Saturday, July 12, 2025

Copper Theft

The importance of copper, now and in the future, was mentioned here a few days ago. It's a significant element in all industrial activities, and particularly in the production of chips and ancillaries of GAI data centers. There's speculation that drought produced by climate change will decrease mining production and make copper expensive.

It turns out that drought isn't the only problem with copper. As it's value increases, as it has, criminal elements are stealing it, by the truckload. It's then resold to others in the salvage business who pass it along, at a profit, to refiners where it re-enters the commercial market. At some point this issue will be resolved by considering copper to be such a high-value item that it will be guarded when not installed, although thieves steal it from operating streetlights and out of buildings, as they have for years.

Economists make the point that in a disaster situation, such as a tornado destroying a part of the countryside, it only makes sense that the local price of gasoline would go up. This means that only the people that really need the petrol will then buy it, a kind of sensible economic rationing.

If this is actually true, it might in a larger sense, be the case that theft of copper is a more efficient method of distributing it than the usual process. More fingers will be in the copper pie but the total cost they share can never be more than the price of copper itself. The only losers will be the victims of the theft and those spending the money to guarantee its safety. It will also be a boon to mines and smelters in the US closed by the EPA that will return to operation if the copper is really needed.   

Surgery Robots

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland have found through an actual experiment that robots could be used in surgery. A robot performed a flawless gall bladder removal on a patient guided only by AI input. The patient made no complaints, being a model of a human.

It's easy to accept that there's a real future for AI in medical diagnostics, since that aspect of medicine is already immersed in digital input. The point of the research must be that a. there aren't enough humans presently capable of surgery and unlikely to be more in the future; b. it's more cost effective to build surgery robots than educate humans in the field; c. a trained robot could work 24 hours per day seven days a week: c. the robot would demand no compensation for its work but it's likely that its owner would; d. being machinery the robots will be continuously technically improved and replaced by better robots.

Certainly there would be no more operations performed by surgeons with hangovers or the lingering effects of an argument with a housemate. But in reality is there an advantage in the outcomes? Will people survive surgery and live better lives if  their knees are replaced by machines? Will heart surgery become a routine affair with robotic surgeons? If something is possible does that mean it should be done?  

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Drought And Copper

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, self-described as a "multinational professional services network" and one of the four largest international accounting firms, climate change indicated by drought will put at risk a third of global chip production by 2035. The copper mining process takes about 86 times as much water by weight to produce one unit of copper, says the accounting firm.

This overlooks the fact that practically all copper that has been put to use in the past is recycled and that substitutions for copper have been found in some industries.

Presently, only the copper mines in Chile, which produce 7% of the world's copper supply, are threatened by drought but the future could be grim for the production of chips needed for cell phones and other consumer products as well as AI data centers.

So what would this mean? In the case of the microscopic copper conductors used in AI data centers basic economics tells us that the price of the chips would increase and that some data centers wouldn't be able to function economically. Or that technology would come up with a work around. Or that droughts wouldn't increase by 2035.

The AI data center drum beat, and the AI concept itself, doesn't seem to have an indicated end point. How many data centers does the country and world really need to function efficiently? How much valuable raw materials like copper and electricity can be devoted to what amounts to an enormous digital filing system? 

While practically all Americans have a pocket-size computer that connects them to the internet, it seems to be a fact that the same is now true of AI, at least in its preliminary form. Will there be a choice necessary between copper as used for piping and copper used in AI chips and electricity pumped into data centers as opposed to  peoples' home lighting and washing machines? What's most important?    

Sunday, July 6, 2025

A Fraud?

The fellows at the Issues & Insights website are speculating that the existential threat of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere isn't just a scientific error but rather a calculated lie by parties with political and financial interests in the fable, that it's about power and money. 

One doesn't need to be very intelligent or educated to realize that climate, over the long haul, definitely changes. Incredible changes have occurred in geologically relatively short periods of time when few if any humans were around to release CO2 and greenhouse gases into the sky. About 9000 years ago, the blink of an eye in the planet's history, much of  what's the northern US was covered in the mile-high sheet of a continental glacier. As the mantle of ice melted it left many signs of its former presence, glacial Lake Agassiz, for instance, its beaches and pot holes that are now part of the Red River Valley and its neighboring areas in North Dakota and Minnesota.

