Search This Blog

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

More Gloom ... for Apocaholics

The Malthusians of the world are always right until they’re wrong. They’ll warn of impending resource depletion until they’re blue in the face, but time and again human ingenuity (and natural providence) has made fools of them. We’ve seen two welcome new examples of Gaia’s riches this week—what’ll we find next?
So concludes an article at The American Interest. (h/t Instapundit)  It mentions:
 As one of the researchers put it, “[t]here’s a lot more fresh groundwater in California than people know.” The breakthrough here involved searching for water deeper underground than aquifers designated for human consumption typically lie.
...
    
Halfway across the world a different group of scientists employing a novel new detection technique found an enormous new supply of helium gas—an increasingly scarce element that’s critically important for advanced scientific research and medical technologies—in Tanzania. The University of Oxford reports:
[A] research group from Oxford and Durham universities, working with Norway-headquartered helium exploration company Helium One, has developed a brand new exploration approach. The first use of this method has resulted in the discovery of a world-class helium gas field in Tanzania. […]
...
 
Helium prices have quintupled since 2000 as supplies have started to dwindle. You can understand, then, why this discovery is being described as a “game changer,” and not just for the fact of this specific supply alone, either: this was the first place these scientists employed their new surveying technique. They’re batting 1.000, and could now apply this technique in areas with similar geology in different parts of the world.

The Apocaholics, control freaks and statists of varying stripes just never learn...

5 comments:

Bret said...

Hmmm. Harry? (Harry has ranted about the free market's "misuse" of helium in the past).

erp said...

... why am I not surprised that U.S. universities are MIA when discoveries like these are being made?

Peter said...

I think it's damn unsporting of these fellows to have discovered so much helium before the brights had the chance to whip up a public panic over helium shortages. Couldn't they have waited for the Harvard bestseller, "The Coming Helium Crisis", or the summer blockbuster about mass deaths from the depletion of helium featuring George Clooney's climactic soliloquy on the evils of greed and profit? Save Our Helium rock concerts? At the very least they could have waited for the UN to call an emergency international conference on the pressing need for global helium management. I suppose this is good news for mankind, but it sure takes the fun out of blogging.

Bret said...

Peter,

LOL. Are you a stand-up comedian on the side?

But remember. Harry's been writing about the helium shortage panic for a long, long time.

Hey Skipper said...

Peter, apparently you have never heard of Hubbard Peak Helium.