And where are those mining machines that allow this to occur manufactured? How about all the components of the mining machines? The locomotives that take all that iron ore to port? The port infrastructure? The ships that transport the ore to its overseas customers?
WA and its mining wealth and efficiency wouldn't exist without a global market for both its supply and demand.
Look at all the people involved in machine manufacture, transport, mining, etc. for sure.
The point being made is that more and more tonnes of raw material are being shipped to smelters per person than ever before.
Automation is still advancing so this will only increase, automation is also advancing in processing and production - we no longer need vast numbers of people to produce a billion tonnes of steel, and the number currently required is still falling.
No the automation would not increase if population would fall, because there would be less demand for iron ore. Your machines would rust away and the knowledge to make them would get lost. We are not living in Star trek utopia where with a push of a button a machine makes whatever you want. Less people means less specialization, less creativity and less activity.
Even if the population suddenly stabilised overnight mining automation would continue to increase in order to meet the rising per capita demand from global population.
It's already rising to meet the transition from fossil fuel energy to other sources.
We are living in a world where 60+ year olds like myself increased per capita throughput in exploration, extraction, processing and production. Much of this creative activity that sees results today came from a time 40 years ago when there were far fewer people than today.
None of what you said would be possible with a dwindling population. We do not live in a Star trek utopia where at press of a button every wish is synthesized by a machine. More people can simply get more done.
There is a good reason why most of the stuff, new discoveries and technologies come from big countries and not from small ones.
Even rich countries per capita with small population size do not build huge infrastructure projects, do not send stuff and people in space, do not have sophisticated armies,...
All of this was put in motion with a population much smaller than todays.
The bulk of it was achieved with a population smaller than todays.
The ongoing work being planned doesn't require the population to grow, there is demand enough from a growing proportion wanting a greater standard of living and a world making a massive transition in base energy.
>> All of this was put in motion with a population much smaller than todays.
Your logic is circular. Because we can go all the way back to first few humans ever to exist and say they put it into motion, therefore a small group of couple of hundred of people is enough. Or go into other direction and dream what new wonders the next 40 years would bring with the rising population.
>> The ongoing work being planned doesn't require the population to grow, there is demand enough from a growing proportion wanting a greater standard of living and a world making a massive transition in base energy.
It doesn't have to grow, but we are not talking about growing we are talking about shrinking.
We are not talking about shrinking back to zero, I am talking about world population finding a sustainable balnce, say five or seven billion by 2300 or so.
You can access annual reports and technical reports on pretty much all the major mine sites about the globe, capital investments, plant sizes, work forces, etc.
then expand outwards mapping supply chain networks, etc. You know, the usual legwork.
It’s possible that the machines are operating on a type of population arbitrage principle.
E.g. with much smaller markets, many small components will be uneconomical to build and will not be available to the complex machinery required to mine at scale. Therefore, they will break down and be replaced by much less efficient but easier to maintain equipment thus decreasing quality of life for everyone in a negative feedback loop.
(I’m a proponent of this belief, and expect it to apply to the semiconductor industry as well, esp. as SK/APEC engineers start to retire en masse.)
In regular football the spherical ball spends more time in the air than rolling, too. And in popular variants like Australian rules football or Rugby the ball is egg shaped, and that doesn't seem to cause any problems with enjoyment of these sports.
The evidence regarding sales of bin liners is mixed:
> The study found California communities with bag policies saw sales of 4-gallon trash bags increase by 55% to 75%, and sales of 8-gallon trash bags increase 87% to 110%. These results echo earlier studies that also showed increases in sales of smaller plastic trash bags.
But while sales of small garbage bags jumped after policies were implemented, sales of larger 13-gallon trash bags -- the size often found in kitchen trash cans -- remained relatively unchanged. [1]
Personally I can say I switched to just not lining the bin after the plastic bag ban. I have a separate compost bin for food scraps so the main bin mostly doesn't get too dirty, and if it does get some liquid or whatever on it, a quick rinse with the hose fixes that.
We use a paper bag (from grocery deliveries) as our general household waste bin under the sink. Also under the sink are a compost bin and then a recycling tub. The compost and recycling tubs fill up far faster than the general waste bag.
