These items were not in use at the Sago
>mine. The company owning the Sago Mine paid for the equivalent of pine box
>funeral and made Cobra insurance payments for, I believe 1 & 1/2 years for
>the family members of killed miners. The family members also receive
>$150,000 or $300,000 in life insurance payments. That is it. If you do the
>math, you can see that it is less costly to pay for killed miners than it
>is
>
>to pay for their safety."
>
>Line of sight devices do not work underground. You can equip every single
>miner with a pager and it will do absolutely nothing for locating them if
>they are not within your line of sight. Transmission of signals
>communication through hundreds to thousands of feet of solid rock using a
>tiny device is simply not going to happen. The US Bureau of Mines was
>working on devices that could do that kind of job, but the scrapping of the
>complete Agency did tend to do in the potential to get devices designed and
>tested.
>
>As for the Australian device that you reference, it is brand new. The PED
>and Tracker system requires more than simply putting a pager on each miner.
>
>Frankly it's a good idea, but it was not even approved for use in the US
>until about a month prior to the Sago Mine disaster and it is not mandated
>by MSHA or required by the UMW. The Australians are just now installing
>all
>
>the equipment as are the New Zealanders and the company involved in the
>systems design is now looking at selling it into Japan. Of course the
>Aussies were just following through with the ideas and the preliminary work
>that the US Bureau of Mines had going back in 1993-6 and all of the Sago
>Miners would have had a US made device had the R & D on it not been wiped
>out by the Clinton Administration, but who the heck is counting. You can
>send a nice thank you letter to Molly Ivins for being such a big supporter
>of doing in the USBM's on that one.
>
>As for the pay outs from the International Coal Group, you are totally all
>wet. First, they have a policy for $5,000 in funeral expenses, which is
>considerably more than a pine box. Next, in addition to the $300,000 in
>life insurance, each family is getting over $300,000 from the company for
>education of their minor children and support for their widows. The
>company
>
>is also paying the families the lost miner's wages for a two years
>readjustment period and is honoring the pension clauses that the men had in
>their contracts, so that the widows will get a retirement income. You do
>the math, because it's considerably more than the sum you suggest.
>
>ICG lost 12 men with a lot of experience, had a mine hit by lightening that
>blew up, lost infrastructure and a lot of production capacity. They also
>sprang a lot of money for the mine rescue operation. All told, they are
>out
>
>tens of millions of dollars. Now please try to convince me that they were
>not interested in seeing the mine operated such that it would not blow up
>and that they would not lose money by the ream. Having your mine blown to
>kingdom come is something any company wants to avoid, yet you are
>suggesting
>
>that somehow they would allow it to be liable to explode at the drop of a
>hat. Ideological blinders and your reward sensor hitting overload have to
>be at play on that one.
>
>Jim strange facts;
>
>"--Although mine deaths have gone down over 30 years, it needs to be taken
>into account that the numbers of underground miners has gone done
>dramatically also, probably by more than 1/2."
>
>And this is a bad thing? If there had been a dramatic increase in Mine
>related fatalities since the Bush Administration came into office you might
>have something to talk about, but the fatality rate has been steady state
>for close to a decade. It might have fallen further had the US Bureau of
>Mines not been wiped off the map.
>
>Jim yet stranger factoid;
>
>"--That since 2001, federal mine safety regulators emphasized getting along
>with the company--not miner safety."
>
>Are you totally unaware that this policy was put in place under Clinton?
>As
>
>a matter of fact, the numbers of mine health and safety violations and
>citations has not decreased, so they are still inspecting as much as under
>Clinton/Gore, they are simply resolving the issues, working for compliance
>rather than working to increase the fines. Is the objective in your eyes
>to
>
>have miners get a safer work place? Or is it to collect money? Because
>collecting lots of fines does not make for a safer work place, but
>demanding
>
>compliance does.
>
>And then Jim has this strange "fact";
>
>"--That like Katrina, some questionable people, closely related to
>industry,
>
>were in positions affecting mine safety, one of those being an OSHA head."
>
>Name one person appointed by Bush who actually has anything to do with MINE
>safety that you think is questionable. You see OSHA has nothing to do with
>underground mine safety and not one regulator at MSHA fits your supposed
>bill of indictment. It's extremely disingenuous to suggest that an
>unrelated agency head with no authority for underground mine safety might
>be
>
>conflicted in the Sago Mine disaster.
>
>
>Then Jim Notes;
>
>"In other words, Molly Ivins asked perfectly reasonable questions and these
>were entirely dismissed by some of you on V2020. I guess your reward center
>must be just glowing."
