A New Age of Copper
September 27, 2023 4:41 AM Subscribe
But there was a darker side to his innovation. What it meant in practice was that rather than burrowing into a mountain, following a rich seam of ore deep into the earth, miners would now essentially demolish the entire mountain to extract its metal. This was not just mass production, but ‘mass destruction’. from The Discovery of Copper
Interesting read! At least for telecomms, the EU world is moving to a post-copper age? We finally gave up on our, increasingly unreliable, copper-wire telephone this Summer because The Government invested billions in a fibre-optic rural broadband scheme. We-the-punter paid nothing for the [average cost €3,000] installation. Telecomms is about 8% of the market for copper.
On the mountain reduced to a mighty hole in the ground front, 30 years ago a mining consortium discovered commercial quantities of andalusite in a hill about 10km from our gaff. Their business model was to cart the whole hill away in 40tonne trucks to fashion the lining of blast-furnaces. Local opposition raised a bunch of money [raffling a Ford Fiesta with tix £50 each etc.]. With commendable insight into Realökonomie, instead of chaining themselves together to block the access roads, they commissioned an alternative geological survey which concluded that andalusite made up a much smaller proportion of the hill.
At the moment, the known quantities of lithium-rich pegmatite in the same hills are also below economic extraction value. But, as Daniel Jackling demonstrated in the cited article, that can change as demand and supply fluctuate.
posted by BobTheScientist at 7:31 AM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
On the mountain reduced to a mighty hole in the ground front, 30 years ago a mining consortium discovered commercial quantities of andalusite in a hill about 10km from our gaff. Their business model was to cart the whole hill away in 40tonne trucks to fashion the lining of blast-furnaces. Local opposition raised a bunch of money [raffling a Ford Fiesta with tix £50 each etc.]. With commendable insight into Realökonomie, instead of chaining themselves together to block the access roads, they commissioned an alternative geological survey which concluded that andalusite made up a much smaller proportion of the hill.
At the moment, the known quantities of lithium-rich pegmatite in the same hills are also below economic extraction value. But, as Daniel Jackling demonstrated in the cited article, that can change as demand and supply fluctuate.
posted by BobTheScientist at 7:31 AM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
One of the biggest fallacies that thretens to destroy our civilization is summed up as "someone like Jackling will come along."
In particular, this is the fallacious idea held by neoliberal economists, that any time the price signal for a resource like copper shoots up, someone like Jackling will respond to it by inventing a new method for bringing more of the resource to market.
When you step back, you see that the idea is that any physical limitation or challenge we face can be addressed with a sufficient exertion of rightly guided will. Rightly guided, in this case, by the price signals of a free market. And sufficient exertion, "nerd harder, Jackling, there's money at stake." For economists, that's a perfect fallacy to adopt because it justifies going from freshman year all the way to a PHD without paying attention to the world outside an econ textbook, an ironic action for someone whose specialty is named "paying attention all around" in Greek.
What's even more ironic is that this particular fallacy reached its zenith in the brain of Mr. Trofim Lysenko. He also thought that the challenges of his era (food. need food) could be addressed with a sufficient exertion of will rightly guided by Marxism-Leninism. Leninize those pea seeds harder and the harvest will expand.
The truth, of course, is that people like Jackling don't just respond to price signals. Lots of agronomists and engineers in the Soviet Union did things to advance the state of the art for the 20th century because the need was there and the opportunity was there. Nobody dangled money in front of Norman Borlaug to start the Green Revolution. The need was there. And that was almost enough. You also have to have the means. In Jackling's case, that sums up to abundant coal. No coal? No copper. In other contexts, other means. But the means have to be there, and that is determined by the physical limits we are all subject to, much as our neoliberal lysenkoists like to assert otherwise.
Thanks for attending my TEDx talk.
posted by ocschwar at 8:01 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
In particular, this is the fallacious idea held by neoliberal economists, that any time the price signal for a resource like copper shoots up, someone like Jackling will respond to it by inventing a new method for bringing more of the resource to market.
When you step back, you see that the idea is that any physical limitation or challenge we face can be addressed with a sufficient exertion of rightly guided will. Rightly guided, in this case, by the price signals of a free market. And sufficient exertion, "nerd harder, Jackling, there's money at stake." For economists, that's a perfect fallacy to adopt because it justifies going from freshman year all the way to a PHD without paying attention to the world outside an econ textbook, an ironic action for someone whose specialty is named "paying attention all around" in Greek.
