From the Ground Up

Over the last month or so, as I’ve been watching the share values of the companies I’d like to work for plummet and my rosy-as-of-August job prospects burn to the ground, I’ve gotten a bit more cynical about a certain type of mining news release. I’ve been seeing a lot of them lately, and I bet you have too.

“Despite [negative adjective] economic times, [resource company] suggests that the long term outlook for [commodity] is [positive adjective]”

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In the shadow of the 2008 US presidential election another important decision was being made that day - the FCC voted to open up TV spectrum whitespace for unlicensed use. This has huge implications for the future of telecommunications in the United States, as it opens the door to much cheaper wireless access across the country. Indirectly, I believe it also has implications for the future of the copper industry. (more…)

A familiar saying in the minerals business is, “If you can’t grow it, you’ve got to dig it up.” This phrase highlights the dichotomy of the living world and the industrial world (industrial agriculture notwithstanding). However, a new study by the Carnegie Institutes Geophysical Laboratory suggests that the mineral world is more closely linked to the evolution of life than previously believed. (more…)

I’ve just returned from the second half of the first day, with the first round of technical talks at Hydrometallurgy 2008.

The first I went to was T.D. Chatwin on getting a social license to mine in an area through responsible handling of ARD. I get the sense that ARD is a topic that’s been talked to death among miner types, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less important. Chatwin laid out the project he’s a part of, the Global ARD Guide - a “world wide reference for acid prevention”. It will go live and available to the public in the middle of 2009.

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Despite living in Canada, I always keep an eye on what’s going on south of the 49th. I’ve been finding the run up to the 2008 presidential election to be very interesting, both in the ongoing primary battle between Obama and Clinton and the larger battles between the Republicans and Democrats. One site that I’ve found particularly interesting is www.fivethirtyeight.com. This is a site primarily geared towards pollster info, primary election predictions, and the gritty details of the US electoral college. The reason I find it so engaging is because the main writer for the site, Poblano, has developed a vast and complex model to predict election outcomes. He draws data from a wide variety of sources, including polls and results for primaries, senate races, and past presidential races, as well as census data for ethnic breakdowns, per capita income, demographics, religious affiliations and other trends.

The result is a very interesting model that accounts for and explains data in a much more comprehensive way than you can get from TV and radio pundits. It’s not 100% accurate, but I can certainly appreciate the scientific principles and math behind it. I’m sympathetic to the challenges of modeling a complex system. Seeking to explain the facts is always more difficult than simply presenting them.

538.com
538.com FAQ on the model
Detailed explanation of pollster weighting

I just attended a very interesting seminar given by Dr. Engin Ozberk, the Vice President of Innovation and Research at Cameco Corporation, the largest uranium producer in the world, on the current uranium industry and the nuclear fuel cycle. He started with a look back at the history of nuclear power, from the Bohemian silver miners who gave pitchblende its name, meaning bad luck mineral (I can see why), to the international chemists who unravelled radioactivity through the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th.

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Almost a month after the Scoble report was released, causing the rejection of the Kemess mine in northern BC, tempers on both sides of the issue are still flaring. David Luggi, chief of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council is demanding an apology from Ken Stowe, CEO of Northgate Minerals Corp for comments made at a Denver mining conference. Northern Miner magazine editor John Cumming is also under fire for an editorial he published on the same subject.

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The recent news about the “world’s largest diamond” has been revealed to be a hoax. In a scenario that sounds as if it’s straight out of a Robert Ludlum novel, the reporter from the Times was blindfolded en route to the site while she heard stories of government agents stealing the diamond at gunpoint.

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Barrick has announced a $10 million prize to anyone who can figure out how to recover their silver at the Veladero gold mine in Argentina. Currently they’re only recovering 6.7% of the silver, the rest of which is strongly encapsulated in silica. As the problem has stumped their own in house researchers, Barrick is turning to the public at large by offering research funding and a cash bonus to any individual or team who can crack the case.

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Last Friday Stephane Dion, leader of Canada’s federal opposition party, excoriated Stephen Harper over nuclear power issues. Specifically, the Prime Minister’s consideration of joining the US championed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Initially I passed off Dion’s quote of, “Imagine - [Canada] would become a global nuclear waste garbage dump,” as typical political alarmism, but after reading around on the official GNEP page, I’m not so sure.

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