Landracing Forum
Bonneville Salt Flats Discussion => Bonneville General Chat => Topic started by: Seldom Seen Slim on November 30, 2018, 12:00:46 PM
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Follow the link and learn that dragging the salt is what makes it disappear from the racing surface.
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/11/30/study-finds-racing-partly-to-blame-for-long-term-decline-of-the-bonneville-salt-flats/?refer=news&fbclid=IwAR0a0Evx2CB4EkdV-297_M809e0I866-5veCEriBAJ_pmtIe_gN-Bu5uEWw
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I warned you guys that if you complained too much they would say that the racing was bad for the salt and they would ban all racing in the future. It looks like they have an argument now to justify that happening.
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And as expected Brenda Bowen...….
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The smirking scientist... Brenda , surely hasn't shaded her report due to money (funding), has she?
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How is displacing salt from the course to the edges of the racing surface resulting in millions of tons of salt disappearing???
THE SALT WOULD STILL BE THERE!!!
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Her report is about what I expected to see but leading with the racers comment & showing a picture of doughnuts made by the passing tourists is misleading to Joe public in that the racers are portrayed as hoon's.
Note the statement "will change to a landscape without salt". Like that's a revelation!!
Sid.
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Someone posted on a Facebook LSR group that they had contacted Hemmings about that donut photo, and are working to get it changed to a photo of the course being drug.
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Notice, her definition of salt (CRUST) is mud and sand and salty water all the way down to mud only without salty water in it. Our definition is salt only. Louise's book shows there used be 12 feet of salt by our definition. I think I remember the STS saying that intrepid had an estimated 116 million tons of salt in 1 evaporation pond?
Ron
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That study report has to be value for the money to the U of U doesn't it? $1.5mil from the National Science Foundation, plus $??? from the BLM, plus $??? from NASA, plus $??? from Intrepid. Maybe I should have offered to buy that girl lunch!
Sid
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We saw hundreds of train cars full of salt leaving every year during SpeedWeeks in the 70's, 80's and 90's, My guess the last 15 years they stopped shipping while the folks that were bitching about the salt going away were around.
Was there any doubt Brenda would not blame the strip miners? :dhorse:
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I'd like to know here theory on how knocking down the high spots with the drag to prep the course has supposedly contributed to salt loss! But I'm sure that would have the equal amount of logic as her previous statement that there was loss of salt content through natural evaporation!
Sid.
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sss - "Follow the link and learn that dragging the salt is what makes it disappear from the racing surface."
But ALL that oil that drips on the salt feeds the microbes.
Will Willis
#6302
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Read paragraph 6 first ("The most quantified human cause of change... potash mining..."). Then puzzle over all the other garbage in the report. :-(
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It's called fake news, folks.
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Today's "spin speak" along with the traditional smoke and mirrors found along the money trail....
Ed
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We saw hundreds of train cars full of salt leaving every year during SpeedWeeks in the 70's, 80's and 90's, My guess the last 15 years they stopped shipping while the folks that were bitching about the salt going away were around.
Was there any doubt Brenda would not blame the strip miners? :dhorse:
Just to repeat what I have been saying all along:
Fishing, logging, and MINING, are extractive industries. SOME of these industries may be sustainable, say fishing, on a shorter than human lifespan timescale. Others, logging for instance; and let's call it what it really is, timber extraction; may require several human lifespans to replenish or sustain.
Mining, however, "extracts" at such high and destructive rates, that "renewal", "replenishment" or "sustainability" can only be achieved on a "GEOLOGIC" time frame, IF EVER.
And yes, that means a time frame of thousands, if not tens of thousands of years . . . . . . . Far to long for even any of our grandchildren to see POSITIVE results . . . . . . .
And in the meantime, government subsidies and ridiculously low "lease" rates, (at taxpayer expense), ensure profitability for corporations engaged in these "extractions".
Call it what you like, but it is really: Corporate "welfare" at its' finest.
If you expected the results of the study to point to extractive industry as the causative factor/culprit in the "diminishment" of the salt crust, well, I don't think that there is anything that anyone can say, that will help you to understand the real purpose of the BLM.
The purpose of the study was to:
A/ Shift responsibility from an industry that is 99.9% responsible for the "depletion"
2/ Create additional and false responsibility among "additional users" of the resource
d/ Obfuscate all other issues with a studied focus on superficial and other insignificant topics.
I'll leave it to you to determine on to whom to focus the "blame".
:dhorse: :dhorse: :dhorse: :dhorse: :dhorse:
Realityboy
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Ford Boy:
You are correct. I remember your post way back and had the same feelings. They will project the blame on racers and the 1/2 of one percent idiots in the world that cut doughnuts and drive on the salt when flooded to water ski !
BR
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Give me her details> I'm too far away for her to "GET" me. :cheers:
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That Report seems like total B.S. I have never seen any trash , Any spilled fluids stain, Digs into the salt, Nothin !
But in 2018 The salt was so nice and hard packed I saw Black Burnout lines ,That was a first for me ..
But Never any damage, Come on
Oh, And when we first pulled up on Friday ,There was someone to the left of the road before the boat ramp stuck deep in the salt in a U-Haul truck, Im talking way out to the left, And they did not look like racers , Thats the kind of people doin damage..
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But even if every car that spun donuts or got stuck being a dick took 100 pounds away from the salt it still would not equal several inches or feet over the whole surface. Let's put blame where it belongs, with the mining operation.
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I honestly don't know why all of you are hating on Brenda Bowen. Her study clearly states that the largest impact has been from potash extraction.
