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We Are Running Out of Sand
HughPickens.com writes John R. Gillis writes in the NYT that to those of us who visit beaches only in summer, beaches seem as permanent a part of our natural heritage as the Rocky Mountains but shore dwellers know that beaches are the most transitory of landscapes, and sand beaches the most vulnerable of all. Today, 75 to 90 percent of the world's natural sand beaches are disappearing, due partly to rising sea levels and increased storm action, but also to massive erosion caused by the human development of shores. The extent of this global crisis is obscured because so-called beach nourishment projects attempt to hold sand in place (PDF) and repair the damage by the time summer people return, creating the illusion of an eternal shore. But the market for mined sand in the U.S. has become a billion-dollar annual business, growing at 10 percent a year since 2008. Interior mining operations use huge machines working in open pits to dig down under the earth's surface to get sand left behind by ancient glaciers.
One might think that desert sand would be a ready substitute, but its grains are finer and smoother; they don't adhere to rougher sand grains, and tend to blow away. As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia. Huge sand mining operations are emerging worldwide, many of them illegal, happening out of sight and out of mind, as far as the developed world is concerned. "We need to stop taking sand for granted and think of it as an endangered natural resource," concludes Gillis. "Beach replenishment — the mining and trucking and dredging of sand to meet tourist expectations — must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with environmental considerations taking top priority. Only this will ensure that the story of the earth will still have subsequent chapters told in grains of sand."
One might think that desert sand would be a ready substitute, but its grains are finer and smoother; they don't adhere to rougher sand grains, and tend to blow away. As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia. Huge sand mining operations are emerging worldwide, many of them illegal, happening out of sight and out of mind, as far as the developed world is concerned. "We need to stop taking sand for granted and think of it as an endangered natural resource," concludes Gillis. "Beach replenishment — the mining and trucking and dredging of sand to meet tourist expectations — must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with environmental considerations taking top priority. Only this will ensure that the story of the earth will still have subsequent chapters told in grains of sand."
Selling sand to an Arab!! Hah, now I've heard it all.
What's next? Selling snow to an Eskimo?
and then you blow away.
When God promised to make Abraham's descendents as numerous as the sand on the seashore, Abraham never thought to ask whether that meant he gets lots of descendents or that the sand on the seashore would be gone. As they say, when you assume you make an ass out of you and me.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I thought the article was about running out of sand for silicon semiconductors. Besides California falling into the Pacific Ocean after a big earthquake, a lack of sand would be the end of Silicon Valley.
California would never be found on that map.
Why don't these people just put a gun to their head and end their misery instead of inflicting it on the rest of us?
Cause they don't got the sand to do it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Because the local sand was the wrong type for sandbags...
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The rational world where they are worth money through tourism. Did you even read *any* of the linked articles? They are fairly illuminating on the subject.
The ocean floors have millions of square miles of sand. The planet earth will not run out of sand.
You've obviously have never made S'mores over a raging bonfire on the beach during summer.
Oh Noes! We've reached peak sand! Our grandchildren will live in a sandless world marked by misery and sharp rocks.
As a result, the desert state of Dubai brings sand for its beaches all the way from Australia.
But then I RTFAed (I know, it's /., no one RTFAs) and
Perth's GMA Garnet will this month send a shipment of heavy mineral sand to Saudi Arabia for sandblasting... ...the special alluvial sand is suited for sandblasting because it is free of silica, which creates dust that can cause lung cancer and silicosis in workers
Nope, no beaches. But wait, there's more:
Another firm selling a sand-based product to the desert region is NT Prestressing, which has a type of concrete that can be laid quickly, speeding up building
Still no beaches though. Guess I won't be going to Saudi for my beach holiday, I'll have to stick with Aus - and we all know what they think of us Brits...
I ate sand.
The problem, if any, is idiots who think that the only possible type of holiday involves roasting to a crisp laying on a beach, then dying of skin cancer. Let them die roasting on pebbles - it means all the more mountains and forests and seas and lakes for the rest of us.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That's all.
A relative of mine just became very wealthy after selling his farm to a sandmine. The sandmine's going to dig out all the sand... haul it off for Fracking, then turn the remaining pit into a lake/wetland and return it to the state after which it'll become a wildlife refuge. Something that was important to my very outdoorsy relative.
They actually sent in geologists, took core samples, and did all sorts of tests to determine what the sand would be best used for. Certain sizes/grains/etc... are better for beaches, Crude oil, natural gas, etc... depending on what you have, the more money you get. He lucked out and had it all. The sandy soil that plagued him as a farmer for years actually made him rich in the end. As a joke I looked up how much he paid for the land back in the 80s... and figured out the price of Apple and Microsoft stock at the time... and proved to him that he made more money buying sand than he would have investing in either. He got a pretty big kick out that because when he bought it I was a kid and he said "If you're going to invest in anything, invest in land. It's the only thing they're not making any more of."
