Price Shocks May Be Coming For Helium Supply 362
Ars has an update on the potential helium shortage we discussed a couple of years back. A Nobel laureate, Robert Richardson, argues for ending market distortions that are resulting in an artificially low price for helium, which is accelerating the projected exhaustion of the supply. "Richardson's solution is to rework the management of the Bush Dome [so named for reasons that have nothing to do with the politician] stockpile once again, this time with the aim of ensuring that helium's price rises to reflect its scarcity. In practical terms, he said that it would be better to deal with a 20-fold increase in price now than to deal with it increasing by a factor of thousands in a few decades when supply issues start to become critical. But he also made an emotional appeal, stating, 'One generation doesn't have the right to determine the availability forever.'"
Someone owns stocks in major helium producers (Score:4, Interesting)
While on the train ride back from Germany, I read a headline in the Financial Times.
"Mineral Prices Depress as Fear Dissipates"
It was spot on. I was involved over the last year in a major project for the Dutch government on the topic of mineral scarcity. After a year of intensive research I came to the conclusion that the mineral scarcity situation was effectively the inability of manufacturers and managers to effectively communicate their material requirements. There is really no absolute scarcity on the planet. We've tapped less than 2% of the resource base on the planet. Unless we suddenly run out of energy, prompting us to slow down extraction of these minerals, it is unlikely we'll ever really be faced with a shortage.
Needless to say, such analytical conclusions are not popular these days, we'd much rather claim there really is a scarcity situation as that would give the government something to do. Not a shock that the results of my study were warped, rewritten and omitted. In the end there was no science left in the report presented to the Dutch government. Just another fear piece, much like this one, which temporariliy increases the price of a resource so a few greedy bastards can make a buck while legitimate manufacturers get screwed with a major artificial spike in price.
the coming century (Score:2, Interesting)
will all be about the fight to successfully manage the earth: its climate, its species, its fisheries, its water, its minerals, its energy sources etc
and those who just want to consume, consume, consume, with no forethought, and then: "hey, where'd all the stuff go?"
but in some areas of this country, when you talk about managing things intelligently and prudently, you're some sort of anti-american fascist liberty destroying socialist
why is that?
if that sort of propaganda is allowed to prevail, our grandchildren are going to live (or rather, mostly die) in some awfully brutal conditions
but just keep ignoring the fish stock depletions, the aquifer depletions, the increased consumption of oil that just gets deeper to dig up, the slowly rising thermostat... nah, none of things are problems! keep partying see? anyone who wants to manage these things is just a killjoy evil liburul!
Re:"One generation doesn't have the right to..." (Score:2, Interesting)
You're examples are interesting, and they do illustrate a point. One generation does have the right to determine the availability forever. But, it also has the responsibility and obligation to wisely use those resources. This comes not only in not trivially forever consuming resources but also, as you point out, providing for future generations to inherent that which is available in a fair way. Oligarchies makes sense in a gene pool, but in the short term humanity exists much more in a meme pool where ideas have much more weight than genetic mutation.
The long-term survival of the meme pool to maintain and progress requires, then, the opportunity for everyone to grow so that those most capable, willing, and involved actually continue the meme pool. To facilitate this requires many things, including the availability of quality education and a mechanism of reallocating rival resources (property taxes and death taxes come to mind). This also can translate into absorbing into monetary costs the externalities of pollution or the warpings of other externalities. Just because a right trumps an obligation in the axioms of law doesn't mean a law cannot be created or a society can willfully choose to act individually to fulfill an obligation and withhold from the exercising of a right. Recognizing that this can and should be so is something too few seeming willing to acknowledge, so I do congratulate you on noting the difference.
Re:Someone owns stocks in major helium producers (Score:5, Interesting)
Insightful MY ASS.
Prices rises, lower concentrations become economically viable, util we use all the fucking Earth crust.
This is just a STUPID rant with the all too common "blame the rich". Way more resources are used keeping stupid people like you viable than keeping my humble pleasure boat.
There aren't enough yacht-owning rich to account for all the resource usage on this planet. Hell, one of the biggest uses of electric power in the U.S. is residential refrigeration ... let's blame the rich for that.
Re:Someone owns stocks in major helium producers (Score:4, Interesting)
If only the Romans had been more conservative with their wood resource use! If they had carefully controlled the cutting of trees and rationed the wood, they could have theoretically never run out, and we would still be using the burning of wood as our primary energy source today.
The next energy and/or mineral gap is always just around the bend, and while prices are cheap, people never develop (or find) alternatives. I agree that we should not be keeping the helium price artificially low, but don't think that we should go into crisis rationing mode just yet.
