
Time is running out for sand - dsr12
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02042-4
======
dang
Threads from 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17916004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17916004)

2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15739917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15739917)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400760)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206717)

2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10569147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10569147)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9268951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9268951)

------
todd8
Oh no. Nextera Energy, according to [1] is "... one of the largest wind and
solar energy developers in North America". According to the article, _800
metric tons_ of concrete go into building a wind turbine.

Replacing all of the fossil fuel based power generation in the USA could
require _one million_ wind turbines according to some sources! My own back of
the envelope calculations indicate that we would need close to 500,000 wind
turbine to be built. I suppose that additional infrastructure and changes to
the power grid for such a massive number of turbines could require addition
concrete as well, spelling doom for sand.

[1] [http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2013/04/17/nextera-
energy...](http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2013/04/17/nextera-energy-uses-
over-800-metric-tons-of-concrete-per-wind-turbine/)

~~~
nine_k
I wish we devised a way to make turbines out of fossil fuel. One word:
plastics.

I hope that something comparable to concrete can be made out of polymers,
glass / ceramics, and steel at a lower CO2 cost.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
That's completely impractical. I am not a structural engineer, but I know
enough about it to know that plastic is certainly NOT the solution.

------
chrismorgan
So, industry needs angular sand, and that’s mostly found on rivers. The
difference matters for concrete and such, but I wonder whether rivers are so
fussy about the type of sand in them.

What would happen if you took the desert sand and used it to replace the river
sand? Because you’re now mining and transporting twice, you’ll definitely have
higher costs.

~~~
dgjrhgi
Sand type definitely matters for water body ability to hold water. I have read
articles where Indian ponds/lakes(used in older India for conserving water)
were completely destroyed by Britisher's in attempt to clean them. They
disturbed the existing floor composition leading to higher water percolation
which dried the lake quickly.

~~~
valarauko
I doubt the ponds had sand, though. The size of sand particles is due to
recent erosion and will continue to erode down to clay. Ponds and lakes are
not capable of the level of erosion to create sand. Besides, sand is pretty
poor at holding water. Remove the silt at the bottom of a lake clogging it up,
and it'll percolate through much faster.

------
quaquaqua1
It would seem to me that we simply need to make buildings (and other
materials) out of other resources.

Whether they are expensive or only effective in certain situations is for the
purchaser to decide.

One man's bamboo is another man's carbon fiber, I suoppose.

~~~
ip26
Wouldn't it be handy if you could make granules of "sand" out of carbon,
perhaps captured from the air...

~~~
0815test
It's even better than that. You can grind metal oxides that form a sizeable
fraction of Earth's crust and are relatively easy to extract into a sort of
"dust" or "sand" that will actively sequester carbon out of the air, with no
further energy input needed. Not silicon-based rock, though,

~~~
thechao
An olivine-process concrete would be the holy grail: net-carbon negative
concrete.

------
blackbear_
If you want to read more on the topic, I enjoyed the book "The World in a
Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization", by Vince Beiser
(no affiliation)

------
Animats
Their data supposedly comes from "Sverdrup, H. U., Koca, D. & Schlyter, P.
BioPhys. Econ. Res. Qual.2, 8 (2017)" Vague reference, no title.

This seems to be "BioPhysical Economics and Resource Quality", which is a
Springer publication. Here's the actual article, "A Simple System Dynamics
Model for the Global Production Rate of Sand, Gravel, Crushed Rock and Stone,
Market Prices and Long-Term Supply Embedded into the WORLD6 Model", by Harald
U. Sverdrup and others.[1] It's not even paywalled. Some quotes:

 _" The resources of sand and gravel are estimated at 12 trillion ton each,
another 125 trillion tons of rock is suitable for crushing to sand and gravel
and at least 42 trillion ton of quality stone is available for production of
cut stone."_

 _" Sand, gravel and stone materials use in construction amounts to about
47–59 billion tons per year_"

" _Sand and gravel show plateau behaviour and reach their maximum production
rate in 2060–2070. The reason for the slight peak towards a plateau behaviour
is partly driven by an expected population decline and increasing prices for
sand and gravel, limiting demand. Assuming business-as-usual conditions rates
remain at that level for centuries._ "

So we have another 1000-2000 years of sand left? Did anyone read the
references?

Incidentally, if you are in Silicon Valley and need base rock, there's a place
on Seaport Boulevard in Redwood City where you can get free concrete, ground
into gravel-sized chunks. They charge for concrete disposal; the product is
free.

