Monday morning is the time to review your mining investments. The question I will consider this week is: Should I invest in Rio Tinto because they are members of the United States Climate Action Partnership? Here are some of my background thoughts on this investment decision.
First I am intrigued by the thought that I might almost have titled this post “Mining and investing for golfers in the porn of cat-scat global warming.” I resisted the temptation—but only just.
The reasons for the alternative title that I resisted are that I am told that the most popular key words for Google searches include—you guessed it, cats, golf, investing, and porn–in that order. If I could but tap into that rich vein of human curiosity, think how I could impress the folk who host this blog with rising access statistics.
Instead I stick with the simple, almost bland title: mining investment in global warming. I was reminded that I had written a provocative piece on the topic when I ran across this link. It is an obscure blog entitled PublicLandWars. The authors of the blog give no hint of who they are. But you can guess their instinct by two postings. The first on Peruvians against destructive mining includes this gory paragraph, that almost reaches the level of snuff-stuff:
An estimated 20 armed persons with their rifles and Molotov cocktails bombard this encampment where 14 employees peacefully sleep. With the precise aim of their rifles, the assailants easily bring down two young guards, Joel Martin Severino Zapata and Luis Guillermo Gomez Vilchez, as well as the administrator of the encampment, Eduardo Ramirez Montero. They die terrible deaths and one of them is carbonized by the fires set by these anonymous attackers. Able to escape the flames that consumed 80 percent of the mining encampment, the other employees flee and hide out in the steepest and wildest mountains until they can finally escape and advise authorities.
The second posting that gives insight attacks something I wrote in an EduMine Course called An Introduction to Mining Investment – Understanding the Risks. The course includes nearly fifty simple rules I call Investment Rules. The one that gets all the attention in the anti-mining blog, tells you not to worry about global warming when making a decision to invest in mining. I conclude in the rule that the consequences are not so dire that reasonable engineering cannot deal with them. Watch out; the course requires registration to access it; I am not sure whether to be flattered or annoyed that somebody believes it is worth pinching something by me in an access-only-by-pay site. Sorry, I forgot, you can read the entire investment rule at the blog that is too lazy or too un-inventive or intelligent enough to write their own original prose. Who would bother to go back to a site that merely pinches pieces from blocked sites? It is almost as bad as seeking to gain by using spurious key words to garner readers.
To return to the issue of text plagarism. In reality it makes no difference. Once you have written something, it is like kids: they go off into the world and do their own thing—and blame you for it.
I wrote that piece on the irrelevance of global warming to mining investors some time ago, so I decided to take a fresh look at the topic. I found that Rio Tinto is a member of the United States Climate Action Partnership. Does that make Rio Tinto a good mining investment for those concerned about climate change? Looking at the list of other members of the Climate Action Partnership, I notice Ford, Chrysler, and GM. Now they are not good investments if you are neurotic about global warming. You decide what is good for your purse and the climate on that one. But first take a look at this site that tells of the guy who probably advised Rio Tinto to go green. Might make you think twice.
Before you finally decide on your mining investment strategy as potentially affected by global warming, take a look at Ben Muse who quotes this from a for-pay-only site:
Soaring commodity prices and the effects of global warming are pushing mining companies to seek out new ore deposits in one of the world’s most hostile environments: Greenland.
Greenland, a giant island in the north Atlantic governed by Denmark, is seeing a revival of mineral exploration as the glaciers that cover 80% of its territory recede. As the ice melts, mining companies can now explore in areas that were previously inaccessible, and also work in the area for longer each year than was previously possible, executives say.
…smaller mining companies are also being drawn to previously operating mines, where higher global prices and the retreat of the ice cap has opened up new opportunities….
“Global warming has extended the working and exploring development season by a few weeks, as higher temperatures mean the frozen ice is leaving a couple of weeks earlier,” he says. “With the rapid melting of the snow early in June, surface exploration is proceeding a month earlier than would have been possible one or two decades ago.”
According to a recent study by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the area of permanent ice cover in the Arctic — sea ice that survives the summer and remains year round — is contracting at a rate of roughly 9% per decade.
Melting Arctic ice could also open a more direct passage for shipping from Greenland to metal-hungry Asian countries such as China, says Mr. Zemek, Angus & Ross’s CEO, allowing “shorter routes for longer periods.”
To end by quoting PublicLandWars: “So there we have it. Not too worry about global warming as it won’t effect their short-term profits. Wow.”
