A wet day in Cape Town

16.00

The weather is foul today- gale-force winds, cool and torrential rain. Despite the weather I would like to have had a swim in the hotel pool, but it was shut down yesterday after developing a leak. The maintenance men were working on it yesterday, but not today, presumably as it is the weekend! The sign says ‘sorry for the inconvenience and thankyou for your understanding’.

Not good enough though. We arrived yesterday to find that internet access in the bedrooms is unavailable at the moment; vouchers are provided for wireless access in the lounge area but this is not a convenient place to work for any reasonable period. From tomorrow, we have around 50% of the conference delegates staying at the hotel, and they are paying for, and expecting, 4-star facilities. With no internet in their rooms, and no pool to relax in after the sessions, this is something they will not be getting, and they would have every right to seek compensation from the hotel if nothing is resolved.

18.15

Amanda and Jon finally arrived- late as plane from Dubai delayed due to fog! They weren’t exactly singing the praises of Emirates’ customer services! After a quick shower they joined us in the bar, then for an excellent meal in the hotel’s The Square Restaurant with Martyn and Christine Hay, and Dean Eastbury. Martyn’s company is Eurus Mineral Consultants, South Africa, and Dean is the Elsevier publishing manager for Minerals Engineering.

In the photo from bottom, clockwise, Barbara, Amanda, Christine, me, Dean, Jon, Martyn.

Arrived in Cape Town!

We arrived at Cape Town International Airport at 11.00 and after the 20 minute taxi drive arrived at the beautiful Vineyard Hotel.

Received a text from Jon to advise that he and Amanda are stuck in Dubai! They were trying out the Emirates route to Cape Town via Dubai, and missed their connecting flight. Hopefully they will be here tomorrow.

Our flight was full of Irishmen, volunteers building new homes for Africans in Cape Town, which has evolved beyond all recognition over the 5 decades in which we have regularly been visiting.

Cape Town is now like our second home, and is very different from the city that Barbara and I first saw when we arrived by boat in October 1969 en route to the Zambian Copperbelt.

The Cape Town that greeted us then was cold, grey and unfriendly. Everywhere were taxis displaying signs ‘whites only’; park benches, beaches, all with the same ubiquitous sign. The local people, mainly coloured, were (not surprisingly) sullen and an air of hostility was all pervasive.

South Africa was in the depths of its era of apartheid, designed to keep the races apart, but heavily biased in terms of land and privileges to the whites. We were eager to leave as soon as possible, but had to spend a night in a small hotel by the docks (now the sophisticated and vibrant Waterfront area). Once our car had been unloaded, and cleared customs, we set off on the Great North Road (now the N1), the start of our 3700km journey to Chingola.


6th November 20.00 Vineyard Hotel

The weather has suddenly turned very nasty- high winds, cloudy and cool (reminiscent of Cornwall).

Jon has texted to say that he and Amanda will be on tomorrow’s flight from Dubai, but they are less than impressed by the service with Emirates- had to queue for 5 hours to confirm change of flight!

Had a quick meeting at 1400 with our excellent Cape Town agent Rene Simpson and hotel staff, and met up for a quick drink and chat with Martyn and Christine Hay, the only delegates booked in today.

17.00 November 5th: London Heathrow

In limbo at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Only 5 hours to go before our BA flight leaves for Cape Town!
The car journey from Falmouth was 4 and a half hours, and the reason for our early arrival (apart from fairly clear M5 and M4) is that Amanda and Jon have an earlier flight than Barbara and me. They are now in Terminal 3 and are trying out the route to Cape Town via Dubai, with Emirates. Cheaper but 7 hours longer! Another advantage of BA is that it departs from Terminal 5, which is very impressive after its horrendous opening day. So we will drop off the bags, then have a leisurely meal before flying.

Checked email, and good to see that abstracts coming in now for Comminution ’10.

On our way!

11.oo 5th November
We are all packed and ready for our long journey from Falmouth to Cape Town.
We now have over 180 delegates for Flotation '09, so if you are thinking of doing some serious networking it is definitely not too late to register.
I will be "blogging" every day while in South Africa, with news and photos of faces and places.

Comminution '10- final call for papers

Cape Town's beautiful Vineyard Hotel is the venue for next April's Comminution '10.

This, the 7th International Comminution Symposium is organised by Minerals Engineering International in consultation with Prof Malcolm Powell of Australia's JKTech, and is currently sponsored by Sigmund Lindner, JKTech & Magotteaux. Media sponsors are The Gold & Minerals Gazette & Industrial Minerals.

If you would like to present a paper at the event, short abstracts should be submitted no later than the end of this month.

Stephan Harrison responds to Ian Plimer's climate change posting

A very comprehensive response to Prof. Ian Plimer’s email of 20th October has just been sent to me by Dr. Stephan Harrison of University of Exeter:

I will respond to Plimer’s main points. This will be a long posting, so apologies! I will identify Ian Plimer’s points as (IP) and my response as (SH).

