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Japanese Team Finds New Source of Rare Earth Elements
gyaku_zuki writes "As reported in the BBC, a Japanese survey team has discovered 'vast' quantities of rare earths in international waters in the Pacific Ocean. The search for alternative sources of these expensive elements (used in common consumer electronics including mobile phones) was intensified recently after a territory dispute with China, which produces more than 90% of the world's rare earths, resulted in China blocking export to Japan."
Alternatively, let's put our technological well-being in the hands of a country that has shown little compunction in using its dominance to screw with any other country that gets in its way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're talking about the US, right?
The oceans are bigger than you think. The article notes that 1 square kilometer would be enough for 20% of the world's rare earth element usage. 5 square kilometers per year being dredged is nothing compared to an ocean that has hundreds of millions of square kilometers.
Why don't you do it the American way? Those poor chinese are enslaved by a horrible dictatorship that owns (real) weapons of mass destruction!
The elements are probably down there because we've been dumping all our e-Waste into the ocean. We could probably just build a drilling platform on that texas-sized mass of plastic floating out there and start raking in the dough.
China only has "90%" of the world's production because they were able to undersell and close suppliers outside China. As China restricts exports, the price climbs and the suppliers outside China resume business.
Media and some politicians have been spinning this one as if China holds 90% or somesuch assnumber of the world's resource. Is that still going on? I know it took BBC two weeks to wake up to that one.
Funny story: it's "illegal" to have a direct shootin' war with another nuclear power, of which China has been since the 60s.
So yeah, watch out, or the World Police will show up and give both countries a ticket.
it says the depth of this find is between 11,000 and 15,000 feet (3,500-6,000 meters). I'm not sure a mining operation at that depth is feasible, or at least, cost effective.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is silly rare earths are not rare, just toxic to refine from ore.
China has the market cornered because they don't give a shit that they dump toxic sludge doing it.
Can't be that much different than deep-sea cobalt nugget mining. Howard Hughes was all over that.
Never mind. That was actually a really cool ruse to raise a sunken Soviet nuclear sub. I can't believe it's not a movie, yet.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So does the country who can get their flag down there first get to stake their claim on the deposits?
Dredging at a depth of two or three miles has an impact on anything we care about? The critters down there aren't even edible and don't impact the biosphere like surface plankton, who gives a shit?
Or, as The Register reports, Japan has found gigatonnes of mud in the deep ocean....
There are rare elements in your back garden. Japan has found some under the sea. But the concentration they've found still means having to dig thousands of tonnes of mud up from the deep ocean and run it through millions of gallons of acid and other toxic chemicals to separate the rare earths from the common minerals. Could be costly. China's angle is that they have them on land and in places they can dig them out with JCBs rather than specialised deep sea equipment. Good luck on Japan but it sounds like it won't be cheap...
most modern windmills and solar cells need rare earth metals for their fabrication. so pick one, 'clean' energy or reduced environmental damage caused by mineing. you can't have both.
He could just as well be talking about every major country in Europe.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
So... let's never do anything, since it could have some ecological impact. :rollseyes:
I mean, the mindset that anything humans do is, by default, evil to the environment is annoying. Dredging the ocean floor might be awful for the environment -- or it might be the most environmentally friendly way to obtain these materials that we need for a modern lifestyle. I don't know the answer without doing some research, but I'm willing to bet quite a bit that you didn't know the answer before posting your kneejerk comment. Having posted my own kneejerk comment, I will now go look it up. :)
How can you have "vast" quantities of "rare" earths?
Buried in the article is also a note stating these same scientists propose changing the generic term to "common" earths.
#DeleteChrome
is the Glomar Explorer when we need it?
That was manganese nodules *cough* nuclear submarine *cough* that they were after.
3rd war being Libya I presume? Perhaps you'd have a word with England and France. France most of all, since it's never pulled its dirty hands out of Africa.
And regarding human-rights violations -- deaths are deaths, be they your own or others. A genuinely moral person would find it all equally hideous. But not you, of course.
Dredging at a depth of two or three miles has an impact on anything we care about? The critters down there aren't even edible and don't impact the biosphere like surface plankton, who gives a shit?
"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Nietzsche
Appropriate at several levels.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
To paraphrase a comment I read on this :
In the mining industry there is possibly two words for those rare metal deposit : ore, and dirt.
