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The World Is Running Out of Sand
- toblender 9y agoWhat's stopping us from making new sand with a giant solar powered grinder? We should have plenty of rocks...
- pjc50 9y ago"Running out of" should, as always, come with the qualifier "at a reasonable price". Rock-crushing is quite energy intensive compared to just dredging. Generally in the West you'll find substitutes like crushed concrete or pulverised fly ash being added to the mix (although PFA itself will be in short supply as it's a coal-fired power station by product)
- ggcdn 9y agoIIRC, in structural concretes flyash is used as an admixture to reduce portland cement usage, and enhance some properties like permeability, but not as a replacement for sand.
- sliverstorm 9y agoAnd/or the qualifier "we are now causing a lot of damage getting resource X because our preferred source is running dry". Rivers can afford to lose some sand, but not all. Convenient oil Wells cause very little damage compared to clear-cutting and surface mining tar sand.
- mrob 9y agoCrushing rocks to sand already happens. Animats posted some interesting links the last time sand shortages were discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15208432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15208432
- ska 9y ago"running out of sand" parallels "running out of oil". It's not that there isn't any left, it's just not cost effective.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoThere are different kinds of sands, and the better kinds are more desired and presumably more expensive to manufacture. Sarasota has sand that feels like a fine powder. It’s wonderful, and also quite limited. In fact there was a recent expensive reconstruction of a beach that was blown away quite quickly because the city didn’t believe the engineers saying it needed more support. Millions of dollars of prime sand lost. Cape Cod has sand that feels like rocks (and the water is ALWAYS cold, even in July!). Nobody would buy that.
- tankenmate 9y agoThe world is running out of cheap sand. Time to breed swarms of parrotfish?
- werdnapk 9y agoYou need a healthy coral reef to do that and us humans have done a pretty good job at running out of those too.
- EGreg 9y agoWhy aren't the companies required to replace the sand with Sahara desert sand, say? They are capable of transporting sand so it would seem straightforward.
- jlebrech 9y agoif they start taking the sahara sand it'll turn into a lake.
- raverbashing 9y agoAnd? - Extract lots of sand - Fill it with water Maybe it will compensate for the increased ocean levels if the hole is big enough
- gus_massa 9y agoIt's more complicated, and someone thought about a similar project with a different objective: "Qattara Depression Project "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project Edit: Also see "Flood Death Valley" https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/
- hinkley 9y agoThat much evaporation is going to increase rainfall downwind. If the Sahara keeps spreading we might have to do that project for several reasons. Edit: aaand it’s full of cheetahs and gazelles. Damnit.
- ethbro 9y ago- Extract lots of sand [from the desert] - Fill it with water - Run solar distillation - Create additional freshwater source for region (at expense of creating a high-salinity lake)
- jlebrech 9y ago
- sctb 9y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400760
- chillax 9y agoThis article on the same topic is worth reading: How the demand for sand is killing rivers http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41123284 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41123284
- amelius 9y agoReminds me of: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160502-even-desert-city-dubai-imports-its-sand-this-is-why http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160502-even-desert-city-d...
- Sharlin 9y agoOne of my favorite bits of trivia is that Australia sells sand (and camels!) to Saudi Arabia [1]. In fact, the Arab countries import most of the sand used for construction because their own sand is not well suited to that purpose. [1] https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Saudi-Arabia-imports-sands-from-Australia-If-so-why https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Saudi-Arabia-imports-s...
- 21 9y agoAnd US sells chop sticks to China :)
- javajosh 9y agoI was surprised to find that the US also grows most of the world's cotton for clothing. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't produce a lot of wood products, too.
- wahern 9y agoYes, but not as much as I originally thought, in relative terms: https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/money-does-grow-trees-us-forest-product-exports-set-record https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/money-does-grow-trees-us-fores... As the world’s fourth-largest exporter of forest products (behind the European Union, China, and Canada), the United States maintains a steady share of the growing global market at just over 10 percent.
