Oh, the stupid, it burns.
Helium shortage threatens time-honored Nebraska tradition | Dr. Saturday – Yahoo! Sports http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/helium-shortage-threatens-time-honored-nebraska-tradition-152527242–ncaaf.html
Face palm! Unfortunately, there’s this nagging little detail about the noble gas, Helium, one of the most stable and chemically inert elements there is.
Helium is a result of radioactive decay. I don’t think global warming is powerful enough to overcome the forces in the nucleus of an atom yet.
On Earth it is thus relatively rare—0.00052% by volume in the atmosphere. Most terrestrial helium present today is created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy radioactive elements (thorium and uranium), as the alpha particles emitted by such decays consist of helium-4 nuclei. This radiogenic helium is trapped with natural gas in concentrations up to 7% by volume, from which it is extracted commercially by a low-temperature separation process called fractional distillation.
How hard could this have been to look up?
BTW Methane CH4 (Natural gas) is lighter than air, maybe they’ll switch to that and endure the caterwauling for releasing a GHG about 20 times more potent than CO2.
h/t to Marc Morano
UPDATE: Maybe the National Helium Reserve will be brought to bear in this crisis. Who knew?
The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, is a strategic reserve of the United States holding over a billion cubic meters (1E9 m3) of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir. The reserve was established in 1925 as a strategic supply of gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Space Race and Cold War.
h/t to Chris Horner
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Use hydrogen. I hear there’s an abundance of it in the universe…
Another tradition in Nebraska football going away. Husker fans are barely hanging on…
Senator William Proxmire waged a personal war on the US strategic helium reserve. He gave it a golden fleece award for “fleecing” the government and returning no value. He said the Navy has no more blimps, so we don’t need helium.
The company I work for spends several thousand dollars for helium every year, and we are always looking for ways to use less. Part of the problem is that the price is so low that natural gas suppliers are letting it go rather than capturing it. And after you let it go…………. it’s gone forever.
What an interesting story, Anthony! Nothing about the Arctic today? Nothing about record lows? You prefer to talk about Helium do you?
REPLY: Are you incapable of scanning the front page of WUWT?
Apparently so. We covered the issue in-depth this week on 8/13:
Sea Ice News – Volume 3 Number 10 – ARCUS August Sea Ice Outlook posted, plus worries over Arctic storm breaking up sea ice
And of course, I cover the issue in depth every day, 24/7 on our Sea Ice Reference Page
I think your opinion needs more testing, and less operational use. Cheers. – Anthony
Jeez, use hydrogen, cheap, plentiful, more effective, and perfectly safe to use in small quantities by anyone except imbeciles — ok, there’s a lot of those. NASA (or someone) is designing a new generation of air-blimps — hey, the wave of the future, guys, Buck Rogers was right! — and they use *hydrogen* because of its superior lifting qualities and availability.
As anyone else who does technical diving can tell you, a large part of the cost of gas mixes is helium. From what I understand, there is a finite amount of helium on earth and it’s not very easy or cost effective (yet…) to produce (this is versus say, hydrogen… just zap water, wham bam thank you maam).
Helium has all manner of important medical and scientific applications, and it irks me to see it wasted in so many balloons all over the place.
Fun fact: your local grocery store likely sells only one brand of mylar helium balloons (you know, the ones that say happy birthday and have children’s characters on them near the check-out). This is because helium is so expensive. The balloon companies competitively subsidize the cost of helium for the store in exchange for an exclusivity contract.
My company will very occasionally purchase from a local supplier (helium wholesaler) for special events. In May I paid $80 for 100 cubic feet.
Methinks someone’s leg came off in someone’s hand.
The helium that is in that reserve in Texas came from the oilfields of the early 20th century
Most natural gas contains little or no helium. But some natural gas wells in (only!) the United States produce a lot of helium mixed in with the methane.
We can be having a natural gas boom and a simultaneous helium shortage if the fracked gas contains no helium, as is apparently the case.
Don’t fusion reactors create Helium?
I’m not sure, but I think that may have been some lame attempt at sarcastic humor of one form or another.
I’m in the it’s sarcasm camp, but I’m sarcasm biased.
Don’t be alarmed by peak helium; we’ll just get it from the moon.
http://news.discovery.com/space/this-moon-was-made-for-mining-helium-3.html
As I recall, the US has a few thousand unused helium synthesis devices in inventory. Capture might be challenging.
Methinks it was Nitrous Oxide they filled the balloons with and inhaled most of it!
Helium is used in large volumes by many nuclear plants, industrially as well as research. Supply problems and worries, have been around since the 60s. It is a real concern… just doesn’t have anything to do with GW. GK
You wonder how many of these cretins could name the third most common gas in the atmosphere. Their brains “are gone” so to speak.