[1]
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41247-017-0023-2](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41247-017-0023-2)

~~~
dredmorbius
Heavy structural materials tend strongly toward local utilisation as transport
costs are so prohibitive (water transport possibly excepted). Concrete
companies are the canonical anti-monopoly-tending industrial sector example in
many econ texts.[1]

So your objection is somewhat like claiming oxygen starvation by fire is
impossible since the atmosphere as a whole is 20% oxygen. It's what's near you
that matters, and the local impacts of sand and gravel mining are often
severe. As the _Nature_ article notes:

 _Desert sand grains are too smooth to be useful, and most of the angular sand
that is suitable for industry comes from rivers (less than 1% of the world’s
land)._

Riparian ecosystems are generally the most productive of terrestrial (vs.
marine) zones, and activities at one point on a river will have major impacts
downstream and even offshore.[2]

Another excellent reference on physical resource use is Vaclav Smil's _Making
the Modern World_ [https://www.worldcat.org/title/making-the-modern-
world/oclc/...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/making-the-modern-
world/oclc/868348464)

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Which suggests strongly that frictions may be the most effective
antimonopoly measures, and low-friction sectors tend strongly toward monopoly.

2\. E.g., the Mississippi River dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, much of which
is a consequence of Chicago toilets, 2000km north. As well as ag activity
along the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio-Arkansas-Red river system.

------
nanomonkey
The problem seems to be that desert sand is too smooth to use in concrete.
Perhaps a method is needed for fusing desert sand in such a way that it
becomes rough. Perhaps large fresnel lenses that use sunlight to fuse the
grains into small clumps?

~~~
rootusrootus
Perhaps melt it into glass and then as it cools take the broken chunks and
grind 'em up into sand again. A bit energy intensive but hey, if you're
running out of sand and and all you have is the wind-blown smooth kind...

~~~
twic
Crushed or ground glass is already used in concrete:

[http://www.concrete.org.uk/fingertips-
nuggets.asp?cmd=displa...](http://www.concrete.org.uk/fingertips-
nuggets.asp?cmd=display&id=783)

Interestingly, it can be either aggregate or cement, depending on how finely
it is ground.

------
d_iv
I remember years ago I frequented a popular vanilla Minecraft server with a
few hundred regular players. The world boundaries were somewhat tighter than
they needed to be. The first resource to be exhausted wasn't ore, or trees,
but sand.

------
bookofjoe
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20365803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20365803)

------
gnode
> Desert sand grains are too smooth to be useful

I wonder how hard it would be to convert smooth sand into angular sand.
Perhaps a pulsed laser could be used to fracture the grains into angular
fragments or something like that.

Not only would being able to use desert sand create an abundant supply, but
it'd be beneficial for fighting desertification.

------
spurmboy
Why would you need angular sand for electronics?

------
boksiora
people can start gathering sand from the deserts and plant trees on the new
land

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Desert sand isn't useful as it's too smooth and has properties nearer dust or
silt than sharp sand.

~~~
HarryHirsch
They talk about the three main uses of sand being concrete, glass and
electronics (the third one is actually wrong, only 15 % of silicon produced
ends up in the semiconductor industry, the rest is used in metallurgy). I can
imagine that one could use desert sand for the last two purposes but don't
know how much of an impact that would make.

~~~
throwaway2048
In most glass production, and in all silicon production you need sand of high
chemical purity, desert sand is heavily contaminated with things that are not
silicon dioxide.

------
bosma
CTRL-F "price" 0 results

~~~
gameswithgo
its in one of the two charts, as an image.

~~~
jjoonathan
Yeah, but nearly every other HN comment is either

1) wringing its hands about a problem that probably has less of an impact on
construction prices than a single NIMBY catching a cold and missing the next
zoning meeting

2) suggesting an alternative that would charitably be 1000x the current market
clearing price, ignoring the fact that there are probably alternatives at
1.2x, 1.3x, and 1.8x the current price that will kick in long before the 1000x
solution would become relevant

.

There are many things that markets handle poorly, but this is not one of them,
and the stupidity on display in this comments section is a stark reminder why
markets are a good default choice for coordinating human activity.

~~~
jessaustin
No kidding. Sand is one of the cheapest substances you can buy, and always has
been. If it increases enough in price, builders will use something else.
They're still using sand...

------
ecoled_ame
As with every resource-depletion issue like this, the obvious answer is to
reduce the number of humans. Consider never reproducing instead of trying to
think of some clever technological solution.

~~~
GuiA
If you are wealthy and educated, adopt. The greatest act of humanism one can
make.

------
cletus
So I've come around to the belief that we're on the verge of another massive
civilization-level change that will be transformative. Think flight,
electricity, motorized transport, plastic, writing, agriculture,
domestication, firearms, etc (and no I'm not just listing techs from Civ).

That change will be when we have cheaper mass power generation than fossil
fuels.

The reason this will be transformative is that a lot of problems basically go
away when this happens.

Take burning hydrocarbons for energy. We can make hydrocarbons from the
atmosphere. It's simple chemistry. It just makes no sense to spend
hydrocarbons to make hydrocarbons from air. That's a net loss of power. If
wind or solar (both of which have problems with inconsistent power generation,
which is an issue of using them for the power grid). Batteries are of course
one solution to this. Another is making fuel from air and using it when it's
calm or at night or cloudy (respectively) to smooth out power output.

Bringing this back to sand, we can make sand. It's really just ground up stone
and we have plenty of stone. Current sand is made from millions of years of
erosion by water. But we can make more sand. It's just cost-prohibitive to do
so now because energy is too expensive.

On a side note, I honestly don't think humanity can pull back on carbon
emissions. Trying to change behaviour is largely going to be fruitless. What
will change behaviour is other power sources being cheaper so that's what we
need to strive towards.

~~~
steve_adams_86
We can't manufacture the sand we need (yet).

