Why Sand Is Disappearing (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Why Sand Is Disappearing (2014)

nytimes.com

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This is basically the same content as the one from ejolt:

http://www.ejolt.org/2014/08/building-an-economy-on-quicksan...

The original documentary, Sand - Die neue Umweltzeitbombe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEWqs1wJuLc

There is a documentary about this called the Sand Wars. Here is the trailer

https://youtu.be/CAPfwwb59uY

That is hilarious.

The aspect of Dessert Sand not being a suitable alternative to Beach Sand was news to me.

I had a half baked notion that, given the long term downturn for Oil and the increasing shortage of Sand, the Middle Eastern countries could diversify into selling Dessert Sand apart from Black Gold. Guess it is not meant to be.

Not suitable for beaches but it's probably still suitable for industrial use, which is much, much larger than the beaches. It's just that it's not yet cost effective to haul sand halfway around the world

Dessert Sand

And sprinkle on Baked Alaska for a delightful extra crunch!

Unfortunately, desert sand is specifically not useful for one of the largest industrial uses: Concrete. The weathering of sand in a wind-blown environment reduces the sharp edges and makes it significantly less strong. The ideal in concrete sand is as sharp and as new as possible. It is also ideal that it be dust-free, since dust and other very fine particulates also negatively effect strength.

Surprisingly, not really even that. As pointed out in the Wired article The Deadly Global War for Sand [1]: "Desert sand generally doesn’t work for construction; shaped by wind rather than water, desert grains are too round to bind together well."

[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/03/illegal-sand-mining/

It's too bad the factories are stationary on land and not mobile. If factories were built on large boats, maybe old container boats, they could just move closer to the resource. It would still be very expensive to move such a bulk, but the costs would be known and could be evaluated against the other costs and profits involved.

To extend the idea, space travel might simplify this - if we build factories on very small asteroids, we could possibly move the whole asteroid across the solar system, to be closer to a resource.

In some uses it depends on what the sand is made of. Specifically, silicon dioxide (silica or quartz) is a chemical feedstock for the making of cement. I don't know what minerals compose desert sand.

Similar weird are the snow making machines in the Alps and other regions. Thousands of units with water from many artificial lakes on top of the mountains to create snow for tourists.

At least when the snow melts it returns to the rivers and streams where it came from.

Sadly the lakes are often lower down the mountain which requires a lot of not very environmentally friendly pumping to get it up. Here's one set up https://www.skiroundtop.com/how-snowmaking-works

The sea near where I live throws up huge amounts of sand each winter storm. It just keeps coming. The owners of the bay beach are give it away for free. They just cant get rid of it quickly enough. I take a few dump trucks worth every year.

So from my own subjective experience there seems to be a lot of sand in the sea. Are we really running out? Or is this just alarmist journalism?

I've heard in the news here in South Africa the prices of sand are going up and we are running out of sand, so I think this has a real basis in reality.

"...a practice that disturbs the sea bottom, creating turbidity that kills coral beds and damages spawning grounds, which hurts inshore fisheries."

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