[meteorite-list] WG: Asian falls

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 05:10:38 -0800
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=cyhd+S_FwWMsPR4ujLApez4hzJ3CHrOnJBAOi_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hello Martin, All,
I'll address your entire message with a slightly different angle this time.

> some of the federal laws in Australia were even earlier in place.

Right. Which supports my idea that the laws aren't what stopped the
meteorites from being found.

> The find numbers, correct me if I'm wrong, were produced mainly by
> "official" expeditions, two times Euromet (one of them at least hopelessly
> unsuccessful ?Mundrabillas, Millbillillies, three OCs - stuff in a quantity
> a meteorite dealer would charge you today with 15-20k$) and one carried out
> by the school of mines.

You are unequivocally wrong. If you go through the literature, you'll
note that at least half of the more recent Australian meteorites were
found, as I said in my last email, by natives, or at least by
scientists not on WAMET/EUROMET expeditions.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1989Metic..24..135B

According to Bevan in his 1992 abstract on the WAMET/EUROMET
expedition, they recovered roughly 600 meteorites between 1992 and
1994. It's important to note that most of the material found was
found prior to these expeditions, between 1986 and 1992. And as best
I can tell, the "600 stone" figure included paired finds, meaning that
they actually recovered fewer meteorites than that.

Bevan notes in 'Desert Meteorites: A History:'

"An active collecting programme continues in the Western Australian
Nullarbor. However, unusually high rainfall related to cyclonic
activity during the mid- to late 1990s, and the consequent
regeneration of vegetation caused a temporary cessation of collecting
activities. Since about 1997, the onset of drier conditions has
reduced vegetation and returned parts of the Nullarbor to a condition
suitable for systematic searching."

I could stop here and say "Here is your answer -- this is why
meteorites stopped being found in the early 1990's," but I'm guessing
you won't take Bevan's word for it.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l0t783p802k561u6/fulltext.pdf

If you check out the above article dedicated to the subject, you'll
note that Bevan's claims are somewhat grounded, due to the three year
streak of above average cyclone activity around 1994 (at which point
the study ends, so it may have even been longer than that).

So I'll get to the rest of your message.

> 15 published new finds for a whole continent with deserts, where the past
> proved, that they are very productive for meteorite finds - and that in THE
> decade, where the big harvest took place in the deserts of the African,
> Asian, and North-American continent,
> is very unsatisfying, especially in a country of such a long and in former
> times remarkable meteorite tradition.
> The problem is, that since the 1990ies, no serious meteorite expedition
> wasn't carried out anymore by universities there, as well as the basic work
> (see the 500 unclassified finds) was neglected.

On the one hand, I see what you're trying to say. But in light of
Bevan's comments, you're left without a leg to stand on. If
systematic hunting was rendered implausible due to increased levels of
vegetation, you can't sit here blaming Aussie scientists for not
mounting more expeditions because...

You have no evidence of *anything,* so going on and on about how
they're lazy on a list where they're not present to defend themselves
isn't quite a nice thing to do.

In light of that fact, I'm forwarding this thread to Alex Bevan
himself, to see if he'll chime in.

> So the Australian meteoricists fall short regarding the special meaning and
> status, the Aussie meteorites are given in Australian legislation.
> Consequently this legislation isn't tenable anymore.

If you break the above block into the three respective ideas it
contains, you get the following:
1) The scientists aren't doing the work they should be doing to
recover meteorites based on the legislation that has been enacted.
2) Therefore the law should be repealed.

I see two problems with this train of thought. The first is that
you're implying that it is somehow an Australian meteoriticist's job
to recover meteorites because a law was passed that protected them as
national treasures.

That in itself is twisted reasoning. Is it an archaeologist's job to
recover all Native American artifacts in the US as quickly as possible
because laws have protected them from being picked up by "unqualified
people?"

No. Does that make the law somehow defunct?

I don't think so.

The second is that you're insinuation that the law should be repealed
because find rates have gone down. The law was passed with no intent
of arresting or aiding the recovery of new meteorites in Australia.
It was passed in order to keep the as yet largely unexploited cache of
Australian meteorites from being exploited, as happened with
Morocco/Algeria/Oman.

In my opinion, a country has every right to exert laws over its
resources. Correct me if I'm wrong.

> How meteorites are found, I think everyone of us here on the list knows, as
> well as those involved in Australian projects, at least partially, do know.
> Therefore I allow myself to criticize the legal situation and the efforts
> undertaken there.