- Viper007Bond 9y agoProbably because we use so much of it ourselves for housing and stuff.
- emodendroket 9y agoLumber was originally one of the chief exports of North America; if you read Common Sense there is quite a long discourse about lumber for ship-building.
- 0x4f3759df 9y agoThere's an interesting documentary about this 'Sand Wars' here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAPfwwb59uY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAPfwwb59uY
- thaumaturgy 9y agoI learned about the importance of sand (and other media) this year when setting up a saltwater tank for my s.o.; I really had no idea beforehand. Sand provides a huge amount of surface area for colonies of bacteria responsible for converting ammonia into nitrites and nitrites into nitrates, which can then be taken up by plants or algae and converted into other chemicals that are less harmful to aquatic species. Dredging sand from rivers and beaches is likely going to be seen as a massive ecological disaster in the next couple of decades.
- beat 9y agoOne of my favorite factoids is that in many deserts, the most common plant life by weight is algae. It grows in tiny drops of dew on the underside of grains of sand.
- sk0g 9y agoWait, so the most common plant life by weight isn't algae, then? What is it actually?
- im3w1l 9y agoFactoid has two almost opposite meanings 1. an insignificant or trivial fact. 2. something fictitious or unsubstantiated that is presented as fact, devised especially to gain publicity and accepted because of constant repetition.
- civilian 9y agoAh, the second definition isn't one I've ever seen used? A factoid may be used inappropriately to support an unrelated argument, ("the last pirates were seen in the 1800s, right as climate change started") but they're still _true_.
- mikeash 9y agoThat's actually the original meaning. "Factoids... that is, facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." The meaning has since mutated, and of course there's no reason we should be constrained to the original.
- timthelion 9y agoIn these articles I keep on seeing the phrase "illegal mining", and yet I see no reason why legality would effect the environment. Is it somehow better for the environment if the government gets paid for the resource extraction? I don't think so. I know that illegal miners may violate mining regulations which are intended to protect the environment, but as far as I can tell, legal third world mining is not regulated in any ecological way making that point moot.
- lr 9y agoI would think it would be more about "managing" the resource, than income to a government, but I could be wrong.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoHere’s something to think about: how much CO2 has been released into the atmosphere just from crypto currency mining alone? One of the main reasons I’ve avoided getting into bitcoin mining is because my town is powered by a coal plant and I simply cannot justify burning coal to acquire make-believe money. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful.
- emiliobumachar 9y agoDo you consider gold and silver similarly perverse? Literal mining is messy.
- Scarblac 9y agoHow is that not just whataboutism? It's not as if we are all forced to choose between either bitcoin or gold...
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoBesides, those metals are real and have industrial uses, whereas cryptos are just a series of bits that the market collectively agrees holds a value.
- program_whiz 9y agoInteresting comment on article: Isn't this better stated as "some areas of the world are running out of sand"? The Sahara is 9.2E12 meters squared and one estimate puts the average depth of sand at 150m, giving 1.38E15 m^3 of sand. The earth's land area is 5.1E14 m^2, meaning the sand in the Sahara alone is enough to cover earth's land area in 2.7m (9ft) of sand
- 0x4f3759df 9y agoSahara sand is not suitable for construction or island building because it is too spherical, desirable sand is jagged because it clumps together better.
- mmjaa 9y agoSeems like an opportunity to use sun and sand to construct 3D-printing oases in the middle of nowhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUj8JRAYu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUj8JRAYu8 Wonder why this isn't working out as the "new construction technique" hit success that it seems, with a little optimisation, it could be?
- microcolonel 9y ago> Wonder why this isn't working out as the "new construction technique" hit success that it seems, with a little optimisation, it could be? Well, it's incredibly dangerous to set up an array of solar concentrating fresnel lenses and/or mirrors anywhere near human beings. Concentrating radiation on things which are becoming more and more shiny and/or refractive as you go can go very wrong, as you start having to manage the caustics of even the cloudy glass you end up making.
