[HN Gopher] First satellite imagery of the Feb-13, 2024 landslid...
___________________________________________________________________
First satellite imagery of the Feb-13, 2024 landslide at Copler
Mine in Turkey
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-02-19 11:11 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (eos.org)
| londons_explore wrote:
| Who would have thought that if you pile soil up in a tall pile as
| high and steep as you can, right next to a huge pit, then
| occasionally it might fall back into the pit...
|
| A 5 year old on the beach could tell you that...
| walthamstow wrote:
| A 5 year old in a Welsh primary school could tell you even more
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster
| Loughla wrote:
| 109 kids died in that.
|
| Holy shit.
|
| And the senior officials got off with a slap on the wrist.
| That reads like a complete failure of the government.
|
| Why did the right people not hang for that?
| defrost wrote:
| The people on the right at that time (UK 1966) didn't hang
| as they were of an effectively protected capitalist caste
| with no regulation to hold them to account.
|
| If you scroll down the wiki link you can see that the
| changes to the Mines and Quarries Act ultimately lead to
| things such as the _Health and Safety at Work etc. Act_
| (1974) which provided some teeth with which to bite the
| owners that cut corners, paid off inspectors, etc.
|
| Swings and roundabouts though, a little while later came
| the Miners' Strike of 1984-1985 which was easily one of the
| most bitter industrial disputes Britain has ever seen.
| a turning point in British history. Miners left their pits
| to fight the attempt of the Thatcher government to close
| the collieries, break the miners' union and the labour
| movement in general, and open the way to a free market
| economy in which deregulated financial capitalism would be
| set free by the Big Bang of 1986. The full force of the
| police, the courts and the media were mobilised to defeat
| the miners, culminating with the battle of Orgreave on 18
| June 1984. Thousands of miners were arrested, fined,
| imprisoned or sacked, some never to work again.
|
| https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-
| histo...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/27/40-ye
| a...
|
| All part of the delicate balance between those many hordes
| wanting good wages and working conditions and those few
| that want all the profits.
| londons_explore wrote:
| In retrospect, it was a battle that didn't matter. There
| were no profits to be had on either side - mining is best
| done mostly by machines, and will always be undercut by
| places with cheap labour and lax environmental
| regulations. The UK would never be able to compete. And
| besides, by the 80's it was already becoming clear that
| coal wasn't the future.
| defrost wrote:
| You seem unfamiliar with mining.
|
| The UK and the US aren't really big players, the single
| largest market for mining stocks is the Toronto TSX by a
| long shot - many loosely commonwealth trans national
| companies (Australia, Canada, South Africa, etc) with
| Russian, Chinese, Brazilian partners, etc.
|
| Machines play a big part - Western Australia mines almost
| a billion tonner of iron ore alone per annum with a tiny
| population, but cheap labour and lax environmental regs
| don't play nearly as great a part as you might think.
|
| Long term stability on 20 to 50 year time scales is
| pretty desirable on projects with forward capital
| investments of 300+ million dollars, high skill levels
| and good wages improve success rates, the larger mining
| companies have been trending more and more toward being
| accountable with respect to populations affected and post
| operation rennovation .. although that's a shift from
| don't care and never so .. <shrug>
|
| From a political "how society works" PoV the mining
| strikes and Thatcher push backs weren't about the coal
| either .. it was a reflection on how the new neoliberal
| 80s Tories intended to deal with those not aligned with
| their vision.
|
| There were other directions to turn labour forces of the
| 80s toward, but the vision as such for that time was
| propert development pyramids, fintech, and all that jazz.
| Better to be a barrow boy in The City than a gay dancing
| coal miner.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| So offer the mine to the miners, if they each put up GBP
| nx100k capital. See if they really want the risk of
| loss/mortgage/debt in return for a job. Perhaps they know
| something beneficial that management doesn't? Workers can
| be capitalists if they know the business and want to take
| a risk. Get the responses, end of story.
|
| Yet it led to a huge (literal) battle? It was _all_
| political: an attack on the gov by the communist miners '
| union, backed by the Labour Party. It was never about
| economics, which were obviously terminal. Everybody knew
| that, on _both_ sides.
| defrost wrote:
| > the communist miners' union
|
| Get a grip.
|
| Break free of whatever bicameral Red V. Blue blinkered
| global view you have - there are more shades across the
| world than Joe McCathy dreamed of.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| Anyone who knows that an industry is uneconomic, but
| wants the gov to own and run the industry, just to lose
| taxpayer money and pay wages to his union _is_ a
| communist.
