Tim Worstall

It is all obvious or trivial except…

 

 

Entries Tagged as 'Metals'

This Texas fertiliser fire: a hydrogen explosion perhaps?

April 18th, 2013 · 57 Comments

I’ve been trying to puzzle through what might have happened in that dreadful fire and explosion in Texas. Of course, we all know that ammonium nitrate is highly explosive: people make bombs out of it. But it doesn’t appear that the plant actually made or even stored that. It was a wholesaler for anhydrous ammonia. [...]

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Tags: Metals

Seabed harvesting for polymetallic nodules.

March 18th, 2013 · 14 Comments

Diddy Cameron has a new enthusiasm. Sponsored by the Government, a company called UK Seabed Resources has won the first commercial exploration rights over a 58,000 square-kilometre area of the Pacific, he announced. The licence was granted by the International Seabed Authority, the body governing mining outside territorial waters. Late this summer, the company will [...]

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Tags: Metals

Korea scours Colombia for valuable substances

March 13th, 2013 · 3 Comments

I was really rather surprised to see this story making the front page of Bloomberg: South Korea, the world’s biggest maker of consumer-electronics memory chips, is leading the first geological study of Colombia’s rare metals as it seeks to secure supplies for Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and LG Corp. (003550) State-run Korean Institute of Geoscience [...]

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Tags: Metals

George misses the point again

March 12th, 2013 · 8 Comments

Today it’s all about blood minerals. There are dozens of issues, such as starvation wages, bullying, abuse and 60-hour weeks in the sweatshops manufacturing them, the debt bondage into which some of the workers are pressed, the energy used, the hazardous waste produced. But I will concentrate on just one: are the components soaked in [...]

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Tags: Metals

Anyone read Al Gore’s new book, “The Future”?

February 19th, 2013 · 6 Comments

I’d be interested to hear what he says about resource availability. I know he mentions it but does he only go with oil and fracking? Or does he talk about metals and minerals as well?

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Tags: Metals

So here’s a question: Where can I go to dodge EU environmental regulation?

February 13th, 2013 · 24 Comments

So, a leetle report from the front lines of the business world. As you all know I’m working on ‘untin slags in the ‘ore mountains. A likely path through the thickets has been planned. But we’re facing an odd little problem. Through the various alliances we’ve made we can work up to a certain scale [...]

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Tags: Metals

Reviving Cornish tin

February 9th, 2013 · 14 Comments

Sounds like a bonzer idea to me: The company, Marine Minerals, said the project would only go ahead if the tin could be “extracted” – it rejects the idea that it will be “dredging” – in an environmentally and socially responsible way. Its proposal is to suck the sand up from the seabed — between [...]

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Tags: Metals

It’s not just pharmaceuticals I’m afraid

February 9th, 2013 · 4 Comments

A system of overbearing regulation is preventing researchers from running clinical trials which could lead to new treatments for diseases like cancer, leading experts claim. The entire economy is wallowing in such regulation. A real life example for you. Inside an already licensed chemicals factory we discussed the idea of recreating a production line that [...]

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Tags: Metals

Who’s ringing the bells?

February 4th, 2013 · 12 Comments

Nine newly cast bells have gone on display at Notre Dame, the Paris cathedral, weeks before they are hoisted into the two great towers in time for Easter. The new bells, weighing 23 tons in total and named after saints and prominent Catholics, have been cast to mark the 850th anniversary of the Cathedral’s founding [...]

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Tags: Metals

Rio Tinto and aluminium

January 18th, 2013 · 7 Comments

In addition, Rio Tinto had to unveil a further $10 to $11bn hit to the valuation of its aluminium assets, bought at the market peak. It has now written down $28bn of the $38bn paid for aluminium company Alcan in 2007, analysts estimated. That’s gotta hurt. And as the economists keep trying to tell people: [...]

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Tags: Metals

So the question of the day

January 6th, 2013 · 4 Comments

Is Zinnwaldite usable as a mica in the normal industrial sense?

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Tags: Metals

And on to today’s lovely business story

January 5th, 2013 · 5 Comments

So, the adventure of ‘untin’ slags in the ‘ore mountains is on again. 2012 was spent surveying, organising, finding. 2013 is to be spent, as of Monday, actually processing one specific pile that was found. Money has been raised, a lease is being written, companies will be founded, workers employed etc. And the first stage [...]

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Tags: Metals

As ever, it appears that Mr. Ridley and I are thinking along the same lines

January 2nd, 2013 · 14 Comments

Here he is in The Times. Sound familiar? Every small businessman I talk to these days has a horror story to tell about the delays and costs that have been visited upon him by planners, inspectors, officials and consultees. Using the excuse of “cuts”, the bureaucracy is taking even longer to make decisions than five [...]

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Tags: Environmentalism · Metals

Timmy elsewhere in The Mirror

December 13th, 2012 · 2 Comments

This was rather fun really. Wideboys with their sights set on anyone lucky enough to have savings have found yet another wacky investment to flog. We’ve already warned about ­landbanking, carbon credit trading and wine investment. Now it’s the turn of “rare earth metals”. It’s true that a string of obscure elements are crucial in [...]

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Tags: Metals

Oh dear: Chatham House doesn’t get it

December 11th, 2012 · 4 Comments

This is the problem with having the governmentally Great and Good discuss something: The world will be blighted by supply disruptions, volatile prices, environmental damage and rising political tensions if governments fail to act as competition for resources intensifies, an influential think-tank has warned. Analysts at Chatham House say that short-sighted policies compound tensions created [...]

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Tags: Metals

Cambridge scientist has just received shitty email from Timmy W

December 10th, 2012 · 13 Comments

Over this: ‘The scarcity of helium is a really serious issue,’ he is set to say. ‘I can imagine that in 50 years’ time our children will be saying, “I can’t believe they used such a precious material to fill balloons.”‘ The scientist will continue: ‘If we keep using it for non-essential things like party [...]

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Tags: Metals

Skylon: they need scandium

November 29th, 2012 · 6 Comments

Just remembered this. OK, so Alan Bond’s lot are getting their engine to work. Excellent. Now someone needs to think about what to build the plane out of. No problems going up. But that wing and fuselage surface is going to take a beating coming down. You know, tiles on the Shuttle and all? To [...]

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Tags: Metals

Arcelor Mittal in French jobs row

November 27th, 2012 · 3 Comments

This is fun. In the latest episode in an increasingly heated dispute with President Hollande’s Socialist Government, Arnaud Montebourg accused ArcelorMittal, the steel magnate’s group, of resorting to lies, blackmail and threats. “We no longer want Mittal in France because they haven’t respected France,” Mr Montebourg said. The flamboyant standard-bearer of the radical Left accused [...]

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Tags: Metals

Now The Guardian’s after the tin miners

November 24th, 2012 · 4 Comments

Given that they’ve solved the problem of violence in Congo over conflict minerals that is.

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Tags: Metals

The Very Reverend Spacely-Trellis writes in The Guardian

November 20th, 2012 · 11 Comments

We are all to blame for the agony of Congo Indeed, we are all guilty. Hmm. Or am I thinking of Dr. Kiosk? A report leaked earlier this year said Rwanda and Uganda were aiding and abetting the M23, motivated as in the past by a desire to control and exploit eastern Congo’s vast mineral [...]

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Tags: Metals