Ore is the state where you can collect it for less than the market price and make a benefit.
Dirt is the other one, aka 5 km deep underwater where the cost of recovering it TODAY would WAY exceed the possible ore value.
N.B. : IANADSM (I Am Not A Deep Sea Miner)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Is that like 200 nautical miles East from Fukushima?
China is working on a blue water navy. Article is dated Sunday, April 18, 2010
China has been, and will be, developing a blue water navy. They're in no position to threaten the US at the moment and show no inclination to do so at any rate. So your point is exactly what? That the Chinese will risk a major confrontation with the rest of the world for rare earths? Righto. Best to loosen the tinfoil a bit.
Rare earths aren't particularly rare, they are just present in such low concentrations that they are expensive (and environmentally problematic) to mine. If the cost goes up a bit, there will be many other sources of rare earths developed. The short term issue is that developing such sources takes time and China has much of the current supply spoken for. However, these new Japanese discoveries will not come on line in the near future - they will take an enormous investment to get to the surface. So they will be of little help to the rest of the world. They do offer Japan a potentially home grown supply and they may find it advantageous to spend the time and considerable money working out the problems of hauling large amounts of muck out of an abyssal plain. Everyone else, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So where would you rather live, China or the US?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's because they're brainwashed uneducated fucktards
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I would expect that the "monsters" (e.g. giant squid) would be smart enough to leave any dredging area in a big hurry. True story, at a prominent national lab a large sum of money was spent to make a habitat for an on-site family of whooping cranes, as part of the land they ranged was going to be impacted by new construction. As the construction to make their new home commenced, the cranes went "whooooop, whoooop whoooooop" like Curly from the three stooges (that might be slight embellishment), and flapped away never to be seen again, rendering the whole "wetlands mitigation" project yet another exercise in government waste and enviro-nazi stupidity.
Cyber-attacks and human-rights violations might be hideous, but they're still incomparable to starting 3 wars.
No, no, no. The US is smart enough not to declare war on sovereign nations these days, only abstract concepts (drugs, terror, piracy whatever). I don't remember any declaration of war against Iraq, for example.
Depending on your point of view, anything done by certain types of organisms are evil. Heck, look at the great oxygen catastrophe, when all those early photosynthesising organisms began shitting massive amounts of O2 into the atmosphere and created possibly the most substantial massive extinction in the history of the world.
I'm not saying we should go around throwing radioactive or toxic waste around, but there's a balancing act to be had unless you want a major population crash and the remnant population to live like our ancestors did 10,000 years ago. Get much closer in that in time to us, and well our ancestors develop agriculture, which began a process of slash-and-burn to ecosystems that permanently altered many places on earth.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As Woodrow Wilson warned, there is a military-industrial complex. It demands blood and souls. Otherwise it starves and takes the economy down with it. Of course that's not the nature of the economy. A long time ago, the economy was rooted in manufacturing and tangible goods. Not so much now. Now it's all IP, marketing, and arms. The biggest of these is arms. We have put all of our eggs in this one basket. We will sacrifice the flower of our youth to die horrible deaths in some third-world shithole that was never a threat to us, in the holy name of fighting terrorism or building nations. It is the international version of "to protect the children".
The few at the top who benefit from this not only have to keep people stupid and mindlessly patriotic, they also have to keep them in a lower state of consciousness. Anything less than that and they would wake up and question what they are supporting. You think it's about money and physical force. Yes it involves those things, but most of all it is about consciousness. Otherwise the masters would quickly become reminded of the fact that we outnumber them by tens of thousands to one. Mindless patriotism means you support your government no matter how wrong it is, to save national face. Real patriotism means you support your country at all times and your government only on those rare occasions when it does the right thing and really deserves your support.
Just keep telling our youth that they are somehow "protecting America" by going over to some third-world shithole that would never stand a chance of threatening us in any meaningful way and killing a bunch of brown people because the propaganda machine told them it was a good idea. Long as we make more battleships and fighter jets and fantastic super-weapons to keep the phony fiat dollars flowing. That's what really matters. Right?
To all non-Americans, I am so sorry that we are exporting both our way of life and that you are willingly importing it, lured by promises of being the next important player on the world stage. There is no world stage. There are only empty promises. You live in peace or you are unfit for life on Earth. It is that simple.