- beat 9y agoSand is not just sand. It's not a fungible thing. Different kinds of sand have different mineral compositions, different sizes and shapes for the grains, different consistencies, etc. The sand used to make an iPhone screen is different from the sand used to peel paint, but both are highly specific. It's not just sand that's running out. It's specific kinds of sand, or sand that is readily available (because sand is expensive and annoying to transport).
- beat 9y agoI've had a weird front row seat to sand in Minnesota. We have a popular local renaissance festival southwest of the Twin Cities. Its location is typical for such things - a plot of otherwise unused land near a riverbed, too sandy for typical Minnesota farming, thanks to the meanderings of the nearby Minnesota River. The sandy soil, it turns out, is like a hundred feet deep, and perfect for fracking operations in the kinda-nearby North Dakota gas fields. A few years back, the owners started aggressively strip-mining it, leaving gaping holes where the festival parking lots once were. Eventually, they ended the lease with the festival, in order to strip-mine the land it sits on. Imagine that... mere "sand", so valuable that it's worth giving up a substantial commercial lease that has run for decades and should have been able to run for decades into the future (and provides hundreds of local jobs), just for the one-time use.
- cal5k 9y agoIt makes sense if you think about it... let’s say that sand sells for $10 per cubic yard. If there’s a substantial area with sand down to 100ft you’re talking millions upon millions of dollars worth of sand!
- beat 9y agoYeah, I assume the value of the sand is on par with at least a decade or two of the lease value, for the land owners. It still strikes me as a poor decision for the city, though. The renaissance festival employs hundreds of locals every summer, has for decades, would for decades. It also supports a caste of roaming professional performers who live there for a few months every year, spending money in town. That's a lot of economic activity! Instead, it'll be exchanged for money to go to a probably out-of-town mining operation, and the land will be permanently worthless after that - just a big hole in the ground, filling up with water.
- burger_moon 9y agoPeople also have to work at the sand mine too. Unlike festival jobs these aren't seasonal and the pay is actually livable and something you can raise a family on. I understand losing your festival isn't fun, in fact I remember you writing this on hn previously when there were articles about sand mining but you have to understand that this happens in all cities. Some old theatre gets torn down to make way for a new high rise condo, or a tech company decides to move in and tears down a factory to make way for a shiny new office building. Additionally, if the festival promotors really cared for the festival and the long tradition of it, wouldn't they just ya know move to a different field to host it?
- neverminder 9y agoThis exactly same titled youtube video documentary seems to precede the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMLYLcniXIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMLYLcniXIc
- deskamess 9y agoThis is a big problem in India too. Many of the rivers in Kerala state have been impacted by illegal sand mining. We had rarely used property next to the river which we sold to a relative who had a house next to ours. They fell on hard times and sold it to someone else who discovered the sand and started mining the land ($$$$). That land, the house, the large jackfruit and coffee trees are no more; in its place is a huge indentation in the landscape where the river would fill if there was enough water. The rest of the river has very little sand in it as a result of mining. Natural flooding is now very rare. It has been reduced to a sliver of its former self.
- kiliantics 9y agoIn the US, the federal government spends obscene amounts of money ($1 billion over 30 years in NJ alone, apparently[0]) replenishing sand on beaches so that rich people can keep their nice homes there. And even if they do lose the houses, they can write off taxes to the value of their investments[1] [0]http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/10/jersey_shore_beach_replenishment_cost_pegged_at_1b_over_past_30_years.html http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/10/jersey_shore_beach_... [1]http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/06/hurricane-sandy-beaches-government-spending/ http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/06/hurricane-san...
- exelius 9y agoI was under the impression that there were legitimate, erosion-based reasons for doing this. Basically, by building a gradual, sloped shore it causes waves to break smaller and over a longer distance, reducing shoreline erosion. Sure they dump the sand in front of the nice houses first because people want it there, but they would still dredge the beaches even if they were abandoned. Or that's the theory at least. But I only remember reading it somewhere, not where I read it; so I don't know if it's BS pseudoscience. Does anyone who actually knows something about the science behind shoreline erosion have an opinion?