What's even more ironic is that this particular fallacy reached its zenith in the brain of Mr. Trofim Lysenko. He also thought that the challenges of his era (food. need food) could be addressed with a sufficient exertion of will rightly guided by Marxism-Leninism. Leninize those pea seeds harder and the harvest will expand.
The truth, of course, is that people like Jackling don't just respond to price signals. Lots of agronomists and engineers in the Soviet Union did things to advance the state of the art for the 20th century because the need was there and the opportunity was there. Nobody dangled money in front of Norman Borlaug to start the Green Revolution. The need was there. And that was almost enough. You also have to have the means. In Jackling's case, that sums up to abundant coal. No coal? No copper. In other contexts, other means. But the means have to be there, and that is determined by the physical limits we are all subject to, much as our neoliberal lysenkoists like to assert otherwise.
Thanks for attending my TEDx talk.
posted by ocschwar at 8:01 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Speaking of Ea-Nasir...
The Bronze Age was our species' first attempt at operating a long distance supply line. To make Bronze, you needed to bring together copper and tin. So you needed a copper mine, fully operating, along with a trade route to wherever the tin could be found, which came from traders who were naturally cagey about where they were getting it. Tin ingots in Israel have been identified as coming form Cornwall, so for that you needed timber with which to build ships for the Mediterranean, to reach modern day Cadiz, and the denizens of Cadiz (Phoenician name meaning "boundary", as the city existed to guard the secret of where the hell Cornwall was, needed their own supply of timber.
Your other source for tin was all the way in Uzbekistan, so you needed enough excess wealth to hand to everyone encountering the overland caravans going back and forth from there. And, as you keep harvesting timber for charcoal to smelt copper, and for ships to reach Penzance, the land changes around you. Go to the copper mining sites of Timna (Israel), Khirbet al Nakhass ("the slaggy ruin," Jordan), or even modern day Cyprus, and you can see that the timber must have run out. Ea Nasir's source of copper, the mythical site called Lagam in Sumerian, was only recently (tentatively) identified in Oman, and you'd be hard pressed to figure out how the hell they did any smelting there today.
And so came the Bronze Age collapse. Was it because charcoal for copper ran out? Or because timber for ships ran out? Or was it because there was not enough wealth to pacify everyone along the trade routes? Yes.
And the consequences are hinted at in the Bible. Read Joshua through 1st Samuel with an eye for material details: workers despairing over the loss of a single ax blade and calling on God to save them. A usurper killed by a slice-shaped-fragment-of-an-upper-millstone during an assault on a town wall. The crown prince of Israel, supported by his people, but having to settle for riding a donkey. Not a fun time.
Copper is a particularly tricky component of our civilization. Too cheap to guard closely, but too valuable not to. We have to develop a closed circuit for recycling the stuff, and not count on the next Jackling to provide us with more of it.
posted by ocschwar at 8:59 AM on September 27, 2023 [20 favorites]
The Bronze Age was our species' first attempt at operating a long distance supply line. To make Bronze, you needed to bring together copper and tin. So you needed a copper mine, fully operating, along with a trade route to wherever the tin could be found, which came from traders who were naturally cagey about where they were getting it. Tin ingots in Israel have been identified as coming form Cornwall, so for that you needed timber with which to build ships for the Mediterranean, to reach modern day Cadiz, and the denizens of Cadiz (Phoenician name meaning "boundary", as the city existed to guard the secret of where the hell Cornwall was, needed their own supply of timber.
Your other source for tin was all the way in Uzbekistan, so you needed enough excess wealth to hand to everyone encountering the overland caravans going back and forth from there. And, as you keep harvesting timber for charcoal to smelt copper, and for ships to reach Penzance, the land changes around you. Go to the copper mining sites of Timna (Israel), Khirbet al Nakhass ("the slaggy ruin," Jordan), or even modern day Cyprus, and you can see that the timber must have run out. Ea Nasir's source of copper, the mythical site called Lagam in Sumerian, was only recently (tentatively) identified in Oman, and you'd be hard pressed to figure out how the hell they did any smelting there today.
And so came the Bronze Age collapse. Was it because charcoal for copper ran out? Or because timber for ships ran out? Or was it because there was not enough wealth to pacify everyone along the trade routes? Yes.
And the consequences are hinted at in the Bible. Read Joshua through 1st Samuel with an eye for material details: workers despairing over the loss of a single ax blade and calling on God to save them. A usurper killed by a slice-shaped-fragment-of-an-upper-millstone during an assault on a town wall. The crown prince of Israel, supported by his people, but having to settle for riding a donkey. Not a fun time.