|
| (The barrier for gov ownership is slightly lower than a
| capitalist, because the gov has to pay transitory
| unemployment benefit to those put out of work, and it was
| still not economic).
|
| Actually, that person is not just a small-c communist
| interested in the community, but a big-C Marxist, who
| wants the gov to lose money for his selfish reasons.
|
| Are you perhaps, tentatively, obliquely, hinting, in a
| roundabout fashion, with elliptical prose, that Arthur
| Scargill was _not_ a communist..... fascinating.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_L
| abo...
| defrost wrote:
| Riiiiight. (yawn).
|
| Have you ever done any manual work for a living? Worked
| with any miners in trade unions? Met any actual
| communists? Maybe worked in Rio Tinto as a labour
| negotiator?
|
| Some of that might help you sound more grounded an less
| disconnected from the world as it is.
|
| Scargill _was_ a commnist in his youth, he veered
| elsewhere on the left later in life - but more to the
| point here, Scargill was not the trade union, he was a
| single human being.
|
| Not all miners in trade unions are communist, far from
| it; and not all _actual_ communists are miners (likely
| very few), we 're in a world of Venn diagrams here and
| broad reductionist brush strokes don't achieve much
| beyond polarisation
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| Are you talking about profitable RIO mines? Then there is
| an argument to be had about how those profits are split
| between shareholders, workers (incl managers), and the
| national gov in royalties. Off-topic and _this margin too
| small_ ... etc.
|
| But that was _not_ the case in the British coal industry
| in the 1980s. Only a handful of marginal mines survived
| into the 2000s. The last coal-fired power stations will
| close this year.
|
| No profits, no discussion (except the offer I mentioned
| above, which is the _only_ true test of whether it is
| really profitable, on a risk-adjusted basis, judged by
| those with the most information).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| maybe the particular case you state is accurate - no idea
| here. But a summary report after the COP 28 event in
| December stated clearly that there will be no policy
| action to stop coal extraction and use. It is my
| understanding that very large "modern" economies in
| various parts of the world are absolutely continuing.
|
| Profit and loss can be gamed. Old generals always fight
| the previous wars.
| walthamstow wrote:
| > Anyone who knows that an industry is uneconomic, but
| wants the gov to own and run the industry, just to lose
| taxpayer money and pay wages to his union is a communist
|
| Doesn't this also apply to public transport, roads, waste
| collection, education, and most other public goods?
| red_admiral wrote:
| The government outsourced managing Aberfan and most other
| mines to a National Coal Board. The tribunal who
| investigated the disaster was very critical of said board,
| but it wasn't the done thing in those days to go after
| senior officials.
|
| Indeed, the disaster was one of the main inputs that led to
| the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the act under which
| senior officials nowadays can be (and sometimes are)
| prosecuted for negligence leading to deaths.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The Crown, Season 3 Episode 3, tells this story.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I find comments like this not very helpful. I mean, sure tall
| things fall, but you have presumably competent people working
| with these things, people that understand risks and do this all
| their life. Certainly people that know more than you and me.
| Somehow, they failed on this, and there's lessons to learn
| here, but smug "hurr-durr, don't stack things tall" is not it.
| selcuka wrote:
| > you have presumably competent people working with these
| things, people that understand risks and do this all their
| life.
|
| I don't know if you are Turkish, but unfortunately this
| statement is not a given in Turkey, mostly because of
| corruption, nepotism, and a general lack of respect for
| knowledge and experience.
|
| I personally know some of the people who built this mine.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I'm not sure about Turkey, but everywhere it's common to
| fire the guy that is worried about security and doesn't
| want to cut corners. Even if they are competent, some
| people must choose eating or safety.
| buremba wrote:
| When you consider the costs of "doing it the right way", the
| reasoning becomes much more complex no matter how competent
| people are. In addition to all the corruption, we also
| culturally tend to be more risk-tolerant when it comes to
| safety IMO.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Just world fallacy
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> "hurr-durr, don't stack things tall"_
|
| This is a rude and uncharitable (bordering on disingenuous)
| paraphrase of the post you're replying to. The fact that you
| tossed in an extraneous "hurr-durr" of your own seems to
| indicate that you feel particularly incapable of responding
| to what was actually said.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| What should I be responding to more exactly? Someone saying
| platitudes while being smug? Yes, I am incapable of
| responding because there is nothing to respond _to_.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Comment might not be helpful, but it's very true.
| yowayb wrote:
| Other than rage comments of political and corporate incompetence,
| is there a sounder explanation of inadequate preparation and
| response in Turkiye? The vast majority of Turks I meet/see don't
| seem to care about fully understanding their problems and putting
| in appropriate work. But I don't understand why this is.
