US Sits On Supply of Rare, Tech-Crucial Minerals 324
We've recently discussed China's position as the linchpin of the world's supply of rare earths, and their rumblings about restricting exports of of these materials crucial to the manufacture of everything from batteries to wind turbines. Now an anonymous reader sends this MSNBC piece on the status of the US's supply of rare earths. "China supplies most of the rare earth minerals found in technologies such as hybrid cars, wind turbines, computer hard drives, and cell phones, but the US has its own largely untapped reserves that could safeguard future tech innovation. Those reserves include deposits of both 'light' and 'heavy' rare earths... 'There is already a shortage, because there are companies that already can't get enough material,' said Jim Hedrick, a former USGS rare earth specialist who recently retired. 'No one [in the US] wants to be first to jump into the market because of the cost of building a separation plant,' Hedrick explained. ... [S]uch a plant requires thousands of stainless steel tanks holding different chemical solutions to separate out all the individual rare earths. The upfront costs seem daunting. Hedrick estimated that opening just one mine and building a new separation plant might cost anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion and would require a minimum of eight years. [But the CEO of a rare earth supply company said] 'From what I see, security of supply is going to be more important than the prices.'"
Supply and demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
If these rare earths are so rare and valuable, and only going to become more so, why should the upfront cost matter? The plant should still make a huge profit, unless I am misunderstanding basic economics.
Seems people in America only want to invest in fraudulent get rich quick gambling schemes these days. Actual resource extraction and manufacturing is for the peons.
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People really underestimate the greens when it comes to obstructing progress.
I mean come on, how can you trust a group that bitches about how unclean coal is and then holds up the building of Solar power with litigation waiting for environmental impact studies of plopping solar arrays in the middle of a desert.
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Re:Supply and demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yes. Let's admit we have a problem, and then go ahead and implement a solution without bothering to evaluate that solution.
I hope to God you don't have any sort of responsibility for any systems I use.
And, for what it's worth, do you really think that "greens" are part of a single organized group with a single platform of goals and ideals? Have you ever bothered to consider that "greens" constitute a large number of people with diverse concerns? It's quite possible for some people who are "greens" to think it's OK to damage wild deserts in the name of reducing carbon output -- and there are some "greens" who are more concerned with maintaining a natural environment.
But whatever dude... your tired complaint of a large group of people having members with sometimes conflicting interests is useless for any kind of rational discussion.
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Far better to consider the impact of action than to act rashly without understanding the consequences.
For that matter, beyond the consequences, are we a rational society or not? If we aim to be a rational society, why would we not want discourse on a divisive course of action?
There is a reason that the phrase "look before you leap" is used so often. I'll let you try to f
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you can sit and do contemplation until the end of time. We needed solutions yesterday. And quite frankly it doesn't matter if we screw up the ecosystem of the Sahara dessert or Bonneville salt flats or some other arid wasteland.
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
The minerals will sit there waiting until we are ready. In the mean time, separation technology will improve and (unless other sources are discovered) proce/value will increase. Once shortages occur, prices will skyrocket and producers will argue that we need to fast-track and sidestep environmental concerns in the name of security.
- Profit!
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Yes, because I really want to get cancer from drinking water that is polluted by the mine that gathers these elements, or die in a mine collapse because the mine owner is too cheep to provide for safety bunkers.
The number one rule for business is to internalize the profits, and externalized the costs.
It is why gas is taxed to high in Europe. They are trying to capture the costs of the pollution and environmental hazards caused by the use of oil. It is why coal miners in the US die in a collapse, and the Eur
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because I really want to get cancer from drinking water that is polluted by the mine that gathers these elements, or die in a mine collapse because the mine owner is too cheep to provide for safety bunkers.
What year do you think this is, 1900? Mining is not perfectly safe. It never ever will be. In 2008 in the US, 15 people died in coal mine accidents. In 2007 the number was 21. In 2007, China -- the worst in the world -- had 4746 deaths.
