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It's expensive and/or polluting to get, China offers to do it for a price that is much cheaper than elsewhere (much like to do with many things we buy from them).

The US has a bit more then 1/3rd the REO (Rare earth oxide) that China has (we have 13 mil. met. tons, China has 36)

Some more info: China has about 1/3rd the world supply of REO. China produces 98% of the worlds supply (as in, they are one of the few countries that mine). We could get our source from the 66% of the supply that exists outside china, 33% of which is in the United States. However, it costs more.

You also need to factor in that we'd have to set up mining operations, and processing plants, to handle this. Currently we only have 1 operation, located in California, that has not been in operation since 2007.

Source: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/
United States Geological Survey

hilariously enough, most of the pictures of google earth (at least, originally, and still partially true today) are "Non satellite imagery". They are high altitude Aerial survey pictures. Taken from around 20 thousand feet, done by the USGS starting around 1987, I know for a fact that google started out with these, and only in more recent years has bought satellite data.
info about the USGS aerial surveys. http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/booklets/aerial/aerial.html

You have been undone by your fifth reference, which is pure bullshit. A more authoritative source shows that world reserves of helium as compiled in January 2003 were 7.8 billion m^3, not 2 billion, and the reserve base is 25 billion. So it will be a lot more than 14,598.5 airships. Your point is, in any case, well taken.

Aside from some of the obvious mistakes this opinion piece makes.

> There is no need to worry about toxins leaching into the water supply. No elaborate liner or monitoring is required

This is wrong. There are some situations where organic rich runoff can cause problems.

The following link:
http://toxics.usgs.gov/topics/rem_act/saco.html

describes:
" dissolved organic carbon in the leachate plume is dissolving arsenic from arsenic-containing iron oxides in the aquifer and bedrock"

I do worry about this. While lithium isn't consumed by the batteries, electrifying a substantial portion of the world's road transport would require a huge increase in world wide lithium production.

[... goes away and searches ...]
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2010-lithi.pdf

World production was about 25,400 tons in 2008, and reserves about 10,000,000 tons, so we have about 400 years of production at current rates.

If an electric car typically contains a 200kg battery which is 5% lithium by weight, that is 10kg per car. (These numbers are slightly better than guess work, but not by much.) If we manufacture say 200 million new cars per year, that is about 2 million tons of lithium per year, or about 20% of world reserves per year. (200 million cars with 10 year average lifespan would give 2 billion cars worldwide.)

So it does indeed look like it could be a big problem. Eventually there will be a significant contribution from recycling the previous generation of electric cars, but that is some way away. There may also be major reserves yet to be found, as it has not previously been worth looking hard for them.

In any case, even if the reserves exist, we're likely to need on the order of an 80-fold increase in mining capacity if we're to convert the world to battery cars.

Except that nothing makes sense in biology except in light of evolution. Therefore all biologists are evolutionists. They're probably also all cell theoryists, germ theoryists, gravitationalists, atomists, plate techtonicists....and I note that your stance on radiocarbon dating is both a) wrong and b) an unsupported assertion. Why don't you read up on it before disparaging something that you are ignorant of?

I'm looking at the text of the law at the Bureau of Land Management web site: PDF and I'm not seeing anything about a set price. There's a section about the Secretary of the Interior being able to set a price to recoup costs.

The USGS site here has PDFs of the prices. Looks like it started ~$1.70/m^3 in 1998 and has risen to ~$2.15/m^3.

If what the article stated is correct (DoI instructed to sell helium at a constant rate until it was done) then they'd be dumping the He on the market, depressing the price, and altering the market.

Can anyone comment more knowlegeably? Especially as to WHO is buying all that He?

Really?

It's not only feasible to produce quite detailed topo maps of the entire US, there's a government agency that does precisely that, namely the US Geological Survey. There maps are in degrees and minutes rather than 100km squares, but generally serve the same purpose.

The other fun part about the USGS is that they left markers embedded in rocks at important points like mountain peaks.

There are also many private organizations that sell topographical maps with fairly detailed info as well as lat-long and all the other things you'd expect on a map.

See, this is why government oversight is so expensive. Regulations have to written for morons and swindlers. Here's the US Government standard.

1) Class A Vaults.

(a) Reinforced Concrete. The wall, floor, and ceiling will be a minimum thickness of eight inches of reinforced concrete. The concrete mixture will have a comprehensive strength rating of a least 3,000 psi. Reinforcement will be accomplished with steel reinforcing rods, a minimum of 5/8 inches in diameter, positioned centrally and spaced horizontally and vertically 6 inches on center; rods will be tied or welded at the intersections. The reinforcing is to be anchored into the ceiling and floor to a minimum depth of one-half the thickness of the adjoining member.