Oh believe it. For example, there are millions of tons of gold in sea water, just no way to extract it.
Because, of course, the only thing these minerals are used for is cheap ear buds.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Marketing to drive the price up; "Green"land is covered with ice (well, more than it has now), "Little" John was a giant and Brienne the Beauty really wasn't, except for lovely blue eyes.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
To be police they would have to always follow the majority even when they don't agree with their orders: no nation does this and I doubt one ever will.
I think you meant vigilanteism.
The UN is the one trying to police the world; we* made it to promote - and enforce - peace. Whether they're succeeding or not a different question.
* 'Us and you' we; neither 'us' we nor 'you' we. I wish English had separate words for those.
Wrong monsters. Let's try again: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
sure hope the Chinese aren't making all our guns.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
There's plenty we can and do do without catastrophically damaging our environment.
Yep. Like deep-sea mining for rare earths.
5% cheaper earbuds for you is not worth trashing millions of cubic meters of ocean.
Your attitude is annoying.
As Woodrow Wilson warned, there is a military-industrial complex.
Wilson helped create the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower is the one who warned about it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Depends. Are these 'monsters' edible or not?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
" I have combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals to make the most evil creature of them all."
"It turns out it's man!"
No cheap way... yet. Once you remove the human effort, all bets are off.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
"5% cheaper earbuds for you is not worth trashing millions of cubic meters of ocean."
The more powerful magnets and better batteries needed to switch over to nonhydroelectric renewable evergy sources use those very same rare earths. In large quantities compared to ear buds. Ditto more energy efficient motors.
So, by never mining any of them, you help keep everyone chained to other sources.
Your choice, bub.
China does not by any means have a lock on rare earth production, with wikipedia reporting the following:
China now produces over 97% of the world's rare earth supply, mostly in Inner Mongolia, even though it has only 37% of proven reserves.
There are two things going on here:
On #1 -- Indeed mining for rare earths in the US is expensive because of workplace and environmental health regulations, but it can be had for some price. If China restricts supply, price will rise and US mines can reopen while meeting rigorous US standards for environmental sustainability of rare-earth mining operations.
On #2 -- if China wants to restrict supply, that's fine -- but they're own factories are probably close to the world's largest users of rare earths for electronics. So it's not as if we won't be able to get our iPods.
He could just as well be talking about every major country.
FTFY
US has better Chinese food.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
It's been converted to an oil drilling ship.
People hear "rare" and they think there must not be much of them. Well rare earths, aren't. I mean they are rare as opposed to, say, iron or silicon or aluminium, but they are not rare as in "very hard to find."
As the parent said, China produces most of them because they do it the cheapest. The US (and other countries) produced them in the past and can do so again in the future.
Now these under water deposits might be of interest because it sounds like they may be easier to process than what we have now. That could be useful. Even though the extraction will probably be more costly, if the refining and processing is cheaper, that could make them worth while.
However these are not something that is rare, contrary to the name.
By having truly stupendous quantities of everything else.
I said "starting 3 wars", not "declaring 3 wars". USA last declared war in 1942, and has started at least two dozen wars since then.
Im from a country fucked by the US in a regular basis and well, I do prefer to be subsidiary to country that at least says its democratic or, even if some of its citizens dont like it, has people that *can* say they WANT to be democratic as opposed to what they have...
At least its press will eventually get around to showing shit at abu garib and gitmo... What if it was China instead? You would never know anything. You would either conform or spend years at reeducation camps if not with a bullet in your head.
Fuck that.
Its bad enough as it is...
NO SIG
TFA stated that:
China's apparent monopoly of rare earth production enabled it to restrain supply last year during a territorial dispute with Japan.
but omitted the fact that that "monopoly" had been created and sustained by undercutting the prices of other sources, not by being the only possible source. There are plenty of sources for rare earth elements with proven production capacities that will be available when China inevitably restricts exports or raises prices. The ocean floor is just another possibility, but one where the costs are not yet known.
JESUS H. CHRIST WITH A CHERRY ON TOP!
THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR *DECADES*!!!!!