In 2007 the US produced 1,147 million short tons of coal. China produced 2,795.
By comparison the only European countries with significant coal production are Germany and Poland. Germany produces about 1/5 of the US, and Poland produces even less (this is true presently and in 2007). Numbers for the European countries are hard to find, but accidents are not. Barely 6 months ago (2009) at least 17 miners died in Poland. Google Ruda Soska if you're unfamiliar with it.
Am I missing anything here? Are the very few remaining European coal mines really that different from the US or Canada?
It is why gas is taxed to high in Europe
Is THAT why gas is taxed so highly in Europe?
It is why coal miners in the US die in a collapse, and the European coal miners spend 3-4 days in an emergency shelter waiting to be dug out.
See/rebut above?
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Cheap labor and no environmental concerns. You pollute the local village and give most of the kids cancer the maximum downside is they close the factory. It's just a building. You can always pull all the equipment out and build a factory somewhere else. That might change in 20 years, but right now China is still in the middle of it's Industrial Revolution.
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most likely the high cost and long wait times resulting from EPA, OSHA and various state agency regulations (not to mention fighting Greenpeace and other hippies) make it more economical to just import the stuff from China rather than try to mine it and build a processing plant here.
If you had been alive before Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water act you wouldn't be so anti-environment. When I grew up in Cahokia, you could not drive through Sauget past the Monsanto plant with your windows down, even in hundred degree heat. It didn't just stink, it burned your lungs. Nowdays it's rare that you even smell anything.
I think my right to breathe should trump Monsanto's privilege of making billions of dollars of profits more than they already do. THIS is why Free Trade is a BAD idea -- how can someone who likes to breathe compete with a country who doesn't give a damn how filthy and poisoned their country is?
As to OSHA, that protects YOU. Did you know that more people die in Chinese mines than all the other mines in the world? Protecting workers from sociopaths who don't value human life in the least is a GOOD thing, unless you're one of the sociopaths who don't care about human life and don't work in a dangerous industry.
EPA regs are a GOOD thing, and only the woefully ignorant think otherwise. It would do you good to read a little history.
Now get off my lawn, yuppie!
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If you had been alive before Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water act you wouldn't be so anti-environment. When I grew up in Cahokia, you could not drive through Sauget past the Monsanto plant with your windows down, even in hundred degree heat. It didn't just stink, it burned your lungs. Nowdays it's rare that you even smell anything.
What's with the straw man? I don't think ANYBODY would argue against regulating such things. However, regulating toxic chemicals and noxious vapors is very different than deciding (e.g.) you can't build a wind farm because some birds are going to die.
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There's no straw man except the one you just constructed; we're talking about regulating the mining of TOXIC MINERALS, not putting up a wind farm, and the poster I responded to put forth that regulating these things was a bad idea. If you don't think anybody would argue againt regulating such things, then read the post I responded to.
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Horsepoop. Really, just plain horsepoop.
Although lots of clauses in the Constitution have been abused, establishing clean air and water are textbook examples of measures tak
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"The world is much different than it was 220 years ago. Deal with it."The world is much different than it was 220 years ago. Deal with it."
Maybe so, but people are the same. And our Constitution is actually intended to restrain people from behaving badly, more or less.
So which right(s) do you think is(are) now outmoded in our 'different' world? It's not the knee-jerk strict constitutionalists I fear, it's those who would pick and choose which parts to keep and which to use, and do so without the approval
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Constitution is a dead document. Realistically it can't be touched... so instead we use it as a guide for governance.
Horsepoop. Really, just plain horsepoop.
The Constitution is a living document. It was devised to be amended. There is a well defined process for amending it that has been used dozens of times before.
Of course, you qualified your statement with "realistically", which basically means either "not fast enough to suit my tastes" or "not in a manner which will allow power to accrue to the federal government without a proper vetting period so that normal people realize that all their rights are vanishing into thin air."