(b) Modular. Modular panel wall, floor, and ceiling components, manufactured of intrusion-resistant material, intended for assembly at the place of use, and capable of being disassembled and relocated meeting Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. (UL) standards are approved for vault construction.

(c) Steel-lined. Vaults may be constructed of steel alloy-type, such as U.S. Steel T-1, having characteristics of high-yield tensile strength or normal structural steel with a minimum thickness of 1/4 inch. The metal plates are to be continuously welded to load-bearing steel members of a thickness equal to that of the plates. If the load-bearing steel members are being placed in a continuous floor and ceiling of reinforced concrete, they must be firmly affixed to a depth of one-half the thickness of the floor and ceiling. If the floor and/or ceiling construction are less than six inches of reinforced concrete, a steel liner is to be constructed the same as the walls to form the floor and ceiling of the vault. Seams where the steel plates meet horizontally and vertically are to be continuously welded together.

(2) Class B Vaults.

(a) Monolithic Concrete. The wall, floor, and ceiling will be a minimum thickness of four inches of monolithic concrete.

(b) Masonry Units. The wall will be brick, concrete block, or other masonry units not less than eight inches thick. The wall will extend to the underside of the roof slab above (from the true floor to the true ceiling). Hollow masonry units shall be the vertical-cell type (load bearing) filled with concrete and metal reinforcement bars. The floor and ceiling must be of a thickness determined by structural requirements, but not less than four inches of monolithic concrete construction.

(3) Class C Vaults. The floor and ceiling must be of a thickness determined by structural requirements, but not less than four inches of monolithic concrete construction. Walls must be not less than eight inches thick concrete block or hollow-clay tile or other masonry units. The wall will extend to the underside of the roof slab above (from the true floor to the true ceiling).

source

We can provide what we have with the technology today.

It's just cheaper to use fossil fuel because renewable energy is not ready yet. Capitalists are very busy working on that problem right now. Back in the days when Ammonia (the root of all nitrogen based fertilizers - all the ones made from natural gas) was first made, it was not made from natural gas. It was made by running electrolyzing water inside of a hydroelectric powerplant. Right now, those powerplants are being diverted to aluminium production. If push came to shove, we'd stop the smelting and go back to Ammonia synthesis in the hydro plants. Interestingly, the reason Ammonia was made from electrolytic hydrogen was because of purity. Carbon oxides from the conversion of natural gas to hydrogen would get in to the Ammonia makers (Nitrogen + Hydrogen = Ammonia) and jam up the system. The electrolytic hydrogen did not contain any of these oxides and thus worked a lot better. Once purification processes were developed, natural gas took over. Total calculation gives (for 109 million tons of Ammonia/year) 75 Gigawatts/year of electricity. Double that due to process inefficiencies, and get 150 Gigawatts. Total hydropower production worldwide is 860 gigawatts.

As for water, it is an issue, but not an insurmountable one. If you do the math, in the use we use about 387,000,000 acre-feet of water here in the USA per year. If you run 2.5 kWh per m^3 (a good desal plant, like the one you'd get), we'd end up with 140 gigawatts of electricity or so. That's about %30 of the total electricity which sucks. That's what you'd need if there was no fresh water in the USA at all, and %48 of that water is "used" for thermoelectric power. That's another issue that is separate. This is a great application for offshore wind farms because they are right where the electricity is needed, and the wind farms can turn on and off all day without the desal plant caring.

As for population, it is a known fact that industrialized, educated countries have less children per capita then developing countries. This effect is striking in places like India. If we care about population growth, the best solution would be to help those developing countries develop as fast as possible. It would be very profitable for most people in the world if that happened. If we can develop alternative energy sources, we can stop CO2, increase energy use world wide, and everything will be good. We better do all that as fast as possible.

Even on mercury they are by far the worlds largest polluter. A recent comprehensive study of anthropogenic mercury emissions in China (Streets et al., 2005) yielded a figure of 536 t of mercury for the year 1999 with coal combustion (all types) accounting for 38% of the total.
Oth, Mercury emissions continued to fall in the decade of the 1990s. In 1993, U.S. yearly emissions totaled about 242 tons. By the end of the decade, emissions had declined to less than 160 tons per year. And we have continued our downward emissions due to putting in more and more controls. China has treaties in which they are required to have the controls installed (with japan and koreas), but have never even turned them on some plants(not required in the treaties). WHen a friend of mine went to China to study air pollution she was telling me that all of the plants (over 100) that they checked, NONE had controls turned on. Several that they saw closely she said were looked brand new, as in nothing had ever been routed through them (both plants had bypasses that were being used).

