On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 17:04:11 +0100, Rob van Riel
wrote:

OK, I'm quite willing to take your word for that, but then I must ask,
where is the environmental cost of scrapping them? I mean, if you leave
them at the bottom long enough, whatever comes out of the ships during
scrapping would also come out during decay. What am I missing?

The "administrative cost" of environmental cleanup can be truly
massive, even if the actual cost is not. You also have the liability
exposure if some dim dot chooses to act stupidly with materials they
know, or ought to know, are dangerous. Putting the whole thing on the
bottom solves all the problems. You can disolve a whole lot of stuff
in a few billion cubic yards of water.

And it's not like there's going to be some problem with accumulation
over time. We can't do it but thre or four times, total.

America was my last ship and I'd sure rather see her go this way that
under a cutting torch .

I agree. It might be more logical to recycle the lot of them, but this has
to do with human emotion, and logic has no business in that arena.

It might be more logical to recycle, then maybe it's not. "Logic" in
this case is probably synonomous with "dollars."

Bill Kambic