(IP) It is claimed that there is a scientific consensus about human-induced climate change. There is no consensus. Consensus is a process of politics, not science. Science is married to evidence, no matter how uncomfortable.
(SH) The word consensus is used to show that the overwhelming majority of informed scientists agree that there is a greenhouse effect; that C02 is a greenhouse gas (GHG hereafter) and that these have increased enormously in the atmosphere and that recent warming is largely being driven by this. There is also consensus in other parts of science (Newtonian Physics, Quantum Physics, Evolution etc.). Are these also politically driven?
(IP) Scientists who push the view that humans create climate change are young, trying to forge a career in a narrow field by fear, seek government and research grant favour and base their opinions on computer projections about the future. There are no natural scientists I know who have spent more than 40 years of integrated inter-disciplinary science who argue that humans change climate.(SH) Nonsense. I know lots of scientists at the beginning and end of their careers who accept the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). At both Exeter and Oxford Universities, where I recently taught, both places were full of them. Actually, the way to make a real name for yourself as a scientist would be to show that AGW wasn’t happening. If you could do that then you would become the most famous scientist in the world. It’s telling that no-one has managed this….including IP.
(IP) To argue that temperature has increased 0.80C since 1850 is misleading because the Little Ice Age ended in 1850 and it is absolutely no surprise that temperature increases after a long cold period.
(SH) Why is it no surprise? Why should temperatures increase? They only do this in response to the forcings; and since the middle of the 20th century the GHG forcings have begun to overwhelm the natural variability in the climate. IP’s mistake is to think that the climate acts like a rubber ball. Just because it was cold in one period, doesn’t mean that it has to be warm in the next!
(IP)Since 1850, there has been temperature increase (1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1976-1998) and decrease (1880-1910, 1940-1976, 1998-present) and the rate of the three periods of temperature increase has been the same.(SH). No, this is wrong. The have been no GLOBAL increases in temperature in the instrumental record comparable to the present one (since 1975 or so). And temperatures since 1998 have NOT fallen…they’ve risen. Look at the data!
(IP) A simple question does not get asked: what part of warming and cooling since 1850 is natural? The first two warmings could not be related to human additions of CO2 from industry hence why wouldn't the 1976-1998 warming also be due to natural processes?(SH) This question is regularly asked! That’s why we do attribution studies. IP needs to read the attribution literature…if he thinks it’s wrong then he could try to develop an attribution that explains the present warming and temperature changes over the past 100 years without, aerosol, volcanic and GHG forcing.
(IP) It is claimed that, since 1950, human additions of CO2 has been the dominant cause of warming. What is not mentioned is that CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant, and without CO2 there would be no life on Earth.
(SH). Irrelevant. Lots of things are pollutants at high levels and not at low levels. Try drinking 10 litres of water quickly and you’ll see what I mean (it will kill you).
(IP)The scales and rates of temperature change in the past have been far greater than when humans emitted CO2 from industry. What has caused the cooling (1940-1976 and 1998-present) or, by some tortured logic, is global cooling in this century actually global warming cunningly disguised? (SH) The cooling in the mid-century (which was very mild and nowhere near as marked as shown in IP’s manufactured temperature graph) is attributed to a combination of aerosol and natural variability. There has been no cooling since 1998.
(IP)At present, atmospheric temperature is decreasing and CO2 is increasing, again showing that CO2 is not the principal driver of climate change.
(SH). Irrelevant and shows misunderstanding. Firstly T is NOT decreasing. Second, there is natural variability. In a dynamic climate system over short periods (less than 15 years or so) the T signal is as large as the noise. That means the natural variability can mask the T signal. A couple of years ago we had a warm spell in April and a cold spell in May. No doubt IP would use these data to argue that summer wasn’t coming and that the seasons aren’t driven by insolation!
(IP)Planet Earth is a warm wet greenhouse volcanic planet. The planet is dynamic; change is normal. Five of the six major ice ages occurred when the atmospheric CO2 content was up to 1000 times higher than at present and for half of Earth's history CO2 has been sequestered naturally into algal reefs, coral reefs, sediments, altered rocks, bacteria, plants, soils and oceans.
(SH) Irrelevant what happened in the distant past when the oceans, continents had very different configurations compared to the present.
(IP)This process is still taking place. Ice core drillings show that over the last 400,000 years, CO2 peaks at least 800 years after temperature peaks.(SH). Irrelevant. This was predicted before we had the ice core data. CO2 acts as an amplifier (feedback) during glacial-interglacial transitions when warming (orbital forcing) warms the oceans, permafrost etc, producing C02 outgassing, methane release and changes to biogeochemical cycles. Orbital forcing alone is insufficient to terminate glaciation. C02 is acting as a forcing now. The physics is the same but the timing is different. How would IP explain the termination of glaciations?
(IP)The hypothesis that high atmospheric CO2 drives global warming is therefore invalid. The Earths atmospheric CO2 initially derived from volcanic degassing. Much of it still does and the rest is recycled CO2 from the oceans, rocks and life.(SH). Nonsense. Answered above.
(IP)The claim that warming will increase in the future has been disproved by the climate modellers’ own data. Climate models of the 1990s did not predict the El Nino of 1998 or the cooling in the 21st century.
(SH). Nonsense. Climate models aren’t supposed to predict stochastic events! Either IP doesn’t understand how models work (in which case he shouldn’t pontificate about them) or he is deliberately misunderstanding them. There has been no cooling in the 21st century.
(IP) If such models are inaccurate only 10 years into the future, how can they be accurate for longer-term predictions? Furthermore, when these models are run backwards, they cannot be used to identify climate-driving processes involving a huge transfer of energy (eg, El Nino), volcanoes, solar changes and supernovae.(SH) It’s worth saying that models have predicted an enormous amount. They correctly predicted the cooling from Pinatubo; stratospheric cooling and troposphere warming; arctic amplification; warming of the land compared with the oceans; enhanced warming at night etc.
(IP)Climate models tell us more about the climatologists than they do about nature.(SH) I don’t understand. Not many climatologists I know require the solution of partial differential equations to explain their behaviour. On second thoughts…..
(IP)Another claim is that climate cannot be reversed. This invokes a non-dynamic planet. The fact that previous warmings with an atmospheric temperature some 5 degrees C higher than now (eg, Minoan, Roman, Medieval) were reversed is conveniently ignored, as are the great climate cycles driven by the Sun, supernovae, the Earth’s orbit, tectonics and tides seen on modern, archaeological and geological time scales.(SH) I don’t understand the ‘reverse’ bit here. Past warming (Holocene at least) was not global and T were not as high as today. The 5 degrees bit is nonsense.
(IP)“Tipping points” are another sensationalist unsubstantiated claim. In past times when atmospheric CO2 and temperature were far higher, there were no tipping points, climate disasters or runaway greenhouse.
(SH) terms like ‘climate disasters’ and ‘runaway’ are emotive….no scientists use these (at least not in the scientific literature). Is IP saying that threshold responses have not occurred in the past? If he is, then he’s wrong.
(IP)The climate catastrophists attempt to create fear by mentioning the carbon cycle but just happen to omit that significant oxygenation of the atmosphere took place when the planet was in middle age and this process of photosynthesis resulted in the recycling and sequestration of carbon.(SH) Irrelevant to the present day.
(IP)The atmosphere now contains 800 billion tonnes (800 Gt) of carbon as CO2. Soils, vegetation and humus contain 2000 Gt of carbon in various compounds, the oceans contain 39,000 Gt and limestone, a rock that contains 44% CO2, contains 65,000,000 Gt of carbon. The atmosphere contains only 0.001% of all carbon at the surface of the Earth and far greater quantities are present in the lower crust and mantle of the Earth.(SH) Irrelevant.
(IP) Human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere must be taken into perspective. Over the last 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic eruption can do this in a day.(SH) Wrong. The increase is around 30% or so. Volcanic eruptions do not produce as much C02 as humans.
(IP)Climate chestnuts about polar ice are commonly raised. What is not raised is that ice is dynamic; it advances and retreats. While the Arctic is warming, the Antarctic is cooling and vice versa and if ice did not retreat, then the planet would be covered in ice.
(SH). Irrelevant and wrong. Of course ice retreats. It is doing now (the majority of glaciers, GIS, much of the WAIS, ice shelves etc). Antarctica is warming (see Steig et al. 2009).
(IP) For less than 20% of time Earth has had ice. The Antarctic ice sheet has been with us for 37 million years, during which time there were extended periods of warmth and the ice sheet did not disappear. So too with the Greenland ice sheet which has enjoyed nearly three million years of expansion and contraction, yet did not disappear in extended times far warmer than at present.(SH) Irrelevant. No-one is saying that the Antarctic or GIS is going to disappear….a couple of metres sea level rise by the end of the century might have some consequences though!
(IP) Sea level is also dynamic and has risen and fallen over time by at least 600 metres. Since the end of the glaciation 12,000 years ago, sea level rose some 130 metres until 6,000 years ago when it was about 2 metres higher than at present. This is an average sea level rise of more than 2 cm per year. It is now rising at about 1mm per year. This sea level rise has flooded Bass Strait, the English Channel and destabilised the west Antarctic Ice Sheet. It is this sea level rise that has stimulated coral growth, created larger shallow water ecologies and changed the shape of landmasses.(SH) Irrelevant and wrong. Sea level rise is over 3mm per year, not 1mm. With hundreds of millions of people living on the coasts, and major cities located near to sea level, does IP not think that 1-2m of sea level rise by the end of the century will have an effect?
(IP)The fear-mongering suggestion that oceans will become acid is also misleading. The oceans are buffered by sediments and volcanic rocks on the sea floor and even in past times when atmospheric temperature and CO2 were far higher than at present, there were no acid oceans. If there had been, there would be no fossils with calcium carbonate shells. Although industrial aerosols are decreasing, the climate catastrophists omit to state that volcanic aerosols kill. At least three of the five major mass extinctions of complex life on Earth were probably due to aerosols emitted by volcanoes.(SH) Irrelevant. There is compelling evidence that ocean acidification is happening, and will become a major issue.
(IP)If our climate catastrophists want to twiddle the dials and stop climate change, they need to play God and change radiation in the galaxy, the Sun, the Earth’s orbit, tidal cycles and plate tectonics. Once they have mastered volcanoes, then we can let them loose on climate change.(SH) It’s not a question of stopping climate change. It’s a question of stopping the enormous emissions of GHG and the T rise that has to follow. We’ve known about the Greenhouse Effect since the early 19th century. Maybe IP would like to rewrite nearly 200 years of atmospheric physics?
IP) There have not been independent scientific review or financial due diligence on various nation's emissions trading schemes. All that there has been is spin and fear mongering.(SH) This is not science, so no response is required.It is these legislative time bombs across the developed world that will destroy productive industries in rural and industrial areas.