David Thomas Bronzich says:
August 16, 2012 at 12:39 pm
High squeaky voices may be a thing of the past, children in the future simply won’t understand….
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Nothing to worry about. Since the pronouncements of Hansenites is becoming more shrill that proves that there is still plenty of He around.
(Hmmmm…..unless they’re using it all up for their press releases. In that case, maybe CAGW HAS caused a shortage.)
Oooh, this deserves a Cornhusker joke. This story is from a few years back, when Nebraska was a real college football powerhouse. As it happens, its best football player was struggling in class, and was placed on academic suspension prior to the last home game of the season, a game the team needed to win to advance to the Orange Bowl. University officials huddled with the NCAA and came up with a remedial plan that required the player to pass a proficiency exam before he could suit up for the game.
Nebraska officials decided the player needed as much time as possible to study for the exam, so they scheduled an oral exam, on the 50 yard line, right before the coin toss of the football game. The player had to score 75% or better, and there were 4 questions on the test, one each from the subjects of English, Math, Geography and Physical Education. He studied and studied, cracking his advanced English book, his advanced Math book, his advanced Geography book and his advanced PE book.
Finally the day of the big game arrived. The player, suited up in full pads and carrying his helmet, nervously trotted out onto the field. The full house of screaming fans went crazy, cheering for their best player. The University President came out to administer the test. “Question number one,” he announced into the public address system microphone. “This is your physical education question: Can you do 25 push-ups?” The player thought and thought, and finally said, “YES!” “That’s RIGHT!” said the university president, and the crowd roared with joy!
The university president was beaming as he asked the next question. “The next question is from the subject of Geography. Name the Capitol of Nebraska, and I can give you a hint, it’s the city you’re in right now!” The player looked startled, hemmed and hawed a bit, then just as he was about to give up and say he didn’t know the answer, he looked up at the stadium scoreboard where the scoreboard operator had flashed the message “Welcome to Lincoln Nebraska!. “Lincoln?” said the player tentatively, noticeably trying to pronounce the silent ‘L’. “That’s right!” And the crowd again went wild!
“All right, quiet down, everyone, we need to continue,” said the University president, “and let me remind you, he only needs to answer one of the remaining two question correctly to pass. Your next question, in the subject of English is this: spell CAT.” The player looked like a deer in the headlights. He didn’t know the test was going to be this hard. He heard lots of people from the stands shouting out lots of suggestions, but there were so many that it all sounded like white noise. He thought and thought and finally stuttered out “K-A-T!” “No, I’m sorry, that is incorrect,” said the president. “The correct answer is C-A-T.” The crowd groaned.
An intense hush filled the stadium, as the president reminded them he needed to answer the final question correctly to be eligible to play. “From the subject of mathematics, and I want no help from the audience, please. What is 2 plus 2?” The player was ready. He’d studied his advanced math, and knew this one cold. He confidently stepped up to the mic and said “FOUR.” A huge gasp of horror went through the crowd as they all began to chant “GIVE HIM ANOTHER CHANCE!”
[ba dump bump] I’m here all week. Remember to tip your waitstaff.
It’s sarcasm, ridiculing the notion that a small amount of a trace gas (or balloons) in the atmosphere could affect temperatures.
ShrNfr says: “You wonder how many of these cretins could name the third most common gas in the atmosphere. Their brains “are gone” so to speak.”
And nobody is healing ’em.
The abundance of hydrocarbons to provide energy means not enough investment has been put into developing commercial fusion reactors which would produce Helium as a by product. So as CO2 has increased such Helium has not been produced. At this rate our grandchildren will be deprived of the opportunity to hear a Helium induced squeaky voice, so we should also add this to our crimes against future generations ;>)
To get the full effect you have to read the article in a high squeaky voice.
What with the GE connection to the current administration, one would think it would be a piece of cake for them to get a subsidy for this element vital to their MRI magnets.
I think we can forget about GE paying a price that would justify natural gas producers isolating and storing helium on their own.
Meanwhile with the constant attack by the left and the media on natural gas and the ensuing glut, I don’t see much incentive for the producers to produce either methane or helium.
Don’t forget the President (Clinton) who signed the decentralization of helium storage away from the feds to the free market heavily promoted natural gas and expected that our cars, trucks and a great deal of our co-gens to run on it.
The National Helium Reserve is severely depleted (is mandated to be sold off entirely by 2015), due to the Helium Privatization Act of 1996.
It’s a joke folks. Further down the article it says:
“What remains of Lincoln’s dwindling helium supply is being saved for local hospitals, which need it to cool MRI magnets and for lab experiments. And local construction companies need it for tools.
“We want to be good stewards,” Ethan Rowley, NU director of athletic marketing, told the paper. “We don’t want to take away helium from hospitals and industries that need it more than we do right now.”
Don’t people understand that they’re messing with tradition here?”
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I would say that last sentence is the giveaway.