Well, there are again two things to consider here.
First is that, if Bevan's comments regarding poor hunting conditions
due to weather are correct, you criticism is entirely groundless.
The second is that I disagree with you on this point. The law wasn't
passed to aid the recover of meteorites. The law was passed to
protect a national resource of Australia, and to prevent it from
falling into the hands of entrepreneurs, etc. Mining operations and
the like bring income to the state by providing the country with
taxes, etc. If a meteorite hunter finds a new meteorite, takes it out
of the country s/he finds it in, gets it analyzed, and finds out it's
a lunar meteorite, the country that the stone was found in gets
nothing.

In my mind, the Australian legislature/few scientists who pushed the
passing of such laws were extremely prudent. Very few countries are
likely to contain as many easily-findable meteorites. They protected
what will likely be a very valuable resource from commercial
exploitation.

> Some blogs of the "expeditions" there, you have on internet. A handful
> people, for a few days in the desert,
> hence less professional than any of the amateur hunters.

Many amateur hunters don't even seem to record coordinates for their
finds. The blogs that I've seen have all mentioned GPS's and in-situ
photos. I don't know what sort of superior documentation you think
amateurs are doing nowadays, but to hear such a criticism coming from
you -- the same guy who just a few months ago said that recording
coordinates for meteorite finds was nearly useless information -- I'm
surprised to say the least.

> The fireball network, I'm allowed to criticize, because it is partially
> financed by my tax-money, I'm generating with meteorite sales.
> The costs and the equipment, the goals and the predicted find rates, of this
> project, you'll find on internet.
> They admit there, and the find area and the size of the covered area are
> almost the best condition, one can have for meteorite finding, they admit
> there, that they even weren't looking for all the droppers, they were able
> to narrow down.
> Here in Europe we have fundamentally different experiences and methods with
> our fireball network.
> We learned, that whenever possible, the help and the manpower of amateur
> hunters has to be used, to find the stones, which the cameras had
> documented. Therefore the data and predicted fall areas are open to
> everyone.

Do you even know who you're blaming?

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/earthscienceandengineering/research/iarc/collection/cameranetwork

As you can see, if you want to criticize who is releasing data from
the Desert Fireball Network, you should talk to the academics in
charge, few (if any) of whom are from Australia, since the project is
being run primarily by researchers in Imperial College London, though
it is apparently supported by *volunteers from Western Australia,* if
you look at the website.

It's not like there's some Aussie conspiracy to keep meteorites from
getting to you. But the researchers know that they can guarantee that
stones will be well documented and since they've spent however many
hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on funding the project, I
again find it strange that you feel that you're entitled to their
data. My tax money pays for many things in this country such; that
doesn't mean that I feel entitled to any and all raw scientific data I
want from any publicly funded program. That's ridiculous.

> If you take Neuschwanstein for instance - hundreds of people were hunting
> for three years in a difficult terrain, and if you take your North American
> showers, we have it always here on the list, there you know, what for a
> large number of participants and what time-spans are necessary to generate
> the resulting tkws.

A large part of the problem with your argument is that, especially in
the US, the researchers either willingly provide data to the amateur
hunters, or the amateurs track down the falls on their own.

And the recording of find information is usually abysmal. Even when
it is recorded and accurate, it is rarely mae available to the
scientific sphere and instead remains secreted away on some hunter's
computer.

I personally know of several stones reportedly found in the Ash Creek
and Mifflin strewnfields that were individuals from H-chondrite falls
from Northwest Africa.

I'm sorry, Martin, but you're not going to sway me here; the science
done by folks looking to make a few bucks isn't as good as the work
done by those whose only goal is to recover meteorites for science.
They might not find quite as many, but take a look at something like
Bunburra Rockhole. The coordinates are posted. And they're accurate,
which is more than I can say for many Omani coordinates (because
people wish to obscure the find locations of rare stones). Thanks to
the fact that the fall was tracked down by scientists, if you want to
go and find more of these Aussie falls (once the meteorites are
official), you can.

> In Australia, you have an easy accessible flat terrain with less vegetation
> than here in Europe, the efforts to spend to find the droppers would be much
> lower than here - but even that isn't done there.

But that's the point. The hunting is easier, so fewer scientists can
go and find material. The program wouldn't result in many finds in
Europe or the US because the hunting is harder. In Australia it
works, and they find them.