(SH). In the end who to believe? We have well-established physics (since 1824) that shows that there is a greenhouse effect; that C02 is GHG (since 1859); and that doubling C02 would increase T by several degrees (since 1896). If Ian Plimer wants to argue these points then he needs to publish his ideas in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. If he’s right then he will win the Nobel Prize. That he doesn’t do so (nor does any other sceptic) is rather telling!

Flotation '09 exceeds expectations

All being well, this time next week we will be in Cape Town for Flotation ’09.

We are now finalising what has turned out to be, despite the recession, a very successful event.

We have an excellent delegate list, currently around 180 delegates representing 20 countries. Notable exceptions? American academics. Although we have a number of delegates from USA, representing mining and equipment companies, not a single academic. I wonder why this is?

New Flotation Book from China

I've just received a copy of a book Electrochemistry of Flotation of Sulphide Minerals by authors at the Central South University in China.

If there is anyone out there who would be interested in reviewing this book for MEI Online, please let me know and I will forward the copy.

3 old crocks on the Gold Coast

Great picture just in by email of two very well known mineral processors, Tony-Holland Batt (left) and Tim Napier-Munn, posing by Tim's pride and joy, his vintage E-type Jaguar.

Tim retired some years ago as Director of Australia's JKMRC, but still retains an active interest in the minerals industry. In fact Jon caught up with him only two weeks ago at the Mill Operators' Conference in Adelaide (2nd photo).

Tony Holland-Batt is happily retired on the Gold Coast, dividing his time between golf and indulging a long-standing desire to compose music. Samples of his compositions can be heard on myspace.com in the music category under the title "Compositions by Tony Holland-Batt". In his working career Tony lectured at the Royal School of Mines for eight years prior to moving to Australia where he worked for Mineral Deposits Ltd for 23 years. In 1995 he relocated to Denver, Colorado where he worked for Hazen Research before retiring back to Australia in 2000.

Two great characters who it is always a joy to meet.

Istanbul '10- provisional programme now published

The list of papers accepted for presentation at Processing of Industrial Minerals '10 is now available for viewing.

It is not too late to submit an abstract if you would like to present a paper next February.

Cullinan Diamonds

Way back in 1978 I visited the Cullinan Diamond Mine (then the Premier Mine) near Pretoria in South Africa.

The mine is famous for having produced the largest diamond ever, the Cullinan, at 3106 carats, now pride of the British crown jewels.

Only 5 months before my visit the Premier Rose, at 353.9 carats, was recovered on one of the final grease tables, having passed unscathed through the crushing plant! Recognising that large diamonds could be destroyed during crushing, a large X-ray sorter had been installed just after the primary crusher, although it had picked up nothing by the time of my visit.

So it was interesting to see today's story in MEI Online. The new mine owner, Petra Diamonds, has recovered one of the world's largest white diamonds, at 507.55 carats.

The discovery is expected to cover costs at the mine for the next two years.

What I would like to know is where was it recovered- was it in the primary x-ray sorter?

Human-induced global warming: a load of hot air? Ian Plimer weighs in

The recent postings on climate change (22 August, 4th October and 16th October) have certainly generated much discussion in the long run-up to Climate Change and the Minerals Industry ’11.

This morning I received the following email from Prof. Ian Plimer, author of the controversial book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science :

It is claimed that there is a scientific consensus about human-induced climate change. There is no consensus. Consensus is a process of politics, not science. Science is married to evidence, no matter how uncomfortable.

Scientists who push the view that humans create climate change are young, trying to forge a career in a narrow field by fear, seek government and research grant favour and base their opinions on computer projections about the future. There are no natural scientists I know who have spent more than 40 years of integrated inter-disciplinary science who argue that humans change climate.

To argue that temperature has increased 0.80C since 1850 is misleading because the Little Ice Age ended in 1850 and it is absolutely no surprise that temperature increases after a long cold period. Since 1850, there has been temperature increase (1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1976-1998) and decrease (1880-1910, 1940-1976, 1998-present) and the rate of the three periods of temperature increase has been the same.

A simple question does not get asked: what part of warming and cooling since 1850 is natural? The first two warmings could not be related to human additions of CO2 from industry hence why wouldn't the 1976-1998 warming also be due to natural processes?

It is claimed that, since 1950, human additions of CO2 has been the dominant cause of warming. What is not mentioned is that CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant, and without CO2 there would be no life on Earth. The scales and rates of temperature change in the past have been far greater than when humans emitted CO2 from industry. What has caused the cooling (1940-1976 and 1998-present) or, by some tortured logic, is global cooling in this century actually global warming cunningly disguised?
At present, atmospheric temperature is decreasing and CO2 is increasing, again showing that CO2 is not the principal driver of climate change. Planet Earth is a warm wet greenhouse volcanic planet. The planet is dynamic; change is normal. Five of the six major ice ages occurred when the atmospheric CO2 content was up to 1000 times higher than at present and for half of Earth's history CO2 has been sequestered naturally into algal reefs, coral reefs, sediments, altered rocks, bacteria, plants, soils and oceans. This process is still taking place. Ice core drillings show that over the last 400,000 years, CO2 peaks at least 800 years after temperature peaks.

The hypothesis that high atmospheric CO2 drives global warming is therefore invalid. The Earths atmospheric CO2 initially derived from volcanic degassing. Much of it still does and the rest is recycled CO2 from the oceans, rocks and life.

The claim that warming will increase in the future has been disproved by the climate modellers’ own data. Climate models of the 1990s did not predict the El Nino of 1998 or the cooling in the 21st century. If such models are inaccurate only 10 years into the future, how can they be accurate for longer-term predictions? Furthermore, when these models are run backwards, they cannot be used to identify climate-driving processes involving a huge transfer of energy (eg, El Nino), volcanoes, solar changes and supernovae.

Climate models tell us more about the climatologists than they do about nature.

Another claim is that climate cannot be reversed. This invokes a non-dynamic planet. The fact that previous warmings with an atmospheric temperature some 5 degrees C higher than now (eg, Minoan, Roman, Medieval) were reversed is conveniently ignored, as are the great climate cycles driven by the Sun, supernovae, the Earth’s orbit, tectonics and tides seen on modern, archaeological and geological time scales.

“Tipping points” are another sensationalist unsubstantiated claim. In past times when atmospheric CO2 and temperature were far higher, there were no tipping points, climate disasters or runaway greenhouse. The climate catastrophists attempt to create fear by mentioning the carbon cycle but just happen to omit that significant oxygenation of the atmosphere took place when the planet was in middle age and this process of photosynthesis resulted in the recycling and sequestration of carbon.

The atmosphere now contains 800 billion tonnes (800 Gt) of carbon as CO2. Soils, vegetation and humus contain 2000 Gt of carbon in various compounds, the oceans contain 39,000 Gt and limestone, a rock that contains 44% CO2, contains 65,000,000 Gt of carbon. The atmosphere contains only 0.001% of all carbon at the surface of the Earth and far greater quantities are present in the lower crust and mantle of the Earth.

Human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere must be taken into perspective. Over the last 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic eruption can do this in a day.

Climate chestnuts about polar ice are commonly raised. What is not raised is that ice is dynamic; it advances and retreats. While the Arctic is warming, the Antarctic is cooling and vice versa and if ice did not retreat, then the planet would be covered in ice. For less than 20% of time Earth has had ice. The Antarctic ice sheet has been with us for 37 million years, during which time there were extended periods of warmth and the ice sheet did not disappear. So too with the Greenland ice sheet which has enjoyed nearly three million years of expansion and contraction, yet did not disappear in extended times far warmer than at present.

Sea level is also dynamic and has risen and fallen over time by at least 600 metres. Since the end of the glaciation 12,000 years ago, sea level rose some 130 metres until 6,000 years ago when it was about 2 metres higher than at present. This is an average sea level rise of more than 2 cm per year. It is now rising at about 1mm per year. This sea level rise has flooded Bass Strait, the English Channel and destabilised the west Antarctic Ice Sheet. It is this sea level rise that has stimulated coral growth, created larger shallow water ecologies and changed the shape of landmasses.

