Gallium cannot be produced at scale because it does not form concentrated ores in nature. It cannot be usefully mined directly. The only reason it is relatively inexpensive is that there is limited demand for the minuscule quantities that are currently produced.
Gallium is currently supplied by reprocessing the waste from other convenient metal ores to extract the traces of gallium. Even if we maximized gallium extraction from these waste streams, we are talking about a few thousand tons of gallium per year. We produce more gold every year than there is practically available gallium.
Unfortunately this is the story with many proposed solutions to carbon capture. Many things are possible as a prototype which are completely infeasible at the industrial scales required to make a dent in atmospheric carbon because the resources don't exist to run chemistry at that scale.
> The only reason [Gallium] is relatively inexpensive is that there is limited demand for the minuscule quantities that are currently produced.
It is possible that we might be able to find more if we actively start looking for it? This would not be the first time that what was once a waste product becomes valuable once we know how to use it. Regarding gallium itself, its presence as basically waste product in bauxite ore suggests we can increase production (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...) and there may be other sources if we start searching.
Gallium is found everywhere, it doesn't make sense to actively search for it because it doesn't concentrate anywhere. That's the whole problem. There is little that distinguishes bauxite ore from my backyard in terms of the amount of gallium that can be extracted.
The advantage of extracting it from certain ore waste streams is two-fold even though they don't contain much gallium. First, the chemical processing cost varies with the chemistry of the rocks you extract the gallium from, and certain types of ore waste such as bauxite, zinc, etc are cheaper to deal with. Second, these rocks have already been dug out of the ground as part of a mining operation, which is much cheaper than strip mining an arbitrary place to extract the same trace quantities of gallium -- you get to free-ride on the extraction costs of the primary mineral someone already paid for. If it doesn't matter where you dig, then all you can really optimize for is the processing cost of where someone already dug.
It would make no sense to increase bauxite production for the purpose of gallium production. Extracting gallium from bauxite is only economical to the extent that there is healthy demand for the aluminum produced from that bauxite. This is common in mining operations -- a secondary mineral that cannot be economically mined by itself becomes profitably extractable from the same ore if and only if the primary mineral is sufficiently profitable. Many less common metals are produced solely via secondary extraction because they cannot be profitably mined directly even when they concentrate.
wouldn't it also increase tailings thus we would just change our pollution problem from co2 to toxic mining waste?
I mean aren't tailings from bauxite highly toxic?
No, bauxite processing is pretty benign. Strong hydroxides are used to extract the aluminum. Conveniently, a fraction of the gallium in the ore also leaches into the same hydroxide solution, so you can extract it by processing the waste solution after the aluminum has been precipitated. Any ore that uses strong alkali extraction is a candidate for cheap gallium extraction.
Bauxite processing produces iron, silicate, and similar minerals. Nothing anyone would identify as toxic. The alkali hydroxide solutions are recycled because they are one of the most expensive inputs. Nothing to worry about as such things go.
Right, but it's fair to say the real pollution from bauxite comes from the production of aluminum. It's often said that aluminum is solid electricity and if the electricity used to produce it comes from coal then its production is polluting, if from clean energy then it isn't (well, at least it's minimal).
The tailings from the Bayer process for extracting aluminium oxide from bauxite aren't toxic. The remains ("red mud") have an elevated pH from the residual sodium hydroxide used in the extraction of the ore but that's about it. There's a lot of it though and that sheer amount makes it a bit of an environmental problem as Red Mud has limited industrial use and much of it will be dumped / stored somewhere.
Yeah, basically there's only one solution to the CO2 problem that's also the solution with the least political will to push it through: deindustrialization.
Everything else relies on miracles and/or unobtainium.
Or nuclear. No one is going to deindustrialize. It's just not going to happen, and it's not a practical solution. It's right up there with forced sterilization to limit resource utilization. Either tech and industry saves us, or our species dies.
The level of industrialization that we’ve reached in the present moment is a key contributor to falling birth rates, and what will soon be a stable and shrinking human population, a process already achieved in advanced nations and one we shouldn’t get in the way of in the places where it still has some time to go.
De-industrialization would result in growing population and an even more massive increase in the conversion of wildlands to food production.
The implication of that is that we should accept climate change, is that what you're saying? Deindustrialization would probably be worse than climate change so it's likely not an option. In case you want deindustrialization, can you estimate it consequences in terms of deaths caused or some other important metric so we can compare it to climate change?
I think we could do the following; local seasonal food farmed as naturally as possible. It’s likely to still use some carbon, but doing this would massively reduce what’s used today.
Tax meat production heavily.
Tax air travel heavily and these taxes should increase exponentially per journey per person.
Stop shipping goods half way around the world… make the things you need locally.
Improve the grid and invest in plans for heating using electricity.
Build hundreds of small nuclear plants.
