[meteorite-list] A New Question

From: mexicodoug at aim.com <mexicodoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 02:12:48 -0400
Message-ID: <8CA83A0AAC1D9A8-E70-5BB_at_mblk-d23.sysops.aol.com>

BM3 wrote:

"Sale of any scientific material is a big no. no."

"years of schooling you are not qualified to touch, handle or study
 a meteorite. "

Editorial
Dear Bill, Sure: Let me respond with a flurry of opinion that has
not been peer-reviewed...

What some think of individuals without Academic printed
Union Cards, I really wouldn't give any thought to the portion of
folks endowed with such intellect that they've lost the ability to
have unbiased thought while researching a meaningful world
problem. It's just the wrong crowd, the same one that
failed the verbal portion of their entrance exams and were
admitted into their PhD programs anyway - dump 'um or
become a politician or talk show host.

Clearly the "No-sale" is a cork in Pandora's Bottle that prevents all
sorts
of abuses against each and every one of our rights from surfacing,
just like business as usual on the meteorite-list, because as I
mentioned, anything Antarctic simply may not be for sale in
the signatory countries. The important thought here is:

"It is NOT about the meteorites and it NEVER was."

It has nothing to do with science, or any magic about meteorites,
either. Meteorites have NOT been singled out for discrimination.
It only impacts people who have vested interests in meteorites.

As I understand this, you could not even bring a snowball, a boat
full of ice to sell to parched children in the desert, or a pile of
bat guano back from Antarctica and sell it.

The rest is just protocol and riders that have been added within
different countries and only applies to their jurisdictions, so you can
talk to your congressman about that and challenge the more foolish
provisions in a competent court and rewrite it if it ever became a
real issue.

Scientists, have simply applied for an exemption to allow meteorite
collecting and it has been granted. It is their (our) good fortune
that science is universally accepted by the signatory countries.
I'm not sure everyone is entirely ok with that either, btw.
What would Guatemala think of the American, Japanese, Chinese
institutions hoarding so much?

What will the Americans think when the Chinese ramp up their
recovery effort and vacuum clean the blue ice for years missed?
Surely, they'll be delighted that there will be all the new
meteorites in curation. It's a fragile alliance and I think in
everyone's interest to work out the details. Do you think
researchers in a country may get preference on material vs. a
foreign request? Do you really think each nation's program isn't
looking out for their own benefit when they march to save
humanity? Politics ...

I realize that certain scientists have put all sorts of biased checks
and controls, erring on the side of protectionism rather than
commercialism and individualism. It's really too difficult a problem
for one person to solve by themself, so I just ask myself,

"Am I happy with the Antarctica meteorite recovery efforts
I hear about?"

As a shareholder in this Planet it is my final decision one small
vote, and I think I am happy, because all I see is an impeccable
record of science keeping researchers happy and supplied for
generations, and if I ever want to follow protocol, I too could
have an opportunity to study this materia subject to external
review. Now, I don't like being reviewed any more than the
next guy, but that's just the unofficial part of the scientific
method. It gives me pride more than anything else that
this could happen.

IMO, the world is like one big swimming pool that fell together
by chance which we are all treading water inside... everything
in some sense is connected to the whole. Do you really think the
NWA phenomenon would have blessed (and damned) responsible
collectors if the big guys didn't have their olympic sized continental
Antarctic pool to recover meteorites? I, like many list members am
a little disgusted with the paucity of coordinates associated in NWA,
so I think we have a generally healthy situation which forces
everyone: collectors and scientists alike- to behave themselves to
a certain extent. Antarctica is a beacon of perfection to remind
collectors what meteorites are all about and to provide for posterity,
and NWA is a thorn in the paws of those who think that an illiterate
nomad can't discover all by himself to recognize and value the Moon
and conduct a a search into the minutia and add value even where
a government body couldn't. It's the Ying and the Yang which
teaches us mutual respect although most of us have difficulty to
handle that once we see anything remotely interpretable as
favored treatment.

Until a true case comes along to challenge the current establishment,
it's moot and it's cool.

But when the day comes where a private and talented individual
has the gumption to challenge the current assumptions, I'll sit
back and chomp the popcorn. The Antarctic treaty says nothing
to my knowledge about trades, and if the first iron meteorite
from a distant supernova happens to fall through the roof of
the Inn Suites and get caught in some dinosaur skeleton's skull
right next to you, and then accidently plop into one of your
baggies just as it is prepared, which you seal and freeze, offer
it up as trade material for a new Antarctic meteorite and see if
the beaurocratic wheels of science suddenly don't run after you
like hungry crocs with their red carpet ready and clasped
between their jaws...

Or, if the nationless NWA nomads organized a meteorite
collecting expedition to Antarctica, I'd be devastated to
think how quickly all this greatness we have could crash
and burn if hey ignored non-binding protocol.

Would anyone actually prefer that to the status
quo? I sincerely hope NOT. After all, if not for the science,
all the unclassified gravel on the planet would only be
useful for building roads.

Best wishes,
Doug

Bill wrote:

Dear Doug, I suspect that the academic community like the SVP (
Society of
Vertebrate Paleontology) honestly believes that if you don't have a
PhD and 12
years of schooling you are not qualified to touch, handle or study a
meteorite.
The nature of public intuitions from which they hale is governmental in
nature.
The pole regions are financed by government hence they have the say so
as to how
their domain shall be managed. Sale of any scientific material is a
big no. no.
even if you have 50 tons of the same stuff. Don't ask for an
explanation they
have already made up their mind and that is final - until someone
changes their
collective mind set.