Studies looking into the issue have found non silica compounds cause issues too, and its the engineering process rather than the silica that causes the problem. This is why they haven't created an exemption for low-silica products.
> "It's not just about the silica, it's something specific about the engineered stone products that's causing such a significant issue in workers fabricating these products."
> "What we found ... was that the natural products we had in the panel of products that we assessed actually caused the biggest inflammatory response," Professor Zosky said.
I'm not sure why they are saying it's the engineering. Their own study says that natural stone products are worse than the engineered products!
It's probably there's a larger number of cases of silicosis from engineered products despite it being safer. And that's probably because it's easier to cut in the field so people do it more often.
> In conclusion, this study is the most comprehensive assessment of the physico-chemical characteristics of dusts generated from a wide range of resin-based engineered stones (of high- and reduced-silica contents) and the first to assess how these characteristics relate to the lung cell response, at a scale large enough to potentially identify components of these materials that could be linked to the severity of disease among ES workers. We showed that exposure to high levels of RCS dust during ES processing is likely contributing to disease severity in this occupational group, however, other inorganic components of ES dust, in particular Co and Al, may also be strong contributors. Furthermore, some of the highest inflammatory responses recorded were observed in non-engineered stones, further supporting the view that components other than crystalline silica may be contributing to the pathogenesis of severe silicosis. The outcomes of this study have important implications for future regulation of ES products as they challenge the common view that reducing the crystalline silica alone will eliminate disease risk.
The key take-away I get from that is that it's not silica specifically, but something else about engineered stone that is making it so unsafe to work with. And that's why they are banning the whole product class.
Do you know if they ruled out the resins used to bind stuff together?
In theory perfectly cured resins are supposed to be non-toxic (eg food safe) but you can get sensitised to specific mixes or accelerants and sometimes the curing isn't perfect...
EDIT: It looks like they considered it but didn't come to any firm conclusions, further research needed etc.
The theory I’ve heard would make a lot of sense: the resin coating prevents natural breakdown, similar to how asbestos victims never recover while small glass fragments are eventually removed. I hope that some researcher figures this out because I’d bet it’ll be applicable to more than just this product.
It's been said elsewhere here, but the ban isn't because of manufacturing. The stuff can and generally is handled very safely during manufacturing, and they appear confident they can sue / jail the odd cowboy shop that doesn't comply.
What they aren't confident is their ability to force the installers handle it safely. When it gets to the site there is often a corner to be shaved, or a unexpected hole needed. It only takes slightly more effort to use a wet saw, but to contractors time is money and it's their health they are putting as risk - so it's OK, right? The site is typically a new house or small business. Policing those sites effectively is prohibitively costly, suing for the consequences after they happen doesn't work because the disease takes years to manifest so they've killed a few people by the time it happens.
So in typical Australian fashion they've decided people making decisions in their 20's they maim or kill them in their 30's is not OK (that is what's happening), so they take what seems drastic action. It's entirely in keeping with the Australian way. We were the first insist on plain paper packaging for cigarettes for example, ditto on seat belts, we enforce total alcohol bans in towns where alcohol related violence is deemed too high (typically we see a 60% drop in alcohol related crime when that happens).
The exposure to silica comes from cutting and grinding - and there is probably more exposure to cutting and grinding from natural stone (first at the quarry and second in production).
I think the important distinction is that with natural stone, much more is cut to fit from the factory (which is easier to handle dust) vs cut on site.
Since it's a luxury but not a super expensive product, the more expensive process of precise measurement, off-site waterjet/laser cutting is not suitable.
Natural stone are expensive and a luxury items. They are not the alternative to engineered stone really. Engineered stone are bought by middle-class, and thus in much higher number. The alternative being usually plain wood.
While natural stone is more expensive, it also requires sealer (wax/polymer + VOCs) is more prone to cracking or breaking during transport or use (put a hot pan on the counter and find out) and we do cut it on site with a angle grinder when nessisary. Engineered stone generates a ton of microplastics when being fabricated, and it wouldn't surprise me if it had endocrine disrupting chemicals. I'm a cranky old web dev, looking for my next dev/ops job, email in bio :)
It’s not weird. Natural stone has been used forever and it was only after engineered stone entered the market they started to see a sharp rise in silicosis cases. Why ban a product that wasn’t causing the problem?