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Well, more specifically we're talking the Interstate Commerce Clause. If states can externalize the cost of environmental destruction and reap all the tax revenue benefits, that's *precisely* the kind of thing the clause was intended to address.
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When was the last time we had an amendment that actually impacted the operation of government?
Amendment 27 just deals with legislators not granting themselves immediate pay raises. This amendment is nowhere near the scale of what OP is suggesting. It's addressing an administrative detail, not a critical issue.
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Insofar as dirty water and dirty air move from one state to the next, Congress has explicit power to regulate under the interstate commerce clause. Insofar as it is impractical to regulate interstate movement of dirty air and dirty water without regulating the intrastate production of such, Congress has explici
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IMHO it makes more sense to save our resources while the rest of the world's supplies dwindle to nothing. Then the United States (and Canada) can charge a small fortune since we will be the sole supplier for coal, oil, and other rare minerals. We will be as wealthy as Arab shieks.
BUT that's long term thinking. It will be ignored.
I was reading an interesting story about how enterprising New Englanders would transport frozen lake ice from Massachusetts/New Hampsphire, down the Alantic coast, and sell it to
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Of course! Government regulation and hippies, the scapegoat for Slashdotters the world over! What didn't *I* think of that??
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not the cost of regulation that is high, its the cost of doing things right and safely. China effectively uses human life and environmental destruction to offset production costs. So far there is no developed nation that is able to match the prices that the chinese are giving us, so it would seem that we are not willing to give up the protections that we now take for granted in a civilized society.
Its economical to keep buying from them, but its not morally correct because we are simply enabling the the ruling class of chinese society to continue to exploit the land and people in ways that would be considered gross negligence if we saw it first hand.
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because we can sue, and win, and force payment from, the country of China in our own courts.
That's about as effective as getting a Very Very Sternly Worded Letter from the UN warning you that you should stop murdering lots of people, otherwise you might get a Very Very VERY Sternly Worded Letter in the near future.
Onoes, please, anything but that.
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
We have international courts and trade agreements. If they don't play fair, they can get slapped with tariffs or outright bans. And if they won't play ball at all, well, by our own rules we should not be trading with them.
Yes we've seen how the US handles trade disputes (Score:5, Informative)
The WTO & the environment. (Score:3, Informative)
We have international courts and trade agreements. If they don't play fair, they can get slapped with tariffs or outright bans. And if they won't play ball at all, well, by our own rules we should not be trading with them.
You seem to be under the impression that our international treaties were written in a way to provide a fair shot for communities that favor strong environmental and labor protections over bottom-feeding rent-seekers. [wikipedia.org]
Unfortunately, the WTO cares far more about trade barriers than the environment. While the WTO recognizes the right of nations to protect human health and their natural resources, it does not recognize any restraint on trade in "like products." So, for example, if you want to ban tuna caught i
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I admire the intent of your post, but the US is so utterly in bed with China that your nation will never put up bans or tariffs.
You'll accept most of their conditions regardless of political posturing - the voters in the US will demand the politicians kowtow if it means higher prices otherwise.
As for international courts... are you guys ever going to join the International Criminal Court? It's hard to take your presence in the other courts seriously when you pick and choose which ones have jurisdiction over
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All we need to do is make a small city near the resources in China and send a 'Great Artist' to create a 'Great Work'. Once the borders expand we can mine the stuff... easy...
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And by "not wanting to lose a trading partner," you really mean "not wanting to lose the group that lends us boatloads of money."
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Not likely, given the supply and the current and projected demand. But we should seriously start suing countries like China for unfair trade practices like destroying the environment. It's the same thing as subsidizing an industry. I like our environmental laws, people should not be allowed to dump the costs of their actions onto others, they should take personal responsibility.
Destroying whose environment exactly? If I damage your property, there are already laws stipulating personal liability to provide restitution. If ownership of this "environment" is not defined, who bears the cost of the action?