| not_a_dane wrote:
| Welcome to Turkiye, that's why we shouldn't build our nuclear
| reactor by ourselves.
| yowayb wrote:
| Oh dear. I forgot about that.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > _But I don't understand why this is._
|
| So the more general question is where group differences
| originate, and you would like to discuss this on HN. I'll go
| grab the popcorn.
| vkka wrote:
| Most probably due to corruption. People have been actively
| protesting this mine for at least a couple of years now [1],
| including politicians [2].
|
| [1] https://www.veryansintv.com/veryansin-tv-aylarca-haykirdi-
| ik... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jJjDjylPg
| BurningFrog wrote:
| A simple first order explanation is that Turkey is still a
| fairly poor country.
| tokai wrote:
| 17th rank on GDP. Sure its worse per capita, but Turkey is
| not poor compared to actual poor countries.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I mean per capita. It's the only measure that matters
| fatihpense wrote:
| My pet theory: The daily agenda is dizzying. There is also
| always several existential/deeper issue looming around/inside.
| So we can't have time to discuss small daily things, that
| actually affect quality of life! It has been like this for
| decades, maybe more than that. It is sad really. Countries also
| have an attention span, and we can't pick long-term important
| stuff over immediate stuff.
| mrb wrote:
| Here is the best video of the landslide I could find:
| https://youtu.be/SUD0hQjueI0
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The stark thing is just how liquid the flow is.
|
| Then how fast it is. Utterly terrifying.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Who invented this method of framing a vertical or square video,
| and why did they think it was useful?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because millennials (and later) think the vertical aspect
| ratio is so cool and refuse to flip the phone to record
| video. The vast majority of video is landscape oriented, so
| the default players all have that aspect. People seem to very
| against black mattes to fit differing aspect ratio content
| than the frame, so some creative type came up with this.
|
| Why is this difficult to understand?
| stetrain wrote:
| > The vast majority of video is landscape oriented, so the
| default players all have that aspect.
|
| I'm not so sure, by hours created and viewed in recent
| years that may no longer be true with TikTok / Reels /
| Stories / Shorts.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Okay, for the pedantics, broadcast news is a landscape
| format. So if someone provides content that was recorded
| in portrait, something must be done to it. The black bars
| from matting the content is still despised, primarily by
| the same crowd that is shooting portrait video.
| jeffbee wrote:
| But there's nothing good about the blurred-and-displaced
| copy of the video beside the video. It's just
| distracting!
| xattt wrote:
| Generative video AI may be a solution in a decade or two.
| dylan604 wrote:
| dear gawd no. especially for news. that's the last thing
| we need in the fight with fake news.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| media critical thinking -- all news is a representation
| in language and pictures, therefore inevitably contains
| contrary, noisy or misleading content (same with the
| perception of the users). Since news is a social
| phenomenon, there is a chain of gather, produce,
| disseminate, consume involving many people over time.
|
| From an Economist Magazine view, somehow bills have to be
| paid, whether through government and taxation, private
| expenditure, for-profit basis or others.. Generative AI
| decisions will arrive from command-and-control basis in
| most cases.
|
| Generative AI in News is very likely, for something that
| is simple like saving money on background screens for
| newscasts, less wholesome like replacing newscasters and
| journalists with machine inputs, or at a meta-level like
| propaganda in content and editing. In the leading
| economies of the world, this will happen.
|
| Solutions are partly market, partly political.. not very
| personal -- one person boycotting will not change
| outcomes -- IMHO.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's nothing good about portrait oriented video, so
| it's fitting. /s
|
| i feel like i'm conversing with a fence post. what are
| your brilliant ideas to solve the problem? all i'm
| reading here are complaints. don't be that person.
|
| the final orientation of the video cannot be changed. it
| is a spec with hard defined parameters by a
| standardization body. the easiest thing is to just fit it
| into the frame with the empty space filled with mattes.
| lots of people do not like that, so other things have
| been used to fill the space. just like shooting video in
| portrait, trends have been established and this is the
| current trend. you don't like it? stop shooting video in
| portrait and sending it to the news where it's going to
| be played back in a landscape format. you are the square
| peg in a round hole.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| A huge proportion of video is viewed on phones, in which
| case vertical orientation is far more comfortable and
| convenient. It used to be the case the landscape was the
| "correct" format, but that has rapidly changed with the
| change in how video is watched.
| dylan604 wrote:
| *Social media video
| cidbitt wrote:
| This could be a remnant of the switchover from SD to HD
| resolution in home TVs. The nicer TVs that could use the new
| resolutions also suffered from burn in, so you wanted
| something in the margins for the content still in SD.