Engineered stone has been around for 60 years by now. Something tells me they weren't tracking silicosis cases as diligently back in the 1960s as they are today. Most likely, cases are up because they are better diagnosed and tracked today than before engineered stone was a thing.
I don't understand how you could possibly draw this conclusion based on the evidence we have.
>Engineered stone, a durable and affordable alternative to natural materials like granite and marble, exploded in popularity in Australia throughout the 2000s.
>However doctors began sounding the alarm after noticing a surge in stonemasons developing silicosis, a long-term and sometimes fatal lung disease caused by inhaling unsafe levels of silica dust.
This is all in the last couple decades where doctors were well aware of and tracking cases. It’s very well documented and there’s no debate about cases increasing. The only debate is what exact is it about ES that makes it so much more deadly then natural stone.
It is very much linked to the use of ES not “better tracking of cases”
You clearly did absolutely no research or even read the linked article and are responding with you feelings on the matter.
This is actually completely reasonable and a positive for the energy grid. Large industrial energy users who can switch off when needed make the grid stronger, not weaker.
To illustrate, imagine a grid with 1000MW max demand and 2000MW of production. Let's say the generation is composed of equal parts solar, wind, gas, and nuclear.
You've got 500MW of always on (nuclear), 500MW dispatchable (gas), and 1000MW intermittent.
When the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, where do you put all your extra energy?
Well if you add on another 500MW of bitcoin mining, you can send it there. And if you hit peak demand when you've got no renewables (or the gas/nuclear is offline) you can switch off your extra demand.
The dispatchable industrial user is helping to pay to keep the extra capacity around you only need a few days a year.
Natural gas and coal make up over half of Texas power generation. We're better off ramping them down during low demand rather than keeping them running at max capacity for bitcoin mining of all things. What an environmental nightmare. Your example only works if most of the power comes from green energy sources.
But ERCOT is not running at max fossil fuel generation capacity at all times. [1]
Keeping industrial scale operations running is usually cheaper, safer and more efficient than turning them completely off. This is not like switching off a lightbulb. ERCOT is using these agreements so that they can smoothly ramp down and dial up generation capacity.
No, they are using these agreements because they simply don't have enough capacity regardless and are desperate to find ways to cut power usage. You don't live here do you? Otherwise you'd see the constant emergency alerts from ERCOT begging residents to lower power usage or risk outages.
The flip side of that is you can use control of all those high wattage devices to prevent power outages by shifting load to times when more energy is available.
Hopefully, that's how the impulse will be remembered.
Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been this buried deeper in the article
"The US worked through Third World countries and fake companies and finally was able to ship the ore to the US to build the SR-71."
And to complete the loop, Russia is now importing sanctioned American microchips for its missiles via third parties. I wonder if the order form states they will be used in smart pizzas ovens.
80% of the world's silicon and magnesium comes from Russia/China. US can't make the stealth coating on the F-35 without it. Can't control where the big bang placed mineral deposits...
*Technically silicon is everywhere but until the US and EU are willing to rip up their riverbeds to get at it, it's as good as nonexistent there.
I would word that differently. Different sources of sand are good for different things. River sand is very good for concrete, which cares almost entirely about shape and not chemistry. If your goal is silicon you're usually looking elsewhere.
the * is the important part. Little to do with the big bang, much more to do with where we export environmentally disastrous mining operations to. The countries the West destroyed by (among many other things) putting the mines there now (at least that) reap a dividend in leash power. Good for them.
The power requirement at cruising speed would quite a lot less than max power would it not? If cruse consumed 60% of max you'd be using closer to 80kW which would give you over 2 hours flight time.
The torque steer in my FWD EV (BYD Atto) is horrendous. Sure its possible to use clever engineering to manage it, but just switching to EVs isn't going to magically make torque steer go away.
Wouldn't this apply to other continents too? Given for example Vancouver Island is part of North America, then North America (the island, not the continent) would qualify as it too is sub-continental. Europe and Asia would be the only continents excluded by virtue of being connected by land.
WA and its mining wealth and efficiency wouldn't exist without a global market for both its supply and demand.