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Price Shocks May Be Coming For Helium Supply
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.'"
All I can think of is making kids laugh at parties by inhaling helium and then talking like a chipmunk. I will miss those days.
One generation doesn't have the right to determine the availability forever.
Like property rights, why should land only be able to be sold by those who got to it first (or bought it from those who did) - I wasn't able to compete with them and doesn't seem fair that my ancestors lack of ability to "win" should deprive me.
And the same thing for all the minerals that have already been mined from the earth. And in fact, every single thing on the entire planet, ever.
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Only if you don't recover it. At some price for helium, sucking the exhalations into a compressor, bottling it and selling it back to the gas company for reprocessing becomes cost effective. I don't imagine that recovering the helium would be difficult given the difference in densities between helium and other gases.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
why is that?
I live in redneckland. It sucks at times and is great at others. But maybe I can give you some insight as a result.
1) Often, "intelligently and prudently" comes across as very condescending, and that doesn't sit well with most people, regardless of their intelligence or social status.
2) People around here have a very high distrust of anyone that doesn't believe the same as them. Yes, that means religion, and their belief that anyone who isn't their particular variety of christian is automatically "wrong" in some manner. Add to that the fact that most people haven't ever lived far from where they grew up, and a distrust of most "big city folk", and a paranoia of those from either the east or west coasts.
3) Most of the things you mention aren't an issue around here, so there's also a big case of "out of sight out of mind". Fishing? That's a way to spend the afternoon drinking beer; not a way of life (though some of the bass fishermen would call those fightin' words). Aquifer depletion? Not a huge deal here (yet). Oil? Again, not produced here, and no one will care until it all goes away.
4) Things that work in the more densely populated area simply won't work here. Small commuter cars are great in cities and suburbs. A better system of public transit and light rail would be completely awesome to have. But they really don't work out in the rural areas. So various proposals that have been made regarding high taxes on gas, or on "gas guzzlers" (specifically light trucks), are seen as directly and unfairly targeting them.
5) Incomes out here are very low compared to the coasts. So while people in Boston or LA may not think much of something that might cost an extra $1000 / year per family, people out here often cannot afford it. When a family of 4 are barely getting by on an income under $30k before taxes are taken out, ANY increase is difficult. Being told "it's worth it" by someone out east making 6 figures, with no kids, and a wife/husband/partner who ALSO makes a nearly 6 figure salary, doesn't go over very well.
6) Lastly, when they try to make any of these points, they're often dismissed with little thought because they often don't come across as terribly educated. So when they find anyone willing to listen, they can be fiercely loyal.
I'm not saying any of these make people around here right (indeed, I often disagree with them on just about everything), just trying to explain part of what's going on.
The best way to reduce mineral scarcity, eliminate the psychopaths who consume resources beyond all reason, no more mega yachts, mansions, private jets et al. the planet can no longer cope with them.
Wrong. The best way is to develop the world as fast as humanly possible. Why? Because the more resources people consume, the less children they have. If population growth is our enemy, then our friend is economic growth. This is happening in a big way in places like India, which previously was a huge pop growth center. It is still growing, but it is down from 6 births per woman to 2.75 per woman. Why? not because of environmentalism, government or anything. It is because of consumerism and capitalism. Why? because women decided that they'd rather have cars then kids. What this means is that if we build, build, build, we end up with less people total. If we conserve and become poorer, more people will be born, and we will end up with a overpopulation catastrophe. Oh, and the mega yachts etc. of the ultra rich aren't the main resource users. It's average people in developed countries. It doesn't really matter though, because we haven't used all that much of the earth's metals.
not only from mining but also from refining (which becomes much worse as you deal with less viable mining resources).
Wrong again, rtb61. A mine in a poorer country that dumps toxic waste into a river is bad news. A modern mine, with all it's emission controls and neutralization processes is not. You really have to understand the difference between an open coal fire and highly emissions controlled one.
The world contains more than enough metal for all the stuff the enviros love to hate. More energy then we could ever find a way to use hits the earth from the sun. However, we need to actually use it. Then all 15 billion of us can live in mansions, and drive flying SUVs. The real psychopaths are people like you who wish to deny people the right to live their lives to fullest. The best way to reduce mineral scarcity (and this is proven over and over) is to allow entrepreneurs and capitalists to find new methods of mining, recycling, and substitution of materials, and sue them if they dump acid down the drain.
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The best way to reduce mineral scarcity, eliminate the psychopaths who consume resources beyond all reason, no more mega yachts, mansions, private jets et al. the planet can no longer cope with them.
So when are you going to kill yourself? I believe that would do more to reduce mineral scarcity than killing off the producers.
"The best way to reduce mineral scarcity, eliminate the psychopaths who consume resources beyond all reason, no more mega yachts, mansions, private jets et al. the planet can no longer cope with them."
Nice rage, but the above listed uses consume a trivial amount of resources compared to more mundane but widespread consumption.
"the rest of us the majority still should consider all future generations of humanity in the way we use and abuse our mutual resources, not just the next but thousands of years even hundreds of thousands of years into the future."
Precisely why should we do this?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Normal minerals don't go anywhere after you use them, they either remain in circulation or end up in a landfill, which we'll eventually mine for resources later. Helium rises through the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere.. until the solar wind or a photon, random collisions gives it enough velocity to bounce off into space, never to return.
It's critical to at least attempt to recover helium since we don't really have it in abundance (like hydrogen, locked as it is in the oceans) and it can so easily be lost forever. At the very least, we should try to keep the annual consumption of helium below the annual production, and I don't mean the rate at which we pull it out of the ground, but the rate at which it forms naturally as a decay product of minerals throughout the earth's crust.
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I venture to guess that you haven't traveled much. It's easy to rail against environmentalism when
1) You have your own SUV to think about
2) You live in a country with abundant natural resources, trees, land, and relatively low population per area
3) Environmental destruction is an abstract concept that only "left wing wackos" and people who want to take away your "right to consume" rail on about...
4) You consume (or produce) commercially sponsored news/research/propaganda
Visit a developing country sometime. You will quickly observe that:
1) Not even the rich can afford single story houses, let alone mansions because of land scarcity
2) Even a tiny fraction of the population driving causes unbelievable amounts of traffic and pollution (you will feel this with your own lungs -- not just read about it)
3) Environmental destruction is effectively permanent (even if some of the ruined pieces or nature theoretically _could_ recover if they had not been covered by apartment blocks, sidewalks, ware houses, or toxic sludge).
4) People do not ever _debate_ whether environmental destruction is bad. They generally find themselves powerless reverse it once it has happened (e.g., it's a LOT easier to keep an existing forest alive rather than try to grow a new one once you've lost all your topsoil and rainfall due to widespread deforestation).
I'm no saint. I own an SUV. I commute. I take international flights. I drink bottled water.
But there's a HUGE difference between not living up to your values and actually BELIEVING that what you do would be good policy if everyone else on the planet did it. The latter may make you feel good, but leads to the election of decision makers who create policies that are far more harmful than the actions (good or bad) of a single individual.
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.
Friend of mine actually said something similar to me. It's bad when people use that kind of thinking when they're assuming property prices will always go higher just because it has so far. It's just downright scary when you're using the same logic on resources that may or may not be replacable by The Next Big Thing.
Natives on Easter Island would no doubt have come up with a conservation plan if they had indeed come to the conclusion that there was NEVER going to be a replacement for wood. Part of the reason they chopped that island clean of trees is probably due to the same kind of thinking you're doing now.