> And keeping in mind, that the camera stations here in Europe are maintained
> by volunteer amateurs, cost-free, as well as the hunts are done by
> volunteers cost-free - and finally if I think, that the large European
> fireball net costs only a few thousands per year, but the small Australian
> net a couple of hundreds of thousands,
> then I can express my doubts, whether my tax-money (if I'm not allowed to
> use it for maintaining my yacht, my castle, my Bentley-collection, my riding
> horses, like almost all other meteorite dealers)

Stand back and think about this.

If I live in Europe, and want to put a fireball camera up somehow, all
I need is the equipment and I can put it on my roof or something like
that. The Desert Fireball Network consists of multiple cameras in the
middle of the Nullarbor Desert.
Which means that things like electricity, maintenance, and even
traveling to recover falls -- it's all many times more expensive and
difficult, to say nothing of the fact that the cameras probably have
to be much more tamper and weather-proof.

> couldn't be used more effectively if used for meteoritical purposes,
> as long as the Aussie-network methodically isn't running lege artis.

And you're entitled to complain to the Imperial College London, who
runs the program, whenever you'd like. Saying it's all "Australia's
fault" when no one from the country is running the program doesn't
make any sense.

> The problem is, that the Australians, other than in other countries, can't
> avail themselves of the enormous, but free, help of amateur hunters and
> trained expert private hunters.
> Because with their laws, they created - even independently from individual
> mentality - legal artificial obstacles to do so.

Again, the Desert Fireball Network is primarily run and funded by UK
scientists. You are apparently very misinformed.
There are no Australian laws protecting the information from the
fireball network. They might even give you the information of more
recent fireballs if you asked.

Have you tried? I assume not...

But sitting at home writing nasty emails about them is probably
easier, I agree.

> And these laws, see also the federal laws there, are an anachronism from
> those times, when there were still so few finds a year, that it could have
> been worth to try to go the way of disappropriation and cutting personal
> rights.

Saying that the three hundred meteorite finds made after the laws were
passed (that showed an actual increase in find rates over the past
several *decades*) are "an anachronism" is preposterous.

By that logic, I might as well say that the decrease in find rates
since 1994 is "an anachronism," and is thus statistically irrelevant.

You accuse me of using purely rhetorical arguments, but I really
don't. I break down what you say into components and attack them as
well as the overarching idea. I suppose it's a rhetorical strategy,
but I'll be damned if you say it's an argument that centers on
semantics, because if you read what I'm saying....it's not.

> Well, it turned out, and that very soon, to have been a misjudgement.

The laws? You're the only one criticizing them. And it's not like
you don't have ulterior motives.

> I object to the Aussie meteoricists and those involved, to adhere still
> today to that misjudgement by all means, ignoring the experiences and stats
> collected over the recent decades in their own country as well as in other
> countries.

It sounds as though you didn't even read my last email, which noted
the recovery of over three hundred new meteorites in the eight years
following the passage of the nationally prohibitive export laws.

Ah, I forgot. You said that the finding of those three hundred
distinct falls was "an anachronism."

Right.

*If* anyone else on here is taking the time to read these emails, I
hope they can see how ridiculous all of this is.

> Monetary values, Jason, I don't believe them to be an argument. At current
> prices it wouldn't make sense for a nomad to bend down to pick up an
> weathered OC.

Well, lets look at the numbers.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gro_nat_inc_percap-gross-national-income-per-capita

The per-capita GDP (which doesn't reflect actual income) is close to
$3,000, but that represents the GDP of the country divided by the
number of inhabitants, so in terms of what people are actually making,
the above site is probably closer to the truth of what people actually
make. $1,059.75, on average.

What does that mean?

Well, the US' average is $33,070.30. If spending power within the
country is assumed to be roughly proportional to income, it means
that, to the average citizen of Morocco, $1060 has roughly the same
equivalent power as $33,000 in the US. Let's make things easy and
assume the ration is 33:1.

If a Moroccan finds a 1kg stone worth, say, $50 in Morocco, that US$50
will bring him the same that...x33 = $1,650 would bring me here in the
US.

It's not a huge amount of money, but this is yet another example of
you saying things that are extremely misinformed and untrue. Even if
my simplistic analogy is off by a factor of five or ten times, the
stone would still "be worth picking up."

