hunter
hunter's JournalThere are excellent alternatives to copper for plumbing...
... not so much for household wiring. Aluminum wiring works for large scale projects maintained by professionals, but it proved dangerous in homes, causing many fires. It's possible that modern material sciences, electronics (such as arc-fault circuit interuptors), and low energy LED lighting and other electrical appliances, could make aluminum household wiring viable, but there's a tremendously bad reputation to overcome, along with an expectation that ordinary wall outlets will deliver at least 1.5 kilowatts.
Copper is used in cars too. There's about 150 pounds of copper in pure electric cars like the Tesla, three or four times more copper than a modern fuel powered car uses. Older fuel powered cars used a lot of copper too. They had copper radiators and heater cores, etc..
Modern renewable energy systems tend to use a lot of copper too, requiring more copper per kilowatt hour than conventional power plants.
The sad thing about this U.S. copper mine is that it might be much less destructive to the natural environment than copper mines in places with very few or no environmental regulations.
I often think about what it would take to provide every human on earth with safe comfortable housing. Providing everyone with a big suburban house with copper plumbing and wiring, an electric car in the driveway, and wind turbines on the hill would do unimaginable damage to the earth.
I've got neighbors living in a house owned by a Chinese extended family.
My great grandfather's house in San Francisco, the one my grandma and her sister were born in, is also owned now by foreign investors.
My grandma's childhood bedroom is now a full apartment. I talked to someone living there a few years ago and he couldn't believe the entire house once belonged to a single family, or that the luxury apartment of the house was once the home of a much abused Irish housekeeper/cook/maid, spinster queen of the big kitchen, and child of St. Ignatius Parish.
My great grandma sold the house in the Great Depression. Don't cry, she had others. My great grandfather was a dreamer who knew the future belonged to Hollywood motion pictures and the aircraft industry, but he bet everything he had on the wrong players and then he died.
I've no inherited wealth, and just a little white privilege, and I won't be happy if my parent's don't spend it all on things that make them happy.
If I don't inherit a big flaming pile of shit with debt collectors calling me so I can mock them, I will not be happy.
Was it a Russian bomb, or a Chinese bomb?
Or maybe it was no bomb at all. Maybe they were pumping nuclear waste into the deep earth like your friendly neighborhood Oklahoma frackers.
The last thing Russia, China, and South Korea want is a destabilized North Korea. Millions of starving and severely disoriented refugees flooding across the border is a bad day in international relations. You can't shoot them.
Years ago I was joking here that maybe someone should give North Korea a bomb just to shut them up, make them wear the big boy pants.
Now I'm a little worried someone else with an actual bomb agreed.
Possibly we are witnessing great brilliance in foreign policy. If a big boy hydrogen bomb destroyed all of North Korea's bomb testing tunnels and a larger portion of their testing technology, then maybe it was worth it.
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Name: HunterGender: Male
Current location: California
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 38,594