All that glitters...

..a long but very interesting article from today's "New York Times" on gold:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/24/international/24GOLD.html?th&emc=th

 

Excellent, tones. Do you have a similar article about gemstone mining? I'd like to show it to my partner.

 

'Fraid not, Markus. This just happened to appear in today's NYT (I have an electronic subscription, mainly so that I can read Maureen Dowd shred the Bushes), and as a chemist it interested me.

I'd imagine the gemstones to be very different from the extraction point of view, both from gold and from each other. Diamond (an allotropic form of pure carbon) is unique in occurring in "pipes". The others are variants of natural minerals, such as corundum (aluminium oxide) (sapphire and ruby) and beryl (emerald). I don't know that any of the extractions is as bad as that for gold, in which cyanide is used.

 

Good read and I find it refreshing that consumers and investors are starting to ask about the social and environmental cost associated with the product, after all like with with all that oil in anwr someone or somebody needs to keep a close eye on things to see that exploration does not turn into exploitation of people, land, water or wildlife.

Now for all the gold bugs on the forum a quick visit to LBMA and WGC should scratch that itch.

 

I have one too, pretty much for the same reasons. But Ms Dowd's brilliant prose is no longer free ...

 

Sad, eh? But I paid!

 

I do not object to paying, but I'm still at the stage where I'd rather pay to read a newspaper made of real paper. I like the touch and smell of it.

 

Not to mention the taste!

Bob

 

So, how does platinum extraction rate environmentally? I much prefer it to gold. More precious and not naff like gold.

Michael.

 

And so do the growing markets amongst the new rich in China as they adopt platinum as the precious metal of choice for displays of private wealth. Gold is so last century, so Chairman Mao.

 

i prefer to wear leather bracelets and beads around me neck...

 

Not quite so bad:

http://r0.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/platinum/chain.htm

Mind you, when they say "special reagents" used in the extraction process, I worry! But then, unlike gold, which occurs in metallic form (it being so unreactive), platinum occurs in an ore and has to be extracted by chemical or electrolytic reaction.

I vaguely remember a story of the Spanish mining for gold in South America and finding lots of "white rubbish". This was no use to man or beast, so they used it to pave the roads. And when they later found it was platinum ore (the metal was unknown to the world of the first gold miners), the town was torn apart to get it.