Why the World Is Running Out of Helium

jamie writes "The US National Helium Reserve stores a billion cubic meters of helium, half the world supply, in an old natural gasfield. The array of pipes and mines runs 200 miles from Texas to Kansas. In the name of deficit reduction, we're selling it all off for cheap. Physics professor and Nobel laureate Robert Richardson says: 'In 1996, the US Congress decided to sell off the strategic reserve and the consequence was that the market was swelled with cheap helium because its price was not determined by the market. The motivation was to sell it all by 2015. The basic problem is that helium is too cheap. The Earth is 4.7 billion years old and it has taken that long to accumulate our helium reserves, which we will dissipate in about 100 years. One generation does not have the right to determine availability forever.' Another view is The Impact of Selling the Federal Helium Reserve, the government study from 10 years ago that suggested the government's price would end up being over market value by 25% — but cautioned that this was based on the assumption that demand would grow slowly, and urged periodic reviews of the state of the industry."

Comments

Blimps vs. 747s, a good reason to keep helium.

[EWAdams]

Your basic blimp uses as much fuel in a WEEK of operations as a 747 uses taxiing from the gate to the runway. We need to get people out of these wasteful planes and into a more efficient (and comfortable) form of air transport.

Re:"The Earth is 4.7 billion years old"

[spinkham]

Personally, as a Christian I'd like to see the line that says the earth isn't ~4.5 billion years old, because I can't find it...

Young Earth Creationism (hence YEC) is a hyper-literalistic reading of the book of Genesis that has been always somewhat rare in Judaism, and not always supported by even those considered mainline Christian fathers.

For YEC to be true, pretty much everything we think we know about physics, astronomy, cosmology, molecular biology and genomics must be wrong.

The good news is that YEC is not the only, or even the best reading of Genesis. See this FAQ for a brief overview, this book for a much more complete overview, and this book if you want a really good, in-depth study of the book of Genesis from a conservative scholar. It's a bit dry, and doesn't give you conclusions as much as really dig into the text, but it's highly recommended if you're serious about approaching the issue rigorously.

I've read many books on the topic, and in my opinion these are the best of the lot. Especially Beyond The Firmament, which is fairly easy read and the best introduction to the issues I've seen.

Perhaps obviously, these books are geared more towards Christians and showing them how to deal with what we believe is an important book, and not towards convincing others that Christianity and the Bible are true. Except perhaps that they might show that not all Christians are (complete) loonies...