As I have said in several other posts, population and/or economic output are VERY bad metrics on this. Instead, it should be tied ONLY to the size of the land. Every country gets the same amount of emissions on a per km^2. That way every nation can decide how to dole out the emissions. If they want more economic output, then lower your per capita emissions. Or plant more trees to absorb the emissions. By going with this approach, it is by far the fairest and easiest means of dealing with CO2.

http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/info/lacs/lead.htm

I'm a developer ... I'm looking into something more formal like a research paper.

LaTeX. Here's a template (you wanted article.ltx). Some distributions of LaTeX come with templates as well. Here's a quick guide (PDF).

I've no experience on those, not even read a complete one, so my first question is what resources do you recommend to learn how to write one?

The template will make you get the basics right. The most basic I've seen are Title, Abstract, Sections, Conclusion, References. It's easy (I taught myself in college) and the production value of LaTeX gives you an instant artificially inflated level of credibility.

And even after I write it I can't expect to be published by Science or other high-profile publications.

Why the hell not? Just do it up and see what happens!

So where should I send it to make it known by people on the respective fields and be taken seriously?

Sounds like you should do some research on arxiv, a prepublication center where you can find some of the best stuff as well as absolute drivel. I would need to hear more about your method to ensure it's indeed an algorithm worthy of publication but I guess you would put that in Data Structures and Algorithms? But why stop there? Why don't you put it on arxiv and blog about it? Why don't you send out e-mails with the arxiv link to open source projects and commercial entities suggesting the use of your algorithm? I'd imagine the USGS would be interested in hearing from you. Sure that's all very wishful thinking but if you've got what you say you've got, why not? At the very least you'll learn why your idea isn't good enough to catch eyeballs.

I will caveat all this with the brutish reality of capital and give you a very unpopular option. Software algorithms are currently considered intellectual property by the United States government and several other countries. You could apply for a patent and then attempt to license your algorithm to companies like ESRI and Google or the USGS. You're on your own if this is what you're aiming for.

I work near Cincinnati, OH, and we felt it in our office building.

But, better than reporting at /., go report if you felt it at usgs.gov. They have a "Did you feel it?" feature which lets you submit info about it, and then it maps the info, and creates lists of responses collated by zipcode, etc, and allows the usgs to create a public record of it that anyone (not just /.ers) can check out.

The USGS has website where they collect "did you feel it" information. By gathering information as to how severe and widespread the shaking is, they can figure out how future quakes will affect various parts of the country. That in turn affects making informed decisions as to how rigorous building codes need to be.

This link might be a bit more timely -- yours is US-only:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/region/N_America.php

They have revised it down to 5.0 per the USGS.

I did feel it. Was on a recliner sofa working on my laptop, and felt the sofa rock back and forth. Did not think it was a quake at the time. See
http://baheyeldin.com/places/canada/earthquake-2010-june-23-1341-quebecontario.html">here.

It's unusual for the location.

No, it isn't.

even better, the USGS did you feel it link. Good graphs of where the earthquake could be felt, and lets you add to the report.

What a bunch of wimps.

Here in southern California, a mere 5.5 would hardly even arouse anyone's interest. Probably make page 1 of the local section unless the Padres made a big trade; then it would be relegated to page 2.

No kidding. There was a 5.7 quake down here a week ago - you know who cared? No one. But a 5.0 (not 5.5, reported by TFA) hits Canada, and it's a front page slashdot story.

Note that since the richter scale is logarithmic, a 5.7 quake is significantly stronger than a 5.0. I don't know the math, but there's at least an order of magnitude more energy released.

What a bunch of wimps.

Here in southern California, a mere 5.5 would hardly even arouse anyone's interest. Probably make page 1 of the local section unless the Padres made a big trade; then it would be relegated to page 2.

No kidding. There was a 5.7 quake down here a week ago - you know who cared? No one. But a 5.0 (not 5.5, reported by TFA) hits Canada, and it's a front page slashdot story.

Note that since the richter scale is logarithmic, a 5.7 quake is significantly stronger than a 5.0. I don't know the math, but there's at least an order of magnitude more energy released.

Don't forget to tell them if you felt it. I felt it in Ohio. Not very exciting here.

The USGS has a nice earthquake webpage http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ with realtime earthquake reporting, with all earthquakes (hundreds of 4.5+ magnitudes per week around the world, thousands of 1.0+ magnitudes in/near the US per week) mapped out.

Here's their info on this particular 5.0 event. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/us2010xwa7.php

I tend to go to the USGS site every few days to see what's up, just out of curiosity's sake.

