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Scientists Reveal Why You Should Never Take Pebbles from the Beach

10 points by laktak 2y ago

EdwardDiego 2y ago
I always love it when people sheet home the blame on John Q Public without ever mentioning commercial activities that may also be implicated. > There are extensive areas in the Solway Firth suitable for aggregate extraction.The map opposite outlines areas with suitable sand and gravel resources. There is, however, no data regarding the amount of aggregates extraction activity which takes place in the Solway. My emphasis added - could be the people taking stones home from the beach, could be people dredging aggregate for construction purposes, but who knows? Could also be changing sea levels and tides because of, well, you know. But yep, it's definitely people taking stones home. Often comes up when commercial fishers blame recreational fishers for declining fish stocks. Or oil companies run propaganda to make climate change a personal responsibility for every human, nothing to do with them. (...How is there no data on extractive operations in the Solway Firth? I have no idea how the UK handles mining operations, but you'd assume that data was available...)
- defrost 2y ago
  Are we reading the same link? From: www.sciencealert.com/scientists-reveal-why-you-should-never-take-pebbles-from-the-beach It is a law enshrined in the 1949 Coastal Protection Act, curbing historic losses of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sediment from beaches by people extracting "free" sediment for building materials. commercial level activities are mentioned early on as the very raison d'etre for these laws existing, and > There are extensive areas in the Solway Firth doesn't appear at all in the sciencealert.com version linked, nor in the original at https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-from-the-beach-heres-the-science-230560 https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-fr...
  - nickcotter 2y ago
    It can however be found here: https://www.solwayfirthpartnership.co.uk/solway-review/productive/energy-aggregates-subsea-cables-and-pipelines/ https://www.solwayfirthpartnership.co.uk/solway-review/produ...
    - defrost 2y ago
      The implication of > some text here in a top level comment is that text is extracted from the top linked article or from a given link (and no link was provided) not that such text might be found somewhere on the internet. That aside, portions of the Solway Firth are perhaps an exception if commercial harvesting is permitted given the law in question: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/12-13-14/74 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/12-13-14/74 is riddled with carve outs for Wales and Scotland (Solway being Scotland to the north and England to the south) along with clauses allowing local authorities to issue licences to permit activities, and Section 18 (1) .. unlawful to excavate or remove any materials .. (subject to exceptions following) ending with (11) Nothing in this section shall be construed as authorising a coast protection authority in Scotland to institute proceedings for any offence under this Act.
  - EdwardDiego 2y ago
    Sorry, I forgot to add my link I was quoting. The other user provided it, but that was my bad.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Cheers! - Turned into bit more of a drama than intended .. but at least I got to crawl through the Act and try to work out where it applied .. :-)
JoeAltmaier 2y ago
Always struck me as utterly irrelevant. The world is big; a beach is huge. The very idea that kids taking a half-dozen pretty pebbles at a time can make a dent in it? An imagining of feeble-minded people with utterly no notion of the magnitudes involved. And, one storm can take an entire beach away (or return it). Happens, repeatedly in some places. Makes the activity of beachgoers profoundly unimportant.
- underlogic 2y ago
  feeble-minded indeed. what are they criminalizing beach pebbles for? lot of that in the UK. I wonder if the cause is cultural, genetic or environmental. They just don't seem to be playing with a full deck over there. One non sequitur after the next. I would suggest widespread brain damage from covid, but this has been going on for decades. There's something seriously wrong in the common reasoning and logic.
  - snorkel 2y ago
    Article mentions people were raiding beaches for free building materials like sand and stone for concrete, which would be a problem at a large volume. Enforcing the same rules on individual souvenir collectors seems excessive.
    - zelphirkalt 2y ago
      Excessive, but potentially necessary, since otherwise you need to draw an arbitrary line between an amount being taken away that is still acceptavle and one that is not, and how many times that can happen in what period of time and so on. From that point of view it can make sense to simply categorically forbid people to take things away from the beach.
      - JoeAltmaier 2y ago
        Yup and that's where it gets silly. It's trivial to say "all you can carry" and be done with it. Nobody can carry away a beach in their hands.
cwillu 2y ago
This is republished from https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-from-the-beach-heres-the-science-230560 https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-fr...