>
>I can only reply;
>
>No Jim, in other words your knee jerk support for the kinds of falsehoods
>that Molly spreads has your little pleasure centers humming and lighting up
>the boards.
>
>And then Jim gives us advice;
>
>"By the way, the CSPAN website has the Senate Appropriations Mine Safety
>subcommittee hearings on it. Do what I did, listen to that and then do a
>little research on your own. And then think (without the usual emotion)."
>
>Good advice, you really should start to do research and not rely on
>propaganda so much. Try starting with basic references like what a mine is
>and work your way up to reading what MSHA had to actually say about why the
>accident occurred. You might just find out a little something that does
>not
>
>fit into your ideology driven agenda. In the mean time try not to think
>you
>
>can teach your grandma how to suck eggs.
>
>Phil Nisbet
>
>
>
> >From: Jim Meyer <m1e2y3e4 at moscow.com>
> >To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> >Subject: [Vision2020] What I learned (aka thinking v. self-deceipt)
> >Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 07:27:44 -0800
> >
> >Are you a thinking person? You know, the kind of person that is
> >introspective enough to test his/her own thoughts and prejudices when
> >confronted with a differing truth. Can you really THINK?
> >
> >"Emory University psychologist Drew Weston has found that our brains have
>a
>
> >convenient way of processing facts that challenge our political
> >convictions. Using MRI scanners, Weston found that when committed
> >Republicans and Democrats were confronted with negative information about
> >politicians they supported, the parts of the brain responsible for
> >reasoning essentially shut down--and "emotion circuits" lit up. As the
> >subjects dealt with their inner conflict by discounting the new
> >information, the brains "reward centers" lit up--a response similar to
>what
>
> >addicts experience when they get a fix. Biases can be overcome, Weston
> >tells The New York Times, but only if people are willing to engage in
> >"ruthless self-reflection"--a quality , he notes, that's "rarely talked
> >about in politics." Nor is it likely to be. It's so much more rewarding
>to
> >close our minds" The Week, Feb 3rd 2006.
> >
> >What I learned recently is that two die-hard Republicans on V2020 believe
> >Molly Ivins is an idiot--as is anyone who would even consider her
>thoughts
> >is an idiot, as evidenced by both their initial comments--"Are you
> >kidding?" and then by their avoidance of addressing the questions Molly
> >asks, and one of them even going so far as to put words in her mouth she
> >didn't say and then discounting them.
> >
> >Well, here here are the facts about mine safety as I can discern them.
> >--Under the Bush Administration, since 2001, fines have been routinely
> >dismissed or diminished--one example is $450,000 being reduced to $3000.
> >
> >--Under the Bush Administration, the requirement to have two shafts, one
> >for the miners ventilation and one for the coal conveyor has been
> >unenforced.
> >
> >--That it is considerably cheaper to pay for a dead miner than pay for
>all
> >miner's safety. It costs $20 each for a personal pager sized device that
> >can locate a miner in the mine. It is made in Australia, by the way. It
> >costs about $800 for a text messaging device that can allow those outside
> >the mine to communicate with trapped miners. These items were not in use
>at
>
> >the Sago mine. The company owning the Sago Mine paid for the equivalent
>of
> >pine box funeral and made Cobra insurance payments for, I believe 1 & 1/2
> >years for the family members of killed miners. The family members also
> >receive $150,000 or $300,000 in life insurance payments. That is it. If
>you
>
> >do the math, you can see that it is less costly to pay for killed miners
> >than it is to pay for their safety.
> >
> >--Although mine deaths have gone down over 30 years, it needs to be taken
> >into account that the numbers of underground miners has gone done
> >dramatically also, probably by more than 1/2.
> >
> >--That since 2001, federal mine safety regulators emphasized getting
>along
> >with the company--not miner safety.
> >
> >--That like Katrina, some questionable people, closely related to
>industry,
>
> >were in positions affecting mine safety, one of those being an OSHA
>head..
> >
> >In other words, Molly Ivins asked perfectly reasonable questions and
>these
> >were entirely dismissed by some of you on V2020. I guess your reward
>center
>
> >must be just glowing.
> >
> >By the way, the CSPAN website has the Senate Appropriations Mine Safety
> >subcommittee hearings on it. Do what I did, listen to that and then do a
> >little research on your own. And then think (without the usual emotion).
> >
> >Jim Meyer
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >_____________________________________________________
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> >communities of the Palouse since 1994. http://www.fsr.net
>
> > mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
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