You might be so well-off as to not care to pick up a hundred euro
note, but most people on this list would appreciate such a thing.

> And you and your colleagues, the sparetime hunters in USA, who generate so
> many new finds - and there I think we're together, to find an achondrite, to
> find a Martian or something like Sonny's CM1 you have to generate large find
> rates - they are doing it because of their enthusiasm - economically it
> isn't lucrative.

Yes and no. If I went at it full-time, I could probably make some
sort of a living off of it. The trouble is that you're saying that the
find rates of a bunch of weekend/hobby hunters don't add up to rates
that could sustain someone.

I agree.

But if I were to go out full-time, I have little doubt that I could
scrape a meagre living off of meteorite hunting -- I just doubt that
it would sustain the sort of lifestyle that I would want.

> And btw. the argument doesn't hold water in the Aussie case, note that the
> rights of ownership aren't trimmed for the Australian tektites, and such a
> flanged button, you know that they fetch much higher prices than most
> meteorites.
> Also a proof that the Aussie legislation is not a naturally grown necessity,
> but an arbitrariness.

Your shortsightedness astounds me. Australites are fine aesthetic
specimens of tektites, but they have been studied and understood.
There are many examples in collections, and a new one, regardless of
shape, will be chemically identical to all of those found before it.

Meteorites are inherently different than tektites; the next one you
find could be a new type never seen by science. The fact that you're
comparing the scientific importance of tektites to that of meteorites
makes me think that you don't appreciate meteorites for their real
scientific value.

> So, that is the second problem. Those, who shoulder the laborious and
> time-consuming work of meteorite hunting, for fun or for profit motives,
> makes no difference, hence those, who generate almost all meteoritic finds
> outside of Antarctica and with that, the base of meteorite science,
> simply can't go into the Aussie desert to find the meteorites for Bevan et
> al. getting more happy.

In the beginning of your email, you said that the majority of
Australian finds were made by WAMET/EUROMET teams. Based on what I
saw in the bulletin and in a few papers, it looked to me like the
finds were made about half by such teams and the remainder were made
by freelancing scientists and locals (esp. Rabbit hunters for some
reason).

Granted, those official teams haven't been doing much lately, but it's
important to note that there are apparently legitimate reasons for
that (see first point in email regarding Nullarbor cyclones). It
would make sense for private parties to make most finds when the place
where scientists most often go to hunt has been un-huntable.

But...you raise a good point. Antarctica. Why do you not think that
you have a right to hunt there? Your tax money pays for bases and
expeditions as well - don't you think you (and all other private
collectors) should have the right to hunt for and keep meteorites from
Antarctica?

> Third problem is,
> in such countries, where no meteorites are found, meteorite science has a
> difficult stand.

No.

Meteorites are not in short supply thanks to the recent NWA rush.

Modern meteoritics as a field requires advanced technology and levels
of expertise/education. Countries that have historically had good
education systems over past decades have the highest concentration of
meteorite-studying scientists. That's why especially European
countries, Australia, Japan, and the US have the highest numbers of
such researchers -- not Oman, Morocco, Mexico, etc. The number of
scientists pertains more to the country's infrastructure, not the
number of meteorites being found.

> And even worse, if you kill the meteorite finders and with them the
> meteorites, if you eliminate the private collecting culture and tradition,
> you will loose inevitably on the long run also your academic meteorite
> tradition.

You seem to be saying that 'Australian laws have destroyed the private
meteorite collecting culture and tradition of Australia.'

Is anyone else reading this? If so, please affirm that this sounds
ridiculous.

It's one thing to (incorrectly) state that amateurs do a more thorough
job of recording their finds than scientists do.

It's another thing to start saying stuff like your above statement.

And while, yes, I agree that limiting the number of meteorites being
found might in theory limit the number of researchers studying them,
you need to stand back and look at the bigger picture.

Scientists currently have access to more meteorites than they can even
analyze. In the past few decades, more meteorites from outside
Antarctica have come to light than in the past two hundred years of
the science as a whole.

Researchers aren't disappearing because there are too few meteorites
to study. And if they ever do, it won't be because Australia limited
their exports.

I've already established that find rates went *up* by several times
following the 1986 passage of the 'Protection of Movable Cultural
Heritage Act,' so your continued assumption that it is what is causing
the decrease in find rates now is baseless and at this point, nothing
but ipse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipse-dixitism

You've yet to back a single one of your claims with any sort of
information, scientific or otherwise.

