121–130 of 341 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Great way to frame mining as eco-friendly What's the alternative? If we want to electrify, it means more resource discovery and mining than we're already doing, plus likely mining more non-renewable fuels to power the intermediate infrastructure we will need to mine or recycle metals for renewables or EVs.
> What's the alternative? Degrowth, using less of everything, only keeping what we truly need instead of producing insane amount of next to useless junk, stop shipping bananas to the other side of the planet to have half of them end up in a trash anyways, &c. Basic common sense stuff that we won't do because we need that sweet sweet "growth" at all cost.
"Rare" earth metals are actually not that rare. The reason we (in the west) don't mine much is that they are very dirty to refine. We don't want pools of toxic waste left over from refining all over the place but China etc will tolerate those. Given the ore itself is (ironically) quite common, all the mining happens where the refining happens because why would you bother shipping tonnes of ore there when is so common…
The Mt Weld rare earths mine located in the Goldfields Region of Western Australia is one of the highest grade rare earth mines operating in the world [1]. The ore is initially drilled and blasted and the blasted ore is excavated and loaded on to trucks. The trucks transport the mined ore to the concentration plant located 1.5km away from the mine. The ore at the concentration plant is crushed before being fed to the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they used impressive colloquially. I guess more fitting would be "interesting/amusing" Although, I think yours is a far bigger offence: being intentionally ignorant for the purpose of being an asshole online
i'm genuinely curious what about their comment makes them an asshole. the comment is a bit dismissive, but hardly assholish
Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they used impressive colloquially. I guess more fitting would be "interesting/amusing" Although, I think yours is a far bigger offence: being intentionally ignorant for the purpose of being an asshole online
i'm genuinely curious what about their comment makes them an asshole. the comment is a bit dismissive, but hardly assholish
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the main reason I'd like to see asteroid mining take off. Let's tear some uninhabited asteroids apart, instead of the only planet we can live on.
Gasp! We must preserve the asteroids, none of that human destructiveness over there! /s
The Earth is unique and precious, but the vast out there - we cannot do our worst even if we tried.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN cares about IT and there being conditions suitable for IT. This means an interest in metals for electronics and suitable for climate related tech. Ergo you'll see news about copper, rare earths, battery technology advances, hydrogen, etc all hit the front page and often rise.
Why not, as many other niches, but 2 different links on the same topic, in a 5 minutes interval it's the kind of things that doesn't occurs that frequently, and it's usually for big news (either general world events or programming/tech world announcements). It could be a coincidence of course, but I find it suspicious nonetheless.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378
So news about Sweden are probably more likely to be posted than for example news about Chile.
This is a little crazy fact I learnt today. Given how much we use, this news hits harder.