Nobel prizewinner: We are running out of helium | Hacker News Reader

Nobel prizewinner: We are running out of helium

newscientist.com

104 pointschanux91 comments

We're running out of all kinds of natural resources. The main problem I see is that natural resources are way underpriced in current markets since markets only assign value based in the short term. We need a pricing mechanism that spans generations and encourages conservation for the centuries to come. A free market for helium is a start, but is still heavily biased towards short-term profits. Or am I wrong here?

If you suspect certain resources will be more expensive in the future, you can buy futures and make a killing. You can also look at the going rates for futures contracts and compare them to the current price of the commodity to get an idea of future scarcity.

sure, but who's going to cash in on those contracts if my horizon is 500 years?

I think any action taken today is unlikely to preserve resources 500 years from now. You'd have to start some sort of monastery devoted to hoarding helium. (This is harder than it sounds. Helium diffuses through metal tanks.)

More importantly, I don't think future generations will benefit much from our conservation efforts. Resource needs and constraints change over time. As technology advances, we find new ways to create substitutes for rare materials, or find ways to use rare materials more efficiently. Someone in 1500 would be unlikely to correctly guess scarce resources 500 years in the future.

Yet in most of the middle ages it was common practise to plant oak when a new building in e.g. a monastery was completed, in order to enable the next generation to replace e.g. the roof structure.

I've never heard of this before and Google gives me nothing. Can you provide a link or something? I thought most medieval structures had thatch roofs made with straw.

I'm not sure what your anecdote has to do with my argument. The medieval times did not have the sort of growth we have today. Hoarding resources for future generations doesn't make sense in our economy. You could help the future a lot more by selling those resources and investing in index funds. A generation from now, that money will have compounded to be much more valuable than if you had preserved your original resources and tried to sell them 100 years later.

He did say 'roof structure', not 'roof covering'. A thatched roof needs a structure to support it, that straw does not stay up in the air by magic. All the gussets and beams were made of wood.

I seem to remember visiting an ancient English church, and being told by our guide that the original architect had caused a stand of trees to be planted near the city, of the same wood as the roof timbers. Centuries later, some of the roof timbers needed to be replaced; thanks to the architect's foresight, the necessary trees were there.

The one I had heard about had to do with Oxford.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/oak-beams-new-college-oxford

Kevin Kelly, I believe, in _The Clock of the Long Now_ mentions a funny story about the Swedish parliament putting aside an island to grow trees for the navy. A bishop argued against it, saying that a century hence ships may well be made of something besides wood. A century hence was the 1900s, where pretty much everything was made of steel or iron or another metal...

or find ways to use rare materials more efficiently

This won't necessarily have the effect of making the remaining Helium last longer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I do agree with you that worrying about the resource needs of society 500 years from now is unlikely to prove useful. Furthermore, it strikes me a bit odd that the lives of humans hundreds or thousands of years after we are dead is of such great importance to everyone. Unfortunately, this article seems to be discussing running out of Helium in our lifetimes, which probably is something we need to think about.

Okay, I godda ask.

How would you hoard helium for 500 years?

It sounds like a fun technical problem. Anyone know any solution?

you could buy a depleted gas field and fill it up.

It's been hoarded for tens of millions of years in existing salt domes. That's more or less how both the national helium reserve (being sold off) and the privately-owned BLM helium reserve are maintained. It's by no means a trivial problem (you have to know where the domes are and be able to drill through kilometers of solid rock to reach them, then repressurize the helium to a high enough pressure to make it go back underground) but it's not out of the reach of 1920s technology.

There isn't really a functioning long-term futures market for most commodities, though: the vast majority of the contracts are <1 year, and most of the rest are <2 years. There are a handful of commodities where it's possible to trade 10-year contracts with relatively good liquidity (U.S. natural-gas delivery is one), but they are quite uncommon, and 20-year contracts aren't even traded on the major exchanges. So, I really tend to see the futures markets, at least the way they currently operate, as more a way of betting on or hedging against (depending on your other positions) short-term logistics and demand spike issues, rather than as a long-term pricing mechanism.

I think the lack of long-term futures contracts is evidence that nobody has a clue about the price of commodities in the long-term.

But then futures contracts don't give "an idea of future scarcity". How does your current statement mesh with your previous one?

It seems like the conclusion is that no one thinks they know enough about future scarcity to be willing to place bets on it.

While the predictions of scarcity are likely correct, the predictions of the consequences of scarcity likely aren't. For example: Once the cost of helium increases, substitutes will be found for many applications. For a buoyant gas, people might use hot air, or hydrogen mixed with some kind of flame retardant. Low temperature research might rely more on computer simulations. MRIs and other devices might use high temperature superconductors bathed in liquid nitrogen.