The USGS has a nice earthquake webpage http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ with realtime earthquake reporting, with all earthquakes (hundreds of 4.5+ magnitudes per week around the world, thousands of 1.0+ magnitudes in/near the US per week) mapped out.

Here's their info on this particular 5.0 event. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/us2010xwa7.php

I tend to go to the USGS site every few days to see what's up, just out of curiosity's sake.

Community view (people reporting with lat/lon): http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/us/2010xwa7/us/index.html Report your own experience: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/us/2010xwa7/us/form.en.enabled.html

Community view (people reporting with lat/lon): http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/us/2010xwa7/us/index.html Report your own experience: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/us/2010xwa7/us/form.en.enabled.html

More details here. Growing up in Peru, and experiencing many earthquakes in my life time, you would think I would recognize an earthquake but I didn't feel a thing. 5.5 isn't a small shake either.

Or, to save time, you could just try querying the Twitter API for any tweets with the #earthquake tag, check the location of said tweets, and plug those into Google maps. Or, for an even faster (but more constrained) result, you could just check the USGS Did You Feel It? map. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/us/2010xwa7/us/index.html

Magnitude 5.0 - ONTARIO-QUEBEC BORDER REGION, CANADA. Filter: Don't use so many caps it's like yelling.

But I figured a USGS link was in order.

The first place you should ever check if you feel a quake (or something like) is the USGS quake page. After that, if you want to delve into the high sig-to-noise ratio of twitter, go right ahead.

Actually, the USGS is involved in Afghanistan. They have a web site dedicated to their work in that region:

http://afghanistan.cr.usgs.gov/

And they knew about the minerals much earlier.

http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/details.asp?ID=47

Well, there are significant known resources, uh, in the country of copper, iron, and gold, and potential for significant undiscovered resources of these metals as well. There are also known and potential undiscovered resources of cobalt, chromium, silver, barite, sulfur, talc, magnesium, salt, mica, marble, ruby, emerald, and lapis lazuli. Known deposits of asbestos, mercury, lead, zinc, fluorspar, bauxite, beryllium, and lithium, are also present.

Niobium's about all that's not mentioned.

Actually, the USGS is involved in Afghanistan. They have a web site dedicated to their work in that region:

http://afghanistan.cr.usgs.gov/

And they knew about the minerals much earlier.

http://www.usgs.gov/corecast/details.asp?ID=47

Well, there are significant known resources, uh, in the country of copper, iron, and gold, and potential for significant undiscovered resources of these metals as well. There are also known and potential undiscovered resources of cobalt, chromium, silver, barite, sulfur, talc, magnesium, salt, mica, marble, ruby, emerald, and lapis lazuli. Known deposits of asbestos, mercury, lead, zinc, fluorspar, bauxite, beryllium, and lithium, are also present.

Niobium's about all that's not mentioned.

I think San Francisco would be more worried about this place if geothermal was really a problem, being that it's practially in their backyard and all. Still if you look on an earthquake map, it's pretty easy to locate where the place is located. But I doubt too many people are bothered by level 3 local magnitude or less quakes.

I'm not a fan of cats either. They are feral pests that should go. High-rises are stationary. Windmills are natural. The bird brain has eveloved some capabilities: Either it is a tree, rock or land and is largely stationary. Or it is alive and highly mobile. Wind mill blades never deviate from course. It falls between a tree and being alive, and the birds lack sufficient understanding/collision avoidance systems. I am open to the possibility that these may be learned over the long term.

Ah, yes, but what about bats?

You have all those same costs with wind farms. Have you considered the Toshiba 4S Reactor?

Even AWEA admits that it is not cost-competitive. They instead invoke unquantified "hidden subsidies" (really post-market costs, subject to customer mitigation) to justify their front-loaded costs.

Do you mean something like this?

"...a 99% chance of having a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake within the next 30 years."

That is the assessment we have for California.

We just onshore everything. I just spent some time trying to come up with some steel production numbers for the U.S. (one of our vaunted 'dead' industries). The best numbers I came up with come from the the USGS:

http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/

(look for Iron and Steel)

Raw steel production in 2008, in the U.S., was greater than most of the last 30 years and greater than any year prior to 1950. At about 92 million metric tons, it is only about 40% lower than the 1973 peak of 137 million metric tons (such percentages are a pain in the ass, production in 2008 represented a 33% drop from 1973, or alternatively, 1973 production was 149% of 2008 production, so a lot more, but the industry didn't exactly disappear).