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Because the common man (not you -- the general "drill baby drill" public) doesn't seem to grasp a few concepts. Minerals, including oil and rare earths, are of finite supply. Eventually, they will run low or out totally. When that happens, do we -- the U.S. -- want to be on the SUPPLY or DEMAND side of the equation?
This is why the entire concept of "stop using foreign oil" is wrong. Who do we want pumped dry first? The Middle East, or the U.S.? Ditto with other critical resources. Which is why as lon
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way to solve energy problems in the long term without eventually running out of resources is to use resources that are (for all practical purposes) infinite or infinitely renewable, like solar power or wind. With anything else, you're just kicking the can down the road.
With things like minerals it's harder of course, because the reason we use these rare earth minerals is they have certain properties that make them desirable for the purpose we use them for. However, we can still put effort into developing renewable (or at least more abundant) alternatives where possible, and aggressively recycling materials whenever we can.
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I am perfect
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Given America's inability to adopt serious ecological policies, the refusal to recycle tech waste and instead to transport it to developing nations... I'm not seeing any developing nation willing to take it ever running out of rare earth minerals to sell to the Chinese.
Re:Supply and demand? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: "Dear Congress, give my company lots and lots of taxpayer money for free, or the yellow peril will eat your children, and you wouldn't want that, would you?"
It sounds like he has every intention of making a huge profit, he'd just prefer to have taxpayers build his plant, offer him some nice tax "incentives", maybe waive an inconvenient environmental protection rule or two first...
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Maybe process controls isn't one of those industries with the right amount of pull in the right places. If so, I'm sorry about that.
That doesn't change the fact, though, that certain segements of business are recipients of massive public largess. Tax breaks, free land, direct payouts [reason.com], access to Fed credit on extraordinarily generous terms, mineral extraction and grazing concessions on public
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Probably the environmental impact statement for opening such a separation plant outweighs (and outcosts) the equipment itself.
Oddly, it's the so-called capitalists who have become stymied by paperwork and government bureaucracy, and the bureaucratic communists of China who have not. Of course they don't mind at all if their people drink and brea
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Some of the nastiest and most polluted places on the planet are in the ex-Soviet Union.
Totalitarianism does make certain things easier up to a point.
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Well, if a company were to set up shop here, they'd have to comply with all applicable federal/state/local environmental and safety guidelines, and pass on the cost to their buyers.
Companies operating in China have no such problems (or, at least, not to the degree that they would here) and therefore would be able to sell those materials at a lower cost.
Consequently, such a venture wouldn't be profitable UNLESS China cut off their exports of those materials.
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Seeing as demand for rare earths far outstrips supply, I don't think your explanation holds water. Even given the unfair trade advantage China holds by not upholding environmental standards, a US supplier could make a huge profit. Also, given that this story comes from a rare earths company, if environmental issues were a factor, you would have heard their whining. Plenty of new mines have opened up in the US. Heck, we're stripping the tops off of most of the Appalachians as we speak. I sincerely doubt tha
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Well, we don't even know how much of the rare earth minerals are in the US. Vast parts of the United States are either under surveyed or not surveyed at all.
I'm up in Alaska and there is a huge fight over expanding mines and new mines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dog_mine [wikipedia.org]
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2010-raree.pdf [usgs.gov]
"In 2009, rare earths were not mined in the United States."
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Wow, yeah, sounds like those mines are costing everyone else a lot of money by polluting. Why should I subsidize someone else's mining operation? They should pay all the costs they incur, and pollution costs money.
What we should do is fine importers who damage the environment, in order to cover the costs. That will help out local industries that do the right thing and do not try to externalize their costs.
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Pebble Mine is the big fight here right now, probably the second biggest single copper deposit of its type on the planet.
The main anti-mining group just had to pay 100,000 in "settlement" for funneling money into the anti-mining initiative.