The only problem would be if helium scarcity happened too quickly for people and technologies to adapt. If you thought that was likely, you could invest in companies making or researching helium substitutes and make a killing.

It seems like the conclusion is that no one thinks they know enough about future scarcity to be willing to place bets on it.

Almost. Nobody knows enough about future scarcity to be willing to place bets on it instead of placing bets on other investments such as index funds. If you enter into a 20 year futures contract, you're saying, "I believe I will make more money from selling this resource in 20 years than I would from investing the value of this contract in index funds for 20 years."

Thank you for the clarification.

> While the predictions of scarcity are likely correct, the predictions of the consequences of scarcity likely aren't. For example: Once the cost of helium increases, substitutes will be found for many applications. For a buoyant gas, people might use hot air, or hydrogen mixed with some kind of flame retardant. Low temperature research might rely more on computer simulations. MRIs and other devices might use high temperature superconductors bathed in liquid nitrogen.

Those are cool speculations.

Hydrogen is probably the only option for a buoyant gas. I don't think mixing flame retardants in with hydrogen will work; you either need something lighter than nitrogen (and hydrogen, helium, and neon are the only candidates) or something that can retard flame appreciably in such small quantities that it doesn't counteract the buoyancy, and I don't think any such substances exist. They'd either have to produce a lot of non-inflammable gas, the way sodium bicarbonate does, or absorb a lot of heat like tetraethyl lead, and in either case they have to be pretty heavy.

For superconductor and other cryogenic coolants, as they said, liquid helium is already recycled.

I like the idea of using high-temperature superconductors. Maybe invest in yttrium mines? (I guess there are lots of high-temperature superconductors today.) Why don't these devices currently use high-temperature superconductors? Are they too expensive? (Edit: http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i06/html/06chem.... says that 123, YBCO, and its family are only superconducting within a single crystal, which makes it hard to make large coils out of them.)

Yes there is, you can take delivery of the good and store it or pay someone to store it. And sell at some point in the future.

You can buy the good (although that's a lot more expensive than buying a call); you can buy shares in a mining or refining operation whose profits will rise if the commodity prices do; you can buy shares in equipment suppliers who sell to the above; you can do any of the above for commodities that substitute for the commodity in question (e.g. rice and corn, if you expect wheat supplies to be short); or you can bet against commodities that complement the commodity in question, either in production or consumption (e.g. mining more indium will probably push zinc and gallium prices down, since the three tend to occur together; cheap energy would probably depress the price of aluminum somewhat; and similarly, cheap energy would probably elevate the price of bauxite.)

Disclaimer: I'm broke at the moment; following my financial advice would be a bad idea.

Well, yeah--- my main point is that the futures market doesn't serve as a functioning long-term pricing mechanism. That's why you have to go to other things outside the futures market if you want to speculate on/hedge against long-term price movements, like buying physical commodities, or stocks, or other such things.

There's a good book [1] and LSE podcast [2] on the morality of letting future generations participate in natural resources.

[1] http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Economics/Poli... [2] Direct link to mp3: http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publicLecturesAndEvents/20100524_...

And the problem with a pricing mechanism that spans generations is that it will have to assume a great deal about how helium will be produced and consumed generations from now.

Remember when the world ran out of wood and whale oil a bit more than a century ago? Nope, cause our great grandparents pivoted into using other materials for ships and houses and mineral oil instead.

I have a stupid question: If helium is so infeasable to extract from air or get from other chemical means. How did US end up with such had such a large supply of helium in the first place?

EDIT: The answer to the question is:

U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile (684 km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

> Maybe in Europe there has been a conversation, but not in the US - and the US supplies nearly 80 per cent of the helium used in the world. The problem is that these supplies will run out in a mere 25 years, and the US government has a policy of selling helium at a ridiculously low price.

This sounds like a prediction! 'US helium production will crash to near-zero in 25 years.' http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1686

So, because a prediction about something once was wrong, all subsequent predictions about that thing must also be wrong?

No, its just that when you cry wolf so many times, no one believes you when the wolf actually turns up.

yo :)

Now that was funny. LOL

common, wolves can't type!

Please down vote this to prevent future pun threads. Far too many one liners are getting points lately.

You look like you could use a hug.

No. I don't see how you could possibly extract any such interpretation out of my comment. A prominent pundit^Wrespected scientist has made a prediction; I am merely recording it for later judgment.

Yeah, except as noted above, it's a pretty solid prediction. We're mandated to sell all of this stuff by 2015.

Absent a change in the law, it seems like a good guess that we'll sell it by 2015.

This is not climate science, you don't have to have a chip on your shoulder -- you can objectively evaluate this evidence if you choose to do so.

