Imagine a world without ballons Mr.Speaker

[jcoosi]

I understand his point but seriously I have had my fill or their bipartisian antics

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/26/rep-hank-johnson-on-helium-debate-imagine-a-world-without-balloons-video/

 

 

 

 

[Guest Cami]

This is the same guy that said Guam would tip over if their were too many people on it....  He is either high, drunk or beyond stupid.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

He is way past stupid. I didn't hear much of a point, either. I guess the strategic helium reserve may, some

time in the future, become valuable, once again, after an EMP over America, and we go back to dirigibles.

[Dolomite_supafly]

This is what you get when you vote based only on the letter next to a candidates name.

[JayC]

Well to be fair, this is a real strategic issue that we should be concerned with...  Unlike made up issues, there is a real concern that we could have a major helium shortage, as early as 2025.

 

90% of the worlds helium comes from Natural Gas wells within 250-300 miles of Amarillo, TX, there currently is no readily available source for helium anywhere else in the world today.  

 

So, what we only use helium for filling kids balloons :)  Helium is the only atom we can cool to nearly absolute zero and not freeze, this provides us the only way today to make superconductors.  These superconductors are used in things like MRI machines, and to make many of the electronics we have today.

 

So a shortage of helium would be bad, very bad, not only for technology but possibly for our economy.

 

Now, things could change down the road, we might find a way to perform fusion, and then have a crap ton of extra helium laying around.  But until we find a second source of pure helium somewhere in the world, it might not be such a bad idea to treat it as a strategic resource. 

 

He is way past stupid. I didn't hear much of a point, either. I guess the strategic helium reserve may, some

time in the future, become valuable, once again, after an EMP over America, and we go back to dirigibles.

 

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I don't doubt that at all, Jay, but is our reserve being used up faster right now, because of kids' birthday

party balloons? Just kidding. It's used in welding, also. My comments were directed at the buffoon and

his delivery. He has a track record of silliness.

[mikegideon]

This is the same guy that said Guam would tip over if their were too many people on it....  He is either high, drunk or beyond stupid.

 

C. Does he really think that he accomplished anything? The Tea Party is there to keep assholes like him from ruining the country.

Edited April 30, 2013 by mikegideon

[mikegideon]

Well to be fair, this is a real strategic issue that we should be concerned with...  Unlike made up issues, there is a real concern that we could have a major helium shortage, as early as 2025.

 

90% of the worlds helium comes from Natural Gas wells within 250-300 miles of Amarillo, TX, there currently is no readily available source for helium anywhere else in the world today.  

 

So, what we only use helium for filling kids balloons  :)  Helium is the only atom we can cool to nearly absolute zero and not freeze, this provides us the only way today to make superconductors.  These superconductors are used in things like MRI machines, and to make many of the electronics we have today.

 

So a shortage of helium would be bad, very bad, not only for technology but possibly for our economy.

 

Now, things could change down the road, we might find a way to perform fusion, and then have a crap ton of extra helium laying around.  But until we find a second source of pure helium somewhere in the world, it might not be such a bad idea to treat it as a strategic resource. 

 

If it's that scarce, wouldn't the market price eventually get to the point that they wouldn't waste it on balloons anyway? The good news is that helium is probably the most stable element in the periodic table. It won't react with anything. So... there's as much helium now as there ever was.

 

BTW... I'm glad the Amarillo area is making some contribution to the world. I spent some time there, and left wondering why it was there at all.

Edited April 30, 2013 by mikegideon

[Dolomite_supafly]

I think using hydrogen would be a lot more fun than helium for ballons. Imagine the fun of holding a candle to a hydrogen filled ballon.

[gjohnsoniv]

Honestly should the government be in charge of something like that? Give them the Sahara and we would have a sand shortage in a year.  The government can't do anything well except give out welfare checks.

[JayC]

That would be the case if it was a free market, unfortunately just before WWI the government declared that is was a strategic resource and created the national helium reserve which held a huge amount of the gas because it was so rare.  Then in 1996 the government wanted to switch to a free market, and passed a law that said the helium needed to be sold off by 2015, which artificially dropped the price on it, so it's not really a free market to begin with.

 

And while nobody would argue I'm not all for a completely free market, we have to understand that unlike most 'products' we can't make more helium because it's an atom.  Right now there is a single source for the helium in the world, and that source seems to be running out.  With what we use helium for, it's probably a good idea for national defense that we have a strategic supply of it on hand.

 

As for having as much as before...  yeah kinda, first helium is light enough that it does escape the atmosphere out into space...  So while it still exists as matter it's not still here on Earth...  Second, helium is hard to 'refine' in low concentrations, and right now we know of only 2 methods to create helium in a high enough concentration to capture...  First is fusion by pressing 2 hydrogen atoms together to create a Helium atom, which we can do in the lab, but have no method to do this on large scale (or we would have very cheap power), the second is fission and while we do have plants setup they don't produce very much helium, your average nuclear power plant if we captured all the helium would only produce enough for 2 MRI machines.

 

We can redesign some stuff to use liquid hydrogen, but currently there is no replacement for liquid helium.

 

If it's that scarce, wouldn't the market price eventually get to the point that they wouldn't waste it on balloons anyway? The good news is that helium is probably the most stable element in the periodic table. It won't react with anything. So... there's as much helium now as there ever was.

 

BTW... I'm glad the Amarillo area is making some contribution to the world. I spent some time there, and left wondering why it was there at all.

Edited April 30, 2013 by JayC

[joustin]

Helium isn't renewable in the sense that it escapes the atmosphere and is blown away by solar wind etc. So in reality there is peak helium unless we find more.<br /><br />Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2<br /><br />