I think that’s net zero roughly but it’s not possible politically even though it’s a feasible solution to the problem.
This is the conventional wisdom, but as you mention it's not politically possible. It would be hard for one country to enact all of these changes, let alone all the world's countries.
There is an alternative path and that is radical renewable energy production. Many of the things you mention are not intrinsically harmful, they are only harmful because of the dependency on fossil fuels. For example, shipping things around the world is not intrinsically harmful, it is only harmful because it today requires fossil fuels.
From this perspective the actual problem is a shortage of renewable energy. If we build vastly more renewable energy capacity then we can make fossil fuels economically unviable. Since that is a problem of money rather than politics it is much more viable as a solution.
The alternative to what I’ve said is probably a pretty horrendous dystopia because we still have nowhere to store renewables let alone a process that can make the type of diesel used in container ships…
I strongly doubt that local food production would be less carbon intense. The reason for producing food in far off, but often sunny places is generally about accessing the free solar energy they have as well as higher efficiency because they can supply the whole globe year round, rather than one nation on a weather dependant cycle.
Shipping isn't particularly polluting by it's nature. Currently we allow people to burn some really dirty fuels in ships on the basis that it won't directly affect too many local voters and the fossil fuel industry needs to do something with the stuff they can't burn near people, but it would be relatively easy to regulate and is generally tightening up over time.
Moving to clean ammonia or hydrogen engines is also very doable.
Carbon taxes are often a talking point for politicians that don't actually want to do anything but many of your ideas could be better implemented as carbon fees and/or tariffs so that it will optimize for greenhouse gasses directly, not for what people think is the carbon cost of something.
"Deindustrialization would probably be worse than climate change so it's likely not an option."
That's very true but nevertheless we could improve things very considerably by manufacturing products that are very much more durable. Today, much of production is given over to manufacturing crappy junk that has a very short life and there's almost no political will to stop it (even Greenies are known to buy junk because it's cheap and they've no cohesive or determined plan to improve the situation).
Instead, it's inevitable that we'll fall back to blunt tools such as carbon taxes that disproportionately disadvantage the poor - and we can be certain of this fact irrespective of what politicians might say or promise, as it's a dog-eat-dog world and the poor have always had less political power and clout than the rich. (Sometimes even I have difficulties paying my electricity bills and a carbon tax will stress my already tight budget even futher.)
It's inevitable that we'll arrive at suboptimal solutions such as carbon taxes in that they are lowest common denominator thinking (as it's my experience that the collective decision-making IQ of politicians is well below the 100 mark, thus we cannot expect to see smart solutions arising from them).
Around where I live shops are filled all sorts of crappy lowgrade goods that are specifically designed as throwaway items and the situation is almost identical everywhere else.
If all this junk were replaced with more durable goods (and we stopped buying so much unnecessary stuff that we don't actually need) then I'd reckon we'd do better than having a broad non-selective carbon tax.
When we eventually do end up with a carbon tax then it ought to be applied to selective industries - ones that could would actually benefit by upgrading plant and facilities and it should only apply on the proviso that the replacement equipment is more efficient/less polluting. Adding a carbon tax when no reasonable or economic improvement is possible will only raise prices without any benefit (that's why it'd be best to apply it across processes that would specifically benefit from being upgraded than across complete industries per se).
One may ask how feasible is it to improve the durability of everyday items. Answering that in detail would, no doubt, fill many volumes but I'll finish with a couple of examples involving household objects to demonstrate that it's not only possible but that it's already been done in the past and that somewhere along the way that manufacturers - along with our (consumers') blessing - ditched the idea.
My family is still in posession of an old hot-dipped galvanized bucket that belonged to my grandmother and it dates from early in the 20th Century (likely from around the time she was married) and it's still fully serviceable. Despite being at least 100 years old and having a few dents of no consequence, it still has its handle (which is also galvanized) and it has no rust whatsoever (as proper hot-dipped galvanizing works extremely efficiently at preventing rust).
Now compare this with the three cheap and nasty plastic buckets I bought at the supermarket recently - two of which had the handles fall off before I'd gotten them home. Sure, if it were possible to buy a galvanized bucket today of that quality (and it's not, as I've looked unsuccessfully) then I'd argue that in any comparison with its modern plastic equivalent the old bucket would be an order of magnitude or two ahead in the longevity/cost equation. This is a no-brainer (as one of my plastic buckets is already landfill after having split). (The psychology of why people buy junk goes deeper than just the fact that it's cheap.)
Not long ago I saw a documentary tour of Cuba and the Caribbean presented by the delightful Johanna Lumley and at one point she interviewed an old woman - one of the Cuban aristocracy who'd not left Cuba at the time of the revolution - and who was still living in her rundown mansion that had not seen any maintenance for 60-plus years.