Geologists have know for decades that the oceans contain a vast quantity of minerals, including rare earths. The Glomar Explorer, for example was built to secretly salvage a sunken Soviet submarine. However, a realistic cover story was needed, so the Government settled on saying that it was a ship designed to recover manganese nodules (which contain a smorgasboard of minerals and rare earths, in addition to high concentrations of manganese, hence the name) that cover the ocean floor.
The plausibility of the story rested in the fact that there *DO* exist extremely vast sources of minerals (including rare earths) on the sea floor.
Honest to God, why do highly educated and credentialed people keep overlooking things that have been known for a years?!
This should be grounds for revoking their credentials until they go back to school..... again.
I can already see the next "discovery" headline:
"Japanese researchers discover rotting fish stinks!"
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
You damn well can have both.
It's called "nuclear energy". The volume of fuel required is low, so you reduce mining damage. The energy output is nice and clean, and you can reuse waste in appropriately designed reactors. Don't put it on a major fault line near a gigantic body of water, and you're good to go.
After all, the PRC has never fought a war, and they certainly never make aggressive moves against India, Russia, Japan, the legitimate Chinese government, the Philippines, Vietnam...
"man is the measure", I'm perfectly happy to kill a small amount of some creatures to make things good for mankind. You live in a building where worms and cicadas died when the foundation was dug. That's reality.
Rare earths are not rare. It was a horrible, horrible mistake to call them rare. Some of the elements in that family are more abundant than copper. They were coined 'rare' because as far as metals go, they are quite reactive, which makes them great for batteries, but also means they don't have much time to bond with eachother...which makes them great FOR BATTERIES! In essence, you do not find chunks of Cerium just laying around like you do, or did in some cases, as iron and boxite (aluminum) and copper. Thus they are usually found as minor, but significant, traces in other minerals and not all by themselves or as significant ores.
The largest mines prior to the mid 90s were located in the United States in Oregon, Brazil, and South Africa. There were literally Indiana Jones like warehouses full of 'rare earths' that were unneeded because the chemical properties of this family mean they are not found in huge chunks, but rather spread out in a given area. If you are digging for Lanthanum, for example, you'll end up with 'worthless' Neodymium and other metals. Prior to the mid-90s, these elements would often flip flop on the market as mines started pulling out different metals (Scandium vs Yttrium and Neodymium vs. Iridium)
China undercut global demand for the metals 20 years ago, and the World hasn't looked back since. It was an arrangement of convenience, as China started pulling out the damn stuff faster than the world could 'spend it.' No longer did lamp makers and battery manufacturers have to worry about ridiculous future contracts for rare earths. Prices stabilized quite dramatically, and the Wold loved it. China got a huge boost to a nascent technological and manufacturing industries due to the flood of foreign investment, as well as first dips on cheap metals.
The minute the so called 'Peak Earth' hits, and rare earths spike on the market because they have all 'disappeared', mines across the Globe will open up once again since it will be cost effective to sell the damn things.
So no, it will not be commercially viable to dig these elements out of the ocean floor for many many years. Keep in mind, the ocean floor is also full of gold nuggets, and the ocean itself as a vast amount of gold in solution. But just as it wouldn't be worth it to fly to the Moon where it made of gold, it isn't worth it to go panning for the stuff 1km below the ocean surface.
Anyway, 2.5 cents.
Watch your mouth, you don't want the Kingslayer to smack you around with his gold hand, do you?
No sig for the moment.
This is just basic economics at work. If there's still a demand and the cost goes up (or the current supply dries up), replacements will be found, or new, previously uneconomic sources become cost effective to tap.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
It's also called geothermal energy. Very low emissions, sustainable, baseload power. No messy radioactivity to deal. Just expensive to find.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
You're talking about the US, right?
No. The U.S. isn't involved with this discovery, and the U.S. had shut down it's production previously due to environmental problems (which raise costs to address properly) and cheaper imports. (bashing the U.S. isn't insightful, especially when the facts don't back it up)
"Currently, China supplies around 95 percent of the worldâ(TM)s demand for rare earth minerals. "
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6563619,00.html
"China supplies more than 90 percent of the world's rare earth minerals and Japan is greatly dependent on the neighboring country for supplies of the strategically important resources..."
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20110704p2g00m0bu038000c.html
The U.S. has mined rare earths from a remote California location in the past, but production had been stopped largely due to severe environmental issues.