The fear-mongering suggestion that oceans will become acid is also misleading. The oceans are buffered by sediments and volcanic rocks on the sea floor and even in past times when atmospheric temperature and CO2 were far higher than at present, there were no acid oceans. If there had been, there would be no fossils with calcium carbonate shells. Although industrial aerosols are decreasing, the climate catastrophists omit to state that volcanic aerosols kill. At least three of the five major mass extinctions of complex life on Earth were probably due to aerosols emitted by volcanoes.

If our climate catastrophists want to twiddle the dials and stop climate change, they need to play God and change radiation in the galaxy, the Sun, the Earth’s orbit, tidal cycles and plate tectonics. Once they have mastered volcanoes, then we can let them loose on climate change.

There have not been independent scientific review or financial due diligence on various nation's emissions trading schemes. All that there has been is spin and fear mongering.

It is these legislative time bombs across the developed world that will destroy productive industries in rural and industrial areas.

Professor Ian Plimer,
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences,
The Mawson Laboratories,
The University of Adelaide,
S.A. 5005 AUSTRALIA

Re-instatement of ICRA

Six years has gone by since the last International Comminution Research Association (ICRA) workshop – the highly successful 2003 Cape Town ICRA workshop, where the theme "The application of computational techniques to industrial comminution problems” was tackled.

I hear today that members of the comminution community have re-instated the working group of ICRA, with a view to holding a major workshop in association with Comminution ’10 in Cape Town next April.

We will post more news on MEI Online as soon as available.

10th Mill Ops Conference

After a 44 hour journey home I am back in Falmouth getting ready for next months Flotation '09 conference in South Africa.
The 10th Mill Operators conference took place in Adelaide and showed that people are coming back to conferences with an optimistic but cautious view to the future. There were around 300 delegates and the exhibition had sold out months before.

The MEI booth had lots of visitors, the first of which was Nick Slade (pictured with me below) from Golder Paste Technology. Nick is also based in Falmouth and was kind enough to invite me out on the Golders boat in the summer to watch some sailing.

It's always nice to meet people who haven't been to our conferences but take great interest in our future events.

This was my second Mill Ops conference and once again it was well organised with a good dinner and the now expected comedian!

Back to Climate Change

Jon and I back in the office this morning, me after 10 hours door to door from Istanbul, and Jon 44 hours from Adelaide!!

Checking emails and a very interesting one from Prof. Keith Atkinson, former Director of Camborne School of Mines:

Following our lunch, you may care to place this contribution on your blog and I'll watch for the brickbats!

I read the climate debate with interest and tend to agree with those who have taken your South African contributer to task. I thought you gave a balanced set of answers but reading his responses I can see that Galileo was right -"...we all tend to see what we expect to find". Regarding Ian Plimer, I first came across him when I was writing "Ore Deposit Geology" with Richard Edwards and therefore when I saw his article "Climate Change, a geologist's view" in Materials World, March 2009, I wrote to him as I thought his was an interesting view on the subject. He replied that his book, which you cite, had become a best seller in Australia and he was touring the country on book signings – not normally associated with academic authors! I have yet to read his book so cannot comment on the veracity of its findings, but I am struck by the emphasis that some of your contributors place on peer review. I agree that peer review is the best we have but what concerns me is peer review cannot always assess the original data. Remember the falsified Indian fossils saga? Furthermore I wonder how many reviewers check/rework the results and, of course, unless you have access to the programs and the models into which the data are fed you have no control over the predictions. Like you, I have experience of models produced by well recognized people which, when examined in detail, i.e. line by line, had some fundamental errors with far reaching, and erroneous, consequences. Have we all forgotten the Club of Rome and the Limits to Growth debates of the late 60's early 70's and the dire predictions for global mineral resources based on "models"? For those who have, we shouldn't have any mercury, tin etc by now!

Having got that off my chest I'd just like to make some observations based on geological data. Global temperatures have varied, often dramatically and over short time frames, throughout Geological Time. We could, of course, talk of the climate in "Britain" during the Cretaceous, or Triassic, as being much hotter than today but really that would have little bearing on today's position. Therefore we can look at the Holocene, and perhaps just the last 10,000 years and the Flandrian Transgression. As you know, the last major Glaciation ended about that time and sea level, globally, was over 100 metres below Present Day. This means that over the last 10,000 years sea level globally has been rising by an average of 1metre per hundred years (10mm p.a.). This, I believe, is equivalent to the most severe of the current climate model predictions for the next hundred years. Coming more up to date, the longest tidal gauge records for Europe suggest a small, but steady, rise since records began (c1800), with an acceleration over the last half century to about 2mm per year. For comparison, it has been calculated that around 8,000 years Before Present some 18 trillion metric tonnes per annum of glacially derived water was being added to the oceans and the global sea level was rising by about 50 mm per year. We have to talk of global because, with isostatic adjustment due to offloading ice, some land was rising and sea level in those areas was falling relatively. About 7,500 years ago the Climatic Optimum occurred when global temperatures may have been as much as 4degrees C higher than today. There is plenty of published work containing figures for specific areas. For example if we consider the North Sea between 8000 and 3000BP sea level rose from 55metres below present to 6 metres below present (therefore from 3000BP to today the average rise has been 2mm p.a.- the accelerated rate quoted above ).

What does all this tell us? Very significant global temperature variations, with concomitant sea level rises, have been occurring long before humans tramped the Earth and also while they have tramped the Earth but before they used massive amounts of fossil fuel sources (Oil, Coal) to contribute Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere. Without going into the debate over the universality and accuracy of the temperature readings which you mention, as global temperatures are rising the big question - which I think you have already posed - is to what extent is man contributing? There is plenty of evidence to show it has happened in the past without "help" from man. In any scientific experiment you'd want a "control", unfortunately in this debate there isn't one, i.e. would this temperature rise (and sea level rise) have occurred anyway? This is where you need to examine the models very carefully - how do you establish the base level? how do you calculate the 'normal' annual effect (ie without man's influence), are there any missing variables, etc etc?

Finally, if we look at glacial/interglacial precedents, based on Milankovitch Cycles and previous interglacial stages, the Earth should be going towards another Ice Age, after the Climatic Optimum quoted above (you make reference to this in one of your comments to your South African contributor) so if man is having a marked effect what we may be seeing is a delay imposed on the next Ice Age!!

I think you have chosen a great topic for your future Conference let us hope that there are people there who can provide stimulating papers whatever their stance.

Incidentally, you may remember that in 1997 in conjunction with the University of Plymouth and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory I tried to establish a Centre for Climate Impact Forecasting (CCLIF) in the South West of England to help Insurance Companies, Banks etc understand the likely effects of Climate Change – and we failed to get funding support. How times have changed!!

All the best to you and Barbara and everyone associated with Minerals Engineering International.

Last night in Istanbul

We experienced wonderful Turkish hospitality last night, as dinner guests of Guven and Nese Onal. Their driver met us early evening and drove us through the Istanbul rush-hour, which made driving on the M25 look like a ride in the park. After a one and a half drive, passing through Black Sea resorts, we arrived at a renowned fish restaurant on the banks of the Bosphorus, where we enjoyed local sea-food delicacies and convivial company.

It is the long journey back to Falmouth today. Not as long as Jon's journey home from Adelaide though. His email this morning was from one of his stop-offs, in Dubai. His total journey time to Falmouth will be just under 2 days!

A pleasant walk to the Bosphorus

The PIM '10 conference hotel really is wonderfully situated in the heart of the old city, with no need for taxis to get around.

This morning Barbara and I walked to the Golden Horn, only 30 minutes away, then crossed the Galata Bridge into the New City. After a steep walk we reached the Galata Tower, one of the world's oldest towers, affording magnificent views of the old city and the Bosphorus (photo above).