Copper is a particularly tricky component of our civilization. Too cheap to guard closely, but too valuable not to. We have to develop a closed circuit for recycling the stuff, and not count on the next Jackling to provide us with more of it.
posted by ocschwar at 8:59 AM on September 27, 2023 [20 favorites]
→
There is a philosophy in prospecting for oil that (please be sitting down for this) the very act of looking causes oil reserves to be formed. I remember reading that the Enron guys were very keen on it. While I never worked directly with anyone in the energy industry who believed in it, plenty folks I talked to had heard of it, and some cautioned me about how seriously people took it.
posted by scruss at 9:05 AM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
any time the price signal for a resource like copper shoots up, someone like Jackling will respond to it ...
There is a philosophy in prospecting for oil that (please be sitting down for this) the very act of looking causes oil reserves to be formed. I remember reading that the Enron guys were very keen on it. While I never worked directly with anyone in the energy industry who believed in it, plenty folks I talked to had heard of it, and some cautioned me about how seriously people took it.
posted by scruss at 9:05 AM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
There is a philosophy in prospecting for oil that (please be sitting down for this) the very act of looking causes oil reserves to be formed.
Not a very new idea. See also Rain Follows The Plow.
posted by notoriety public at 9:20 AM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Not a very new idea. See also Rain Follows The Plow.
posted by notoriety public at 9:20 AM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
> The crown prince of Israel, supported by his people, but having to settle for riding a donkey.
I'm not sure it's appropriate to identify riding a donkey as something you "settle for." Riding a donkey is messianic symbolism. The historian Richard Bulliet wrote a satirical novel about it.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:44 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure it's appropriate to identify riding a donkey as something you "settle for." Riding a donkey is messianic symbolism. The historian Richard Bulliet wrote a satirical novel about it.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:44 AM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I misremembered. It was a mule:
Then Absalom met the servants of David. Absalom rode on a mule. The mule went under the thick boughs of a great terebinth tree, and his head caught in the terebinth; so he was left hanging between heaven and earth. And the mule which was under him went on. 10 Now a certain man saw it and told Joab, and said, “I just saw Absalom hanging in a terebinth tree!”
Absalom made no religious claim to legitimacy, so he would have been better with a horse.
posted by ocschwar at 11:32 AM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Then Absalom met the servants of David. Absalom rode on a mule. The mule went under the thick boughs of a great terebinth tree, and his head caught in the terebinth; so he was left hanging between heaven and earth. And the mule which was under him went on. 10 Now a certain man saw it and told Joab, and said, “I just saw Absalom hanging in a terebinth tree!”
Absalom made no religious claim to legitimacy, so he would have been better with a horse.
posted by ocschwar at 11:32 AM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ah, Butte Montana,; the amazing Marcus Daly (copper from his mines & mills provided all the wire at the beginning of the electric age!). A later result was The Berkeley Pit that ate a significant part of the town when a mountain was removed.
The copper baron wars make for delicious corrupt corporate government shenanigans' reading. (Trump Tower rests on Daly's NY home site).
posted by Mesaverdian at 4:35 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
The copper baron wars make for delicious corrupt corporate government shenanigans' reading. (Trump Tower rests on Daly's NY home site).
posted by Mesaverdian at 4:35 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't recall Absalom being viewed entirely positively for one, and mules and are still valued to the present for being hardier than either a horse or a donkey.
posted by ockmockbock at 4:44 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by ockmockbock at 4:44 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Copper is a particularly tricky component of our civilization. Too cheap to guard closely, but too valuable not to
I popped into a big box hardware store yesterday. With a few minutes to spare, I remembered that I'd be needing a bunch of stranded wire of various gauges over the next few days... but it didn't matter. The shelves holding the spools of copper wire were under lock and key, with no employees in sight.
Ah well.
posted by tigrrrlily at 5:27 PM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Gold’s Deadly Truth: Much Is Mined With Mercury (gift link)
Ten years after an international treaty to ban mercury, the toxic metal continues to poison. The reason might have to do with your wedding ring.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:46 AM on September 28, 2023
Ten years after an international treaty to ban mercury, the toxic metal continues to poison. The reason might have to do with your wedding ring.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:46 AM on September 28, 2023
Why don't they just search through the tailing piles in the Keweenaw peninsula like my wife when we go on vacation? Or raid my wife's basement so I don't have to haul as many fucking rocks next time we move?
posted by charred husk at 6:44 AM on September 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by charred husk at 6:44 AM on September 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why don't they just search through the tailing piles in the Keweenaw peninsula like my wife when we go on vacation?