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"There is already a shortage, because there are companies that already can't get enough material, " ... at the price they want. The cost of extraction in the US is likely to be significantly higher than in China, due to environmental rules/lawsuits if nothing else. In all likelihood, the first such operation will be buried in lawsuits and bare the cost of setting case law. There is also the early adopter penalty - if we are only beginning to mine these elements, then it is likely that we have not develop
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It is also a matter of opportunity cost. If you have no morals, and can make 100% profit on some insane debt gambling, in six months, or you could make a reasonably hefty 20% profit on this, but in eight years, where would you invest your money?
Until we put a stop to Wall Street insanity, there will be no money to invest in actual useful projects like this.
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The problem is that there are large legal barriers that create delay in actually getting a return on investment. The larger the start up costs and the longer between initiating activity and actually generating any revenue, the more money one needs t
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If it takes a billion to build the factory and needs eight years to get going, then you need to be able to raise a billion dollars, keep a float for over eight years before even hoping to break even (because you know that first year isn't going to produce a billion in profits).
Not a scenario many can pull off.
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The Nuclear Power Industry does this all the time. They have a horrid record when it comes to cost over runs and delays. Now they are trying to get rate payers to pay for the possible construction of a new nuclear plant that may or may not be built in the next 5 to 10 years.
No insurance company will insure a nuclear plant.*
No bank will loan money for construction of a nuclear plant.*
*Without government guarantees.
US mining is politically uneconomical (Score:2)
The vast mineral districts in the western US are very expensive and risky to develop even though there are large, high-value mineral deposits available there. While old mining sites are sort of grandfathered in, developing a new mining site is prohibitively expensive for regulatory reasons such that the value of the resource has to be atypically high to offset the regulatory overhead. In short, opening a new mine in the western deserts has become kind of like trying to build a new nuclear power plant. Ther
Re:US mining is politically uneconomical (Score:5, Informative)
I own a mineral deposit in a central Nevada mining district, though not with any intent to exploit it. I am quite familiar with the regulatory details of mining in the US. It is very different than the caricatures spoon-fed to the public by activist organizations.
Environmental impact studies are fine and necessary. Archaeological impact studies are mostly bullshit; the region is littered from end-to-end with artifacts leftover from the Lake Lahontan civilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan), you can find stuff everywhere if you know what to look for. So everyone just pretends that there are no artifacts.
There are two big problems that really make it impossible to profitably mine US deposits. First, there is an environmental lawsuit industry that thrives on delaying the opening of mines until the companies run out of money to deal with them. The lawsuits are mostly bullshit about hypothetical habitats for endangered species and the like; they aren't credible, but that isn't the point and some courts are willing to entertain them indefinitely.
Second, a big problem is that if you pick up a rock, you own it. In the western US mining districts, those rocks are laden with natural concentrations of all sorts of low-value heavy minerals that are magically transformed into "toxic waste" the minute you touch it. This has arguably been the biggest killer of new mining. The obligation to scrub natural mineral formations of elements with no economical value very substantially increases the cost because you end up "mining" metals that have no value. This is particularly problematic for things like rare earth metals -- the mineral complexes are intrinsically "toxic waste" under standard regulatory regimes. It doesn't matter that they are natural, the mining company is obligated to treat nature as a superfund site.
Regulations regarding arsenic in the water have been similarly exploited by environmental activist groups to shut down mining. In many places in the western US, the background levels of arsenic in the groundwater is naturally several times higher than the EPA limits because of the local mineral formations. The way it works now is that if you do mining near those formations, you become responsible for bringing the natural background levels within EPA guidelines -- a fool's errand. So mining companies avoid areas where the local arsenic levels exceed EPA guidelines, lest they become responsible for cleaning up arsenic they didn't produce.
Environmental activists have very cleverly created a regulatory framework that holds mining companies responsible for natural mineral distributions even if the mining companies are in no way responsible. This has effectively outlawed heavy metal mining in the western US because the environment is naturally full of heavy minerals.