I'm sorry, are beaches not a resource? Are they not found in nature? Do they not provided a habitat that has it's own ecosystem? Do they not act as a buffer between the tides and habitable/irrigable land? The only person not rational here is you - because you are clearly too much of a fucktard to understand what a natural resource is, much less understand what value these resources might have aside from consumption and exploitation. Yes, beaches are a natural resource and yes, like other natural resources, they need protection from brainless consumer pieces of shit like you who take take take and eat eat eat like hungry little piggies with no thought of consequences or appreciation of nature at all.
That or we use the climate change deniers as infill ... because assholes like you already have your heads buried in the sand.
Okay, I could understand if we were losing topsoil or something we really need. But sand?
So, I guess we'll have to wear shoes now at the beach. What a catastrophe!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Before someone responds to contradict an obviously correct point... stop. Step away from the computer... do something less likely to reveal you are an idiot.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Where they weighed you on arrival at the planet, and on departure.. except now they'll make you pass your swimming costume over a sieve before leaving the beach.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
It's sort of like the Dunning Kreuger effect - the cognitive skills that wold enable you to tell if you are rational are exactly the ones that the lack of makes you irrational...thus, your assertion that you are rational is just another symptom of the California effect.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Not enough 3D printers?
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As someone who lives on a lake I see neighbors buying dumptruck-loads of sand every few years and laugh at them. Peach reservation is all about coutour and slope. My little piece of lakeshore includes a parabola shaped cove around 50' wide at the mouth and 50' deep with a gently sloping floor. I've been there 18 years and haven't had to buy any sand yet, the wave action washes the sand around my shore cleaning it naturally, but the shape of the shore keeps it in the cove, in fact my neighbor to the north bought 30Tons of sand and put it on his shore (that happens to be shaped like a peninsula. My beach gained 3' over the next few years as his sand washed into my cove. Anyone who wants a beach shouldn't be screwing up the shoreline that created and preserved the beach in the first place.
Well in Oregon all beaches are publicly owned, and as such there's no 'shoreline' development. Your move California.
I heard all kinds of stories about sand replenishment on beaches when I lived back east. The most interesting story involved dredging a few miles off-shore and dumping it on the beach. This had the unintended consequence of churning up the occasional sunken treasure. Visiting the beach shortly after such a replenishment operation, maybe you'll find a doubloon, but more likely an old nail or an interesting piece of sea-glass.
California doesn't seem to have this problem. I'll hazard a guess that it has something to do with the continuous seismic activity replenishing things. Also, young mountains bring silt down and many of the beaches are not sandy in the first place. So. The "nightmare scenario" of sand loss is a rocky shore with what we call "pocket beaches" of sand here and there. Strangely, I actually prefer this rugged shoreline. It's more interesting to me. If it comes to that on the East Coast, they'll adapt. I understand Home Sapiens is a highly adaptable species, even though it complains about change a lot.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
>Well in Oregon all beaches are publicly owned, and as such there's no 'shoreline' development. Your move California.
Have you been to Seaside Oregon lately? It's pretty built up.
All the land between low tide and high tide is public land. But right behind that is open season.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
How will timothy pound sand when there's no sand to pound? Will he pound the sand in his vagina?
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Sand has a lot of uses but it's non-renewable. There's no way (yet) to manufacture it. If you mine the beaches you ruin the environment and end up with eyesores. The same thing happens if you go to your local desert and mine there. It is possible to strip mine a desert, take all the sand and sandstone, and then put a layer of sand back on top. That leaves the landscape looking mostly the same, albeit a bit lower in elevation than it was before, but it takes a _lot_ of work. I've heard of people doing massive underwater operations to strip mine the seabed of sand so that none of the easily visible above-water environments are damaged.
...wait, we are talking about Minecraft, right?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
What are you talking about? These people are raking in millions by scaring everybody. Fear and terror are major parts of the economy now. They have replaced manufacturing and farming.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Any one where parks are a natural resource.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We need to stop taking sand for granted? If that's true we have a much bigger problem on our hands.
I used to work at a beach-front hotel on Maui, a storm wiped out our entire beach in a couple days and started eating away at the grounds of the hotel, until they brought in truckloads of boulders to protect it. It was pretty amazing. I'm told most of the sand at Waikiki was shipped from another island, don't know if that's true.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
If we run out of sand, where will you put your head?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sorry but this is some kind of NGO paid placement in the NYT.
We are running out of a number of things which are more immediately critical. Let's chill out a bit here.
Natural Resources are things found in nature that are used and can be used up. Clean water, breathable air, plant life, animal life, arable land, those are natural resources. They are consumed through use and can be overused to the point of disappearing. A beach on the other hand, that is not a natural resource. It's a terrain feature, just like a mountain. You can no more "use up" a beach than you can use up the view of Mt. McKinley.