More abstracts in today for the conference, which is looking like being a good one.

Lunch in Istanbul

Barbara and I are in Istanbul for a few days with our Falmouth friends Judy & Mike.

We had lunch in the old city today with Guven Onal and his wife Nese (top). Guven is our consultant for Processing of Industrial Minerals '10, to be held in the old city in February. We are staying at the President Hotel, the conference venue, only 5 minutes walk from famous landmarks such as Aya Sofia (left) and the Blue Mosque (right).

Jon emailed today from Adelaide. The Mill Operators conference is going well but he is having problems accessing the blog, so hopefully will report on the event this weekend.

Power blackouts forecast for Britain- is fusion the way ahead?

Britain faces a return to 1970s-style power blackouts and disruption to its electricity supplies within four years, the energy regulator warned yesterday.

Ofgem raised the spectre of a return to the three-day week for British industry as the country scrambles to renovate its crumbling power infrastructure ahead of new EU pollution rules that will force the closure of a quarter of UK power stations by 2015.

Alistair Buchanan, Ofgem’s chief executive, said: “There could be a potential shortfall in the period 2013-18 ... life might be pretty cold.”

This report came at the same time that New Scientist reports on how an international consortium known as ITER (“the way”, in Latin), is ready to start building a prototype fusion reactor in Cadarache, France. Critics will carp that there are still important questions to be asked. Why bother to build a fusion reactor when there is a perfectly good one 8 light-minutes away? Why not spend the $10 billion – likely to be an underestimate – on wind or solar power instead?

Stephen Battersby, the article author, argues that these questions are easily answered. We need as many clean energy options as we can get, and commercial fusion power is within sight.

Thanks to studies carried out in recent decades, the science that ITER has to rely on is well established. The challenges lie in the technology, such as developing wall materials to withstand the pummelling by subatomic particles and cutting the cost of the superconducting magnets that will confine plasma that is 10 times the temperature of the sun's core. The more that we spend now, the sooner we'll reach our goal.

The last surge in spending on fusion came during the 1970s, when oil-producing countries in the Middle East cut supplies to the west. As delegates prepare for December's climate change conference in Copenhagen, the case for boosting funding is stronger than ever. Whatever the outcome, the risk of dangerous climate change is a real one, prompting thoughts of draconian measures to tackle it. Compared with the more exotic schemes for large-scale manipulation of the environment now coming under serious consideration – which do look 50 years away – fusion power is a racing certainty. It's safer too. A technology that messes with our planet's climate is what got us into trouble in the first place.

Ruby Anniversary!!

It's hard to believe that it is 40 years ago this week that my career in the minerals industry began.

In October 1969 Barbara and I arrived in Chingola, Zambia, after an adventurous journey from UK. We sailed from Southampton to Cape Town on the 'Windsor Castle' and then drove up through South Africa and Rhodesia and into Zambia. The photo show us in South Africa, crossing the Tropic of Capricorn near the Rhodesian border.

I had no idea what to expect on arrival at Nchanga. I had just finished my PhD in physical metallurgy, and when offered the job in Zambia I said to the recruitment officer "but I don't know anything about mineral processing!" "Don't worry", he replied "it's only bucket chemistry!!"

I have never regretted my time in the minerals industry. I have seen wonderful places and met very colourful characters (and a few prats!).

Retire? Never- I am now looking forward to my next 40 years in this wonderful industry.

Overseas postings next week

Jon is in Australia at the moment, en route to Adelaide for the AusIMM Mill Operators' Conference, which starts on Monday. He will be posting a few reports on the blog. If you are attending the conference, call in at the MEI exhibit booth for a chat.

Barbara and I will be in Istanbul next week, finalising plans for February's Processing of Industrial Minerals '10 conference, which has already attracted over 50 papers from around the world. Look out for a few photos next week of this exciting city.

Health and safety could stifle scientific inspiration

Two very ancient pictures of me - the first one messing around in the school chemistry lab in 1960, and the other 12 years later on the Nchanga tailings leach plan in 1972.

The connection? A report in yesterday's Times that many schools are phasing out chemistry practicals because of health and safety concerns. The safer option is to watch experiments being performed via the internet, This is worrying, as most people who pursue a scientific career were inspired by practical experiments at school. I remember mixing chemicals to produce the most noxious smells and violent reactions, and I never saw or heard of any serious injuries- a few holes in shirts and jumpers due to acid burns maybe.

Where will this end? Presumably if students aren't introduced to practical work at school, the next stage will be a reluctance to initiate them at University. No more dangerous laboratory ball mills, or nasty furnaces which can burn fingers. And perish the thought that a young graduate might be let out onto a plant with all the inherent dangers of heavy machinery. Cone crushers!! Not within a million miles.

How reliable are the input date to climate change models?

As is probably evident from the earlier posting on the climate debate, I have some degree of scepticism regarding totally anthropogenic climate change. The robustness of the models has always been a concern, and whether all the possible variables, such as natural earth and sun cycles, have been taken into account, as well as the interactions between dependent variables. Questions I hope will be answered at Climate Change '11.

A few days ago Amanda and I attended a lecture in Falmouth by Dr. Stephan Harrison, a quaternary scientist at the University of Exeter, and an advocate of human-induced global warming. I have to say that his lecture, crammed with data and graphs, was very impressive and presented a most convincing case for anthropogenic warming. It was evident that the mathematical models are now very sophisticated and take into account all known variables, including cycles of the sun, oceans, and vulcanism, but I have to admit that I left with the same degree of scepticism.


No matter how big and powerful are the computers, or the sophistication of the models, the latter are only as good as the input data. The two most important inputs, and the subject of the debate, are atmospheric CO2 content and mean atmospheric temperature and I am not at all clear as to how the levels of these variables can be effectively compared over long time intervals.


In recent years satellite technology has been employed to measure temperature, but prior to that temperatures were measured by thermometers in stations around the world. During the 20th century the number of stations providing data must have fluctuated, and those situated in or near cities must have been influenced by the 'urban heating effect'.

So, in my naivety I ask if anyone can provide me with a convincing argument that average annual temperature readings over a period of, say, one hundred years can be reliably compared. The same question applies to CO2 levels- were they measured as accurately a century ago as they are now?

Carbon Capture and Storage- possible perils

One of the themes of MEI's Climate Change and the Minerals Industry '11 conference is the development of new technology, such as carbon capture and storage.

This all looked so promising - tidy carbon dioxide away underground and forget about it. But even as the US's first large-scale sequestration operation is getting off the ground at the Mountaineer plant in West Virginia , geophysicists are concerned that burying the carbon could trigger earthquakes and tsunamis, according to an article in New Scientist.

The full story can be found on MEI Online.

Growing International Audience for Flotation ‘09

You can now take a look at the current delegate list for Flotation ’09, which will be held in the beautiful Vineyard Hotel, Cape Town, in November. We will be updating this list every Friday until the beginning of the conference.

If you would like to register for the event, we advise that you do so as soon as possible, and reserve your accommodation, as Cape Town is very busy in the spring. We have only one 3m x 2m exhibition booth available for rental at present, so if you wish to exhibit your products or services you should also register without delay.

The current programme is also available for viewing.

The two faces of India

It is 20 years since I was in India. as a visiting lecturer at the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad (left), situated in Bihar, India's poorest province (below).

I found India a deeply disturbing place. I had seen crushing poverty in Africa, and other parts of Asia, but not on the scale that I found in India, where beggars were dying in the streets and the future for the lowest caste 'untouchables' was hopeless.


I always remember a small boy, not much older than my grandsons, his only possession a dirty blanket, sleeping among the rats between the rails of Calcutta station. It was evident that the country was so impoverished that it could do little to help these people.

