Posted on 03/02/2021 2:39:51 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
COPENHAGEN - In the tenth century, Erik the Red, a Viking from Iceland, was so impressed with the vegetation on another Arctic island he had found he called it “the green land.” Today, it’s Greenland’s rocks that are attracting outsiders - superpowers riding a green revolution.
The world’s biggest island has huge resources of metals known as ‘rare earths,’ used to create compact, super-strong magnets which help power equipment such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, combat aircraft and weapons systems.
The metals are abundant globally, but processing them is difficult and dirty - so much so that the United States, which used to dominate production, surrendered that position to China about 20 years ago.
As Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers recede, two Australia-based mining companies - one seeking funding in the United States, the other part-owned by a Chinese state-backed firm - are racing for approval to dig into what the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) calls the world’s biggest undeveloped deposits of rare earth metals.
The contest underscores the polluting side of clean energy, as well as how hard it is for the West to break free of China in production of a vital resource. Rare earth metals have many uses, and last year China produced about 90% of them.
Greenland’s position near the eastern flank of the United States makes it a sensitive location. Former U.S. President Donald Trump offered to buy the island in 2019, and he was not the first U.S. president to do so: In 1946 Harry S. Truman offered Denmark $100 million for it.
Friedbert Pflüger, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, says the revenues generated by a major mine could give its owner leverage over policies in Greenland, and a strong Chinese presence there may pose strategic threats.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Greenland is part of North America.
I remember when environmentalist were opposed to strip mining.
I thought he was joking...
I didn’t. Another missed opportunity for the USA due to #TDS.
SCHADENFREUD A political quandary for Joe Biden...he has made big promises to greenish environmentalists, promising to convert the entire US govt fleet - about 640,000 vehicles - to E/Vs. That single plan could require a 12-fold increase in US lithium production by 2030, as well as increases in output of domestic copper, nickel and cobalt.
“You can’t have green energy without mining. That’s just the reality,” says Mark Senti, CEO of Fla-based rare earth magnet company Advanced Magnet Lab Inc. “There is no way there’s enough raw materials being produced right now to start replacing millions of gasoline-powered motor vehicles with EVs,” added sLewis Black, CEO of Almonty Industries Inc, which mines the hardening metal tungsten in Portugal and South Korea.
That was a good article. We better get a handle on our rare earth metals needs. Is there anything China isn’t outperforming us on?
When you let your enemies do some of your dirty work for you, you give them leverage. When you let them do all of your dirty work, you have submitted your future to your enemy.
Even though the Greenland glaciers may be “receding”, the winters are brutal and would hamper any industry.
Who started making deals to give the rare earth metal market to China.
The bad part is....we gave them the market and gave up extracting the metals.
so much so that the United States, which used to dominate production, surrendered that position to China about 20 years ago.
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The surrender was a unilateral one conducted by Bill Clinton in the 90’s, turning the largest US mine into a National Preserve to help his close Chinese PLA friends.
Yeah, about that receding ice ... it used to cover 98% of Greenland, now it’s barely 97.9%. In other words, it’s fairly stable.
Studies show that some portions are increasing, in any case, almost all of the population live on the unglaciated west coast where that 2% of ice-free land is all found, and the climate while hardly temperate is not all that bad in those settled areas, you wouldn’t want to live there but Greenlanders like it. Snow free from about May to October, winters not much colder than Wisconsin or Maine (maybe not colder at all if you compare some colder places in those states — definitely not as cold as some places in central Canada).
China has the largest rare earth element (REE) reserves, by a long shot. They also were allowed to sell their REE below the cost to produce it, effectively shutting down competition.
China is dominating in this market, because of their aggressive policies to control the world and the world through the WTO lets them get away with it.
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Who let China into the WTO? Let’s look:
“Today the House of Representatives has taken an historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China, and peace in the world. . . it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China.
Bill Clinton, U.S. President”
Source:
What Happened When China Joined the WTO?
spring of 2000
https://world101.cfr.org/global-era-issues/trade/what-happened-when-china-joined-wto
AND:
Bush backs China’s WTO entry despite standoff
April 6, 2001
Excerpt:
“I’m an advocate of China’s entry into the WTO and I’m hopeful that the current situation ends quickly and our people come home,” Bush said.
Stumbling in a speech given in Washington on Thursday, the president said, “China is a strategic partner, I mean, strategic competitor but that doesn’t mean we can’t find areas in which we can partner and the economy is a place we can partner.”
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/04/05/china.WTO/
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Here is an excerpt from a very good article:
Dangers of a Dominant World Producer
Supply and demand normally determine the market price of a commodity. As supplies shrink, prices go up. As prices go higher, those who control the supply are tempted to sell. Mining companies see high prices as an opportunity and attempt to develop new sources of supply.
With rare earth elements, the time between a mining company’s decision to acquire a property and the start of production can be several years or longer. There is no fast way to open a new mining property.
If a single country controls almost all of the production and makes a firm decision not to export, then the entire supply of a commodity can be quickly cut off. That is a dangerous situation when new sources of supply take so long to develop.
In 2010 China significantly restricted their rare earth exports. That was done to ensure a supply of rare earths for domestic manufacturing and for environmental reasons. This shift by China triggered panic buying, and some rare earth prices shot up exponentially. In addition, Japan, the United States, and the European Union complained to the World Trade Organization about China’s restrictive rare earth trade policies.
https://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/
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Not only are the winters brutal, but the geography is even more brutal. Just to get to most places you must either fly in via helicopter or take a boat and dodge ice burgs in the summer.
Much of the rocky inland is made up of lose stones making it very dangerous to even approach on foot, let alone actually mine.
See the now defunct TV show: Ice Cold Gold, about miners trying to find gold and precious stones in Greenland. (they found valuable stones, but when they returned the next year to mine them, the locals had mined it out.)
Give Greenland to China.
Come on, global warming! The sooner that damned ice is gone, the sooner Greenland can be mined properly. Same goes for Antarctica.
Fun fact: The Antarctic volcano Mt. Erebus produces ash that is geochemically identifiable by its anomalous gold content.
Unfortunately, the sun probably won’t cooperate. Another ice age is more likely than significant global warming.
We imposed an oil embargo on Japan for their military action in China.
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