91–100 of 211 posts
It's worse than the wannabe rare earth mining companies.
[1] https://www.unitedstatestungsten.com/
[2] https://investornews.com/critical-minerals-rare-earths/ameri...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't a pretty unhinged take. > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. No it doesn't (at best its about 35 years) and it often (mostly) uses equipment made in the west. In fact, if you want to extract something from the earth, its very likely you need a US firm to help you do it (depends on how hard the material is to extract). > and ecological collapse You can do mining responsibly, it ju…
> > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. It's amazing how many people think China bootstrapped its industry from first principals when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t care about the environment. You care about the environment in your backyard. Otherwise you would not import rare earths and minerals from China (which Europe does).
Individual EUers might care about the environment. It’s pretty hard to personally avoid any dirty imported stuff as you just don’t know where it all ends up. Though I guess overall voting patterns might back up your argument
All products from China are manufactured with electricity that is largely coal.
You just mean it's not economical.
Thankfully, in most industries that use tungsten carbide, there is a lot of recycling of the material (though probably not enough.)
Like anything, it's a complex problem, with no easy answers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worst part is that most of number 3 is self imposed by the ridiculous amount of environmental review and litigation delays surrounding that process. Sure, cost of labor is some of it, but really it's not very much in comparison.
Having seen some former open pit mines I'm not entirely sure the environmental review is "ridiculous." One of them was basically a huge open pit full of acid.
The acid is natural btw just from things leeching out of the rock walls.
This website has no author attribution and this is the only article on it. I would be very suspicious of its claims (not that I disagree with them, just that unattributed works on brand new websites are not ALWAYS the most trustworthy). The United States has exported the dirtiest businesses internationally for quite a few years (raw mineral extraction is a dirty, nasty business, with slim margins). Now that China has…
Hey, I wrote the article. This is my personal website that I wrote mostly over the weekend. I went down a rabbit hole reading about metals and mining and just thought it was interesting. Not an expert or a nefarious actor, unfortunately.
Tungsten is the least of their problem. When a population cannot afford health care system, and have to walk with their passport so they are not sent to jail, you have a broken country. Not to mention the financial problems. Tungsten won't matter when there is no country.
> walk with their passport so they are not sent to jail No, it's broken because we've allowed millions of foreigners to come in and raise said healthcare and housing costs. Checking that people here actually belong here else they're deported is part of the "cost of living" solution, in addition to crime.
What about cobalt? For the largest part of the market, tungsten carbide cutting tools, it's usually a composite of tungsten carbide and cobalt. Thankfully, in most industries that use tungsten carbide, there is a lot of recycling of the material (though probably not enough.) Like anything, it's a complex problem, with no easy answers.
tl;dr there's currently no overarching plan to help the US catch up to China, and we're going to let "the market" fix that problem. Being that "the market" in the US is about quarterly earnings reports and strategic bonuses for the C-suite, I'm keeping my expectations in check.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> walk with their passport so they are not sent to jail No, it's broken because we've allowed millions of foreigners to come in and raise said healthcare and housing costs. Checking that people here actually belong here else they're deported is part of the "cost of living" solution, in addition to crime.
I think overall immigration is a net benefit: https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-g...