Bm3

-----Original Message-----
 From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com]
On Behalf Of mexicodoug at aim.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 5:54 PM
To: Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A New Question

"Does anyone know What is the reasoning behind the ban?"

Hi David,

There is no "ban". Interested collectors from many nations have been
obviously stocking up collections for years with Antarctic meteorites.

Anyone (including commercial tour operators) can put together a
scientific plan for collecting Antarctic meteorites - at your co$$$t-
and apply for a permit. You cannot b denied the permit in your
jurisdiction as long as you can make convincing guarantees as judged by
administrators that you can provide at your cost, the required
scientific care in collecting, curating and furnishing the meteorites
basically free, to bonafide researchers for scientific studies, with
the caveat that if any time during the perpetuity that follows you can
no longer do this, you must transfer everything to an entity that
properly can.

The reason is simple, the Antarctic is a scientific preserve where the
natural resources are protected, like, say, the Old Faithful Geyser in
Yellowstone Park. If someone decided to drill out and cap the geyser
and pipe out the hot water for commercial use, how would that play on
your sense of morality? I think it would bother me... The scientific
preserve creation is a lucky windfall for environmentalists. The real
motivation behind this government collaboration is the worry that
brazen nations (and there is never a shortage of these) might abuse
this "no-man's land" while other "well behaved nations" stood by and
got jealous, disadvantaged, or had their security threatened. So the
countries agreed that military, disposal or commercial (i.e., mining,
harvesting flora or fauna) acivities by any treaty signatories was
mutually prohibited.

This is the "ban" you mention, no commercial meteorite hunters may
apply unless they plan on shouldering all the trip and collection
expenses by themselves and then giving away the meteorites to qualified
scientific interests only under the perpetually self-financed curating
scheme already mentioned. If this non-commercial ban were not in
effect, anyone could go to this frozen paradise and dump toxic wastes,
drill for oil and leave their holes uncovered, tear down the mountains
to make cement, colonize the place ignoring the unclear set of prior
claims of souvreinty (which others put on hold with promises that no
one else could ever jump their claim) and put explosive mines and guns
pointed everywhere (like big boy nations do anyway with their floating
and flying fleets on our polluted deep oceans). So politicians sided
with Greenpeace once this past millenia and decided that making it a
place to observe but not disturb was the only way to go.

Today, Antarctica is a pristine, white, wonderland, teaming with a
unique spectrum of life, a veritable fantasyland but for real, a
fragile window into an environment that is just as much Earth as the
Amazon jungle - which very few will every have the opportunity to
admire in person, unless they seriously take up a career in the
sciences and make contributions to society from studues there. It is
not a live battlefield subject where children are forced to work the
mines for $0.25 per day without medical care for all the fingers and
toes lost to frostbite, just so we can buy disposible containers with
Coca Cola's lithographed logotype.

I don't know, but I would think it is not impossible to get meteorites
 from permitted curating institutions in trades for special material
with perfect provenance traced back to its orientation on the ice.
However, good luck trading as I don't think anyone wants to have to
justify to administrators who always manage to attack with hindsight -
why they made a dumb trade of material that has been cataloged and
never unfrozen, and acts as a control as well as a variable, since the
day it was found. Had Tagish Lake happened in Alaska and collecting
been done like a space mission by private individuals, we could put the
concept to a real test.

Put another way, the parties realized there is no such thing as putting
it half-way in and not making other suitors jealous.

Best wishes
Doug
P.S. This is the only place I know where governments consider costs to
be incremental costs (and don't even give you credit for your meteorite
scale cube or double baggies). Everywhere else governments seem to
have a concept of cost that includes all the fat that they produce.
Ah...human governance...

PPS The Antarctic is but a coming attraction of what is to come in
Space... Probably it will be immoral to mine an asteroid in the
"Federation National Parks of the Asteroid Belt" at some point ...


-----Original Message-----
From: David & Kitt Deyarmin <bobadebt at ec.rr.com>
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Sent: Tue, 13 May 2008 5:04 pm
Subject: [meteorite-list] A New Question


Does anyone know What is the reasoning behind the ban?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

A specific pre-treaty date is unclear. Some of the material that was
released into the market and that are considered 'pre-treaty':
Adelie Land ALHA 76001 ALHA 76003 ALHA 76005 ALHA 76006 ALHA 76008 ALHA
76009 Mount Baldr Thiel Mtns Lazarev Derrick Peak 78008 Neptune
Mountains
Most are next to impossible to get with the exception of ALHA 76009,
which is readily available. Thiel Mountains is out there, but expect to
pay $300-400/g for it. Lazarev was a Rob Elliot exclusive and will
probably never be available again unless a collector sells their own.
A tidbit of info is here:
http://astro-artifacts.com/Astroartifacts/AA_Antarctic_Meteorites.html
Kind regards, Mike Bandli www.Astro-Artifacts.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


-----Original Message----- From: meteorite-list-bounces at
meteoritecentral.com [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at
meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Pete Shugar Sent: Monday, May 12,
2008 7:52 PM To: Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com Subject:
[meteorite-list] A New Question
When was the treaty banning the release of meteorites from Antarctica
to collectors placed into effect? How many meteorites excaped before
the ban? What are their names? Thanks in advance, Pete
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Received on Wed 14 May 2008 02:12:48 AM PDT