Due to worldwide concerns following China cutting exports, operation is being resumed. When China cut year over year exports to 60% of the previous amount, Japan and others felt economically threatened. Rare earths are in high demand for many specialized applications including L.E.D.s (used for LCD backlighting) and the magnets in generators for wind power and those in motors for electric cars.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/214938/us_rare_earth_mine_resumes_active_mining.html
And regarding human-rights violations -- deaths are deaths, be they your own or others. A genuinely moral person would find it all equally hideous. But not you, of course.
A genuinely moral person won't have any problem with deaths inflicted in self-defense.
Not that any of the wars in which US is presently involved have anything to do with that.
We don't "share" the planet with anyone - it's ours. The only reason why it makes sense to care about the environment is because it also sustains our own species. To that extent, healthy environmentalism is good, but praying to the holy Gaia is not. If it takes a few square km of the ocean floor to sustain the high tech that gives us our standard of living, then so be it.
One additional element to the story is that extracting "rare earths" generally means you extract Thorium. One rare earth mine would extract enough Thorium to power the world (if we could get Gen IV happening)
.. they might have started a Thorium program.
The problem is that what is left is considered radioactive leftovers that you cant put back in the ground, even if the ground is more radioactive than what you pulled out.
China does not have the same problem, they have been storing the stuff, and who knows
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/china-thorium-power/
The ROC has aboveboard, free elections, with multiple parties and real competition. The PRC has elections where only the Communist Party or its affiliates are allowed to participate. Which reflects the will of the people better?
The Peak Earth is already there. China's production and export quotas are lower and lower, the Diaoyu incident with Japan made other countries realize they do not want to depend of Chine for their rare earths supply, so everyone is trying to reopen their mines. It is however a complex process and reopen an old mine (US, Australia, South Africa) will take at least 2 or 3 years. Whole new projects (Africa, Vietnam, Korea) will probably take more, around 4 or 5 years.
This is why China is acting fast on this, they have a two or three years window where they want to maximize their advantage: it can be used to drive prices higher and make money, as a diplomatic tool with Japan, but more importantly to make manufacturers move to Chine for their high-tech products and export the high value added end product instead of the raw rare earth. Oh, and if possible, gain access to the technology ...
Because there's even more vast quantities of the common stuff.
In the medieval warm period, Greenland may have well been fairly green.
You miss the point. The government of Taiwan is undisputedly a legitimate government - of Taiwan. It cannot be a legitimate government of mainland China anymore than CCP is, since it was not elected by mainland Chinese, and in no way reflects their will. In fact, given that PRC has had elections on local and municipal levels for some time now, one would argue that at least governments on those levels are quite legitimate.
Anyway, the legitimacy of the government does not necessarily stem from elections - any government which has broad popular support is legitimate, even if it's not democratic.
Edible isn't sufficient. Are they tasty?
If someone killed in self-defense and didn't have a problem with it, I wouldn't be thinking "there goes a genuinely moral person". I'd be thinking "there's something genuinely wrong with that person".
This is not news. I am sure I read this story in Scientific American in 1963. Maybe 1964.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The ROC (not the "government of Taiwan," which is a province of the ROC, and has its own government) had legitimacy on the Mainland until Mao forced them out in a period from the 40's to the 60's. They enjoyed broad support from most people except certain rural peasants.
Which one would that be? The one elected by 23 million people (out of a total of 1.5 billion)?
At least they WERE elected.
I see you have been thoroughly indoctrinated of the infinite value inherent in the uniqueness of each human life, and so on, and so forth. As far as morality goes, this particular kind (and surely you realize that there are many?) is not utilitarian, and tends to not last long in real world. Not until you face an animal with human face who goes on to hurt, abuse and humiliate you for no reason at all - just because it pleases him to see you suffer.
http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm
In most Western languages, "Taiwan" in colloquial speech is synonymous to ROC, unless it is specifically clarified to refer to the island.
The ROC (not the "government of Taiwan," which is a province of the ROC, and has its own government) had legitimacy on the Mainland until Mao forced them out in a period from the 40's to the 60's. They enjoyed broad support from most people except certain rural peasants.
Kuomintang forces have fleed to Taiwan in 1949. CCP was in uncontested control of mainland China from 1950 onward.
