Gary sent in this link www.yahoo.com/news/why-sand-mafias-forming-science-124003906.html …. William actually sent the link to Gary who forwarded it on to SIS. The mainstream theory is that weathering creates sand. Rocks break apart from frost and heat and continue to break down piece by piece until they are the size of sand granules. Wind and water play a role in this process. There is, or there should be, an unlimited supply of sand on earth. The gradualist models virtually guarantee it. Facts, however, are sometimes stranger than fiction. Sand, is apparently in demand – and criminal gangs are involved.
White sand is made from weathered corals, and black sand from basalt -with an origin in magma emitted by volcanoes. Yellow and orange sand has varying levels of iron oxide in them. Then we have green sand on a beach in Hawaii – weathered green olivine rock. Pink sand in the Bahamas is derived from a mix of white sand and red shells weathered over millions of years. And so on. At a sand quarry near Leighton Buzzard, you get yellow, orange, and white sand in one vast deposit. The local rabbits love the sandy soils. In fact, sand is the most mined, or quarried, commodity in the world. It is mainly used in construction and cement, in bricks and tiles, as well as the glass industry. The building industry depends on it and without access to sand houses and hospitals and hotels won't be constructed. You would think sand was everywhere but it seems modern society is beginning to run out of the stuff. Organised criminal gangs in India and Italy, and elsewhere, are illegally trading in sand and making huge profits. You might think there was enough sand in the deserts of the world to satisfy demand, but no, that is not so as desert sand is too rounded and does not bind together enough for construction projects. Desert sand is no good. What is required are access to those deposits laid down millions of years ago. There is a lot of it under the North Sea, for example, massive deposits, and we know that dredging for sand is an activity all around the continental shelf system of western Europe. So much so that some people are alarmed it will cause flooding and erosion, and shrink the land surface.
Gary also provides a link to www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/SilicaSandMineLochaine … which is about a sand mine on the Morven Peninsular in Scotland, that has sadly closed down as a result of EU safety directives and a combination of the closure of the glass industry in the UK, also as a result of EU membership. It is cheaper to buy inferior glass from China than manufacture it in the UK. The mine was opened in the 1940s, during WW II, in order to satisfy a demand for high quality glass for use in optical instruments and sighting systems as used by the army, air force, and navy. Gary also provided a link to https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Policy-and-Media/Outreach/Plate-Tectonic-Stor… … Alderley Edge, overlooking Manchester, is a highly desirable residential area of larger than life big houses. It is much prized by Manchester's soccer stars. Expensive cars and a sandstone ridge. The Navajo Sandstone deposit, on the other hand, is a belt of sandstone that covers 400,000 km of the western USA. It forms part of the Colorado Plateau, also a region coveted by the big spenders, as well as locations in Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. It consists of thick layers of cross banded sandstone, similar to that at Alderley Edge. Here we are told the deposit was formed, in the early Jurassic, as a result of tectonic processes and mountain building activity.
Over at www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10309501/ … which concerns Mars missing water. Is it hiding in clay 18n miles beneath the Mars surface?