Your claims have in large part been completely wrong, and you have
shown no interest in doing anything other than replying back with more
and more *unsubstantiated* words, words, and more words.

Just pointing it out.

> (Piquancy - see that Bevan, as an Englishman, doesn't espouse such rigid
> restrictions in his home country...)

Or course it makes sense to protect meteorites where they are more
common and easy to find. If there are fewer found in England, the
British museum can buy all that are found if they like, and the odds
that the next find will be a rare meteorite is significantly lower
because -- well, you try to find an achondrite anywhere on the British
Isles. It's not going to happen.

> And even worse. Most finds are made in desert countries, with no meteorite
> science at all.
> If you forbid all collecting activities and with that all new finds, you
> can't establish a meteorite science there, because it would be obsolete.

I disagree with your above comments for several reasons.
1) No one has forbid collecting activities.
2) With the widespread availability of NWA and other meteorites on the
market, samples are easily obtainable. Australia with their
limitation of commercial exports, isn't doing anything to harm the
work being there because -
3) We've already established that the number of finds in Australia
increased for almost a whole decade after the passing of the
prohibitive laws you so lament. So the laws did *not* lead to a
decrease in finds.

Which renders your entire argument moot.

> For me it is no question, that we would have dozens, if not hundreds of
> published Aussie meteorites more and with them, naturally, also all those
> scientifically more interesting finds like the rare carbonaceous ones and
> the planetaries, if we would have there a more civilized meteorite
> legislation, which reflects more the necessities of that branch of science
> and the modern state of art.

Seems doubtful. Maybe more hunters would have gone to Australia, and
more rare meteorites would have been found, but if conditions really
were worse for hunting in the Nullarbor, that may not be the case.

To say nothing of the fact that many of the coordinates would likely
have been falsified, as is happening in Oman today.
.
[Skipping a block of your email that rehashed what you already addressed above.]

> And here we are again at the essential point:
>
> All prohibitionists were over all these year not able,
> to deliver any indication, what a prohibition or a disappropriation has
> brought or even only theoretically could bring for an advantage.

Oh, I don't know, Martin. Why do you not complain that your own
country does not have open borders with the rest of the world? Why do
you not share your country's resources freely with all other
countries?

No, Martin. Australia has one of the oldest unchanged desert surfaces
in the world, and they would be stupid not to protect the meteorites
it has gathered from the likes of me and you. Seeing a new unique
meteorite that could be saved for study chopped up and sold to the
highest bidder on ebay, with only 20g ever going to science (unless
they can pay the $x,000 per gram to buy a sample) isn't the way things
should be done.

> And that makes the debate so strange, that one could get the impression,
> that it isn't about the meteorites themselves or the greater good of the
> individual nations or for science at all!

Well, to reiterate a point I've viewed in the past, the Australian
Nullarbor is a desert, and has been a desert for tens of thousands of
years. If a meteorite isn't found this year, it's not like it will
disappear, never to be seen again. It will be there, as our
terrestrial dating techniques have shown us, for upwards of 30-35,000
years, depending on the stone.

To say nothing of the fact that statistics suggest that the Protection
of Movable Cultural Heritage Act did not decrease the number of
meteorites being found in Australia, even if it did, scientists have
more than enough on their hands thanks to NWA material, and are not
suffering a shortage of samples due to any actions on Australia's
part.

> But in principle rather a hollow (but nevertheless destructive) harping on
> about principles by a few egomaniacs or by people with no greater insights
> in meteoritics.

Wow. Harsh. I wonder if Dr. Bevan will chime in. I sincerely hope he does.

> But there might by hope.
> I like more such modest voices like e.g. Bland in the Gebel Kamil article,
> if you remember,
> who expressed the dilemma - if you classify the NWAs, you make the
> protagonistic yellers angry.

I wasn't able to find a reference to such an article online, but I
understand his point, regardless - addressed below.

> If you don't, you have a short-fall of the very
> objects of our research.

So you're saying that there is a shortfall of meteorites available to
research right now?

You seem to be implying that the increase in meteorite find rates that
occurred following the ratification of the Protection of Movable
Cultural Heritage Act is somehow harming Australian scientists because
they now have too few meteorites to study and have nothing to do.

Again, if anyone is taking the time to read this, please note how
ridiculous this idea is.