Re:US mining is politically uneconomical (Score:5, Insightful)
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That sounds like a round about way of saying that it would be profitable to mine if you were allowed to leave your tailings, and the waste from the refining processes in big piles on the ground.
One man's trash is another man's treasure. The government has to chase people off with shotguns to keep them away from beryllium mines' tailings. The fact that GP brings up that all this stuff is classified as "Toxic waste" means that it is unprofitable to use the entire buffalo on a corporate level. If you want to mine rare earth metals, there WILL be companies who will purchase your tailings from you for what cheaper metals they can tear out of them, but then what do they do with it? They can't sell i
Advanced Automation for Space Missions... (Score:3, Interesting)
I predict within twenty years or so, you can do this kind of separation in your backyard. Rare Earths are actually pretty common. Some people who realize that may not want to put in all the money for a conventional plant?
Meanwhile, the US spends a trillion dollars a year of "defense". But can't be bothered to have a plant in the country to produce strategic materials... What an odd notion of "security".
If you're going to bother to set up such a complex extraction facility, why not go all the way, for exactl
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Welcome to economics 101: Opportunity cost. Right now, investing in congressmen gives obscenely high returns, with little risk. Even when the bubble you paid them off to create bursts, they bail you out in a way that makes you even more money. Investing in this might be guaranteed to return a sizable profit at the end of 8 years it takes to build , and the 10+ years of operation it takes just to pay off it's construction. But that's 18 years you could have been making money hand over fist, and have eve
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We have a winner! The answer is "Opportunity cost!" That's right, why invest in things society find useful when you can gamble outrageously, crash the economy, and get paid billions? We've created a system that encourages pathology and rewards sociopaths. Yay us.
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You're misunderstanding basic economics on two fronts;
Did someone say Adam Smith? (Score:2)
When interests rates get so high, all the capital in a market floods to the finance industry because it offers large and immediate returns without many associated costs. The effect of deregulation, including the abolishment of usury laws early in the 20th century, has led to a world financial market that's basically a hundred trillion dollar casino. The Dow Jones number is perfectly meaningless in relation to the real economy. How many people are employed? What real goods are they producing? These are quest
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Citations or STFU.
Tell you what, I'll stay here where the clean air and water is, you can go live in China and breath filth all day long. Sound good?
I'm sick and tired of the wealthy telling us we should clean up their mess for them, that they won't play ball unless we subsidize them by paying the costs of pollution.
What Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sam Walton believed in buying locally (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for the advice, Sam Walton
IIRC Sam Walton believed in buying locally, or at least domestically. Corporations do not always continue with the policies and practices preferred by their founders.
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Actually Sam Walton used to take pride in selling stuff made in the USA. Blame the current folks running Walmart and not the founder.
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Only it isn't cheap, these are some of the most expensive minerals on the planet. Given that demand outstrips supply right now, local owners could be making money off of this. And given that it takes eight years to get a plant going, wouldn't it be prudent to start now, rather than waiting for the Chinese to take all their balls and go home? Oh, but I guess I am asking the Free Market to actually think ahead instead of focusing on next quarter's immediate profits, silly me.
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You are misunderstanding the problem. The mining companies would *love* to develop the rich mineral deposits in the western US -- all mining is a long-term investment -- but it is politically impractical. Not only are there many years of regulatory overhead before you can even get permission to start (archaeological clearances, environmental impact studies, etc), you also find yourself plagued by routine lawsuits by environmental activist organizations. In short, you can waste decades trying to develop a
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The problem is the lack of processing in this country.
Kinda like how the Middle-East was buying petroleum products from the US because we had the refineries. We could mine the hell out of the minerals, but if we can't process it someone else will be getting the profit.
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Didn't the article say a new plant has about a 10 year ramp-up time?