During the tour of the kitchen the woman casualty and a little apologetically pointed to her old fridge then she gracingly remarked to the effect "we bought it in 1946 and thankfully it's still running". For anyone familiar with buying domestic appliances and that's most of us, it's NOT possible to overlook the significance of this statement. Right, this domestic fridge has worked for three quarters of a century and I'd bet it'll still be working at the century mark in 2046 (that is, if someone doesn't ditch it after the woman dies).
In my opinion, the fridge ought to be rescued and put in a museum as a tribute to what manufacturers actually did before planned obsolescence and financial greed possessed them totally!
Unfortunately, I remain pessimistic: the two reasons why this fridge is still in use today is that was actually built to last, which is not the case with most things manufactured nowadays, and because of Cuba's longstanding dire economic conditions; that is, its utility has outweighed fashion - as in Cuba fashion is still too much of a luxury to change it for a later model.
The fact is if we're truly serious about cutting back on manufacturing - or as I ought to say 'optimizing' manufacturing - then we need to readjust our thinking about replacing stuff just for the sake of it. I'm pessimistic because the world's situation isn't perceived to be sufficiently dire by governments, manufacturers and sufficient numbers of ordinary cosumers for that to happen - and it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. As I've shown, for that to happen living standards would have to fall to a level similar to that of Cuba, which, by then it'd likely be too late to rectify things.
Is production of things really a major GHG emission source? It might seem wasteful but things are cheaper now than before so it can make economic sense for them to have shorter lives which gives other benefits. Only having durable products would also be crippling to poor people, more of whom would never be able to afford them at all. Your old fridge owner was an aristocrat afterall!
> (as it's my experience that the collective decision-making IQ of politicians is well below the 100 mark, thus we cannot expect to see smart solutions arising from them).
This is something I tend to think too. Any popular idea must be stupid because it has to be understandable to a majority of people, which includes low IQ ones. I wouldn't blame politicians though - they're just a reflection of what the population wants. It's their job to placate people, no matter how stupid or wrong those people are, otherwise they'll get fired.
If I'd shortened that post even further I wouldn't have gotten across the basics of what I wanted to portray, so much is already missing. In response, I've included additional points here but it barely covers this huge subject. Clearly, these issues are complicated and beyond the scope of any single person to solve alone, all I can do is to paint a brief overview from my perspective. First, I need to explain my position to help fill in the gaps.
I'll begin by using your comment that durable products would be crippling to poor people. Right, this is a crucial issue in any such discussion but I deliberately omitted it, had I done so then I'd have had to have add additional threads to the discussion. Nevertheless, this matter is ingrained in my psyche as I grew up in a comparatively poor family—so when my parents purchased their fridge and washing machine it was a big deal financially. Moreover, when purchased in the 1950s they were much more expensive relative to the average family income than they are today. I recall as a kid my grandmother only having an icebox and she received regular deliveries of ice from the iceman because she couldn't afford a fridge. The same went for laundry, once a week she'd boil the copper over a wood fire to do the washing. Right, durability must be tempered against cost and affordability (more on that monetarily).
The other crucial issue with having more durable, longer-lasting products is that fewer people would be employed, and unless they're found new work then large sections of the population would definitely suffer economic hardship.
Having been taught trades (wood/metalwork) early on I've an understanding of what it's like to work in production-line industries and to get my hands dirty—as they helped finance my way at uni. In fact, I rather enjoy working at a milling machine with swarf flying about as I can actually see I'm achieving something useful unlike much of the deskwork and many useless, time-consuming meetings I've had to attend over the years. As mentioned in past HN posts, I've great respect for craftspeople and skilled workers who work with their hands and I firmly believe that any disruption to production that would disadvantage them without provision of alternative work is completely unacceptable in this modern age.
However, disruption has already happened. If one had to choose a starting point then it began some three, going four, decades ago. If you're familiar with modern numerically controlled (NC) machining workstations then you'll already be familiar with their three outstanding features: consistency and repeatability, speed and accuracy/precision. The introduction of this new automated technology has enabled phenomenal, once undreamt of increases in productivity in recent decades and it shows. We've seen this enormous productivity increase reflected in huge price reductions of many common everyday items. Some will argue the reductions are due to free trade and exploitation of cheap labor in Asian countries, and no doubt in many respects this is very true to various degrees (and it's still a significant problem), but the fact remains that automated machinery is hundreds of times faster than the fastest human worker and day-by-day this automation is getting better (thus it's encroaching still further into areas still performed by humans).
It's why anyone can now buy, say, a flashlight for less than $10 that's been precision machined out of solid or tubular stock, has a properly knurled holding grip that feels comfortable and its batteries are held captive with a cap that screws onto what is essentially a precision thread—a thread that in past generations would have required the skills of an experienced machinist to cut—not to mention that cutting threads by hand is time-consuming work. It's almost jaw-dropping to watch such machines in operation.