Even now India is one of the highest recipients of British overseas aid, a sizeable amount of which helps to provide potable water in rural areas. Ironic therefore that India is now spending millions discovering water on the moon!!

What is an industrial mineral?

We have received a number of abstracts for Processing of Industrial Minerals '10, which we have had to reject, as the authors do not seem to know what defines an industrial mineral.

A good definition can be found in A Dictionary of Earth Sciences (1999):

An industrial mineral is any earth material of economic importance, excluding metal ores and fuels; e.g. barite, fluorite and china clay (kaolin).

In general industrial minerals are extracted from non-metallic ores, although some ores can produce an industrial mineral or a metal product. For instance chromite ores are the source of metallic chromium, or can be concentrated to produce chromite, an industrial mineral used for refractory bricks.

The conference in Istanbul is therefore concerned with the processing of any industrial mineral. The scope of this conference also includes coal preparation, although coal is not classified as a mineral.

Wishing you a speedy recovery, Guven

Further to yesterday's posting, Guven Onal has emailed to let me know that he has been in hospital in the USA for the past month, after suffering a heart attack. He is now back home, resting, in Turkey.

We all wish you a very speedy recovery Guven.

Conference Memories, IMPS '86, Izmir

The first of the biennial Turkish International Mineral Processing Symposia was held in Izmir in September 1986, and I had the honour of presenting the first paper on research needs in mineral processing.

My session chairman was Prof. Guven Onal (2nd right in photo) of Istanbul Technical University. Guven is the consultant to MEI's Processing of Industrial Minerals '10 conference, to be held in Istanbul in February.

The IMPS events have proved to be successful enjoyable affairs, and I also attended the Antalya conference in October 1992, Jon representing MEI in Antalya last year.

Next year's event will be held in Cappadocia, and MEI is a media sponsor, so I look forward to renewing acquaintances at this beautiful location.

Microwave Technology Reviewed

The potential of microwave technology, which exploits the differing thermal dielectric properties of minerals to enhance grain boundary fracture, has been understood for more than 20 years, but has not been considered commercially viable until recently because of the large amount of energy required.

However recent developments, such as pulsed microwave technology may overcome this.

As microwave technology is aimed at improving mineral liberation, its major use will probably be in comminution, and will bring real advantages to the processing of ores, such as diamonds, where the valuable mineral needs to be recovered intact.

However there are many other aspects of mineral processing and extractive metallurgy where the use of microwaves will have importance, and two good reviews by Chris Pickles have recently been published in Minerals Engineering (Volume 22 Issue 13, 2009). The first paper reviews the fundamentals, and the other potential applications.

MEI held its first inaugural microwave technology conference last year in Cape Town, and we would be interested in hearing from anyone who might be interested in presenting work, should we decide to proceed with a 2nd event in the next year or so.

Conference Memories- SME Fall Meeting, St. Louis, 1986

The first time that I ever presented a paper at a conference was in September 1986 at the SME Fall Meeting in St. Louis. It was also my first visit to the USA.

I don't remember much of the conference, apart from meeting Prof. John Ralston for the first time. John was one of the first people that I invited to join the editorial board of Minerals Engineering in 1987, and he was a fine reviewer who resigned only two years ago, due to pressure of work and to allow for new blood. He is currently director of the prestigious Ian Wark Research Institute at the University of Adelaide.

Conference organisation

There is an interesting discussion building up on the Minerals Engineers group at LinkedIn.

Entitled "Organising conferences: is it a profit-making venture?", and initiated by Fathi Habashi of Laval University, Canada, it is leading to a general discussion on Society conferences, privately-organised conferences and the IMPCs.

If you are a minerals engineer, and not yet a member of the group at LinkedIn, I recommend that you join, as there are some useful discussions there. You may also be surprised by who you see in the group.

What next for flotation research?

Flotation '09 is looking like it will be as successful as the previous event in Cape Town 2 years ago. There is a very full international programme, only two exhibit booths remain available for rental, and the conference is still eight weeks away!!

Flotation was patented over 100 years ago, so it is amazing how research continues to be so intensive in this area. In the 1990's column flotation was being researched by just about everybody, there were books published and conferences dedicated solely to this process. Judging from the comments on the MEI Online Forum, however, columns may not have lived up to their earlier expectations, and there is only one paper at Flotation '09 with 'column' in the title. Very large mechanical cells now seem to be in vogue.

Which all leads me to the question, where is flotation research going? I would like your views on what you feel might be the favoured topics in say five years' time. Reducing energy consumption must be one of the priorities?

Conference Memories- NATO Conference, Falmouth, 1986

Enthused by my experiences at the NATO conference in Turkey
I thought it might be a good idea to organise something similar, so a colleague of mine, Bob Barley, and I put together a 2-week NATO ASI Mineral Processing at a Crossroads which ran in Falmouth in April 2006.

It was a great fortnight, and I met for the first time people who would become respected colleagues and friends over the following years, notably Jim Finch, the late Gilles Barbery, Alban Lynch, Pom Somasundaran, Jim Watson, Richard Williams and many more.

Photos, from top:

• Richard Mozley, Roger Parker, Steve Boyes, L. Lazaridis
• NATO group at St. Mawes
• Gulhan Ozbayoglu, Irfan Bayraktar, Savi Ozbayoglu, and me at Bassett Mines, Camborne
• At the conference hotel: Geoff & Sandra Slater, Barbara Wills, Derek Ottley, John Monhemius, Wally Kop, Les Adorjan and Steve Boyes
• The full NATO Group
  

Lunch with Keith Atkinson

Barbara and I had a very pleasant lunch today with Keith and Maureen Atkinson. Keith was Director of Camborne School of Mines and, until his retirement last year, Provost of the University of Cornwall.

Those who attended the first three Minerals Engineering conferences in Singapore in 1991, Vancouver in 1992 and Cape Town in 1993 may remember that Keith opened the conferences, representing CSM.

The picture on the right was taken at Minerals Engineering '93 in Cape Town. Left to right: Ian Jackson, Richard Pascoe, Kirsty Walker, Gareth Brown, BW, Paul Hodgskinson, Keith Atkinson, Gaynor Yorath and Chris Martin.

Risky Business

Risk management is a vital decision-making tool in modern industry and commerce. Since virtually every decision involves some element of uncertainty, and because there are risks inherent in most of the key issues facing companies today, the ability to understand risks and manage them effectively is an important ingredient for success. This is particularly true when assessing complex and large scale decisions where considerable capital is involved.

In such cases, risk-based approaches have been shown to be highly effective because they enable decision makers to make informed management choices based on structured information and analysis and to demonstrate the basis of their decisions.

MEI’s inaugural conference Risk-Based Approaches to Major Decisions ’11, organised in association with RMRI, will be held in the beautiful Cornish town of Falmouth in May 2011 and will look at areas in the construction, management and operation of large scale assets where adopting a risk-based approach to decision-making offers advantages in terms of both reduced risks and commercial benefit. Novel areas of application will be discussed and innovative techniques that are demonstrably cost effective will be introduced.

Examples of areas to be covered include:

Capital investment decisions and project evaluation
Project management
Inspection, testing and maintenance

Anyone with responsibility for design, construction and operation of large scale plant in industries such as mining, oil and gas and petrochemical will benefit from attendance.

Two other MEI conferences immediately precede Risk ’11, at the same venue. Sustainability through Resource Conservation and Recycling ’11 will be followed by Climate Change and the Minerals Industry ’11. An interesting week in a great setting.

Conference Memories 1963- from Fathi Habashi

Submitted by Prof. Fathi Habashi, Laval University, Canada:

I first met Albert W. Schlechten (1914-1984) in 1963 when he was the session co-chairman together with Douglas Fuerestenau when I presented my work on cyanidation at the [First] International Conference on Hydrometallurgy that took place in Dallas, Texas in January 1963 (Figure1). Schlechten was Head of the Department of Metallurgy at Colorado School of Mines and a co-worker with the Luxemburg metallurgist Wilhelm Kroll (1889–1973) when they were together at the US Bureau of Mines in Albany, Oregon. On his retirement Kroll donated funds he received from his royalties for the titanium invention to Colorado School of Mines which was destined to create the Kroll Institute for Extractive Metallurgy in 1974. When I was teaching at Montana School of Mines from 1964-67 Schlechten used to come to Butte often because he was a Montana graduate.