 Glacial Lake Agassiz | Department of Mineral Resources, North Dakota

 North Dakota Mineral Resources 

The existence of glacial Lake Agassiz and its disappearance has been known and accepted by geologists since the early 19th century. It is just one of many examples of incontrovertible evidence of dramatic climate change over a short period of time with no contribution by humankind. Life went on.

This is no secret and those hoping to use climate change as a vehicle to power and wealth are even more aware of the truth than the typical person.   

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Tibetan Education

The paywall-protected Wall Street Journal published a front page article on June 30, 2025 titled "China Uses Kids To Gut Tibetan Ways". It describes how the Chinese government has, through its educational system, tried, with mixed results to initiate Tibetan children into Chinese language and culture.

Tibet is an autonomous region of China, whatever that means, and during the past twenty years its students have been the focus of efforts to make them part of the Chinese communist system. This includes boarding schools, instruction by Mandarin-speaking teachers, of children at a very early age.

One Tibetan lamented that the children returned to their homes to visit "with a different way of thinking". 

"They are brainwashed by Chinese thoughts and propaganda," he said.

One could edit out the words "China" and "Chinese" in this article and replace them with "United States" and the story would still ring true. This is exactly what the US has done and continues to do  with the indigenous population of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii and other slivers of its empire. Unlike the US example, the Chinese don't appear to have made a serious effort to exterminate the Tibetans. From the beginning, the American Puritan political regime worked to literally kill as many native Americans as possible. The children of those pushed off their homes to inhospitable backwaters of the continent were sent to boarding schools to assimilate them into the Yankee consumer capitalist culture. Where schools were established on the miserable reservations English was the language of instruction. Boarding schools enrolled children of many different tribes and languages, English was the only common language of instruction. 

In what may have been a temporary benefit, in bush Alaska no public schools were provided for natives or whites until the Molly Hooch court case required them.

The Wall Street Journal should be embarrassed by this article which ignores an identical and even worse situation in its own backyard.   

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's Sweltering!

Reuters, always concerned with the inevitable destruction of man on earth by growing heat tells us of the first round matches at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club being played in "sweltering" heat, "soaring above 30 C". The sweltering heat of 30C corresponds to a temperature measured in fahrenheit units as 86F. According to one weather service the temperature in London may even "soar" to 88F later today.

But this is London, UK, a very small spot in geographic terms and it's temperature at any given moment doesn't reflect that of other locations only a relatively small distance away.

While athletic activity at this temperature is likely to produce perspiration, it's certainly no form of torture or even great discomfort. Maybe the fact that it's slightly unusual for it to be this warm in the UK, surrounded as it is by the ocean allows for such comments. 

We should be quick to note that during the summer months few residents of the warmer temperate regions of the world take their vacations in places known to be less sweltering. For instance Chicagoans are unlikey to spend a month in Nome, Alaska, currently 47F. An Italian from Naples probably won't haul his family to Hammerfest, Norway where it's 55F at this moment. Or try Hobart, Tasmania, 37F right now. In fact, one reason that those locations are sparsely populated is that they are generally uncomfortable from a climate standpoint.

 US industrial development is taking place in the southern, warmer regions rather than the uncomfortable northern plains and Rocky Mountains. A temperature of 88F just isn't all that hot.  The Disney theme parks are both in the very southernmost parts of the country. There won't be a Disney Planet in Havre, MT.

Friday, June 27, 2025

Fort Lee, Virginia Gets Its Name Back

Fort Lee, Virginia, named after Confederate Genera Robert E. Lee, was briefly called Fort Gregg-Adams during the Biden administration but is now once again known as Fort Lee. The Lee in question was a member of the post War Between the States units formed of former slaves in 1866 for the express purpose of destroying the native Americans.

The honored individual, Pvt. Fitz Lee, received the Medal of Honor for heroism in action in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

No record seems to have been kept of the number of native Americans killed defending their homes by Pvt. Lee and his "buffalo soldiers".