10 points by laktak 2y ago

I always love it when people sheet home the blame on John Q Public without ever mentioning commercial activities that may also be implicated. > There are extensive areas in the Solway Firth suitable for aggregate extraction.The map opposite outlines areas with suitable sand and gravel resources. There is, however, no data regarding the amount of aggregates extraction activity which takes place in the Solway. My emphasis added - could be the people taking stones home from the beach, could be people dredging aggregate for construction purposes, but who knows? Could also be changing sea levels and tides because of, well, you know. But yep, it's definitely people taking stones home. Often comes up when commercial fishers blame recreational fishers for declining fish stocks. Or oil companies run propaganda to make climate change a personal responsibility for every human, nothing to do with them. (...How is there no data on extractive operations in the Solway Firth? I have no idea how the UK handles mining operations, but you'd assume that data was available...)

defrost 2y ago
Are we reading the same link? From: www.sciencealert.com/scientists-reveal-why-you-should-never-take-pebbles-from-the-beach It is a law enshrined in the 1949 Coastal Protection Act, curbing historic losses of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sediment from beaches by people extracting "free" sediment for building materials. commercial level activities are mentioned early on as the very raison d'etre for these laws existing, and > There are extensive areas in the Solway Firth doesn't appear at all in the sciencealert.com version linked, nor in the original at https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-from-the-beach-heres-the-science-230560 https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-fr...
- nickcotter 2y ago
  It can however be found here: https://www.solwayfirthpartnership.co.uk/solway-review/productive/energy-aggregates-subsea-cables-and-pipelines/ https://www.solwayfirthpartnership.co.uk/solway-review/produ...
  - defrost 2y ago
    The implication of > some text here in a top level comment is that text is extracted from the top linked article or from a given link (and no link was provided) not that such text might be found somewhere on the internet. That aside, portions of the Solway Firth are perhaps an exception if commercial harvesting is permitted given the law in question: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/12-13-14/74 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/12-13-14/74 is riddled with carve outs for Wales and Scotland (Solway being Scotland to the north and England to the south) along with clauses allowing local authorities to issue licences to permit activities, and Section 18 (1) .. unlawful to excavate or remove any materials .. (subject to exceptions following) ending with (11) Nothing in this section shall be construed as authorising a coast protection authority in Scotland to institute proceedings for any offence under this Act.
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Sorry, I forgot to add my link I was quoting. The other user provided it, but that was my bad.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Cheers! - Turned into bit more of a drama than intended .. but at least I got to crawl through the Act and try to work out where it applied .. :-)

JoeAltmaier 2y ago

Always struck me as utterly irrelevant. The world is big; a beach is huge. The very idea that kids taking a half-dozen pretty pebbles at a time can make a dent in it? An imagining of feeble-minded people with utterly no notion of the magnitudes involved. And, one storm can take an entire beach away (or return it). Happens, repeatedly in some places. Makes the activity of beachgoers profoundly unimportant.

underlogic 2y ago
feeble-minded indeed. what are they criminalizing beach pebbles for? lot of that in the UK. I wonder if the cause is cultural, genetic or environmental. They just don't seem to be playing with a full deck over there. One non sequitur after the next. I would suggest widespread brain damage from covid, but this has been going on for decades. There's something seriously wrong in the common reasoning and logic.
- snorkel 2y ago
  Article mentions people were raiding beaches for free building materials like sand and stone for concrete, which would be a problem at a large volume. Enforcing the same rules on individual souvenir collectors seems excessive.
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    Excessive, but potentially necessary, since otherwise you need to draw an arbitrary line between an amount being taken away that is still acceptavle and one that is not, and how many times that can happen in what period of time and so on. From that point of view it can make sense to simply categorically forbid people to take things away from the beach.
    - JoeAltmaier 2y ago
      Yup and that's where it gets silly. It's trivial to say "all you can carry" and be done with it. Nobody can carry away a beach in their hands.

cwillu 2y ago

This is republished from https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-from-the-beach-heres-the-science-230560 https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-take-pebbles-fr...