I didn't look at those figures for a long time, so I may be interpreting them incorrectly, but I don't think so. Basically, Western labor is not problematically expensive (at least when combined with automation), it just isn't as profitable as cheap Chinese labor.

To move a water molecules you need a huge amount of energy. A normal microwave for instance is up to 800W of power that is focused at one point. Signal that is disturbed in all direction does not create this effect. It does not matter if we are speaking about 16 cm band (900Mhz being at 33cm wavelength) or 30 cm band or smaller or larger band used in radio communications.

Normal transmission power for a GSM/3G transmitter is about 50 to 100W (depending on a location). For GSM/3G phones this power is up to 2W at maximum, but usually is a lot less due to how close people normally are to the transmitters. Wireless AP at 2.4Ghz transmit at 500mW in Europe and up to 1W in the U.S. But that does not have any effect of anything, as the signals are too weak to do so. They can't effect the molecules at this power levels.

In many places for instance there is more background radiation then radiation from a GSM/3G phones and transmitters.

I am not buying the "argument" from the anti-mobile people, as there claims don't hold up to testing.

More on background radiation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/add_aqa/radiation/backgroundradiationrev1.shtml

http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/radon/usagamma.gif (map of U.S, this is gamma rays that are way more powerful then normal radiation)

It's not interesting, it's stupid.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

I think in Phoenix, Arizona they banned any further homes from having a grass turf and going instead with native vegetation which is what they ought to be doing.

Golf courses are a major culprit:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91363837

Who cares how much energy is used. I only care about the sustainability of the energy we are using. Currently, reverse osmosis consumes 2-3 kWh/m^3. Americans use 387000 thousand acre-feet of fresh water per year. Which translates to 1.29 acre-feet per capita per year. Everyone always says we are the biggest consumers, so that's why I'm using American water consumption for this math. 1.29 acre feet per year per capita = 0.013 gallons per second per capita, or 200-400 watts of desalination energy per capita with current technology. 6 billion people = 2 terawatts. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? Well, lets see. With Esolar technology we are looking at 8410.3439 square miles of desert. That's about 0.2 percent of the Sahara desert. And e-solar technology uses only iron, aluminium, and a small amount of water that it recycles over and over again. They can't count how much iron and aluminium there is left on the earth, so those resources aren't limited. Please let me know if there are any other resources I failed to account for by listing them below.

Depending on faults, there is a very good possibility of Tsunamis within Puget Sound:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/pacnw/activefaults/sfz/

Just don't live in any of the cities. They're all built on previous lahar deposits. =p Seriously though, there are quite a few cities that sit on the remains of previous lahars. Though an Osceola sized event may not happen again for a while, the lahar deposits don't respond well to shaking.

and here's a map http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/ of the recent earthquakes in the USA.... where else is it that we should be concerned about?

Alaska sure looks "busy" ... so does Hawaii and Washington State ... there's a few other spots too. Historically there has been a lot more activity all over the US. You really should be looking at more than the last 7 days.

You should be more than a bit nervous if you live anywhere near St Louis [wikipedia.org].

You're absolutely right. Those quakes changed the course of the Mississippi river, which is no small feat.

... why I'm glad I don't live in California.

Here's a list of the earthquakes for the last 7 days. California is not the only place to be concerned about.

and here's a map http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/ of the recent earthquakes in the USA.... where else is it that we should be concerned about?

... why I'm glad I don't live in California.

Here's a list of the earthquakes for the last 7 days. California is not the only place to be concerned about.

and here's a map http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/ of the recent earthquakes in the USA.... where else is it that we should be concerned about?

... why I'm glad I don't live in California.

Here's a list of the earthquakes for the last 7 days. California is not the only place to be concerned about.

[citation needed]

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php

Not even a percentage point, nice try though.

Except petroleum, most of the "limited" resources are limited because of economic reasons. Like the cost of the material is to low to justify a new mine, or a new mine will drop the price and put other mines that company owns out of business. Or here in Alaska, the environmental benefits of the area outweigh the long term economic gains from the resources. There was just a story here on /. about how there is very little rare earth and strategic metal production in the US right now even though the US has known proven sources and there is alot of the US unexplored.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/16/1739241/US-Sits-On-Supply-of-Rare-Tech-Crucial-Minerals

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."

World-wide population growth rates, especially in places like India, are slowing, Sub-Saharan Africa is being ravaged by HIV/AIDS, Western Europe and Japan's populations are declining.

For Lithium - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Occurrence - its not that rare - 27,400 tons of production a year with 4,100,000 tons of reserve make for 149 years of Lithium with another 400+ years of reserve base.

Uranium, we have about 150 years, coal 60-150 years