| dwighttk wrote:
| The shadows in the old and new image are really throwing me off.
|
| The new image looks like the pit is to the left and the old image
| looks like the left side is a huge pile.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Oh okay I'm getting it now... it is always a pile but the slide
| was off the back of the pile.
|
| It just looked so much like a pit when I saw it at first that I
| couldn't get that thought out of my mind.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| There also appears to be a significant shift between the
| images where the after image is up and to the right of the
| before image. But it might also be a distortion issue that
| isn't even across the image. The optical illusion, plus the
| changes in the mine due to mining make the comparison
| difficult.
| bcraven wrote:
| This is a well-known phenomenon in topographic maps. Here are
| some examples:
|
| https://ramblemaps.com/why-does-sunlight-come-from-north
| soared wrote:
| Interesting link, thanks!
| Towaway69 wrote:
| How many people died? Didn't hear a thing about this. I guess
| they are still looking for survivors.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Officially, 9 people are missing.
| Aeolun wrote:
| One of the posts here says they were working on the surface
| though. That does not strike me as survivable. I find it hard
| to imagine anything remains to be found.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Apparently the nine in question were working underground,
| there is probably no realistic chance of survival if
| massive amounts of earth are covering the entrances.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68287504
| rightbyte wrote:
| I guess working underground is your only chance of
| survival if in such a landslide?
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Just getting out might be an issue... Eventually oxygen
| will also become problematic. Electricity and lighting
| might also have gone.
|
| My feelings go out to the nine missing people.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Those Chilean miners were down there for quite some time.
| But ye the outlook is not good. I guess there is a
| fundamental difference in how these mines collapsed.
| Unless any pocket would have some "earth radio",
| undamaged telephone line or something I don't see how the
| rescuers even would begin knowing where to look.
| dark-star wrote:
| There's a high probability they weren't even on site and had
| a coworker clock in for them, or something like that. They
| might still be enjoying the wedding of a 3rd grade cousin
| somewhere in the countryside, oblivious to what has happened
| ;-)
|
| At least that's what my turkish coworker told me last week
| perihelions wrote:
| What is a "leach heap" in an open-pit gold mine? Is it cyanide
| waste?
|
| - _" Gold cyanidation (also known as the cyanide process or the
| MacArthur-Forrest process) is a hydrometallurgical technique for
| extracting gold from low-grade ore by converting the gold to a
| water-soluble coordination complex. It is the most commonly used
| leaching process for gold extraction.[1] [...] Production of
| reagents for mineral processing to recover gold represents more
| than 70% of cyanide consumption globally."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_cyanidation
|
| [late edit]: The _Hurriyet_ news article linked in the OP
| confirms this,
|
| - _" Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar
| stated that even if the miners are reached, the entire soil mass
| will still be removed from the area, addressing concerns about
| possible environmental damage due to the cyanide-tainted waste
| soil used in the gold extraction process."_
|
| https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/35-mln-cubic-meters-of-soi...
|
| [edit 2]: A Turkish-language source cited in Wikipedia suggests
| there's a risk of this waste contaminating the Euphrates river.
| This mine does appear to be located right next to that river, and
| uphill of it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copler_mine_disaster#Aftermath
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B025'33.6%22N+38%C2%...
|
| [edit 3]: Here's a long-form Turkish journalism (published in
| English) discussing this question:
|
| https://www.duvarenglish.com/experts-warn-of-severe-cyanide-... (
| _" Experts warn of severe cyanide exposure to Euphrates as mine
| located in water basin"_)
| Loughla wrote:
| The part about how social media was weirdly critical of the
| picture, with one poster stating that flat wasn't a landslide is
| fascinating.
|
| Why are some people just knee-jerk 'insert thing here' deniers?
| What is that?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| On balance, it's probably a great feature of humanity that we
| always have some contrarians around.
| someplaceguy wrote:
| Well, then I disagree.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> The ultimate cost of this landslide is likely to be many
| multiples of the money saved on mining operations through
| inadequate construction and /or operation of the leach heap._
|
| Ah, but who are the people who profited from cutting corners, and
| who are the people who will bear the cost of the cleanup? If
| these are not the exact same set of people, then it was a net
| profit to collapse this mine and kill these men. The profiteering
| will continue apace, because the system incentivizes it.
|
| The article does mention that some people were arrested, but that
| seems to be for direct negligence, not _systematic_ negligence.
