Here’s a another example of how environmental activists like to beg, plead and claim real excuses when severe environmental accidents happen, yet when an accident is caused by anyone else they demand heads on a plate.
The Cairns Post here has an article: Sea Shepherd guilty of diesel spill that dropped up to 500 litres of diesel into the Trinity Inlet.
Hat-tip: reader Jim
The article is from earlier this year, but it neither got media attention nor the attention it deserves.
What really strikes me is that the environmental organization comes in with its lawyers and fights tooth and nail in claiming that they really acted responsibly and that the accident was not entirely their fault. The excuses they presented are truly sad and pathetic and show an amazing ignorance when it comes to industrial safety regulation and management.
For example, the Cairns Post writes:
A FAULTY switch and instruction manuals written entirely in Japanese have been blamed in court for why a ship owned by conservation group Sea Shepherd dropped up to 500 litres of diesel into the Trinity Inlet.”
Sorry, but using a piece of equipment that you do not understand is gross negligence. Sea Shepard’s motto here obviously was: Let’s just get this thing running (and safety be damned!)
It’s not for nothing that the fundamental industry standard for any piece of such equipment is: Be sure you have read the manual and have UNDERSTOOD it! The crew obviously could not read Japanese, let alone understand it. Here they should have requested a manual in English from the manufacturer, or at least shelled out the money for a translation, before recklessly attempting to put it into operation at sea. They should especially have at least understood the critical technical points dealing with fuel.
The Cairns Times reports that “a crew member named Gabor Nosty failed to manually flick the “low level” switch during a fuel transfer, despite being aware the switch was faulty.”
If that isn’t gross negligence, then I don’t what is. It is management’s responsibility to be sure that its personnel are qualified and trained to carry out the work they have been assigned to do. Most industrial norms and regulations aren’t there to harass companies, but to prevent accidents involving human life and health, property and the environment. The Sea Shepard crew ignored this entirely.
And not only could they not read the vessel’s operating manual, according to the Cairns Times the Sea Shepherd Australia had bought the ship from Japan a week earlier and “had yet to translate signage and manuals or repair the switch“. Again putting a piece of equipment into operation when its crucial safety signs cannot be read is extremely reckless. The crew can count themselves fortunate nothing much worse happened. We are not talking about a TV here, rather a large piece of industrial equipment with lots of power – with people on board – and all around you.
The article also writes that because the chief engineer did not have a manual they could understand, the crew “had to work out the ship’s systems ‘by his own devices’“. This means they were guessing its operational function. This is something you never should do. You wait for a manual you can read, then you read it, and make sure you’ve understood it. Then you can start to use it.
The article also writes that the crew included some Germans. My wife’s company does a lot of translations of German industrial manuals and handbooks. The Germans are gurus when it comes to industrial safety regulation, policy and management. If any one should understand industrial regulation and the importance of adhering to safety standards, it is the Germans. Obviously the Germans on the Sea Shepard crew did not complete a German apprenticeship, or they slept through it.
All the crew members came from an advanced technological country. It’s amazing how activists are always calling for more stringent safety regulations and environmental protection laws, yet they themselves can’t even adhere to the most rudimentary and obvious safety rules. It’s the Japanese manufacturer’s fault!
Despite all the Sea Shepard’s gross negligence, recklessness and disregard for human, property and environmental safety, it appears the crew will get off real easy.
Despite all the Sea Shepard’s gross negligence, recklessness and disregard for human, property and environmental safety, it appears the crew will get off real easy.
Yes … it seems whatever harm the environmental movement does, it’s no problem… just an unfortunate accident. No worries mate!
Anyone else does it… huge inquiry; publicity in all left wing media from the ABC to the Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian; massive fines; etc etc etc etc.
When reading this article I was reminded of an incident in which Greenpeace were fined for damaging part of a coral reef with one of their vessels. I wasnt sure whether to laugh or cry.
It also reminded me of Sen. Jeff Greene and 145 ft yacht dragging anchor through coral reef. http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/why-jeff-greene-is-more-fun-than-rick-scott/1114187
There they broke the law already because (at least in Europe) you are obliged by law to have all operating manuals in the language native to the operators.
Explanation is simple: The Greens are the “good guys” to whom everything shall be pardoned: SUV, helicopters, private jets, fuel leaks, access to media praising them…. They want to impose to OTHERS large wind turbines parks whatever neighbourhood discompfort is, property value collapse, extremely high cost and unreliable energy, more CO² because gas is better than nuclear, and so on…
We all wonder why so many journalists, media, politicians and people follow them to death? Are these (now majority) really stupid? I have always considered that population bulk to be full of common sense:
Shall I reverse my mind?
Half a ton of diesel fuel makes not a jot of difference in fact several million tons of the stuff would hardly be noticed as most of it evaporates , the best entertainment about oil spills is watching the lefty ecolunatics pissing their pants with fear about a non existent problem.
I mostly agree, except
“the spill, which took place while the ship was moored alongside a wharf at the Cairns Port”
. . . is not quite the same as being on the open ocean, or even in the Gulf of Mexico.
