Geologists And Tech Industry Leaders Fear Mineral Trade Wars Imminent

Geologists And Tech Industry Leaders Fear Mineral Trade Wars Imminent:

China has a stranglehold on the high-tech world with control of the rare earth minerals market. They can squeeze the market anytime they desire and offer dozens of reasons why they aren't manipulating it.

Rare earth minerals are available elsewhere but at substantially higher cost which provides one more economic advantage to China in addition to cheap labor.

"A trade war is imminent, James Burnell of the Colorado Geological Survey explained in the Geosociety report:


“China is preparing to build 330 giga-watts worth of wind generators. That will require about 59,000 tons of neodymium to make high-strength magnets — more than that country’s annual output of neodymium. China supplies the world with a lot of those rare earth elements, like neodymium, and will have little or none to export if it moves ahead with its wind power plans…So the source for the West is problematical. [sic]”"

Bloggers in the Middle East: Don't be too cheeky | The Economist

Bloggers in the Middle East: Don't be too cheeky | The Economist:

Islamic culture does not inspire openness, transparency or true democratic freedom of speech given the evidence of crackdowns on bloggers by governments in Muslim countries. China is another bad actor in this regard.

Repressive governments are afraid of dissent and losing control and power.

"Iran is far from alone in locking up bloggers. Governments across the Middle East are increasingly twitchy about their citizens’ online activities. As internet use in the region has soared—up 19-fold since 2000, compared with a fivefold rise in the rest of the world, according to Internet World Stats, which monitors global internet usage—so the number jailed for what they do on the web has shot up too."

The Futurist's Top 10 Predictions for 2008

These predictions obviously extend beyond 2008 and their overall tenor is pessimistic and problematic. My grandchildren will inherit a very different world than the one I grew up in.

1. The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025.

Is this good news or not? I would argue it is, but the socialists among us will say this represents more unequal wealth distribution.

2. Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile industry.

This is good news because more jobs will be created as
people buy this stuff.

3. The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both could replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States.

Definitely bad news, but should we expect something
different as we have exported our manufacturing base, and lately our financial interests as Asian companies invest in many of America's largest banks and financial institutions to help bail them out of the sub-prime mortgage mess.

4. Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society.

Mixed news here. Criminals are alive and apparently
thriving. If we move more or our financial life online, the security must increase simultaneously.

5. The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event.

Very bad news, indeed.

6. Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century.

More bad news, but big companies will make a lot of money on this....GE for one.

7. World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people.

Should we expect anything less as medical science and agriculture continue to enable peole to live longer. The strain on the world's resources is the bad news.

8. The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080.

More bad news for the basket case that is most of Africa.

9. Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale rush to develop the Arctic.

Mixed news here. On one hand, the expanding
population must have resources, particularly fossil fuels and minerals. On the other hand , more people and development in the cold, but warming, North will displease the environmentalists.

10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities.

Not good, but because technology has advanced to this state, robots and other macro and micro devices will pervade our lives.

International language | Addison Independent

International language | Addison Independent

My grandson, Estlin, is touring China and performing with the VYO for the next two weeks. He stayed here last night and I dropped him at the airport at 5:00 am. He's really excited to be going and it will be a trip of a lifetime. Click above to read the story about the four young people from Addison County who will be among the 100 travelers.

Many of the orchestra members have been and will be blogging the trip here at http://www.youngwritersproject.org/vyo.

Held Hostage on Earth and in Space

Think about this future scenario:

China has become the world's leading economic power, producing the majority of goods for the world and by far the richest country on earth. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Europe are bogged down in a world wide war on Islamic terror with declining birth rates at home and a green, no-growth service economy largely committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while China pays little attention to global warming.

Because China needs Mid-east and Africa oil to fuel its growth and the higher expectations of its increasingly wealthy populace, it agrees to pay more for oil than the West can afford because we have not yet weaned ourselves from our oil addiction. Some of this oil revenue is used to fund the radical Islamists. China decides to raise prices for its manufactured goods and the West slowly finds itself in tightening financial straits ever more reliant on China to fund its national debts.

Then a spark ignites a war someplace on earth over natural resources and China and the West find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. The conflict escalates and China now decides to blackmail the West by threatening to shoot down the Global Positioning System satellites upon which the world has come to rely for both military and civilian applications. China has developed its own GPS system at this point.

The U.S. has not developed a similar capability to destroy satellites in orbit, according to this story in the NY Times today. What is our response to China's intimidation?