> And finally someone, who gave a realistic figure
> of the monetary value,

If the value were negligible, people would be flying to Australia to
find and donate them to science for the fun of it. Jus' sayin.'

> how neglectible the volume is -

A 10g meteorite is 'worth' as much to science *or* a collector as a 10
tonne meteorite? I think not...

> and not the grotesque
> fairy-tale-numbers those old bones voice against their better knowledge, to
> haul up that quite innocent small meteorite finding thing to a supposed
> crime of black-billion-marketing drugs, weapons, protected wildlife, art,
> archaeological items, to generate more public interest for their doubtful
> goals and achieving, that this ridiculously small affair could be subdued
> under such holy and mighty laws like e.g. the UNESCO conventions.

If it's against the law to export them from a country, it's against
the law, and breaking that law is tantamount to smuggling. Laws are
laws. It doesn't matter if you're trying to ship the last member of a
dying species, or pick up an arrowhead, of which there are millions
laying on the ground. If it's against the law, it's against the law,
and as such, comparing the illegal, unapproved export of meteorites
from Australia is a perfect analogy. All the more because a meteorite
is likely to hold much more information of scientific value than any
number of arrowheads.

> ?(Strange enough, that sometimes also you hear a curator among these voices,
> where then the meteorite collector asks himself, if that museum or institute
> wouldn't do better, to employ a more skilled person, who has a more
> realistic idea about find volumes and meteorite prices, to save the tight
> budgets better..)

Yeah -- like, say, Monica Grady and the British Museum...and the
fiasco that ensued.

No, Martin, you're not going to get far by using terms like
"realistic" without somehow justifying your claims here, because so
far, I've seen nothing but unreasonable, misinformed assertions. The
same ones you've been making for months.

> So. Try and error.
> Australia made that legitimate try of prohibition - the results seems to
> show, that it was an error.

Well the results initially showed an increase in finds for some
reason, and then, per Bevan, hunting conditions deteriorated, and now
they might be just about good again. We'll see if rate go back up.

But claiming that they went down because of prohibitive export laws
when the evidence we have suggests the exact opposite makes no sense
to me, Martin. Perhaps you could try to explain how the increase in
meteorite finds in the eight years following the passage of the 1986
law was somehow completely disregard-able for your reasoning.

> Other countries currently try to make the same error, I guess, one should
> protect them against that error.

You're just building on the rest of your ipse, but I'll hear you out...

> If a try turns out to be an error,
> then one should do the next try.
>
> Now maybe, Jason, you will ask, why they should make that try at all?
>
> I would answer, na?ve as I am, because they are not my butcher from my last
> post, they are meteoricists and have chosen that profession for themselves.

Your assertion here seems to be that the Australian scientists who
wish to protect Australian meteorites from commercial exploitation
'haven't chosen the profession for themselves.' I'm not sure what to
make of such a claim, but it strikes me as more than a little strange.

> Rhetorically, as I know you, you would try perhaps to say,
> who are you, that you feel entitled to make such statements?

Well I haven't yet, but it's a good point. Of course, you could ask
the same thing, but I'd simply point to the fact that I've cited more
than a few papers in my schpiel, to date you've mentioned a grand
total of one.

The rest of what you've said is and has always been nothing more than
ipse dixit.

It's getting frustrating. Every time I refute what you've said you
just say the same stuff back without any additional support or
justification. If you compare this email to our last little tiff over
the same issue a few months ago, you'll see that you literally said
the same things in your above email, still without *any*
justification.

Your arguments seem to center on the following:
1) Condemnation of Australia as a country and all of its scientists
for wishing to limit exports.
2) Fact that Australian scientists are facing a shortage of samples
because so few meteorites are currently being found in the country.
3) Condemnation of Australia and Australian scientists for not sharing
their Desert Fireball Network information.

Briefly -

1) The Australian individual state laws seem to be the real problem
because they allow for the state requisitioning of meteorites without
just compensation. No scientists pushed for such policies, as best I
can tell, and those laws are due solely to legislators. If you want
to complain about those, I suggest you compare figure out when those
state laws were ratified and compare fid rates of meteorites before
and after in those states with the find rates for the rest of
Australia and the rest of the world to see if those laws had any
actual effect on find rates.
2) Not true, ridiculous.
3) It's not theirs - complain to UK scientists if you want to, but be
prepared to justify why you think the scientific data collected by a
multimillion dollar scientific project should be put in the hands of
someone who may lie about what they find so that they can make some
more money off of the latest fall.

