[meteorite-list] Barringer Meteor $$$$

From: Steve Schoner <steve_schoner_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:25:37 2004
Message-ID: <20030508235321.23347.qmail_at_web12704.mail.yahoo.com>

--- MeteorHntr_at_aol.com wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> I was just informed privately, that my post about
> the Barringer Corporation
> making donation, really sounded like I was saying
> that the Meteoritical
> Society was doing something wrong and was "accepted
> bribes." That was not my
> intent.
>
> Now if some of you read my comments as saying that
> the Barringer Corporation,
> who seems to be so "anti-science" is making
> relatively small donations to the
> most official mouth piece of our scientific field
> (the Meteoritical Society)
> then that is the spirit I meant to say it in.
>
> In no way would I ever fault the Meteoritical
> Society for accepting ANY gift.
>
>
> Now if there might be a significant number of
> members of the Society that
> might tend to agree that the crater should be a
> National Park but would never
> publicly say so because the tiny gifts the Barringer
> corporation makes each
> year are significant to the Society, if that were
> the case, and I have no
> idea if it is, then it would be a different story.
>
> I understand how many large and massively profitable
> corporations work. They
> support people, in government and elsewhere, that
> support them. And more
> times than not, that support is given to protect
> their corporate interests.
> (In fact most all of us vote for and support people
> who will support our
> positions too.)
>
> I know if I owned the crater, I would consider a few
> thousand dollars a year
> to the most significant mouth piece in our science
> to be a good financial
> investment.
>
> I also wanted to add that if anyone would want to
> garner the support of the
> Meteoritical Society to help turn the Crater
> Business into a National Park,
> that it might not be too easy. It does seem that
> the Barringer Corporation
> has historically been a little nicer to the Society
> than to the collector
> field, even though their actions, as Schoner pointed
> out, seem to be quite
> anti-science.
>
> Steve Arnold
>


Steve,

Granted, the Barringer's do make generous donations to
the Meteoritical Society, and they also have, I think
a scholarships at various Universities for aspiring
scientists.

These are noble and right.

But the issue is not the fact that they donate a
small, or even large portion of what they bring in,
but the whole political scheme of the 1872 Mining Act
that virtually gave "Coon Mountain" (later Meteor
Crater) away, and the policies that keep the status
quo in place.

This same Act was invoked by the finders of the Old
Woman Mt Meteorite (1975) and the the miners lost
their legal bid to have it. Previous to that a crater
given was given away in 1929. Both used the 1872
Mining Act with different legal results.

It is the Act that needs to be modified, and the
Patent land leases, if they are still open for
negotiation, re-examined critically at places where
the site is important to Public interests.

Meteor Crater Patented land lease issues... this I am
not sure of, whether the terms are open for
reconsideration. Somehow I remember 2099 being the
year the current lease expires.

We will all be dead long before then.

And who knows, by then there may not be very many
visitors going to see that curiosity called "Meteor
Crater" on the Coconino plains. They will probably be
saving their dollars; for the Moon and Mars will be
available to all who wish to tour those worlds to see
craters grander than anything seen on earth.

Steve Schoner
http://www.geocities.com/meteorite_identification



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Received on Thu 08 May 2003 07:53:21 PM PDT


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