This isn't a prediction. It is an observation that a particular stockpile of already-existing and extracted helium of finite, concrete, and precisely known size has been mandated to be sold by 2015, after which there won't be any of this stockpile remaining. It may happen to involve a natural resource but is not the usual sort of "natural resource will run out" prediction at all.

Theoretically, one could make a lot of money stockpiling the stuff now and selling it later. However I doubt I'm the first to notice that. If enough people do that it would at least buffer the shock.

I don't think that's what he is saying at all. In the article, he specifically says the federal stockpile must be sold off by 2015. He also says that US supplies will be gone within 15 years.

2010+15=2025. 2025!=2015. So unless he is having a serious senior moment, he must be talking about something other than the federal stockpile being gone by 2025.

From context - 'supplies', not 'stores' - I read this as a prediction about the US oil industry's production of helium in the course of its operations.

This is in fact a prediction, since many things could change US helium production from ending in 2025; an asteroid could destroy us all, new helium pockets could be found, taxes could shut down US oil exploitation, etc.

>an asteroid could destroy us all,

Well... by that measure, any statement regarding the future is a prediction.

"I'll see you tomorrow!" - but maybe an asteroid will hit overnight....

It certainly is a prediction, if it's not just a meaningless social gesture or wish, contradiction, or tautology.

(Is this not obvious? Then replace your friend with someone who is about to go over the trenches, or has a terminal disease, or say 'I'll see you in 50 years.'. It's just usually so very highly probable that the small smidgen of uncertainty is hidden from us. From the point of view of life insurance companies, making accurate predictions about how long your friend will survive is very serious business.)

My physics is rusty, but isn't helium a common byproduct in nuclear fission?

EDIT: OK looked it up, it indeed is but totally uneconomical in practice.

Better get cold fusion working, or find a way to mine asteroids profitably...

Fusion works (in that it successfully fuses atoms) and has since the 1960s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

You don't get more energy out than you put in, but if your goal is to make helium, that's hardly the point - just about every other industrial process also consumes energy.

The problem is you need to be really close to breakeven or your going to be wasting GWh per lb of helium.

Rising the price or not selling is not a solution. Not only we are running out of helium, but also any other substance in the earth is concerned. The solution is a big factory that analyses the air, water, or any other mix of substances to extract the substance we like and classify them. It can also create a mix, like H2O....

Sounds like a terrible idea, but it's the revolution we need for the next 100 years, if we really want to continue development in the planet Earth. If you are not already aware, fauna and flora are already doing it for thousands of years. And yes, they did it successfully. The sun could be a valuable energetic resource.

> The solution is a big factory that analyses the air, water, or any other mix of substances to extract the substance we like and classify them.

So all we have to do is either invent perfect nanotechnology or Maxwell's demon? Brilliant!

Reminds me of Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future II

http://bttf.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion

We know. "Engines of Creation" was published in 1986. "The Diamond Age" popularized the idea in 1995. Catch up!

100$ per party baloon? That's pretty expensive. Maybe it would be good strategy to buy pressurized canisters with helium, stash them under your home and your kids or grandkids could sell it and become pretty wealthy.

There are other lighter-than-air gasses that could be used, e.g. hydrogen. Problem is that I think all of the practical ones are either flammable or toxic, maybe both---a bad idea at a kid's birthday party.

flammable sounds like extra fun

Helium isn't toxic, but it can displace air without any feelings of suffocation. It's one of the simplest ways to a 'sweet death'.

Helium is really hard to store for extended periods of time, it will eventually leak through microfissures in metal containers.

Do you know how fast it usually leaks?

Nope, it varies widely depending on the metal, thickness of the metal, temperature and pressure, etc. I don't really know any of the details.

This is a big deal! It's not something that is reflected well on the market, IMO. Important resource that isn't priced effectively, doesn't consider the future... definitely not the only thing that fits that bill, but this one is a little more cut and dry.

However, it's a bit hard to bet on the price of helium. Most of the main producers are reasonably diversified among other gas-products etc.

So should we start hoarding helium so that we can sell it at a premium in like 50 years?

The moon has a lot of it...

I won't be sad to see party balloons go. Even if it's only a small amount of our total helium, it always felt like a huge waste of helium, even when I was a little kid.

How did you know that helium was a so much more valuable than the balloons themselves as a kid?

I knew that helium was lighter than air, and suspected it escaped our atmosphere, so I figured we wouldn't be able to get it back. The balloon on the other hand, while not recyclable, didn't leave the planet.

The balloon is latex and self-recycles. The string though - that's bad.

Well, I was a kid, and didn't know that latex was bio-degradable

That's quite an amazing train of thought for a young kid, especially the 'escaped our atmosphere' bit.