Flawed logic, a complete lack of evidence, and misinformation.

Happy New Year,
Jason

>
> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
> [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Jason
> Utas
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 30. Dezember 2010 09:24
> An: Meteorite-list
> Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] WG: Asian falls
>
> Martin, All,
> I would like to point out that the law prohibiting the approved export
> of meteorites from Australia, the "Protection of Movable Cultural
> Heritage Act," was passed in 1986.
>
> 309 meteorites have been recovered, analyzed, and officially published
> in Australia since then, not including the relict iron recently found.
>
> Breaking statistics up by date alone can lead to deceiving
> conclusions. ?Most of the meteorites found in Australia in the past
> thirty years were found between 1990 and 1994, several years after the
> prohibitive laws had been passed.
>
> So, yes, it's true that relatively few meteorites have been found in
> Australia in the past decade. ?But no new laws were introduced around
> the year 2000, so logic would lead us to conclude that prohibitive
> export laws are not the culprit.
>
> Why, then, did rates fall so dramatically? ?I'm not sure.
>
> I'm guessing it was the influx of Saharan and NWA meteorites that
> caused market prices to bottom out. ?All of a sudden, a CK4 like
> Maralinga wasn't worth untold hundreds per gram. ?Stones like Camel
> Donga and Millbillillie have dropped to thirty or so percent of what
> they used to sell for -- and ordinary chondrites like Hamilton, Cook
> 007 and others now sell on ebay for cents per gram, instead of the few
> dollars or so they fetched ten or more years ago.
>
> And the subsistence wage in Australia is considerably higher than in
> Morocco (it takes more money to live above the poverty line). ?So
> while someone in Morocco might be able to live reasonably well if they
> sell their stones for a few cents per gram, the same is likely not
> true for someone in Australia.
>
> That's my best guess, anyways. ?If you go through the Meteoritical
> Bulletin, you'll notice that very few, if any, of the meteorites were
> actually found by meteorite dealers; they were found by Aussies, and
> they were found well after the passing of the 1986 law.
>
> Regards,
> Jason
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 6:57 PM, Martin Altmann
> <altmann at meteorite-martin.de> wrote:
>> Because I'm very content with Canada.
>>
>> They learned from the Tagish Lake debacle.
>> And eased afterwards the strictest interpretation, their laws allowed in
>> practice.
>> With better results following.
>> Buzzard Coulee got therefore a much higher tkw and a better availability
> for
>> everyone, institutions and private collectors;
>> you saw how suddenly new masses of Springwater were found;
>> or remember that crater building iron - I forgot the name.
>>
>> Never the right of ownership was challenged by Canadian laws, but only
> what
>> finders could do with their property, in past leading to such bizarre
>> situations, that the owner of the second St-Robert stone, desperately
> wanted
>> to sell, but was not able to do so, because no Canadian institute was
>> interested in, although he asked not more the Canadian survey had paid for
>> the 1st stone, but on the other hand, wasn't allowed to sell it outside of
>> Canada - a legally more than unsatisfying situation.
>>
>> Meanwhile Canadian institutes allow export clearance for all stones, they
>> don't need.
>> O.k. it's somewhat uncomfortable and takes time, but it is fair.
>> They pay very fair prices for Canadian finds, if they decide to acquire
>> them. (not anymore that funny reward proposed on radio: 100$ per stone
> found
>> of Tagish Lake ;-).
>>
>> And you don't have to forget, that in contrast to such countries with
>> prohibition like Algeria, Poland, Argentina with all in all no scientific
>> interest in meteorites, or countries with constitutionally more than
>> problematic laws like Australia and so on,
>> the Canadians maintain a real good meteorite science and a vivid
>> institutional collecting,
>> of course also including the important hot desert finds.
>>
>> So all in all, Canada would be a very good example (unfortunately so far
> the
>> ooonly example) for meteoricists like e.g. Bevan, suffering under the
>> unreasonable legislation of their countries, how it could be done better.
>>
>> Best!
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
>> Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
>> [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Chris
>> Spratt
>> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 30. Dezember 2010 01:26
>> An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>> Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] WG: Asian falls
>>
>> You left out Canada.
>>
>> Chris
>> (Via my iPhone)
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Received on Mon 03 Jan 2011 08:10:38 AM PST