Japanese Team Finds New Source of Rare Earth Elements 215
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."
Did they find red herring too? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Indeed, rare earths are abundant elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
China does not by any means have a lock on rare earth production [wikipedia.org], 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.
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Actually #2 is a concern. China's caps include some finish goods. Several industries that requires rare earth components are suffering shortages. While things like iPods aren't on the list things like high efficiency fluorescent lighting ballasts are.
I forget but the USA does have something like 25% of the proven reserves as well. China tariffs rare earth elements two things will/are happen. The USA will start to reopen our mines, and with the price of gas, and cross ocean shipping some mostly automate
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I think the problem is the name (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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More specifically greed driven corrupt mining corporations think because it is in international waters, they can mine without paying license fees and avoid any of those pesky pollution controls.
Delusional of course, no laws restricting their activities means also no laws protecting their activities. Of course leaving a trail of mining wastes drifting through the water column and taken by currents hundreds, even thousands of kilometres into other nations waters, means some real conflicts will likely evolv
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Oh, the problem is in the name, but it's not the 'rare' part, it's the EARTH part, as the Japanese have clearly shown here - it's not earth, it's ocean.
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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.
The problem is shutting down and resuming supply takes time and costs money. So unless there are huge stockpiles kept somewhere then export restrictions by the main producer of a commodity will lead to shortages.
And if the main producer wants to be really evil they can restrict exports for a while then as soon as other sources start up they can resume exports and crash the market. Repeat the cycle a few times and they can make it very difficult for anyone outside their country to have a reliable and economi
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It did not help when we sold Magnequench who was producing for the military to them and they physically moved the entire company to China.
It's deep (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:It's deep (Score:4, Insightful)
In related news tonight, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is in full effect in this thread.
Useless, These Are Abundant (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No problem. Build the Glomar Explorer II (Score:3)
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.
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the fact that it ended so badly doesn't help though...
That's what they want you to think! :-)
Actually, much like the Apollo program, the Glomar project spun off all sorts of serious engineering benefits on the side. They had to invent a lot of tools and techniques to even consider attempting that retrieval. Quite the undertaking.
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My favorite thing about Glomar is how the manganese mining cover story made it into the undersea pavillion at EPCOT.
Or, Japan finds gigatonnes of mud! (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, as The Register reports, [theregister.co.uk] 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...
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Necessity is a mother. If there's anyone who can make it profitable, it's the Japs.
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millions of gallons of acid and other toxic chemicals
Maybe they plan to put that back where they took the mud out - China just dumps it into pools around the factory and the whole district is barely inhabitable. Not dealing with a jurisdictional environmental agency in the first world would help with the price effectiveness.
International waters... (Score:2)
Is that like 200 nautical miles East from Fukushima?
Thank You SENSEI OBVIOUS!!!!!..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!"
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Honest to God, why do highly educated and credentialed people keep overlooking things that have been known for a years?!
I wouldn't even dare say that about the readers of Popular Science, but absolutely not the Slashdot readership. Subtract from it all those who don't post to correct some random dumbass on the Internet, or at all, and you've got.. us.
Economics at work... (Score:2)
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.
Old News (Score:2)
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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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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He could just as well be talking about every major country in Europe.
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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
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If it makes you feel better, The US is getting fucked too [cvcdn.com].
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So where would you rather live, China or the US?
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
US has better Chinese food.
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Well sure, China tends to take the term Poo Poo Platter [telegraph.co.uk] a little too literally for my taste.
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Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
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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
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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
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang_Islamic_insurgency_in_China_(1950%E2%80%931958) [wikipedia.org]
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.)
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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.
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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.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Thanks! That was getting my goat. Here's the full speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnaM8TqAzzo [youtube.com]
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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.
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http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm [navy.mil]
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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 yoursel
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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.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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 [imdb.com], the abyss gazes also into you."
Nietzsche
Appropriate at several levels.
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" 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!"
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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!
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Edible isn't sufficient. Are they tasty?
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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.
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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.
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That's because they're brainwashed uneducated fucktards
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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.
Bump :Definition of terms (Score:2)
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)
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No one is. (As an offshore oil geologist, I'm likely a lot closer to being a deep sea miner than you are, and I certainly don't claim to be a DSM.)
Not quite : "ore" and "gangue".
As you say, one years gangue can become the next years ore, as prices fluctuate.
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Amazingly, none of the rare earth minerals seem to have even a hint of blue shading.
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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.
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Watch your mouth, you don't want the Kingslayer to smack you around with his gold hand, do you?
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By having truly stupendous quantities of everything else.
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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
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Oh believe it. For example, there are millions of tons of gold in sea water, just no way to extract it.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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
ht
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Of course Thorium is abundant. It's all over Burning Steppes, and that's only a 50-52 zone.
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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, t
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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.
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Most people don't appreciate just how much of a stunning advance the cryolite process was.
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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
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Because, of course, the only thing these minerals are used for is cheap ear buds.
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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.
Decision Time: (Score:2)
"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.
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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.
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That doesn't compute. The amounts just don't make sense - if 5 square miles could provide enough for a year's use, then we'd have to be dumping several billion tons of rare-earth metals every year. Since we only dump less than 100 million tons annually, and most of that (by mass) is plastics or common metals, there's no way we can be causing this. Contributing, perhaps, but not causing.
From what I can tell (I'm nowhere near an expert, could be completely wrong here), rare-earth elements seem most common in
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I was just joking, but I appreciate how sincere and informative your comment is!
Re:makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
That was the most polite "woosh" I've ever read.
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Since the Pacific is a very tectonically active ocean, it's also possible that it's being pushed up from lower in the Earth's crust. That's what I would guess, but I could be wrong.
You aren't.
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The deposits are from vents over the duration. Not sure what's disputable about that.
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is the Glomar Explorer when we need it?
That was manganese nodules *cough* nuclear submarine *cough* that they were after.
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It's been converted to an oil drilling ship.
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China is working on a blue water navy. [india.com] 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 bi
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sure hope the Chinese aren't making all our guns.