I think it's very easy to forget exactly how active, and imaginative, a child's mind is.

I thought every science-minded kid had this same thought.

The escaped our atmosphere bit is actually pretty advanced physics. Most kids would assume that the helium would form a spherical shell if they knew about gravity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape

Well, people can happen on the right prediction for the wrong reasons. I'm sure I didn't know about thermal atmospheric escape when I thought this, or probably even that a gas at a temperature consisted of molecules with a random distribution of kinetic energies centered on that temperature. I think I just thought that there would always be stuff denser than helium that would push it further and further away from the earth, without limit. (This is almost true, but most of the solar system is filled with hydrogen, which is less dense than helium.)

Time to hoard helium.

I wonder why you got downvoted. That's probably what people who influenced decision about selling US helium reserves are doing right now.

Or research alternative party balloon technologies.

Hydrogen! Even more buoyant than helium, and if you get it near a flame, the balloon turns into a fireball. Just one of those would make a party more fun. (Do not let oxygen into the mix, though, or you'll get a lot more than just a fireball if the thing ignites.)

A hydrogen-oxygen mixture in a flexible container like a balloon is unlikely to amplify a deflagration into a detonation. However, either way, the fireball radiates mostly in the ultraviolet. You might want to mix some methane or acetylene or something in there to help it radiate in the less-dangerous visible spectrum.

I can't help but feel like there should be an investment opportunity here...

Quick, set up a startup to colonize the Moon for helium. Wait, does helium-3 count?

I wonder if this Richardson made an investment before issuing this statement ;)

I assume that whoever voted this down didn't like the idea of someone profiting from this.

My thoughts were different: if a private reserve was made, there would be a supply for important uses like liquid helium superconductors, rather than party balloons.

Ostensibly, that's what the US reserve was for, but I guess we're selling it off for $1.50/m^3.

As expected from a New Scientist article, this is not very informative. If you wanna learn more, you might wanna take a look at these:

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i06/html/06chem....

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=A-lS1ZD8yOkC

It's an article, not a thesis, what do you expect?

I expect content. Do note that the acs.org link is an article too, not a thesis, so you have no point.

I agree 100%. Keep enough to cover the military's needs for 50 year and sell off the rest.

I'm not sure what you're agreeing with considering the article is arguing the US govt should NOT be selling off helium.

I think stretchwithme meant sell it off wholesale to private distributors, rather than selling off directly to consumers.

Like it matters? Helium is helium, it's fungible, the private distributors have every incentive (like the consumers) to use or waste helium. An annual discount rate of 5% or more means that value 20 or 50 years from now is very small indeed.

No, that's not the case. If you own something, selling it immediately for whatever cash you can get is what you want to do. You want to sell it for as much as you can and that means not dumping it in to the market all at once.

This is especially true when getting more is very difficult. The price is likely to go up in the future, making even more sense to hold on to it.

And not sure what fungibility has to do with it. Doesn't that just mean its easy to quantify and trade? A pound of helium is a pound of helium no matter where you buy? Why would that give you an incentive to dump what you own for whatever you can get now?

Many people like buying assets that hold their value and like holding them instead of pieces of paper the government can and will soon have to inflate away.

sorry, meant selling it immediately is NOT what you want to do. sorry for the confusion.

The fungibility point is that it doesn't matter who the helium gets sold to, the price will be affected. It's like oil - it's all pretty much the same, so it doesn't matter whether you boycott Venezuela and specify that the oil you buy must come from Brazil rather than Venezuela, since that just means someone in Brazil will buy Venezuelan oil for you or a potential Brazilian customer would switch to Venezuelan. The oil flows where demand is.

> This is especially true when getting more is very difficult. The price is likely to go up in the future, making even more sense to hold on to it.

The price has to go up beyond the opportunity cost and one's discount rate. One doesn't invest in a merely profitable activity - one invests in the most profitable activity, and if that isn't bigger than one's discount rate one just consumes rather than invests.

If helium goes up 2% a year but Treasuries return 3%, then the savvier merchants will sell helium and buy Treasuries, and laugh at you all the way to the bank.

From the article,

"But if we do run out altogether, we will have to recover helium from the air and it will cost 10,000 times what it does today."

Assuming he's correct, and assuming we are set to run out of helium in the next 50 years, a 3% a year return would be chump change.

That makes sense. If the US government is selling it cheap, those who purchase from the US and other holders have the incentive to hold on to their helium til later when the price returns to normal. You're right.

Oil is a good example. That's why embargoes don't work. The target country just has to buy it through a third party to defeat the embargo. Embargoes can really only work when the country embargoed is shooting itself in the foot with price controls, as we did in the 70s.

Exactly. Thanks.

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