So tell me, if Kuomintang enjoyed such a broad support, how did Mao's forces force them out? For that matter, who fought in those forces? "certain rural peasants"? From the picture you paint, it sounds like republican forces should have outnumbered the commies several to one and therefore crush them easily. But that is inconsistent with known history.
Furthermore, if Kuomintang was so loved by the people, why did they establish dictatorship first thing on Taiwan? Why the 40-year-long martial law and purges of leftist dissidents?
I assume that means that you have researched the ecological impact of this kind of mining before replying?
Care to fill us in on your results, or are you a hypocrite? And, if I may be egotistical for a moment, you're frankly not as funny of a hypocrite as me.
They were elected by a people of a very small region of the hypothetical unified China. It most certainly doesn't make them legitimate government of that hypothetical unified China - only of the small region.
In other words, there's a reason for the existence of justifiable homicide.
Read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang_Islamic_insurgency_in_China_(1950%E2%80%931958)
KMT forces lasted in southern China until a campaign in late 1960 and early 1961 to drive them out (the Campaign at the China-Burma Border.)
Is each human life of unique and infinite value? Sure. But don't mistake a reluctance to take life with an inability to do so. Math with infinities is hard, anyway; try to kill me or mine and "subtract 1" suddenly looks real attractive.
I take your point, but "bauxite" is not metallic aluminum. Aluminum is so reactive that it does not occur in the elemental state on earth. Bauxite is a complex aluminum oxide/hydroxide (usually mixed with iron minerals as well) that is the main ore mined in the production of aluminum.
I'd go for a different view there. Okay, someone shoots an armed man breaking into his home and he feels bad about it. That's normal. How is it any less normal to not feel bad about it?
I can understand taking the view of being sad, depressed, or even angry about deciding to end a human life in self-defense, but I can just as easily understand not really feeling bad at all. It came down to me or him, and I came out on top. I'd say you'd feel even less remorse if you were protecting someone other than yourself - if you see someone getting raped in a back alley and kill the attacker, well... I'd find it difficult to feel any remorse. It's hard for me personally to feel bad about something I believe to be morally right.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Well sure, China tends to take the term Poo Poo Platter a little too literally for my taste.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
If it makes you feel better, The US is getting fucked too.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Amazingly, none of the rare earth minerals seem to have even a hint of blue shading.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Of course Thorium is abundant. It's all over Burning Steppes, and that's only a 50-52 zone.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I'd understand protectionist laws that try to prevent ecological harm by removal of a species (like, say, shooting the primary predator in a forest, which would result in a population explosion of its prey), but it's hard to have sympathy over a particularly endangered field mouse sitting on some poor bastard's farm lot. Congratulations Mr. Farmer, thanks to federal law you can't do anything with your land, and no one wants to buy it either!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
But that's my point exactly. I'm not saying that you should be trigger happy, not at all. "Reluctant" is a good way to describe it, I guess. But once the line in the sand is crossed, I don't see why the moral thing to do is to feel sorry for a guy you killed because (e.g.) he was trying to do something nasty to you, unprovoked. After all, if you're reluctant to use deadly force, then it must be something really nasty in the first place; so why be sorry that a man who could do that won't ever do it again?
Since the second world war the USA has killed more people than Hitler, mostly in the name of politics. Hitler is reviled as one of the most evil people in history, the Americans get new Mustangs when they arrive home.
No sig today...
Because the name is somewhat of a misnomer.
When the REEs were starting to be discovered in the 18-teens IIRC, they were certainly much rarer than the "common" earths such as iron ores, calcium carbonate (limestone) and quartz (silicon dioxide), and rarer than some less common earths such as copper ores. So "rare earth elements", REEs, didn't seem to be such a strange name. However, as analytical techniques improved (incidentally resulting in the discovery that there were many more REEs than originally thought, this being mostly before the development of the periodic table), some considerably rarer metals were discovered.
Unfortunately, by then the terminology had stuck.
If you don't like the terminology, call them the lanthanides instead.
Incidentally the term "earths" refers to naturally occurring oxides and hydroxyoxides of metals.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Neither off course.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Most people don't appreciate just how much of a stunning advance the cryolite process was.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No it was not.
It's hard for me personally to feel bad about something I believe to be morally right.
