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2010-10-31 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

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Posted by ryuge 2010-10-31 11:24|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top

#1 From the article: The diversity and size of the global oil market provides the U.S. with real energy security. If the writer believes that, he's got rocks in his head instead of brains.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-10-31 12:13|| 2010-10-31 12:13|| Front Page Top

#2 The author's point is that the oil market, with it's many and increasing number of suppliers, is significantly more secure than the rare earths market, with China as the current sole supplier.

Posted by trailing wife 2010-10-31 12:47|| 2010-10-31 12:47|| Front Page Top

#3 is significantly more secure than the rare earths market Even if so, saying 'real energy security' is a gross exaggeration. The real trainwreck would be outsourcing a critical part of the economy to unreliable suppliers (e.g. China or Saudi Arabia).

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-10-31 13:48|| 2010-10-31 13:48|| Front Page Top

#4 Oh goodness, yet another case of confusing "politics" with "science" or "reality".

Here's the line where the article loses coherence:

China, which has a near-monopoly on rare earths,

Maybe the reporter got the story wrong, or the author is unclear or confused.

China has a near "market" monopoly, not a supply monopoly. And the market monopoly is essentially on dirty, filthy polluting heavy industry. And, this is largely due to the Export Pollution Agency, er, Environmental Protection Agency, and its European equivalents.

"Rare Earth" metals are not particularly rare, in varying degrees, but their production (mining, refining, smelting, handling and shipping) is limited by all sorts of factors largely covered under the heading "economics".

Like so much of what our ruling class is reluctant to admit, this is roughly a 90% political problem, 9% technical, and 1% supply.

It's almost like the Chinese are just discovering distinctions between free markets, dictatorships, and "social justice" regulatory regimes. Good luck to them!

Posted by Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division 2010-10-31 14:22|| 2010-10-31 14:22|| Front Page Top

#5 Argh I hate it when people moan and groan about rare earth exclusivity to China, I say let em have it we're using them like any sane person would.

Heres the run down there are 3 (count em...3!!) rare earth super deposit sites in the world, one in the US (in California), one in China, and one new one in Australia.

These superdeposit sites have such a huge amount of rare earths that it makes pretty much any other place non-profitable in terms of extraction for money. The Mountain Pass mine in California one was operating till relatively recently, however although it is technically shut down it is still processing the ores which have already been mined (and theres a backlog of this).

Further more rare earth extraction is an expensive and very polluting process, you easily wreck your local environment trying to produce these, and since the Chinese are so helpful to wreck their environment to sell us the rare earths at below the rate it costs even US to extract them I say why not? We get to keep our strategic supply of rare earths while theres dwindles and get them at discounted price relatively. In fact the reason why Mountain Pass is being restarted is because even the Chinese have realized how much the REE's (rare earth extraction) is wrecking their environment and now they're trying to bring prices back up that its a good time that another competitor enters the market.

Posted by Valentine 2010-10-31 15:22|| 2010-10-31 15:22|| Front Page Top

#6 If you read my link in the O'Club - Japan's Sumitomo Trading Corp is preparing to offer tons of better patents and money to secure 1,000,000 tons of rare earths per year from the "Mountain Pass" mine.

Posted by Water Modem 2010-10-31 15:34|| 2010-10-31 15:34|| Front Page Top

#7 While it is true that China accounts for most of the current rare earths production, they are quite plentiful in the US. It is simply cheaper to mine and process them in China. Once China makes them expensive enough, production will start up again in the US. One of the largest obstacles in the US is environmental regulations. We have basically regulated the US out of that market.

There is an operation due to start soon in the California desert that has been extensively reworked to comply with environmental regulations.

Posted by crosspatch 2010-10-31 16:35|| 2010-10-31 16:35|| Front Page Top

#8 If you start looking at all the producers China has under long-term contract (like the oil sands of Canada, which we currently can't buy for governmental purposes) or can drill but we can't because they're nice "communists" (hah!) but we're ugly capitalists (Venezuela), things start looking less good than they were.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-10-31 19:12|| 2010-10-31 19:12|| Front Page Top

#9 CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > CHINA'S [coming Great] FUTURE SHOCK.

ARTIC = UNKNOWN FUTURE as per Chin's econ potential, Socio-Cultural Changes is causing some in China to lament the disappearance of traditional Values + Methods.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2010-10-31 21:59|| 2010-10-31 21:59|| Front Page Top

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