I see copper just as precious as gold and silver?

No and I'm not the one that pulled 300ft of 600 pair phone line off the pole around here.

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Hello Bigwater

In answer to your comments about the high price we pay for copper environmentally is in some respect correct.  That highly polluting process was the earlier 18/19th and early 20th century technology in the days that the environment was not an issue. Much damage was done to area under the fall out of acid rain. The culprits was from no pollution controls from open hearth brick reverbertory furnaces.The dust from the furnace was highly concentrated sulfuric acid in power form when mixed with water became acid which destroyed vegetation. The same can be said from Iron and steel making.

However to set the record strait.

The process I have mentioned is a more modern process which includes so2 capture by a Bag house acidic duct collection which is reprocessed in an acid plant into battery acid, sulfuric acid and eventually sodium metibisulfate as food preservative, thus with minimal amount of emissions, no where near the levels that were released in the 18th and 18th centuries.

Most modern smelters that are in developed countries and severely restricted on how much so2 emissions can be released into the atmosphere. However that said I shudder to think about the minimal pollution or non existent pollution control levels of smelters in China and India.

Strangle enough is seems not to be an issue with western environmentalists.

Hardluck   

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Hello Bigwater

I cannot make comments on American standards of the release of So2 emissions. But I know the Australian standards.

I cannot argue the fact in the past smelters were responsible for massive environment damage.
 
So2 when mixed with Ho2 becomes dangerous if there extremely high levels of So2 being released into the Atmosphere. The Emission standard on the rate a modern copper smelter can release has decreased year after year. Massive fines are imposed and they have a strike 3 policy. after 3 serious breaches in 12 months the company can loses its license. And do not think this was an idle threat to keep companys inline.

I have been involved with 2 Copper smelters that were closed due to failure to comply with the standards. Even after the company invested nearly 900 million dollars in upgrading its emission control systems. No CEO today would even consider deliberate breaches of the emission standards.

The thing that irks me is some ill informed members of the public with their own environmental agendas actively went out of their way to destroy an industry. They rode off into the sunset like knights in shinning Armour and said "hey look at us where saving the world", As they got into their gas guzzling SUV and talked to their friends on their mobile telephones and went home to their finely expensive homes made from rain Forrest timbers. All made from the industries they so despised.

Interesting enough the leading protagonist against us. Her husband worked there for 40 years before retiring, as soon as he retired she actively complained about the emissions. Getting mothers to bring their little children to play ring a ring a Rosie with little hands held together in front of national Television. cameras. The PR campaign sunk us like Exocet missile, politicians wanting the green vote sacrificed us at the altar of saving their political asses. Set the emissions levels so low that it was technically unachievable. We went through two royal commissions that were nothing short of a witch hunt.

What was left?  In the wake was an industry that has progressively moved operations to china and India with no pollution controls what so ever and now polluting more than ever. And the region that had the Copper smelter which had been closed left to rust, with thousands of unemployed 17 years on living in poverty. Another fine result of the lucky country.

Life has moved me on to other things.

 I am not a overt greenie nor a overt industrialist, but prefer to see some common sense not decisions made due ignorance and mass hysteria.

Unfortunate the country I live in is run buy decisions made from mass hysteria.

Hardluck.

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Hello Bigwater

The mining industry in Australia is in a massive boom in which has helped Australia to escape much of the world wide recession. However it can be Ironic that such a rich lucky country can have poverty.

China and India cannot get enough Iron Ore, coal, gas and other minerals. But this boom has not filtered down to all parts of Australia. Some regions, especially industrial manufacturing and tourism regions have been very hard hit.

Politicians in my country have become drunk on this cash cow. and when China says Jump our political masters say how high.

hardluck 

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Hello Bigwater

We were all overjoyed when our capitalism broke the back of communism in the USSR. But we were too full of ourselves in belief of our invincibility as the sleeping giant turned our weapon of capitalism against us.

We have already lost the war with China and we didn't even know it. It was our petty greed that made us come undone. It was the lure of all the cheap goods from China and everyone fell for it.

One by one the CEO's of the big manufacturers saw the vast profits to be made from taking all the good paying factory jobs off shore, to china where pitiful wages are paid to their workers and a currency 40% undervalued. Slowly but surely the big company's went off shore, the other more patriotic companies who stayed went under because they could not compete with the Chinese counterparts.

To compensate the loss of income and loss of industrial capacity. The banks deregulated saw vast profits to be made in flooding the markets with cheap financing with money they never had. All people in the West were taken in by the great dream living well beyond what they could really afford living on one credit card to the next.

And when the bubble burst we are beginning to slowly realize that the western world is in decline financially, politically and militarily. As our sleeping giant China is increasing in industrial capacity, financial and military power. Which is eating away the industrial and financial capacity of our countries to resist the rising Chinese world superpower.

And you know what is the most Ironic thing of all?

They did all that without firing a shot.

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