Unfortunately (as viewed by beach residents), beach erosion _IS_ natural. That's how it works. The beaches need protection from people like you since you don't understand what qualities define a natural resource and through your ignorance think you can "repair" a beach.
Attempting to "preserve" beaches does no more than screw up the beaches for people who live down-current (no matter which direction that current flows.) You don't understand how the ocean or the earth work.
Beaches are supposed to erode. That is MOTHERFUCKING NATURE. Deal with it.
Study some oceanography.
Wikipedia mentions that the grains are "booming" which means they are 0.3mm. Beaches are 0.2m to 2mm.
So since the stated problem with using desert sand is that it is "too fine", and the Death Valley sand is in fact the opposite (coarser grains), in what way does it not work again?
The real problem is that Death Valley is a national park and even fairly barren wilderness deserves some level of protection... you wouldn't want to mine the whole valley for sand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sand is just ground up quartz. i.e. The second most common mineral in the earth's crust.
Well, clearly from TFA beaches are being used to the point of disappearing, and from the actions of humans, not just nature. That's how it's working. As can a mountain.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Natural Resources are things found in nature that can be used. They need not be used, nor need they be capable of being used up. The rocky coast of Maine is a tourist attraction that can be used without (significantly) being used up. The same goes for the Rockies, Lake Superior, et cetera pluribus.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Unlike California those property owners can't deny access to the beach in front of their property by the general public.
You cannot deny access in Califorrnia either. Some people try to, but legally you can't.
All the land between low tide and high tide is public land. But right behind that is open season.
Patience is a virtue.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And all the animals and trees said: back of the line, buddy!
We are also running out of idiotic tree huggers
Just plant trees. They will attract the tree-huggers.
Have gnu, will travel.
I thought the article was about running out of sand for silicon semiconductors. Besides California falling into the Pacific Ocean after a big earthquake, a lack of sand would be the end of Silicon Valley.
Or sand for construction. Sand is a major ingredient in cement, so running out of sand would be a big deal.
I handled a shipment of sand from the US to Saudi Arabia. Seriously.
Apparently it was for a golf course, and some specially beautiful white sand.
-Styopa
How many Dubai beaches are artificially constructed?
And so should be expected to require a LOT of sand, and not be expected to last very long...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Clean white sand is a byproduct of tar-sand petroleum production in northern Alberta, Canada. They dig a giant hole in this gooey stinky tar stuff, wash it in hot naptha, take the clean white sand coming out, and dump it back in the hole it came out of. What limits production is lack of permits for the pipeline they need to export the oil.
Has anyone done the "taking sand for granite" joke yet? It works on so many levels.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Study yourself. And stop being rude. In an awful lot of places the erosion we're seeing now is far from natural. There are several factors : the "human development of shores", the dredging of sand from nearby ocean floor, and the lack of fresh sand arriving from the rivers because it has already been harvested upstream.
The Netherlands isn't running out of sand any time soon...
How great is this! Global warming can bring world peace! We don't need to go around fighting wars on drugs or brown people, we can funnel all of that money upwards by entering and endless war against the ocean. Plus think of all of the benefits to the economy, they already covered mining for sand, but we'll need a whole lot of concrete and iron for structures. Plus, a lot of houses are going to get flooded, plus we'll have to build new ones, then you can do glass bottom boat tours of the ruins of Miami. This global warming this is going to be a cash cow!
X
>> brainless consumer pieces of shit like you who take take take and eat eat eat like hungry little piggies with no thought
I love it when people go off their meds around here.
"the story of the earth will still have subsequent chapters told in grains of sand."
Huh? What the hell does that sentence even mean? Stories with sand-chapters made out of fine ground rock that tells "the story" of Earth...?
I tried to...but I don't even....
Have you been to Seaside Oregon lately? It's pretty built up.
The law grandfathers existing shoreline development (whatever existed as of 1967).
Also, "right behind" high-tide is a misnomer. Anything new can only be built on land higher than 16' (altitude) above sea level at low-tide, which is much farther back than the mere high-tide mark (which averages around 8'), so unless you're building on a cliff-edge, or a mountainside or suchlike, you're not really going to get a beach view out of your new property...
The state also reserves the right to regulate such land further as needed.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
When I first read the headline, I thought they were blaming it on all the sand that's been removed in order to make silicon products. I wasn't too disappointed - just reverted to form by blaming people for rising ocean levels and increased storms.
Seriously, for crying out loud, silicon is the most abundant thing in the earth's crust. How can we run out of that? It's not like helium, which goes from atmosphere to stratosphere to ionosphere & poof... It stays on earth itself. It's like complaining that we're depleting the earth of water if we find a way to harness the ocean.
ie. 3rd world countries with problems catering to 1st world tourists.
