Resource Insights

Time 2021-11-16 20:07:15

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Resource Insights

Independent Commentary on Environmental and Natural Resource News
By Kurt Cobb

Sunday, November 14, 2021 Another extraordinary delusion: Mining helium from the Moon

Asia Times tells us that there is a secret mining war taking place in space over helium-3, a version of helium which is surprisingly abundant on the Moon. Helium-3 is an isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. The far more prevalent arrangement is helium-4, two protons and two neutrons.

(For those only vaguely familiar with the periodic table, helium is an element which therefore cannot be manufactured from other other elements and must be harvested from nature.*)

The fascination with helium-3 is as a fuel for fusion reactors. This fuel, it turns out, would produce absolutely no radioactive wasteunlike hydrogen-fueled fusion reactors which produce pesky neutrons that bombard components of the reactor and render them radioactive.

So, lets get this straight. There is supposedly a secret mining war between China, the United States and possibly Russia over potential resources on the Moon, resources that might provide very clean fuel for fusion reactors of which there are zero of the commercial variety. And, the number of commercial fusion reactors is likely to stay at zero until at least mid-century. And, there is no assurance that the type of reactor that could use helium-3which would require much higher temperatures than the hydrogen-fueled ones being contemplated nowwill be commercially available any time soon after mid-century.

Read more Posted byKurt Cobbat8:37 AM2 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, November 07, 2021 'Health should not be political,' but like everything else it is

Football fans will wonder how it is that I had no idea who Aaron Rodgers was before the controversy involving his vaccine status erupted in the media last week. (The quick response is that I do not follow professional sports at all unless they spill over into the main news headlines.) For the edification of others like me, Rodgers is a professional football player who is quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. He chose not to get a COVID vaccine for reasons he detailed in this interview. He recently tested positive for COVID.

I am not interested here in commenting on the wisdom of his choice. Rather, I found a particular statement in the interview of special significance. Rodgers opined, Health should not be political. The entirety of the interview tells me that he means specifically partisan politics. But it is easy to equate partisan politics with politics in general which by my definition is a very broad category of human endeavor that impinges on practically our every waking hour. By politics I mean the institutions and processes by which we collectively decide two things: 1) who gets what by when and 2) where personal autonomy stops and the needs of the community take precedence. That definition makes even private family life political.

Americans somehow believe they can take politics out of their daily lives, that they can set up a society in which we all just respectfully leave each other alone to pursue our own best interests so long as we dont hurt others. There are two problems with that thinking. First, as a colleague once explained, nobody likes to be bossed around; but there are plenty of people who want to boss others around. Second, it is a practical impossibility for us humans to leave each other alone to pursue our own best interests so long as we dont hurt others. It turns out we need clear rules for how we relate to one another, either by custom or by law, in order to accomplish this. Its also equally clear that if those rules dont limit what the bossy among us can do, those bossy types will run roughshod over everyone elses autonomy.

Read more Posted byKurt Cobbat9:16 AM1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, October 31, 2021 'Your grocery stores are like museums': Then and now

About 15 years ago I helped to host a group of Russian entrepreneurs during one stop on their tour of the United States, a tour sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. As we hosts accompanied our visitors, we naturally fell into conversation with them. One of them noted a contrast with Russian life that stuck with me because it was offered in terms that were so unexpectedly strange. He said that compared to Russian grocery stores, your grocery stores are like museums.

Just as fish dont notice they are swimming in water, we Americans are prone to think of our spacious (by world standards) grocery stores with their carefully arranged and brimming shelves; colorful produce sections; fulsome meat counters; and well-stocked frozen dessert casesall festooned with artfully crafted point-of-purchase displaysas merely utilitarian platforms for obtaining our daily provisions.

Fast forward to today and we find that some grocery stores are unexpectedly moving even closer to the museum model, but not in the good way my Russian acquaintance had in mind. We are, of course, not surprised to see pretty pictures in museums rather than the objects those images depict. Now, in some of grocery stores in Great Britain, pretty pictures are being used to cover over gaps in the produce and dry goods sections.