Morally right actions often require hard choices and daunting consequences. An easy choice isn't a moral stand, it's the path of least resistance - even if the action itself is a moral one.
I can't imagine taking a human life and not feeling terrible about it after, no matter the circumstances. I know soldiers who understand this. Someone that kills without remorse is missing something important.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
So the US threatening to attack the Netherlands with military force if any american must appear before the International Court of Justice is NOT a declaration of war? Then what is?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Thanks! That was getting my goat. Here's the full speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnaM8TqAzzo
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
You have some evidence to back up this assertion?
You have some evidence to back up this assertion?
Here is some evidence to to consider in your attempting to answer this question : until you've demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that your above assertions are actually true, I give a shit. More about the second assertion than the first, but I do give a shit.
Then again, I was one of the people cheering when Shell abandoned their attempts to dump the Brent Spar - and I was actually at lunch on a Shell oil installation, talking to a Shell OWE(*) when the news broke. He was cheering too, despite being a Shellie.
(*) - Offshore Well Engineer ; "Company Man" in most companies, but Shell Do It Differently.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Japan actually, but why let facts get in the way of mindless patriotic bigotry?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
It's a big, deep water, DP drilling installation. That's be in the order of 150 to 200 k$ per day rental, if you want it.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
It's hard for me personally to feel bad about something I believe to be morally right.
Morally right actions often require hard choices and daunting consequences. An easy choice isn't a moral stand, it's the path of least resistance - even if the action itself is a moral one.
I can't imagine taking a human life and not feeling terrible about it after, no matter the circumstances. I know soldiers who understand this. Someone that kills without remorse is missing something important.
I'm perfectly fine with the "path of least resistance" analogy. Someone tries to kill me , I kill them, they can no longer kill me.
I would liken the lack of feeling remorse for something that (to me) seems very clear cut as an inability to feel pain. One could argue that an inability to feel pain would have its upsides - obviously, you don't feel any pain. If you were in a fist fight, you could go on until your body literally could not move. Conversely, there's disadvantages as well - you might not notice a knife sticking in your thigh, or you would do a strenuous activity so much until your body quite literally breaks down.
I guess what I'm saying is that I just see it as the other side of the same coin.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Errr, no. We're humans, so let's just strip mine the planet and shit in our own back yard.
Next question?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
And if they were robbing and raping before they "changed their ways" then the ONLY reason they are still here is LUCK, nothing more. I actually got to watch a guy like that die once, and if big Ron the bouncer would have refused to take him down? I'd have been more than happy to kill his dumb ass, would have slept damned good that night too, just as big Ron did.
I was playing in the house band of a little place called the C&C, just your average little C&W bar, nothing fancy. it was me, big Ron, and the old man that owned the bar (Jim I think? God its been years) and while the rest of the band had gone because the C&C closed from Tues-Thurs I had stayed behind to pack up some of my gear so I could play a place on Weds.
So this guy walks through the door and Jim says 'Sorry pal, you are about 30 minutes too late, we are shutting down" and this guy pulls a knife like out of crocodile dundee and says something like "you muthas gonna get on the floor and give me all your money". Now this was a big place so there was plenty of room between Mr dipshit and us, and we just look at each other and big Ron reaches around the edge of the bar and plops a .357 on the table and says "uhhh...no we're not. What is gonna happen is you're gonna drop the pig sticker and march your ass right back out that door" so what does Mr dipshit do? keep walking while slinging threats. At about 40 yards big Ron points the .357 and says "one more step and you ain't gonna be walking out of here, I ain't fucking around" and sure enough Mr dipshit keeps on coming. Big Ron ended up putting three rounds into his gut before he went down, the guy coughed twice while STILL spitting out threats along with the blood and promptly kicked the bucket.
Turned out not only was Mr dipshit amped on crank, but he had just got out after turning his GF's face into hamburger and was wanted for robbing a guy where he had stabbed him after he got the money just to be a prick I suppose. The cops took our statements and I had to go to a little hearing thing over it but it was pretty open and shut and it was pretty clear this asshole was one guy the cops were happy to have no longer among the living. The one I talked to said he had a rap sheet to the floor and most of it violent. Would it have bothered me to have been the one with the .357? considering the size of the knife and the fact it didn't bother me to see the asshole go probably not. Some guys are just like mad dogs and if they straighten their lives out? How nice for them, but I sure as fuck ain't gonna be his carving board in the off chance he may feel bad about it 10 years down the road.