You mean like Wonko the Sane, who also lives in California? According to ancient legends, when Wonko saw instructions on how to use a toothpick on a packet of toothpicks, he became convinced that the world had gone crazy and so built the house as an asylum for it, with the insides and outsides reversed. Apparently he also received a fishbowl from the Dolphins before they left.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Studied some oceanography. The problem is not that beaches are transient. The problem is our idea of property. The problem is ports, seawalls, jetties. We want beach front property we can have a house on, a hotel on, a strip mall by. You can repair a beach. Just quit building within a few miles of it. It's a moving object. It will show back up once you give it the proper habitat. If you build houses and seawalls up the entire coast you will not have beaches. That means the beach disappears. The natural mechanisms that make beaches cannot do their jobs.
http://www.amazon.com/Saving-A...
Pedantry...
Silica is not an element.
Silicon is.
And Silicon is not the most abundant element on earth, or in its crust. Oxygen is, comprising almost half of the earth's mass. Silicon is a runner up in second place at just under 30% of the earth's mass.
Of course, silica is made up of oxygen and silicon, and is easily the most common compound found within the earth's crust... but it's still not an element.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What happens if the Sahara changes to communism? Nothing for the first years, then they start running out of sand.
Short of people physically removing the rocks, that can not be "used up."
So there you go.
Attempts to stop beach erosion are both futile and damaging to the environment. Also, fuck off.
You nailed it!
Are we going to disrupt global ecology further for tourism and industry?
1. Beach erosion is a natural effect from rising sea levels. We can only interrupt this process for a limited time, until sea levels make it impossible to replenish the sand. And what are the ecological consequences of interfering with this porcess?
2. Exporting large amounts of sand from one place to another disrupts the ecology of the location being mined. It can interfere with the way water and light are handled by the landscape. Certainly it has an impact on the local flora and fauna.
3. If Silicon Valley needs more sand, let them get it from the moon. Don't further damage our global ecology for industry.
Don't confuse people with the facts. It messes up the integrity of the story.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
What few people who live near or on beaches ever understand is that they live in a temporary and transient environment. Sand on all beaches moves constantly, and long-shore currents move sand along the shore until the sand reaches a channel. After the sand moves into a channel, it moves into deeper ocean waters where it is lost for economic purposes, but will serve just fine to create future sandstone deposits. The reason the sand on beaches is being deplenished was not mentioned in the article at all. The beach sand has had its supply blocked by anthropogenic engineering, such as dams on rivers, channelized rivers, levees, and many other structures. If you dam a river, the dam catches all the sand that that river would have delivered to beaches through its delta. It you channelize a river, like the Mississippi River for example, the sand supply is delivered to deep ocean water, and no longer deposited on the river delta. Much of the cause of "rising sea levels" is actually from this problem. River deltas like southern Louisiana have built up miles thick deposits of loosely consolidated sands and clays and gradually subside as they compact naturally. Unless the river is allowed to flood these areas like it always did, there is not enough sediment supply to keep these places above sea level. Along the Texas Gulf Coast the problem has been that virtually every river that crosses the state has been dammed, and some of them have more than one dam. That means very little sand is making it to the beaches of Texas, and gives some alarmists an excuse to claim sea level is rising. West Coast beaches, and East Coast beaches have much the same problem. Rising sea level does not always mean the water level is rising- very often it means the land is sinking, or in the case of beaches, simply being naturally eroded and carried into the ocean depths.
Yes. It's been known in South Carolina since at least the 1960's that buildings near the beach change the wind currents enough to cause the sand dunes to be blown away. Without the sand dunes next to the beach, the water washes the beach away. So building causes beach erosion!
Except when the hurricanes hit Folly beach, the people that had stuff there appealed to the state politicians and got a special law allowing them to build again. The beach erosion "serves them right".
Look. Sea level has risen about 400 feet since the end of the last ice age. So if rising sea level causes net loss of beaches, that 400-ft increase would have had a far more devastating effect than the puny rise we've experienced in the last 50 years (about 7 cm). When are people going to stop falling for this AGW fear mongering?
By the way, every species that's alive today, including polar bears, survived that 400-ft sea level increase.
And every species that's alive today has survived dozens of glacial/interglacial alternations (i.e, the coming and going of dozens of ice ages).
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
^^^
I call mine the tundra slab.
Makes winter last an extra 6 weeks.
If it has tires or tits, it will give you problems.
Here in Iceland all our natural sand is black. One of the public beaches in our capital city has imported yellow sand now. When I was a kid it had black sand. I don't know why they'd do that. I thought people visited Iceland to see and have fun in blackish/greyish sand, not the bland normal sand in pretty much any other country in the world. Not to mention its now always bloody freezing on that beach now. Since yellow sand doesn't draw the heat in like black sand does.