Read more Posted byKurt Cobbat8:55 AM1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, October 24, 2021 Taking a short break - no post this weekI'm taking a short break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, October 31.Posted byKurt Cobbat7:56 AMNo comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, October 17, 2021 Chokepoint democracy: Workers capitalize on global system weak spots

In his book Carbon Democracy Timothy Mitchell attempts to explain the rising and falling political power of the working class in terms of the evolution of the worlds energy system. The first fossil fuel, coal, required hoards of men (and it was almost exclusively men) to bring it to the surface, get it to market, and bring it to its final users.

Since coal was the largest fossil fuel energy source for human societies from the early days of the Industrial Revolution until the 1950s and its extraction employed a large number of workers who over time unionized, strikes among coal workers severely impacted energy supplies. Those strikes riveted the attention of the authorities and the public as the health and economic well-being of society was at stake.

The rise of oil as the worlds dominate energy source changed all that. Oil required many fewer workers to bring it out of the ground and distribute it. Oil production utilizes pumps and pipelines instead of people to move fuel. The decline of the power of coal miners followed in the wake of oils rise. Oil did not similarly empower workers because so much of the system to extract and refine it runs automatically and can often be overseen temporarily by a few management personnel in the event of a strike or work stoppage.

Read more Posted byKurt Cobbat9:15 AM2 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, October 10, 2021 Taking a short break - no post this weekI'm taking a short break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, October 17.Posted byKurt Cobbat8:24 AMNo comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, October 03, 2021 Things do not have to run out for their scarcity to become destabilizing

Economic cornucopians who believe innovation and substitution will solve every constraint on the resources needed for modern civilization use a clever piece of misdirection to deflect the arguments of those concerned about limits. These cornucopians say that the claim by the limits crowd that we will run out of resources we need to maintain the smooth functioning of our complex industrial society is nonsense.

But that statement is a straw man designed to avoid the real issue, an issue which we see in abundance all around us today, namely: Things do not have to run out for their scarcity to become destabilizing. This is a key argument among those concerned about limits and the effects of those limits on the stable functioning of modern society.

We have not run out of fossil fuels but shortages are creating widespread problems in China and Europe. We are not running out of water in the world, but there is not enough of it in the right place to supply all the needs of those living in the American Southwest. That lack of water is leading to a reduction in geothermal power generation as well. And, drought in California is reducing the amount hydroelectric generation by a third so far this year.

Read more Posted byKurt Cobbat9:28 AM7 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, September 26, 2021 'Pre-crime' software and the limits of AI

The Michigan State Police (MSP) has acquired software that will allow the law enforcement agency to help predict violence and unrest, according to a story published by The Intercept.

I could not help but be reminded of the film Minority Report. In that film three exceptionally talented psychics are used to predict crimes before they happen and apprehend the would-be perpetrators. These not-yet perpetrators are guilty of what is called pre-crime, and they are sentenced to live in a very nice virtual reality where they will not be able to hurt others.

The publics acceptance of the fictional pre-crime system is based on good numbers: It has eliminated all pre-meditated murders for the past six years in Washington, D.C. where it has been implemented. Which goes to provefictionally, of coursethat if you lock up enough people, even ones who have never committed a crime, crime will go down.

Read more Posted byKurt Cobbat8:06 AM1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, September 19, 2021 It's all connected: The natural gas market and its casualties

Natural gas was supposed to be the so-called bridge fuel to the low-carbon renewable energy economy. It was abundant, cleaner to burn than oil and coal, and more and more available to anyone who wanted it as a global market in liquefied natural gas (LNG) blossomed and boomed.

But this season it is looking increasingly like that metaphorical natural gas bridge is going to come up short. And, the effects are starting to ripple throughout the economy, not only in the natural gas markets themselves, but also in the electricity and agricultural markets.

First, there are the obvious signs in the natural gas market. In both North America and Europe natural gas prices have bounded upward. In Europe gas import prices have zoomed up more than 400 percent in the last year from $2.86 per million BTUs (MMBtu) to $15.49 per MMBtu. (A million BTUs is roughly equivalent to the U.S. measure of a thousand cubic feet or mcf.)

Read more Posted byKurt Cobbat8:49 AM5 comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Sunday, September 12, 2021 Taking a short break - no post this weekI'm taking a short break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, September 19.Posted byKurt Cobbat7:50 AMNo comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Older PostsHomeSubscribe to:Posts (Atom)Subscribe ToPosts Atom PostsAll Comments Atom All CommentsSubscribe Now: standard

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