“A dream. It’s perfect”: Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America::For a century, the U.S. Government-owned the largest helium reserve in the country, but the biggest exporters now are in Russia, Qatar and Tanzania. With this new discovery, Minnesota could be joining that list.
This is actually incredibly good news
Not really, because we’re still pissing away invaluable helium because of capitalism…
If we keep doing that, it doesn’t really matter how much we find.
We need to stop wasting it first, then finding huge supplies is a good thing. As long as we’re not dumb enough to start wasting it again.
How are we wasting it? Keep in mind that the helium used for stuff like balloons is not the same as the helium used in medical equipment. Also keep in mind that even if it were, the amount of helium used in balloons would be less than 1% of total usage.
So I ask again, how are we wasting it?
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775554343/the-world-is-constantly-running-out-of-helium-heres-why-it-matters
Tldr:
It takes an insanely large timescale for it to be produced on Earth, and it rarely accumulates because it’s fucking helium. It’s so light that it will literally just float out into outer space as soon as it’s vented to the atmosphere.
Using any for nonessential purposes is a waste.
Ah yes, we’re wasting helium, so finding more isn’t a good thing. Of course. 🙄
Imagine we found out climate change predictions were a decade early, so we kept pace and didn’t use the extra time to try and fix it…
It’s not bad news that we got another decade, but it doesn’t matter that much in the long run if we still don’t fix the underlying issue
Yeah it’ll hopefully see us through to when we’re collecting it in space - there’s plenty up there and they’ve already come up with some good ways of collecting it