the kindergarten arithmetic of asteroid IRON mining ...

Michael Marshall

Its not the higher mathematics so many of our scientists have trouble with - its primary school arithmetic.

For decades many scientists have been seriously talking, out in the POPULAR SCIENCE world, about mining asteroids for IRON , and all the other scientists have let them get away with it.

Oh, they would be severely shellacked for saying the same thing inside an article they wanted a peer-reviewed journal to publish.

But as long as you just say it to 6 billion civilians , instead of to 6000 fellow scientists, well that is alright then.

"Mustn't slight a fellow colleague, no matter how asinine, in public - lowers the tone, lowers our pay packet."

Well it isn't alright.

As the NRA is wont to say, "Public Science (science inside the hothouse of the peer-reviewed Beltway) doesn't kill people, Popular Science (day-to-day science) kills people".

Our world has real problems - but mining distant asteroids for iron isn't the solution - it is a senseless,hare-brained, diversion.

Iron is so abundant on the Earth's surface - still, after 10,000 years of use - that it remains cheap. Even now, our sloppy recycling efforts does a pretty good job about recycling most big bits of iron.

God would have to wing asteroid iron on the backs of celestial angels to beat the current - and future - price of iron on Earth.

Put a penny on this side of the classroom and pour a million pennies on that side of the classroom (representing the delivered cost of a gram of iron, from future earth sources versus future asteroid iron) and ask a four year old which pile is bigger.

Then ask the PhDs of the limit-denying asteroid mining lobby the same question and watch them waffle....

Asteroid miners DENY 'global commensality'

Michael Marshall

Is planet earth our best, most attractive, our least expensive (& only) lifeboat ?

Will we humans survive best by living within limits, the limits set by the need for us to accept that other life on earth has a right to be there too - in part because they keep us alive ?

Do we humans not live, in effect, on microbe poop - just as they in turn live, in part, off human poop ?

Does not all life on earth survive by living off each other's poop - dining together at one table,  via 'global commensality' in fact ?

Asteroid miners deny all this.

All that humans really need to survive and flourish in their minds  is 'minerals and mental agility' .

Mineral & Mental Autarky.

Listen up lower-archy, here is what the higher-archy is planning:

Wealthy DENIERS aren't putting their heads in the sands over our ecological crisis: they are busy putting them into spaceships, aimed far far away from our messy problems.

The 1% is busy abandoning the 99% to  our fates....

DENYING humans need other life for our survival

Michael Marshall

Taking on those who denying global warming is small change - they are hardly worth refuting.

The source of their specific example of denial ---  the ultimate DENIAL --- "the father of all denial" , is denying that we humans are totally dependent on other life for our continuing survival.

This highly popular, highly respectable,  form of DENIALISM is found everywhere.

For but one example --- it is found among the leading elements of our new economy --- the executives of the  biggest firms of the internet.

Top executives from corporations like Google, Amazon, Microsoft are leading the non-government charge into space --- and away from all the Earth's messy problems.

The latest delusion is that we can continue to consume (but not recycle) the world's limited surface supplies of minerals, because a new source will open up when we mine asteroids.

Success will look like all those pre-war sci fi covers, with all of us living inside plastic domes, on the barren poisoned surface of some planet ( maybe even our own) and surviving by converting minerals into food and air and water and all else a civilization needs.

In fact, we here on Earth lack no resources - not even energy - if we learn to recycle what we already have.

Sorry, I meant we lack no natural resources , because of course we lack lots of common sense.

Particularly among the ranks of science, among the people we should be trusting to expose quasi-scientific nonsense.

Oh, and they do -- if the object of their public scorn is somebody powerless touting non-science oriented nonsense -- ie someone, above all, who could not be seen as a fellow scientist.

But they are very reluctant to lower the tone of science debate by
publicly taking on science-oriented nonsense.

It is almost as bizarre as if a fact-finding group of  well-respected
Jewish scientists had visited Doctor Mengele at Auschwitz in 1943 and now had to release a public report, but were torn between being horrified and yet reluctant to publicly scorn a fellow scientist in public.

Bigger than the fate of any one ethnic group are now at stake --- the 'DENIERS of LIMITS' are threatening the fate of all the human race --- yet they fail to face public criticism from the those scientists who claim that they believe humanity must learn to live within limits.

This is where I feel this blog must come in.

I will try not to attack the DENIERS too much - they are the broad side of the barn on this issue.

Instead I will focus on "outing" those scientists who privately scorn the DENIERS, but are reluctant to say so clearly in public.....