In many cases, they'd have to go dig up roads as construction companies have raided the poor rock (Keweenaw term for waste rock) piles for years to use in road construction. A lot of the stamp sands (mine waste deposited in the water after stamping operations) were reprocessed from the 1910s-1950s to get out the leftover copper. If you've ever seen the Quincy Dredge No. 2 on Torch Lake, its job was to hoover up the stamp sands for reclamation. Most of what is left is highly toxic although due to environmental remediation it is better than it used to be.
There are a fair few number of people in the Keweenaw who hope the copper mines will reopen someday...
posted by Preserver at 7:54 AM on September 28, 2023
In many cases, they'd have to go dig up roads as construction companies have raided the poor rock (Keweenaw term for waste rock) piles for years to use in road construction. A lot of the stamp sands (mine waste deposited in the water after stamping operations) were reprocessed from the 1910s-1950s to get out the leftover copper. If you've ever seen the Quincy Dredge No. 2 on Torch Lake, its job was to hoover up the stamp sands for reclamation. Most of what is left is highly toxic although due to environmental remediation it is better than it used to be.
There are a fair few number of people in the Keweenaw who hope the copper mines will reopen someday...
posted by Preserver at 7:54 AM on September 28, 2023
I don't recall Absalom being viewed entirely positively for one,
I know. I bring him because he was in a situation where he needed to show off as much status as possible so that people would rally behind his patricidal coup attempt. A horse would do that. King George V commented that before the advent of radio, his job was to show up on a horse and look like he knew what he was doing, from a distance. And yet, Absalom had to settle for a mule.
posted by ocschwar at 8:07 AM on September 28, 2023
I know. I bring him because he was in a situation where he needed to show off as much status as possible so that people would rally behind his patricidal coup attempt. A horse would do that. King George V commented that before the advent of radio, his job was to show up on a horse and look like he knew what he was doing, from a distance. And yet, Absalom had to settle for a mule.
posted by ocschwar at 8:07 AM on September 28, 2023
Today’s world requires vastly more copper than you could imagine...
I don't know. I can imagine quite a bit.
posted by neuron at 8:46 AM on September 28, 2023
I don't know. I can imagine quite a bit.
posted by neuron at 8:46 AM on September 28, 2023
There are a fair few number of people in the Keweenaw who hope the copper mines will reopen someday...
There's a chance a small mine, 7000 tons per day, may open up in a year or so called the Copperwood project. It surprisingly is fully permitted. Copper grade of 1.5 %
If you scroll down there's link to a 400 page 43-101 feasibility study which contains far more information than you would ever care to read.
The 43-101 contains history, geology, mineral tenure, development economic analysis, royalty structure etc, etc.
There's also second larger project in advanced stage.
posted by yyz at 9:20 AM on September 28, 2023
There's a chance a small mine, 7000 tons per day, may open up in a year or so called the Copperwood project. It surprisingly is fully permitted. Copper grade of 1.5 %
If you scroll down there's link to a 400 page 43-101 feasibility study which contains far more information than you would ever care to read.
The 43-101 contains history, geology, mineral tenure, development economic analysis, royalty structure etc, etc.
There's also second larger project in advanced stage.
posted by yyz at 9:20 AM on September 28, 2023
Why don't they just search through the tailing piles in the Keweenaw peninsula like my wife when we go on vacation? Or raid my wife's basement so I don't have to haul as many fucking rocks next time we move?
posted by charred husk at 6:44 AM on September 28
I don't know about the Keweenaw peninsula, but companies are looking at their tailings and waste rock piles and looking for ways to get out the minerals from them, including copper. Researchers are also looking at new extraction methods or at improving existing methods to work better on what was formerly seen as waste. Here is just one place to start if you want to look into the topoic.
posted by sardonyx at 8:51 PM on September 29, 2023
posted by charred husk at 6:44 AM on September 28
I don't know about the Keweenaw peninsula, but companies are looking at their tailings and waste rock piles and looking for ways to get out the minerals from them, including copper. Researchers are also looking at new extraction methods or at improving existing methods to work better on what was formerly seen as waste. Here is just one place to start if you want to look into the topoic.
posted by sardonyx at 8:51 PM on September 29, 2023
« Older Separating hyperplanes with Shoggoth Shalmaneser | "I really think there’s such a thing as being... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by automatronic at 6:52 AM on September 27, 2023 [13 favorites]