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No one's thinking long term anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
For the same reason they aren't drilling for oil off the coasts. You know, if you don't start now, it's going to take even LONGER before production is spun up. And by then, we'll have yet another dumb ass in office and we can't mine this stuff out for whatever reason (NIMBY, clean air, whatever). Even if the company stockpiles it, the material is still an asset and can be used when the Chinese decide to close their borders because of another cultural revolution.
Re:No one's thinking long term anymore (Score:5, Informative)
The real reason we are not drilling offshore, is that it will not reduce gas prices more than 2 cents and will not make the US energy independant. There have been extensive studies on this and the oil is not just there. The EIA estimated that offshore drilling would reduce US gas prices by 2 cents. The areas offshore entire states contain enough oil to supply the US for only a few months. We could save more energy if people installed some more insulation in their homes and inflated their tires than we would ever get from offshore oil drilling. The idea that we can solve our problems with domestic drilling is a lie told by the public relations of the Oil Industry and Republican puppets.
The second point is it cannot be done safely. That is a fact. Last year there was a massive oil spill off of Australia using the same "Clean safe" technology that the oil companies wanted to use offshore in the US. The fact is, it would take just one spill to destroy miles of beaches and pollute and contaminate the very seafood we eat. A study of the environment around oil rigs found fish around there with vastly higher levels of heavy metals and the seafloor covered with heavy metals and toxic carcinogens including arsenic. Unfortunately there are some who seem to think it is acceptable to pollute our environment with toxic waste that will kill us in order for oil companies to make some more profit.
Here again we see the oil company propoganda at work. In the real world unexpected things happen, pipes break. An oil rig can have a drill shaft miles deep, a leak anywhere in that can pollute and contaminate ground water, cause long running leaks into the ocean which can last for months and destroy hundreds of miles of ocean environment and beaches.
All of this means offshore drilling simply isnt worth the risk. Just one spill and we have ruined the environment, and for nothing at all, it simply will not solve energy problems.
Re:Not safe? (Score:4, Informative)
sorry you seem to still believe this, but it is propaganda that has been debunked repeatedly:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/19/opinion/main4275167.shtml
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We have all sorts of off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita came through back-to-back, none of 'em leaked a drop.
[Citation Needed]
This was the 3rd google result for 'gulf of mexico oil spills'
http://blog.skytruth.org/2007/12/hurricane-katrina-gulf-of-mexico-oil.html [skytruth.org]
Seems like you're just regurgitating a Republican talking point.
Read the Minerals Management Service press release and report if you're skeptical.
/For the life of me I can't seem to find the portion of the Coast Guard website that lists all the oil spills which have ever been reported.
shortage?? (Score:5, Insightful)
'There is already a shortage, because there are companies that already can't get enough material,' said Jim Hedrick
May be, it's not just a shortage, but a cost of doing business. The real question is: if those companies were willing to pay ten times the amount for those rare earth minerals, would they be able to get them? Probably, I think. Personally, I think this is just another industry that's trying to get the government to subsidize 90% of its infrastructure costs.
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It used to be that government welfare was only for poor people. Now welfare is only for rich people.
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More than a short term supply problem (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing that does not seem to be talked about much is that all rare earth metals will be completely depleted, in any practically extractable reserves, within the next 50-100 years. The response to the shortage of rare earth metals seen here is similar to a fishing fleet who is pushing the fish population to total extinction through overfishing, doubling the number of fishing boats in order to make up production decline... it only speeds up the extinction process, and that repeatedly we see fishing industries opposing any efforts to allow fish populations to rebound, thus dooming destruction of the very fish population being fished, forever. This is short sighted thinking, it is far easier to carry on business as usual for fisherman even though the species is going extinct, in the short term, in the long term that behaviour leads to a much worse outcome.
