Barrick Gold is a Toronto based firm, who in the past has employed the likes of Brian Mulroney, George Bush Sr.and Vernon Jordan, Bill Clinton's lawyer and buddy. Barrick's founder is Adnan Khashogi, a Saudi billionaire arms trafficker, who sold illegal weapons to Iran during the Reagan administration. Here's an interesting description of the glacial mining projected, located high in the Andes mountains, where they intend to remove 10 hectares of glacial ice in order to extract minerals. Forget global warming, greedy corporations can't wait for the ice to melt fast enough!
Scroll down page to view below quote.
http://www.miningwatch.ca/issues/Pascua_Lama/Padilla_en.html
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Scroll down page to view below quote.
http://www.miningwatch.ca/issues/Pascua_Lama/Padilla_en.html
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Glacier removal and handling
The information available in the EIA only establishes that this will have an approximate surface area of 10 hectares and that “the sectors of glacier that will have to be removed will be determined with the appropriate lead time in accord with the updated mining plan.” There are no estimates of thickness or the equivalent in water.
The lack of relevant technical expertise in removing glaciers implies an irreversible environmental impact. What is certain is that the three affected glaciers would suffer an environmental impact. Nevertheless, there is no certainty whatsoever of what the impact would be on glaciers or permafrost (frozen rock or soil) from the road network and the associated stabilization measures that generally involves the use of salts.
With respect to the measures and actions that will be implemented for handling glaciers there are the following concerns:
• The “clearing” of ice or “pieces of glacier” will be done by bulldozer and front-end loader until the entire rock bed is uncovered. In this case, any mechanical action on the glacier will cause heat transfer, which will raise the temperature of the ice, and which in turn would be exacerbated by the high local insolation. Despite the fact that diurnal temperatures are low, the radiative balance includes more than caloric energy. There are no measurements of radiative energy but the albedo differences between ice and rock mean that the absorption of energy is greater in rock, which would expose the glacier even more.
• This also the case for controlled blasting and pushing the glaciers by the afore-mentioned means until their final disposition. In the case of blasting, this could elevate the temperature to thresholds of melting and evaporation which would further encourage destruction of the glacier.