Free Republic

President Joe Biden is looking north for critical mineral supplies to meet government-inflated demand for clean-energy initiatives while the administration shuts down major mining projects on American soil. In March, the president invoked the Defense Production Act to expedite the expansion of U.S. mining operations behind lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese as demand rises for the raw materials. Not only are the critical minerals central to the administration’s subsidized wind and solar farms, but they are essential for defense technologies and popular products from cell phones to laptops. Biden triggered the Cold War-era law to reconfigure supply chains of...

Politicians are demanding that the U.S. become more self-sufficient in crucial metals and minerals, but then they block domestic mining at every opportunity. Alaska’s Pebble Mine project is the latest to join the casualty list. The Pebble site holds an estimated $300 billion to $500 billion in mineral resources and could be one of the world’s largest suppliers of copper and gold. Electric cars as well as wind and solar power require enormous amounts of copper. Investors have invested nearly $1 billion on exploration, engineering and studies to meet regulatory demands. Yet last week the Biden Environmental Protection Agency issued...

Downside of Electric VehiclesAn electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle, according to the International Energy Agency.At one time, “Saving the Environment” and “Fighting Climate Change” were synonymous. That is no longer true. The quest for Clean Energy through electric vehicles (EVs) epitomizes “the end justifies the means.”According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE). EV batteries are very heavy and are made with some exotic, expensive, toxic, and flammable materials.The primary metals in EV batteries...

The U.S. aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 as part of its commitment to tackling climate change, but might be lacking the critical minerals needed to achieve its goals.The American green economy will rely on renewable sources of energy like wind and solar, along with the electrification of transportation. However, local production of the raw materials necessary to produce these technologies, including solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles, is lacking. Understandably, this has raised concerns in Washington.In the graphic below, based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey, Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti lists all...

If you are taking supplements, two things are critical to get the most out of them: quality and timing. You need to start with quality products made by reputable manufacturers, and you need to know the best time to take your supplements, including which ones should and shouldn’t be taken along with others.We’re not going to talk about quality and reputation here. Instead, let’s discuss the timing of your supplement use and how you can optimize the rewards from each of your choices. One approach to supplement use is to consider which ones to take during three main parts of...

A secret business deal between the government of Guinea and a multinational firm with a U.S. partner aided by the Obama administration’s wrongheaded foreign policy could cost American businesses billions. Congress ought to investigate to protect American investors, expose any political shenanigans and prosecute the guilty. The London Sunday Times first cracked the story June 3 of the secret $25 million loan between an offshore company, Palladino Capital 2, and the cash-strapped West African country. The funds, according to the loan agreement, were to finance the start-up of Guinea’s state mining company, Heritage, but the cash allegedly disappeared and the...

After the fall of Kabul, US media regurgitates a 2010 New York Times frontpage story on Afghanistan’s mineral riches based on a secret Pentagon memo and a 1977 Soviet geologic map. Search for Afghanistan minerals and you get dozens of articles written in the last few days quoting a magical $1 trillion number including gems like The Taliban are sitting on $1 trillion worth of minerals the world desperately needs (CNN), Afghanistan: Taliban to reap $1 trillion mineral wealth (Deutsche Welle), Biden Just Handed Afghanistan’s Mineral Wealth to China (Newsweek), China Eyes Afghanistan’s $1 Trillion of Minerals With Risky Bet...

What's good for the body is good for the brain. For example, getting lots of exercise, reducing stress, going easy on the alcohol, and not smoking are all no-brainer brain boosters that you've heard about. But what has been getting more attention these days is the surprising connection between your gray matter and your diet. "The nutrients from food influence chemicals that directly and indirectly affect your brain and in turn change the way you think and feel," says nutritional psychiatrist, Uma Naidoo, MD, a professional chef, nutrition expert, and author of the book This Is Your Brain on Food....

Relying on foreign allies for critical minerals supply instead of mining domestically would be an “irresponsible” and “dangerous” policy for the Biden administration to pursue, a top lithium executive says. Calaway was responding to a report that said the Biden administration, in a move to appease environmentalists, would focus on building a domestic industry to process critical minerals rather than exploring opportunities to mine in the U.S. Those technologies are more mineral-intensive. The International Energy Agency recently projected the world’s appetite for critical minerals could grow by as much as six times in the next two decades. A typical electric...

In just one year, the world’s largest lithium producers turned from cautiously optimistic about prices and very careful about expansion projects to decisively bullish on near, medium, and long-term demand for the key battery metal. The pandemic prompted many governments to commit to greener recovery and to raising significantly the share of renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs), stoking demand for critical minerals this year. Lithium, alongside copper, has seen prices rising since automakers started pledging all-EV lineups and exponential growth in their electric car offerings. Rising immediate demand for lithium and expectations of surging demand in the longer term...