Photo: Albert W. Schlechten (1914-1984) [center] co-chairing a session at
International Hydrometallurgy Conference [Engineering and Mining Journal, 1963].

Increasing comminution efficiency should be a research priority

I have been discussing the climate change posting of 22nd August with Tim Napier-Munn, former Director of Australia’s JKMRC.

He reminded me that that well over half of the energy used in mining is consumed by comminution, which is an incredibly inefficient process, only 1-2% of that energy being used to create new surface.

Increasing comminution energy efficiency could decrease world carbon emissions by detectable amounts, so intensive research in this area is vital.
One of the major themes of next year’s Comminution ’10 in Cape Town is the improvement in environmental sustainability while driving down costs, by designing and operating energy efficient circuits and designing for the next generation of mines.

I hope that comminution research will also be highlighted at Climate Change and the Minerals Industry in Falmouth, in May 2011.

Nickel price set to rise?

Some encouraging news for next year's MEI conference on nickel processing. According to a report by Minara Resources, the nickel price is expected to rise by about 9% in the 2010 financial year amid signs of recovery in China's stainless steel market.

Minara Resources chief executive Peter Johnston says "Nickel demand and production in 2009 decreased 20 per cent and we're expecting a rebound of about nine per cent in 2010."

The nickel price is now about $US18,300 ($A21,798), which compares to a high of about $US55,000 ($A65,515) a tonne at the height of China's steel-making boom in 2007 and a 2008 low of $US8,900 ($A10,601) as it curtailed steel production.

Anyone interested in Cornish Mining History?

I met up with Tony Clarke yesterday. Anyone who visited Camborne School of Mines from the early 70s to 1998 would probably have met Tony. An enthusiastic Experimental Officer, he looked after the mineral processing laboratories and pilot plant and was always keen to show people around. It was a pleasure to work with him during my 22 years at CSM.

Anyway, he is now retired and writing books on Cornish Mining History. I have just had this email from him:

"Hi Barry, long time no see. Good to chat again and keep in touch. I've actually been pretty busy recently, continuing my research into the history and practice of Cornish 'mineral dressing'. In fact, I got a bit sidetracked from the 'big book' when I came across a fascinating treatise from 1858 in the Cornish Studies Centre in Redruth (in their 'rare' books' section) on the mechanical treatment of Cornish tin ores, in French, by a (future) very eminent mining engineer named Leon Moissenet, though at the time he was only 26 or 27, and had barely completed his studentship at the 'Ecole des mines' in Paris.It really is a wonderful study, impeccably compiled from first-hand observation (must have taken him months!), and chock full of the most interesting contemporary detail, from the point of view of what was then current theory and methodology, along with both constructional and operational details for all kinds of apparatus in use at that time - working capacities, feed rates, operating costs and so on. Plus, he included a host of excellent diagrams that he drew himself.Anyway, I couldn't resist it (nerdy to the end) and with the very kind permission of the Library have now completed a full translation, and cleaned up all the diagrams on the computer for inclusion in the text. I'm giving a special copy to the Library, but thought there might well be some possible interest further afield among the Mineral processing fraternity - both current and historically minded - if I can manage to persuade somebody to publish it.What do you think? Maybe you could test out reaction on your MEI blog? If you could, that would really be a great help."

If anyone would like to contact Tony, please do so via tee.cee15@hotmail.com

Join us in Istanbul

The Old City of Istanbul is the setting for MEI's 3rd Processing of Industrial Minerals Conference in February.

The President Hotel lies in the heart of the old city, a short walking distance from the major attractions of the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, Topkapi Palace and the Bosphorus.

There is now a final call for abstracts. If you would like to present a paper on any aspect of the processing of industrial minerals and coal, please submit a short abstract to me no later than the end of this month.

Conference Memories- NATO ASI 1984

The first conference that I attended was also the longest (although some have seemed longer!!). It was a 2-week NATO Advanced Study Institute meeting on Mineral Processing Plant Design, held on top of a mountain at Uludag, near Bursa in Turkey.

Once everyone got to know each other, it turned out to be a memorable fortnight, and sparked my enthusiasm for conferences as great places for meeting new people and building professional relationships. The papers were not particularly memorable, but the people were, and it was here that I met for the first time Gulhan Ozbayoglu and her husband (now sadly deceased) Savci. I also met up again with Dick Burt, who I had previously met briefly in Cornwall 10 years previously. The two of us had been interviewed for the post of senior lecturer in mineral processing at Camborne School of Mines, and I think I had been chosen, rather than Dick, more because of my sporting achievements than my experience.

I also met Gordon Agar, then with Inco Canada. Gordon was, and is, a truly remarkable character, who doesn't suffer fools too easily. Four years after the ASI I founded Minerals Engineering journal and Gordon was one of the first people that I recruited to the Editorial Board. He is still one of my most valued reviewers, although I sometimes have to edit his reviews a little to protect the sensitivities of some authors!

I learned a lot about conferences while at Uludag. Quality papers are obviously important, but so is the choice of venue and social activities. Conference should be intellectually stimulating, but they should also be enjoyable and bring people together. My abiding memory is of a colossal hangover after a night in Istanbul with Gordon Agar and Dick Burt!

The photos are (in order):

1. At the Dardanelles with the Ozbayoglu family;

2. By the Bosporus, left to right Raj Rajamani, Bedri Ipekoglu, me, Cornelius Ek, Dick Burt, Gordon Agar, Mrs. Ipekoglu and Jaques du Cuyper;

3. At Uludag with Irfan Bayraktar and Martin & Sheila Parker;

4. Some of the NATO group at Uludag

Dartmoor on our doorstep

Barbara and I have just spent 3 days walking in Dartmoor, only 90 minutes drive from Falmouth, in the adjacent county of Devon, the only English county to lend its name to a geological epoch.

The Devonian and Carboniferous geology of Devon is complex and fascinating, and Dartmoor and Cornwall's Bodmin Moor are the roots of the Variscan mountain range, formed about 300 million years ago when the ancient continents came together to form the supercontinent Pangea. The heat generated by the colossal tectonic forces partially melted the mantle, which crystallised into a gigantic (Cornubian) batholith, which underlies much of Devon and Cornwall, and outcrops on Dartmoor to form the fantastically eroded tors.

Anyone travelling to Cornwall should try to take time out to visit Dartmoor. The main arterial road, the A30, skirts the northern boundary of the Dartmoor National Park, a vast wilderness of deep gorges, dense woodland and high barren moorland. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty and romance, the setting for Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles, and home to the famous Napoleonic prison.

This wild and often inhospitable terrain is one of the reasons for Cornwall having retained its Celtic roots. The moor, and Cornwall's equally hostile Bodmin Moor, served as natural defensive barriers, deterring the Romans, Normans and Saxons penetrating this extreme south-west area of England.

News from the Sudbury Conference

The COM 2009 Nickel, Cobalt conference ends tomorrow in Sudbury, Ontario.

A special session at the conference honoured Jim Finch, of McGill University, and Norman Lotter of Xstrata reports that Jim’s special session saw some really good fundamental flotation papers, including one from Prof Roe-Huan Yoon on collectors. Janusz Laskowski did a fine job on potash flotation. What was very nice was that many of the presenters are ex-students or old classmates of Jim (Norman learnt that Roe-Huan Yoon studied alongside Jim in their respective MSc programmes at McGill 1968-1969).