As for TFA, how bad is the costs of getting it from the bottom of the ocean gonna be compared to just starting back up the mines we have for those metal here in the USA? Because IIRC we have mines for those metals in NM but they were shut down simply because we couldn't compete with the prices the Chinese gave for it, and since the Chinese aren't sharing anymore it sounds like as good a reason as any to fire them back up. So I guess it will come down to how deep this is and if the deep sea dredging of these materials is less than or equal to firing up the mines in NM.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You want the US to ally with a dictator that tortures his own people?
Seems strange that they only have an icon for China showing up for this article when it clearly has to do with Japan too.
How long until China declares that based on history these waters are an integral part of Chinese territory and a "core interest" of China - followed by a declarations that the presence of foreign ships in those waters hurts the feelings of all Chinese people everywhere?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
If someone killed in self-defense and didn't have a problem with it, I wouldn't be thinking "there goes a genuinely moral person". I'd be thinking "there's something genuinely wrong with that person".
Why? There is nothing wrong with killing in self-defense. No guilt, no remorse is necessary or even proper.
Citation needed.
Do you mean people killed by hitler during the genocides or do you mean the total deaths caused by Hitler's forces during the war? One number is drastically higher than another.
Once we have an abundant, reliable supply, do you think demand will remain constant?
Very low emissions, sustainable, baseload power. No messy radioactivity to deal. Just expensive to find.
You forgot to mention that pumping water into hot rock causes the water to acidify -- thus corroding the equipment -- and the rock to fracture and thus causing frequent earthquakes.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Not quite. You're thinking of an enhanced geothermal system (EGS). These systems use water as a heat transfer fluid in spots where the rock is hot and dry. Pumping water into hot rock does not acidify it. These systems do increase the incidence of earth tremors but that is generally considered a feature, not a bug because the increased frequency of tremors means less magnitude.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
More details on the amounts/effects of China reducing rare earth exports:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110705p2a00m0na017000c.html
Sure we can, once we reduce the human population by 70 percent or so. That's the big farting, shitting elephant in the living room that none of the enviro groups ever want to mention out loud, since they know that once people realize that everything else hindges on this one assumption they lose donations.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The people who lived in Iceland named it Greenland so people would go live there; they named Iceland for the same reason, so people would go live in Greenland. :)
Nothing to say here... move along
Pumping water into hot rock does not acidify it.
Why wouldn't hot water dissolve minerals from the rocks?
http://www.powermag.com/issues/features/Assessing-the-Earthquake-Risk-of-Enhanced-Geothermal-Systems_2309_p3.html
EGS techniques such as ... acidization
not a bug because the increased frequency of tremors means less magnitude.
Basel sits on top of a large (200-km long) "locked" fault that had previously ruptured and leveled the city in the 14th century.
Except when one of them cracks your roof tiles.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Not all cases. Acidification depends on the local geology.
As for earthquakes, would you rather have cracked tiles now or the risk of a collapsed roof later? Basel was an example of increased tremor activity. This also happens with oil and gas drilling but is not as well known.
However, there are relatively few EGS systems out there that generate more than demonstration power. The most common geothermal systems are hydrothermal. These are difficult to find but generally operate for long periods with minor emissions and waste.
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does this say about renewable power?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States#Military_engagements_authorized_by_Congress
In all reality, isn't a military engagement authorized by congress pretty much the same thing as a declaration of war? Sounds like a minor semantic difference.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It's spelled bauxite. I don't think you are as learned as you appear to be.
Because an occasional spelling error is a certain, bulletproof indicator of a person's learning (or lack thereof) </rollseyes>
FTFY
And to answer the question, no I don't want the US to ally itself with yet more murderous dictators, but I do expect that the US will ally itself with more murderous dictators. The principle constraint would be a shortage of murderous dictators with something that the US wants who the US are not already allied with.
And I'd expect my government to behave no differently to the US government. After all, they're both composed of politicians and lawyers.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The distinction I am making is that someone who does not feel pain suffers from an illness or disorder. There is something wrong with him. This bears no relation to the benefits or drawbacks of the condition.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
June 6, 1942