A prestigious intergovernmental organization created by the world’s advanced economies is pointing out the bottleneck in the plans to substitute so-called green energy for hydrocarbon-based energy: the availability of key minerals necessary for battery storage, wind farms, solar panels, and other gizmos necessary for the switchover. Simply put: the world can’t provide the quantity of those minerals that would be necessary, and the environmental and social impact of trying to mine them in sufficient quantities would be devastating.The cure, in other words, is worse than the disease. You can download the 287-page report here.The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental...

Colin Freeman Sat, April 3, 2021, 5:47 AM Picture taken on March 30, 2021 shows a view of Nuuk, Greenland - EMIL HELMS /AFP Picture taken on March 30, 2021 shows a view of Nuuk, Greenland - EMIL HELMS /AFP AS elections go, it sounds rather minor-league: a contest with just 40,000 voters, triggered by a planning row in one of the most remote, inhospitable corners of the planet. On Tuesday, though, diplomats from Washington to Beijing will be watching carefully as Greenland holds snap parliamentary polls. With a total of population of just 56,000, its electorate is smaller than...

The Russian Foreign Ministry has displaced a wrong map showing Pamir and Wakhan areas, located in the northern province of Badakhshan, out of Afghanistan's territory. Two days ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a map which indicated a path from Pakistan to Tajikistan via Badakhshan's areas of Wakhan and Pamir. The map didn't include some areas of Pamir and Wakhan as part of Afghanistan's soil. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said in an explanatory statement that the map presented on the Website was schematic and may not provide an accurate representation of national borders. However, such acts by the officials...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its final environmental impact statement on Friday which found gold and copper mining in Alaska “would not be expected to have a measurable effect on fish numbers.” That clears the final hurdle for the Corps to issue a permit this year to Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., the Canadian company that has proposed the mining operation in the state. Environmentalists oppose the project and the Obama administration did what it could to keep the Alaskan wilderness off limits to energy production. “In a scientific review conducted under the Obama administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wide swaths of the Interior Department were taken off the Internet again Tuesday after a federal judge concluded that the agency still has not fixed security holes that threaten payments owed to American Indians.</p> <p>It was the third such shutdown for the Interior Department since 2001, when an investigator found that hackers could easily steal money from a system that allocates energy and mineral royalties to 300,000 Indians for use of their land.</p>

Posted on May 4, 2020May 4, 2020 by Matt Williams Want to Mine the Moon? Here’s a Detailed Map of all its Minerals The prospect of mining asteroids and the Moon is on a lot of peoples’ minds lately. Maybe it’s all the growth that’s happened in the commercial aerospace industry in the past few decades. Or perhaps it’s because of Trump’s recent executive order to allow for asteroid and lunar mining. Either way, there is no shortage of entrepreneurs and futurists who can’t wait to start prospecting and harvest the natural bounty of space!Coincidentally enough, future lunar miners...

History and geology come together at this spectacular destination in Sussex County, showcasing one of nature’s best-kept secrets in the most amazing way. Photo by Michael Kucinski Mining takes on a whole new meaning in the tiny town of Ogdensburg — just a stone’s throw from the “Fluorescent Mineral Capital of the World” in Franklin — where one museum houses more than enough evidence to back up the lofty title. Upon descent into the Earth’s depths in rural Sussex County, an underground world concealed from the masses comes to light, its marvelous features a true hidden gem. Wandering through...

Copper traders in China, the world’s largest buyer of the metal, have asked miners from Chile to Nigeria to cancel or delay shipments as the deadly coronavirus outbreak hits demand. Multiple Chinese copper buyers said they had scrapped or postponed overseas orders by declaring force majeure since the end of January, when Beijing began to report a surge in coronavirus infections. Copper, a barometer for the health of the global economy, is the latest commodity to fall victim to the epidemic. China’s efforts to contain the virus, ranging from restricting highway traffic to extending the lunar new year holiday, have...

Whitney Wickes, who recently moved her Rocking WW Minerals company from Colorado to Sheridan, has been named one of Forbes Magazine's list of top "30 Under 30" entrepreneurs. There is a “healthy” number of people focused on renewable energy in the U.S., but few who are dedicated to improving sustainability on the fossil fuel side, Whitney Wickes said. Wickes, Rocking WW Minerals co-founder and recent Sheridan transplant, was named to Forbes 30 under 30 top entrepreneurs for 2020 in the energy sector this month. Wickes was contacted as one of 20,000 nominees throughout 16 industries in October and asked to...

In an explosive legal complaint filed last month in Delaware, attorneys for a major Ukrainian bank alleged that two oligarchs who founded the bank and controlled it from 2006 to 2016 laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent corporate loans to purchase assets in the United States and unjustly enrich themselves and their associates. Dubbed the "Optima Schemes" in the 104-page document, these "brazen fraudulent schemes" were successful, among other things, in making the oligarchs and their co-defendants the largest commercial real estate holders in Cleveland. With money siphoned from public bonds and 20 million private Ukrainian citizens who'd...