Quote from: fillippone on August 29, 2025, 08:05:54 PM

Recently, a huge reserve of rare Earth was discovered in Sweden. This deposit could be worth billions and shift the geopolitical balance between Europe and China. Yet that deposit won't be dug and used due to enormous environmental concerns about mining operations. The cost for a clean extraction would be too high.

Classic European dumb take, slowly going towards self-destruction and irrelevance with each passing year..

Quote from: fillippone on September 01, 2025, 09:53:16 PM

It doesn’t work like that.
Firstly, China has to go through exactly the same steps the Western world took. It might be shorter in time and quicker to learn, but they have to go the full route without skipping anything.
Secondly, the kind of retaliation you suggest would immediately be broken by some opportunistic player. It’s not a credible mechanism.

Learn what? Do you really think that the Chinese think the same as the people in the West? Have you ever been to China? Roll Eyes

The problem of the Western mind is that it makes so many assumptions regarding the world, assumptions that it believes are the objective truth of reality. The Chinese will not take any such lessons from the West as there is no lesson here. Exploiting others works well. Why should they stop behavior that is the definition of capitalism? Roll Eyes

China is the next super power, and they will dictate the terms. They don't need to follow what the West wants.

Quote from: The Sceptical Chymist on Today at 02:38:50 PM

And being somewhat of a chemistry geek, I found that pictogram (or whatever the hell you call it) informative; some of those elements I was aware of in terms of their industrial importance--like copper and the platinum group metals, but bismuth and gallium and a few others I had no clue about. So people are just barging into your area to dig up these metals? That has got to cause some serious tension, not to mention legal issues. I'm trying to picture that happening in the US, and my guess is that any foreign miners might last a day before law enforcement booted them out on their asses. Man oh man.

Yeah they are the less common ones, bismuth is pharma and cosmetics I think and gallium is widely used in electronics. You could hear about it if you watch some physics shows.