A difference with these metals is they cannot regenerate. Once they are gone, thats it. Still today metals are being used like its an endless supply, and people throw away everything from electronics to batteries which contian precious metals. In the process, we are throwing away our future. Knowing this one realises that with all environmental and resource issues, recycling is not a joke, and the people who have been pushing for it desperately are not "environmental nutjobs", they understand what is really going on and the true ramifications. I find this is true with nearly all environmental issues which are often ignored by the vested interests from pollution which threatens to severely damage our health adn well being to resource depletion.
The concerns over metal are also existing for oil as well, which is now predicted to peak as soon as 2014, that is a question of when, not if.
Re:More than a short term supply problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Landfill: A future mine.
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For recyclable materials(like most metals), the dangers to long-term supply are those activities which dilute the material in question since, generally speaking, the lower the concentration, the more expensive and destructive the extraction. Incineration is likely bad news. Trying to
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In the next 50-100 years?
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2010-raree.pdf [usgs.gov]
Consumption in the US
7,410
Reserves in the US
13,000,000
1754 years worth
Chinese mining
120,000
Chinese reserves
36,000,000
300 years worth.
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The problem with these kinds of projections is that they almost invariably forget to take technological change into account; Malthus predicted that humanity would starve to death because of food shortages in the late 18th Century, whale oil was unsustainable until the discovery of underground oil, and horse shit threatened the
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This hardly needs saying, but that's more or less like arguing that we don't need to worry about burning through our fossil fuel supplies because we can synthesize those fuels again from waste products, or other resources. After all, most of the products of combustion won't be leaving our atmosphere anytime soon.
This thinking is only valid if we have a lot of available energy, and in this case, technology for more efficient recycling. Yes, it's easier to recycle small solids that are largely sitting among
easy as pie... (Score:5, Insightful)
See, first we eat all of their pie, cheaply.
Then, when they're all out of ingredients to make cheap pie, we open up our fridge and start making
our own pies.
Then we can eat our pies, and if they want pies then they'll have to pay a lot more for it. Because we've got the only pie in town.
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So, we drink their milkshake?
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1872 (Score:2)
Will the 1872 mining law apply? Let the plundering begin. (sarcasm)
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Let's channel Frank Spedding (Score:4, Interesting)
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A bit of a nitpick I guess, but uranium isn't usually considered a rare earth. The transactinides do share some chemistry with them, which is why the Spedding process for uranium purification was used after the war for lanthanides.
The problem with rare earths is that they are very evenly spread out in the crust, they don't tend to form concentrated ores the way most other metals do. There's actually more lanthanides around than many precious metals, for example, it's a problem of purification.
I think ther
Re:Let's channel Frank Spedding (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have a cite that actually supports your claim? The link you provide describes him a developing a process to refine uranium compounds into purified uranium, not processes to obtain rare earths.
When I follow the links from your linked article it does indeed describe the laboratory he founded as developing processes to process rare earths, but again your claim of using "a lot fewer resources than being discussed here" is not supported.
The DR Congo (Score:2)
This is exactly why the warfare in the DR Congo is so important to the world. If anyone took a close look at it they'd realize that the modern world is raping that country by any means necessary in order to secure cobalt and other rare minerals. A lot of shady actions being taken by world governments and multi-nationals for control.
That's Black Gold, Jim (Score:2)
we also have an abundance of... (Score:3, Insightful)
oil, oil shale, and natural gas that we cant touch thanks to environmentalists and their willing accomplices in the Gov't... what make you think we will be allowed to tap these resources?
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But we won't use them. (Score:3, Insightful)
> the US has its own largely untapped reserves that could safeguard future tech innovation
Oh, sure, that'll help. With the lunatic left running things we will never manage to open another mine - no matter how crucial the material might be to "future tech". In fact, it's usefulness in future tech is probably proportional to the amount of protest it will create at proposals to mine it.
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Rare in this context really doesn't mean rare as in short supply...
"As defined by IUPAC, rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a collection of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, namely scandium, yttrium, and the fifteen lanthanides.[1] Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earths since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties.
The term "rare earth" arises from the rare earth minerals from which they were first isolated,