The photos above are:

• Profs Janusz Laskowski and Graeme Jameson at the conf
• Prof. Finch, Dr Brian Hart (UWO) (co-session chair) and Assoc-Prof Sadan Kelebek (Queens)(co-session chair) at the start of the special session on flotation to honour Jim for his good work
• Lotter and Finch at the Timberwolf golf course, Sunday

The importance of networking

Jitendra Mihsra, of Bateman, India, today became the 200th member of the Minerals Engineers group at LinkedIn.

I joined LinkedIn only 3 months ago, and set up the Minerals Engineers group, and it has proved to be a great way of keeping in touch, and of discovering lost contacts.

Networking is essential in developing business links, and professional networking sites such as LinkedIn are invaluable, but there is no substitute for face to face contact, and this is where attendance at conferences and other meetings is all important.

MEI aims to be represented at as many major conferences around the world as possible, and very few visits prove ineffective in developing new contacts and ideas.

A glance at the left hand column of the MEI Online home page and the Calendar of Events shows that we are involved in some capacity with many upcoming conferences, so if you are organising a meeting give us a call and I am sure that we can arrange a mutually beneficial, non financial, deal. It may just be as simple as a display of logos on respective websites.

Ashes back where they belong!

I've been a bit of a couch-potato this weekend, watching England beat Australia in the final test at the Oval, to regain the Ashes.

It's not often that we can celebrate an England series win, but it is all the sweeter when it is against the old enemy.

There will be a large Aussie contingent at Flotation '09 in November and all the MEI team have been briefed "whatever you do, don't mention the cricket."

Is the Climate Debate Over?

There's nothing like climate change to stir the emotions and arouse controversy! I have had this exchange of emails with a South African academic, and I invite comments:

I refer to your Introduction to Climate Change in the Minerals Industry ’11.

Isn't your text badly outdated? Time Magazine pronounced 2 years ago "The debate is over". I recently listened to the scientific director of the IPCC - we're now into a time of radical action and hard consequences. Where do you get your scientific information from? Please consider updating your text. What you've written can only serve to portray the minerals industry as obstructionist.It looks like you're trying to give a balanced view, but as Barack Obama wrote in his book "The Audacity of Hope" it's actually false media practice to portray two opposing views as balanced if the one is factually correct and the other is not. Thanks for looking into it,

My reply:
Time magazine may have said that the debate is over, but judging by the comments that I receive from many scientists, and discussions on climate change groups on LinkedIn, the debate is very much still on.We are living in an experiment at the moment, the results of which may not be known for decades. Many people argue that climate change is totally due to man, others (including many geologists) that it is nothing to do with man, and is associated with natural cycles etc. My view is that the answer probably lies somewhere between these two extremes, and it would be naive to think that man has no part in climate change. There have been many interesting peer-reviewed papers on the subject recently, a typical one being that of Lillo and Oyarzun in Science & the Total Environment (Vol. 407 Number 11, 2009). It may well be that climate change is totally down to the follies of man, but no one really knows for sure, and scientists have been very wrong before in their predictions - 40 years ago we were about to enter a new Ice Age.What we are trying to say in the conference Introduction is that even if we feel that there is only the tiniest of chances that it is solely man-induced, then we should pull out all the stops to limit CO2 emissions. If we are wrong and we do nothing, then the effects may be too dire to contemplate. The thrust of the conference will therefore be on how we reduce emissions in the minerals industry and what might be the economic impact of this. Maybe this doesn't come over clearly in the Intro?

and his response:
Correctly, the thrust of your conference has to be on how to reduce emissions - but radically, by 60-90%, not relative improvements in eco-efficiency of 5% here or 10% there.

But your introduction still makes it sound like "we'll do our part even though this might not be necessary". This reinforces perceptions of an obstructionist agenda, and this has big implication on how potential young professionals consider applying for employment in this industry.

By citing the article by Lillo and Oryazun in justifying your stance, you display a misunderstanding of the scientific process. Theirs is a scientific commentary (not a research paper!), in a reasonably respected journal, by two authors who are not particularly well known from some backwater Spanish institution. They might be making some valid points - but weigh that relative to the consensus building peer process of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th IPCC assessments!....and in their concluding statement, these authors say that they do not prove or disprove anything with their commentary. So you are wrong to cite it to say that the current theory of human-induced climate change might not hold. They merely point out the complexity of the system, something that all climate scientists acknowledge.

Calling for "proofs" is asking for the "experiment" to conclude. That is the Bush - Oil Industry agenda. The proof is in the models - whether it was Svante Arrhenius' hand-solved calculation model 100 years ago or the latest mega-computing efforts.

and my response:
We are basically saying the same thing- that we should be doing all we can to counter carbon emissions. Our differences lie in the way that we look at it. You obviously feel that the climate models are infallible and that emissions are totally the results of human activity. My feeling, having had experience of relatively simple mineral processing models, is that there may be other factors which have as yet not been incorporated in these models- but I may be wrong, no one really knows. Interestingly, the Australian senate has just defeated that country's version of cap and trade. According to the BBC report, opposition senators who control the upper house feared the legislation would harm the country's mining sector. This decision was no doubt influenced by a new book by Prof. Ian Plimer, a geologist at the University of Adelaide. Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, totally refutes the claims of human-caused global warming. So I don't believe the debate is over. It will be interesting to see what the state of play is when the conference runs in Falmouth in two years time.

His reply:
Thank you Barry for responding. I can't see how you think we're saying the same thing if you keep mentioning that the science is being "totally refuted". What you cited as evidence yesterday seems to have been weak - at least you haven't answered my critique - do I need to spend another hour or two trying to check on the story you're putting up today? Does a book by a geologist count as peer reviewed science and how does it weigh up with the IPCC's 4 assessment reports? Yes, the public debate and the politics on this is a mess - but I think you owe it to your constituency to represent the science correctly on your website.

And no, I'm not saying that I believe the models are infallible - I am just saying that it is in the nature of this case that if you wait for the proof, it will be too late. So I can't see how you can ignore the models.
We're not talking about simple mineral processing models, but very complex ones that capture a lot of the known non-linearity already.
Thanks for a good debate.

My response:
We are saying the same thing regarding the need to reduce emissions. Some people refute the science (notably Ian Plimer) who is a reputable geologist. OK, his book is not peer-reviewed, but the paper by Lillo and Oryazun was, but you discount this because the authors are from a 'backwater Spanish institution'. Regarding modelling, I was stating that even simple processes such as mineral processing operations are difficult to model, so the complexities of the climate pose even more problems. And yes, I agree with you that if we wait for the proof it may be too late. Exactly my point that we should be pulling all the stops to reduce emissions now, rather than wait until the results of the experiment are finally known.

Back to squash

Playing squash again after my recent eye injury.

Got my revenge on Jon. Beat him without having to resort to his underhand tactics of two weeks ago!

Blast from the past- Les Stewart

Just had an email out of the blue from Les Stewart, who I have not seen or heard from in 36 years. I worked with him for a few months on the Nchanga high grade leach plant in 1973, and also remember him as a fine squash player.

Les retired to Alderney in the Channel Islands about 6 yrs ago after a spell in Perth. He now has a one man consulting business in which most of the work has been for Inco, now Vale, in nickel laterites - in Brazil and Goro, New Cal. He is now doing some gold work.

I look forward to more blasts from the past.

Terry Veasey in Falmouth

My old friend Dr. Terry Veasey, and his wife Pauline, have been staying with us over the past few days.

Terry left the minerals engineering group at Birmingham University in 2004, and is now an eminent consultant to the Greyhound Board of Great Britain, advising on track surfaces, and writing articles for the Greyhound Star.

He was UNESCO Professor of Chemical Engineering at the National University of Science & Technology, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe from 1995-1997 and in the early 1990s was a familiar face at the early Minerals Engineering conferences. The picture below was taken at Minerals Engineering '92 in Vancouver, and shows Terry and me with Byron Knelson of Knelson Concentrators.

Terry would be interested in hearing from any of his past students- just contact me and I will supply his email address.