"The most quantified human cause of change as listed in the report, however, falls to potash mining at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Intrepid Potash, which leases the flats from the Bureau of Land Management, regularly mines the flats by draining brine from the northern part via a series of ditches and canals, then allowing the water to evaporate in ponds on the southern part. While some of the salt is sold off, most of it is considered a waste product from the production of potash, which is used largely for fertilizer.
According to the report, from 1960 through 2016 “it is possible that more than 17-million tonnes of NaCl were removed,” about 30 percent of the estimated 56-million tonnes of salt that the Bonneville Salt Flats lost during that period, as determined by a companion report. That doesn’t include the countless tons of salt removed from the flats since potash mining began there in 1917".
I believe racing has had a pretty insignificant role in the salt loss but, to believe it has had zero impact on the ecosystem is foolish. I think Hemmings decision to use racing as an example of what's causing salt loss in it's headline is misleading.
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...or as our esteemed Dict.. or I mean President would say, "She was bleeding... all over the Salt...et al.) What a f*cking dufus (both of them.)
Bob Drury
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Please consider the basics of the salt on the flats equation.
1) The pumping project(s) can be effective if TIME and VOLUME allowed is both long and huge.
2) Very briney water (high concentration of salt per water voume) returns more salt after the liquid evaporates than does lower concentrations of salt per water volume
3) The salt laydown/recovery can be considerably improved if TONS of NaCl (salt crystals) are RETURNED to the flats north of the highway AND orchestrated with the pumping program......
4) The salt reserves south of the highway stashed by the various mining efforts belong to the areas NORTH end of the highway anyway.
This whole issue has become more based on politics and political correct comments than actually solving the problems of getting MORE SALT redeposited in the north side of the highway.
In a very distorted way, Intrepid Mining has been very good about SAVING THE SALT, it just happens to be in the wrong place!
Thanks for even reading yet another plea for logic to be applied to the old white dyno. Less brunches and lunches for posturing and positioning and more support for direct action! Yeah I guess that is not a politically correct statement either. Deal, brothers and sisters, deal. :-o
Regards,
HB2 :-)
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If you win $850 million in the P-ball and go after them in about 15 years the judge will say two words, "National Security!" and you will be out some big bucks! (Potash is used in munitions!) :-( :cry:
No one will ever move the salt for us or anyone else! :dhorse: :dhorse: :dhorse:
Look on Google Earth - we are just racing on the wrong side of the freeway! :x :x :x :x
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So when I was racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1974 I was depleting the salt pan. Sorry I screwed it up for you guys. Or is she FOS?
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She must be. Someone buy her a cat or something????.
Could send her a hungry Leopard if you guys spring for shipping?. :-D :-D :-D
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Mike, do you have a rough estimate of shipping costs? :roll: :cheers:
Wayno
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Some years ago Rick Vesco and the STS group tried to gate the entry road to the salt and was turned down. More BS from the BLM and others that said no.
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Yo Woody and others that may be interested,
No sir, potash is not used in modern munitions. Perhaps an important additive for fertilizers but not modern day weaponry. You do have a very good point on the side of the highway we should be considering running on, however. Going where the salt is stashed is not a bad point at all. I might be mistaken, but I recall reading a while back in Intrepid's contract that the SALT was to be redeposited back on the flats.
We all need to look into the political motivations that are deflecting the potential solutions to get the SALT back on the flats. :roll:
Regards to all,
HB2 :-)
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Granted, the percent used in munitions is small compared to fertilizer and may only be a derivative of potash but would still be irrelevant to the presiding judge! :roll:
Somewhere I read that WWII munitions used more than today's more exotic mixtures - cannot find the source but it was a gummit paper like this one!
https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/potash/560400.pdf
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... You do have a very good point on the side of the highway we should be considering running on, however. Going where the salt is stashed is not a bad point at all. I might be mistaken, but I recall reading a while back in Intrepid's contract that the SALT was to be redeposited back on the flats.
We all need to look into the political motivations that are deflecting the potential solutions to get the SALT back on the flats. :roll:
Regards to all,
HB2 :-)
Herold... they are a LLC.... I suspect when all of the salt is depleted and it is no longer profitable to strip mine the flats, they will run out of money before 10 tons are brought back and cease to exist. :x
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I once found reference to an Intrepid Salt company. I'm sure it didn't have any relation to the Utah facility.
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I honestly don't know why all of you are hating on Brenda Bowen.
Because she's an idiot for including something that's probably the equivalent of two drops in the ocean in her list of things responsible for depleting the salt. Dragging the course is causing salt depletion? Really? Did she include the salt that collects on her shoes every time she walks out there? Or however much might stick to the foot of a bird after it lands on the salt and then flies away? I'm sure lots of birds land on the salt every year and take salt away with them - probably at least a few grams so why isn't that on here list? Or what about the salt that was lost when Will Smith dragged his movie parachute across the salt while filming Independence Day in 1996? Why didn't she include those equally insignificant depletion contributors?
It's a real easy argument in favor of killing the salt - it's for the greater good for humanity. Pot ash makes fertilizer and fertilizer makes food and food feeds hungry mouths across the world. In the grand scheme of things, us and our sport is really nothing in comparison to what harvesting pot ash actually accomplishes. We can't seriously argue that what we do is actually more important that feeding people and that's the truth. Intrepid will never go way, salt harvesting will never stop. All we can hope for is that they keep a special natural resource from completely going away and letting us play on it a couple times a year.
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The mining operation will not stop until the profit margin goes away, at which time they will close the doors & move on just like Magcorp did at Knolls.
I'm resigned to the fact that we just have to do the best we can with what is there & don't be surprised by the continuing decline.
All the testing & inspecting I've personally done on the salt was to educate myself, weed out the bull$hit & hopefully enlighten others to the real truth but nothing will change because we all live in a people farming world.
Do the best you can inside your farm & avoid the slaughter house.
Sid.