… but the fact is that it happened, and it happened to the biggest environmental nazi organisation, and that save for their negligence the fuel spill would not have occurred.
Having spent time in the Cairns and knowing the ‘Inlet’ well, that fuel spill would have resulted in any of the commercial operators being prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Have they at least blinded the Port Authority guys with laser pointers and escaped on their quest to save the Earth?
And chopping birds and bats in mid air is not the same as dying in an oil spill.
Makes one wonder if any animals died or if they would care.
I doubt they would announce it in the MSM if they did.
John, of course you are right. But the accident happening right next to the shore makes it even much worse. Out to sea, the oils slick would break up and eventually dissipate, get eaten by bacteria or whatever.
This happened October 13, 2012, on the watch of Julia Eileen Gillard. Likely after the show trial the crew was invited to a special dinner where they were award a medal of some sort.
long time ago, greens were young, red, poor students claiming the richs were evil, then they became wealthy themselves, they then needed another ideology…
The exact turn of events was like this: In the 70ies there were many small communist parties in Germany and Europe; mostly calling themselves Maoist as Stalin had recently been found out to have been the slavemaster of the genocidal Gulag system – so Stalin was out, Mao was still good as an idol.
These communist groups had members like Josef “Joschka” Fischer (Foreign minister under Schroeder government, responsible for the bombing of Serbia), Kretschmann (today green MP of Baden-Wuerttemberg), Juergen Trittin, ex-boss of the Green party.
So, in the 70ies, these K-groups (who were close to the German terrorists RAF), tried to agitate the proletarians for communism. But the workers refused to rise up against their paymasters; industrial workers simply being too well paid to be malcontents.
What to do? The end of the 70ies saw the rise of environmentalism, protesting chemical pollution and notably, nuclear power.
Only after the first mass demonstrations did the K Groups realize that this was an emergent uprising, something they had without success tried to create themselves. Using Frankfurt School ideas of replacing one grievance group – the workers – with a more suitable one – a general populace protesting radioactive threats – the K Gruppen members infiltrated the new antipolitical Green party, and started purging it from all non-leftist elements. After an internal war that lasted several years, the K-Gruppen members now presented themselves as the “realist” faction of the Greens, with a “fundamentalist” faction presenting an untenable utopian Deep Green wing against ALL technology.
THe K Gruppen members had reached their goal: Access to political power.
Since then they actively overtake all kinds of position in the state’s bureaucracy. They have not changed their ideology at all: They are and have always been hard left.
Here’s a comment of mine about something that just happened in Hannover which demonstrates how far they have come.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/racist-bastards-at-healthcare-gov-require-id-twitterer-smokes-healthcare-gov-in-troll/#comment-152327
(The Greens together with the Socialists currently govern Lower Saxony, of which Hannover is the capital.)
Climate campaigners desecrate sacred Aboriginal site
Ahead of this week’s climate change summit in New York, activists rallied across the World calling for greater respect for the environment.
But in the New South Wales Blue Mountains, activists have disrespected a sacred Aboriginal place and world heritage listed site at Echo Point look-out.
“Nothing can explain the heartache that this has caused to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people of the Blue Mountains,” said Gundungurra elder Sharyn Halls.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/09/25/exclusive-climate-campaigners-desecrate-sacred-aboriginal-site
Follow up newspaper article “Conservation group Sea Shepherd fined $15,000 for Trinity Inlet diesel spill in Cairns court” JULY 25, 2014 (the diesel spill into the inlet happened on October 13, 2012)
– So remember when you drop your $ into the Greens collecting boxes “to sve the planet” it may end up being handed over to the gov to pay the fine for the Greens polluting the planet
http://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/cairns/conservation-group-sea-shepherd-fined-15000-for-trinity-inlet-diesel-spill-in-cairns-court/story-fnjpusyw-1227000695269
that newspaper mentiosn a more recent occasion where a fuel company pipe broke and 23,000 litre leaked “It also found that by April, the facility operator had recovered about 85 per cent of the fuel lost and at least 10 per cent would remain adsorbed to soil particles.”
..I didn’t read anything about Sea Shepherd doing anything to clean up their own spill.
Also recently in Australia : “Climate change campaigners violated a sacred Aboriginal site when they committed the ultimate photo-bomb; hanging a banner from one of the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. 25 SEP 2014”
“Ahead of this week’s climate change summit in New York, activists rallied across the World calling for greater respect for the environment…”
‘Global Climate Activist Group 350.org co-ordinated the day of action, but told NITV News the banner posted on the culturally and environmentally sensitive site was not a sanctioned event.’
National Park Officer said “As far as I’m concerned the people who put that message up there were trying to put a message up there to do with climate action but they’ve created an environmental vandalism event themselves so I don’t think they’ve thought through what they were doing properly,”
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/09/25/exclusive-climate-campaigners-desecrate-sacred-aboriginal-site
photo : http://images.smh.com.au/2014/09/21/5797084/Article%20Lead%20-%20wide6139505010jz4vimage.related.articleLeadwide.729×410.10jwq2.png1411279005179.jpg-620×349.jpg
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