- kroltan 9y agoIt really depends on the kind of shore, in some places the dredged sand would just be dragged all the way to the seafloor. IANAMG (I Am Not A Marine Geologist)
- noitsnot 9y agoI feel like the comment is misleading in so many ways. The first article even has a video showing the 'rich people' filed a lawsuit because they already have a wall protecting them from the 1800's, which is the height of the dune the government is building up. Not to mention the build-up was to protect residents further inland. Beaches are pretty much public property. Private owners have sued to claim newly created beaches up against their properties due to replenishment. I have not read a lawsuit where the government has lost its right to make it public land.
- mdemare 9y agoAccording to Google autocomplete, the world is also running out of antivenom, bees, cocoa, doctors, energy, fish, gravity, helium, ip addresses, jobs, lithium, magnets, nutella, oil, phosphorus, rice, scotch, topsoil, vanilla and water.
- erickj 9y agoI'm definitely most concerned about the scotch.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hennsen 9y agoCouldn’t read until that cause the Nutella shortage made me cry...
- randomtest 9y agoI was blown away at gravity shortage
- rconti 9y agoI suppose that's exhibit A for the gravity shortage.
- awj 9y agoIf we run out of all of this other stuff, I'm going to be really worried about the scotch shortage too...
- J5892 9y agoOh shit. Soon trampolines and bouncy castles will be illegal, because they're using up all our gravity.
- emodendroket 9y agoIs it supposed to be impossible for us to be running out of multiple resources at a time or something?
- ataturk 9y agoI...just...don't know. It reads like another breathless "please worry" article. I really think there's just too many people for the planet to sustain and also maintain whatever human aesthetic ideal we believe is necessary.
- haberman 9y agoI worry about this sometimes with all sorts of raw materials and waste products. We seem to take for granted that we can make as many cars, computers, buildings, etc. as the market demands. But there must be some kind of eventual limit to how much steel, rubber, plastic, glass, etc. we can manufacture before we've used it all up. It fills me with vague anxiety that I don't have any sense for how many of these raw materials are left. And I also wonder whose job it is to think about such things, and if they are thinking ahead or just building for the now.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoAs materials become scarce their prices are raised, acting as a natural brake on their use. Environmental concerns may still be an issue however.
- PeachPlum 9y agoWith the caveat of Jevan's Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- imtringued 9y agoAt some point the price is high enough that we can no longer afford to just throw away the material. It becomes profitable to recycle. Copper is a good example.
- davemp 9y agoThat doesn’t really agree with the conservation of mass: > The law implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, or the entities associated with it may be changed in form . . . -Wikipedia
- peeters 9y agoI'm not sure why they didn't get the Yangtze juxtaposition to line up, but you can put this in the Chrome debugger to get a lined-up juxtaposition: $('.jx-left > img').style = 'margin-left: 5px'
- PeachPlum 9y agoHomilies that didn't age well : "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand." - Milton Friedman
- rplst8 9y agoWe're just an oxygen atom away from turning the CO2 from coal, natural gas, and oil power plants into CO3. http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/Green-cement-may-set-CO2-fate-in-concrete-3196916.php http://www.sfgate.com/green/article/Green-cement-may-set-CO2... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Unt7MRsV4&t=267s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Unt7MRsV4&t=267s
- bdamm 9y agoI can't help but wonder if an Oxygen shortage is our next major challenge.
- eitland 9y agoAlong with a silicon shortage then?;-) For anyone wondering: a lot of "rock" and "sand" is silica AKA silicon dioxide. When it comes to oxygen we also have water which contains oxygen.
- 24gttghh 9y agoDo you mean Carbon Trioxide (CO3), or Carbonate (CO3(2-))?
- Parcissons 9y agoCould one frack saharah sand with water and a temperature drop?