There are alternatives on the horizon (using NMR as an example since I am familiar with it): high temperature superconductors exist that some day will be able to make powerful magnetic fields while cooled only by nitrogen. More sensitive detectors and better analysis methods can yield more data from weaker magnets. There are solutions just waiting to be found. If we ran out of helium today, I promise you that organic chemists would still be using NMR in a year.
Re:emotional appeal? (Score:4, Interesting)
He has basically put all the badness of using up a resource on the single generation variant. Its as if its not bad when more-than-one generation depletes a resource...
I've got news for him. The generation that doesnt have access to the resource doesnt give a fuck how many generations it took to use it up.
Re:the coming century (Score:3, Interesting)
"will all be about the fight to successfully manage the earth"
And you got it in one, once you add the part that it's even more about managing people, as in dictatorship.
You will decide what car (if any) I get to drive, you will decide what I eat, when I'll be allowed to have kids, what medical care I'm eligible for, and so on.
That's the not so hidden agenda that riles up people so well. I don't know if you intend to be one of the new slavemasters or not, but someone is pushing for that role. Richard Heinberg is very open about using "Government means" to "encourage" 50 million people to move out to newly confiscated and redistributed lands to take up organic subsistence farming.
As for him, in his own words (I do give him full points for honesty)
http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/189 [richardheinberg.com]
"Many people (this includes him) who are doing this necessary work (leading others on the path of righteousness as defined by him) will be unable immediately to put much effort into building alternative, off-grid dwellings, and may have to continue using computers and jet transport, at least in modest ways. "
He will milk the system for every luxury he can get because he has to show the true path to the 50 million new eco-serfs who are being marched out into the country at bayonet point.
And this one is really a riot: http://energybulletin.net/node/22584 [energybulletin.net]
"Rather than a new peasantry that spends all of its time in drudgery, we could look forward to a new population of producers who maintain interests in the arts and sciences, in history, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology--in short, the whole range of pursuits that make modern urban life interesting and worthwhile."
As if subsistence farmers have time for anything other than subsistence. And you are never more than two bad years from starvation. See the Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan, who has a much more realistic view of subsistence farming, or the opening act of said book;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315 [wikipedia.org]-1317
Yes, I grew up on a farm, and even with Friend Diesel and Friend Hydraulic System, it's not easy.
Re:I can't wait... (Score:4, Interesting)
They used to capture it and re-sell it. But when the govt got out of the helium business and liquidated their supply in Texas, the nat.-gas folks just started discharging it (it doesn't burn, so they strip it off the supply). It's been about 2 decades since they stopped capturing it. Now STFU about these stupid articles that haven't the faintest clue what they're talking about.
Raise prices - jeezus fucking christ - you have no idea what's even going on in the supply chain and you want to enforce price controls...fucking morons.
Re:I can't wait... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I can't wait... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I can't wait... (Score:1, Interesting)
Are you forgetting that this entire situation is due to government meddling, as in government buying helium for one price, building a massive reserve, and then selling it for a much lower (ridiculously low) price, totally independent of any demand or worth of the product?
Good point. When the military realized that they needed a stockpile, they should have stepped back and thought of the poor market whose freedom they were taking away. After all, is a country worth defending if the price of helium will be distorted by non-market forces in twenty years?
Re:Lets mine the Moon! (Score:4, Interesting)
The last time airships powered by vacuum were attempted it was found that the then current technology could not create a container strong enough to support a 1 atmosphere pressure differential without weighing enough to cancel out all the displaced air, preventing any buoyancy. Modern technology might be able to do better, but this is not guaranteed.
Re:Mining is destructive by definition (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, there would be if the government had more regulatory will and power - you could easily tax all mining activities at the exact level that they are harming the environment and use those tax incomes to foster green environments (plant trees, clean up old dump sites, ...). A company can pillage and leave, a country, where its happening can not. So it is for the government of the country where mining is happening to impose taxes and regulations that must ensure that environment actually benefits from the mining overall. That is the role of the government - insure that in the long term, the country benefits and not just the companies.
Re:Lets mine the Moon! (Score:4, Interesting)
Vacuum is lighter than helium (0 g/l vs. 0.1786 g/l at NTP). The problem is the weight of the casing necessary to keep the atmospheric pressure out. Since it seems that nitrogen is diamagnetic, putting a sufficiently strong superconducting magnet in the middle of the balloon might help by reducing the effective density of the atmosphere around the balloon; unfortunately it's not quite sufficient alone since oxygen is paramagnetic, so we can't build a vacuum bubble with that alone. Then again, simply repulsing nitrogen should create lift...
Anyone care to work the physics out?