| If the highest-ranking person who sees consequences from this is
| merely a single VP, then it sounds like the rest of the executive
| parasites might be in the clear.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Ah, but who are the people who profited from cutting corners,
| and who are the people who will bear the cost of the cleanup?
| If these are not the exact same set of people, then it was a
| net profit to collapse this mine and kill these men. The
| profiteering will continue apace, because the system
| incentivizes it.
|
| It's a mine. The cost of the cleanup refers to what it will
| cost to remove the collapsed dirt and get back to the layers at
| which they were mining.
|
| So to answer your question: The cost is borne by the mine
| operators if they want to resume mining.
|
| > The article does mention that some people were arrested, but
| that seems to be for direct negligence, not systematic
| negligence. If the highest-ranking person who sees consequences
| from this is merely a single VP, then it sounds like the rest
| of the executive parasites might be in the clear.
|
| Kind of wild that a country throws people into jail before an
| investigation can even be performed, yet people are out for
| blood and demanding that, what, the entire company leadership
| is thrown in jail? Everyone who might possibly be involved?
|
| There are countries where governments will use their power to
| throw large numbers of people in jail to seek revenge for
| problems, but they aren't the workers' paradise you imagine.
| They're just terribly oppressive regimes. It's also unlikely
| that these situations would only result in executives going to
| jail, because the people on the front lines (who are not
| entirely free from involvement in decision making) tend to get
| blamed too.
|
| Reactionary jailing feeds people's revenge fantasies, but it's
| actually a really terrible and scary way to have to live for
| everyone.
|
| There are a lot of extremely cynical assumptions in this
| comment.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> The cost is borne by the mine operators if they want to
| resume mining._
|
| In my country the tradition is:
|
| 1. Mine operators get a mining permit by swearing they'll
| clean up all the pollution and restore the site to its
| original condition once the mine is exhausted.
|
| 2. Mine operates for years, paying out $$$ to bosses and
| shareholders
|
| 3. Mine gets exhausted or becomes uneconomic to operate,
| company declares bankruptcy, tax payer has to fund the
| cleanup
| gruez wrote:
| That's a serious problem, but in this particular case it's
| unlikely to happen. This mine is currently in use, so
| presumably there's still left in the ground to extract.
| Therefore the mine owners are still incentivized to clean
| up the landslide. Moreover, let's not forget this landslide
| happened entirely inside the of the confines of an open pit
| mine. The land is already fucked. The landslide was
| unlikely to have made it worse.
|
| There's a lot of issues with how mining is done, and how
| owners are held to account, but kneejerk calls for
| immediate punishment and/or commenting is entirely not
| constructive.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Funds for cleanup should go to an escrow account before any
| profit is distributed.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Sounds like the USA. The oil and gas industry has an extra
| twist in #3 which would read:
|
| 3. Producing field get exhausted or becomes uneconomic to
| operate, company sells field to smaller less-capitalized
| operator who reworks some wells in an effort to pay back
| their investment.
|
| 4. Smaller operator eventually sells to a mom-and-pop
| operator who operates a series of stripper wells in the
| field. Once production from these wells decline to the
| point where this under-capitalized operator can no longer
| profit the field is abandoned and tax payers are left to
| fund the cleanup.
|
| All of this can take decades before abandonment and any
| technological advance during that time could make the field
| more attractive to large operators who would then buy these
| fields from the mom-and-pops and mid-size operators so they
| could squeeze even more profits before cycling back into
| the later steps of the loop.
|
| Over a long enough time period you have a Texas which is
| dotted with tens of thousands of orphaned or abandoned
| wells. Many of these wells leak oil, natural gas, or brines
| into shallow surface aquifers when the old production
| strings inevitably rust away. The problem is worse when new
| tech maintains production in an area since wells that were
| abandoned years or decades ago but never plugged are
| effectively open to atmospheric pressure and when a
| technique like hydraulic fracturing is used downhole, it
| repressurizes formations and can force fluids up thru
| unplugged wellbores to the surface where, if controls are
| not in place, fluid spills are inevitable.
|
| When that happens in an area that had been abandoned the
| operator responsible for the increased pressure would argue
| that cleanup is not their responsibility since the previous
| owner was responsible (had paid a bond to the state) for
| the plugging and abandonment of the leaking well.
|
| It's more complicated than this but you get the idea. It's
| never their problem and the wrong people tend to get stuck
| with remediation expenses.
| soared wrote:
| Near info with video and images:
| https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/copler-mine-2
| user90131313 wrote:
| For all the HN folks, they had a very big arsenic pool near and
| it was used for gold mining. It will probably affect life around
| there because of very close river called Firat river.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| The Firat is known in the West as the Euphrates.
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