- tryingagainbro 9y agoThis is also ruining beaches (sand should go to the sea) Grinding limestone ??
- encoderer 9y agoOnly somewhat related, I recently was in Malibu and needing to relieve myself my wife and I stopped into an open house for a beachfront home. Nice house, private beach access. Anyway, the agent tells me that just down the road the residents there lost their private beach. Work was done to a harbor a couple miles north and it changed the tidal dynamics and in just a couple of days all the sand was washed away. I had never heard of that before. Hard to feel too bad about people losing their private beach but interesting nevertheless. The house had nice facilities, 10/10 would use again.
- uniformlyrandom 9y agoThis happens all the time, due to the natural causes. In Hawaii, some beaches are seasonal. It is funny to read the mixed reviews of nearby properties on AirBnb - some people praise the beach, and some people cannot find it.
- rtkwe 9y agoSounds like something the hosts should clearly state in their description.
- russdill 9y agoReminds me of magic sands beach in Kona. It looked like an awesome beach in pictures so we went. There was no sand. It was all gone. Had to check 3 or 4 times that we actually had the right beach. Turns out seasonal hydrology removes the sand in the winter, but puts it all back in the summer.
- smogcutter 9y agoSide note about Malibu: those beaches aren't private, but homeowners illegally block access. (with cooperation from the sherriff's dept, who know where their bread is buttered)
- Tempest1981 9y agoSimilar battle in Naples, Florida: http://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/special-reports/2017/11/16/who-owns-floridas-beaches-private-landowner-rights-can-clash-public-beach-access/775556001/ http://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/special-reports/2017/11...
- lordnacho 9y agoIf it's as bad as it sounds, Saudi prayers for an economy after oil have just been answered.
- bluegene 9y agoNot really, Desert sand is very smooth and fine to use in construction. From what I read, Dubai actually imports sand for use in construction
- 2close4comfort 9y agoThank your local fracker!
- Animats 9y agoThe developed world is not running out of sand. It's making sand by crushing rock. Here's a typical sand-making plant in China, with old, beat-up equipment making sand in high quantity.[1] There are lots of sand-making machine videos on Youtube, some from China, some from India, and some from the US. They all work about the same; first there's a rock-crusher, then some screening, then a cone crusher which crushes gravel against gravel until it's sand, then a washing and screening stage. All the plants look similar - lots of conveyors and trucks, few people. It's not even that energy intensive. Look at the motor sizes on the equipment. The trucks are probably using more energy than the crushers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07WTDgO-K-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07WTDgO-K-k
- kilroy123 9y agoI thought it was crushed _coral_, not rock?
- dwaltrip 9y agoChecking wikipedia, it looks like silica-based sands are the most common type. Most rocks are composed heavily from silicate compounds -- I'm guessing this is why sand manufacturing is possible. Calcium carbonate, which is crushed coral and shellfish, is the second most common type of sand. I'm curious about the differences between these two types of sand and how it affects their use cases. I also wonder if manufactured silica-based sands are any different from the naturally occurring variety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_(geology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_(geology)
- emodendroket 9y agoThe article also mentions a shortage of gravel. I'd certainly be surprised if there were a shortage of both sand and gravel but rock were in abundance.
- Hextinium 9y agoI would venture a guess to say that we can always make sand but it is easier to just dig it out of the ground instead of crushing it all up.
- himom 9y agoThe bigger, obvious issue is destruction of soils near either thriving biomes or human settlements. Destroying rivers, beaches, forests and areas around where people live is just dumb. There’s always two reasonable alternatives. One, use the essentially lifeless interior, vast deserts of parts of Australia, Africa and South America. Or two, ban concrete as a top CO2 emitter and switch to a renewable carbon sequestration material.
- thescriptkiddie 9y agoI wonder if we should start dumping crushed glass into the oceans again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_glass
- TheGrassyKnoll 9y agoPretty good article: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-canadian-gravel-20171104-htmlstory.html