In many ways, today's production worker is much better off than in the past. New manufacturing technologies mean that he or she works in a cleaner, safer environment (or ought to), and has learned new skills such as programming the numerical controls that drive said automation. Thus drudgery has given way to less boring skilled work, and where it hasn't then it soon will (at least it'll be so in mass production manufacturing). That said, many serious instances of worker exploitation still exist and they must be eliminated.
Today's operators of NC machines can go whole shifts without so much as a spot of cutting oil getting on their coveralls. Some years ago, I was involved in contract work for reasons too involved to explain which found me working in a Japanese car manufacturing plant and it was so clean that one could almost eat off the floor. The automation and speed of the JIT production, aided by robotic machines, was phenomenal: from rolls of steel sheet in at one end to cars of mixed variety and color (i.e.: made to order) rolling off the production line at the plant's other end then driven directly to awaiting ships only meters away in all of 59 minutes (the deadline being 60). Moreover, all workers were remarkably well trained and exceptionally skilled, and they took pride in their work in ways that I'd never seen in Western countries (incidentally the plant had the best factory canteen I've ever eaten in). Much of production worldwide is now like this and it's becoming more the norm by the day.
In essence, all that sums up to the fact that it's both easy and inexpensive to make very durable goods these days and that the differential cost between making a product durable or second-rate and trashy is minimal. We now have a situation where precision and repeatability are built into the production process by default, these factors are key if we're to make products reliable and more durable. Whether manufacturers choose to use these new processes and techniques for the betterment of their products is a separate issue altogether (and so often it's not the case).
The fact that many, many manufacturers not only deliberately choose to build what essentially amounts to substandard products but also that they go much further—in fact go to quite inordinate lengths—to build in planned obsolescence into their products to deliberately shorten their life is of key importance in this discussion; it's the crux of my argument.
This was brought home to me some years ago when I was working in Europe. I rented a small apartment for nine or so months I was there and it came with a small fridge (large bar size) which had failed to restart and the landlady immediately replaced it with a brand new one of Italian manufacture. As happenstance would have it, almost ten years to the day I was back in the same apartment doing the same work I'd been doing a decade earlier—and you guessed right, that 'new' fridge failed the moment I moved in! To this day, I'm sure the landlady still thinks I jinxed her fridge even though she was well aware that I was employed in high-end engineering work.
That incident led me to investigate how sophisticated planned-obsolescence engineering had become, and I can assure you it's extremely sophisticated. Obviously, products must outlast their warranty period as well as some additional predefined short amount of time that manufacturers have conditioned us customers into accepting before they have to be replaced (by advertising, being seemingly out of date and needing updating, etc.), then they engineer these lifetimes to within quite remarkable accuracy. Even if you're familiar with the Phoebus cartel and great lightbulb conspiracy of 1924 then this article is worth a read: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy. Now, almost 100 years on, manufacturers are even more adept at such conniving skulduggery.
It's worth comparing that fridge with the ten-year life to that of the one my parents bought in the '50s. It was in use for well over 40 years before it was replaced, in fact it never failed nor at any time was the sealed unit re-gassed, rather in the end it too had fallen victim to fashion. The washing machine failed a bit earlier at about 36-37 years and was replaced. In comparison, my own modern washing machine lasted only 11 years (and that's with coaxing as I'd replaced valves and seals in it at about year nine). Whilst I've only given you a small sample here, there's reasonable evidence to indicate the lifespan of whitegoods has dropped to a third of what it was immediately post-war, and that's a conservative estimate. Moreover, it's much more difficult to repair modern machines and appliances for various reasons that are also too detailed to discuss here. Instead, I'd refer you to the John Deere tractor controversy and the Right to Repair movement for details.
Furthermore, the figures are much more alarming for electronic equipment as the mountains of e-waste are almost out of hand, disposing of it is now a serious problem worldwide. I'm well aware of the argument that due to rapidity of the development of computing and IT technology that holding back on purchasing updated equipment is silly idea. Again, this is a complex problem and simple one-line quips will not suffice. Similarly, I cannot discuss the matter thoroughly here as it would fill a book.
I've mentioned a few examples that demonstrate the exploitative behavior of IT/computing manufactures but I've run out of space to post them (I'll provide them later if you're interested).
Gallium is currently supplied by reprocessing the waste from other convenient metal ores to extract the traces of gallium. Even if we maximized gallium extraction from these waste streams, we are talking about a few thousand tons of gallium per year. We produce more gold every year than there is practically available gallium.
Unfortunately this is the story with many proposed solutions to carbon capture. Many things are possible as a prototype which are completely infeasible at the industrial scales required to make a dent in atmospheric carbon because the resources don't exist to run chemistry at that scale.