Re: Diamonds are an Eskimo's Best Friend
Posted by Uncle Al on Feb 10, 2004 at 11:07
(68.99.179.162)Re: Diamonds are an Eskimo's Best Friend (Mike Kremer)
A one carat flawless raw diamond at the minehead is worth about $(US)20. Diamonds below 5 carats are common as dirt and are essentially worthless. Russia is flooding the world with 1-5 carat synthetics passed as mined stones. De Beers has at least 50 million carats of large stones in its vaults - 10 tonnes. Even the Argyle dig in Australia makes most of its money from industrial abrasive. Argyle pinks are collectibles. Paying $million/carat is a rich man's personal obsession.
Inuits are Neolithic savages. They traditionally live hard and die young as subsistence hunter-gatherers. Encroachment of European civlization has destroyed them as a culture and as a people. They overall live in an alcoholic haze and loudly beg from a stupid Socialist Canukistan government. "First Americans" have rights! They have the right to get drunk, fire up their annual Welfare snowmobiles, grab their high powered rifles, and go blazing across the tundra celebrating Inuitihood.
Northern Canada is dotted with circular lakes. Most of them are the eroded tops of kimberlite pipes, a large fraction of which are diamondiferous to as much as five carats/tonne. One typically mines in the winter when the permafrost is frozen solid and the mosquitos and blackflies won't kill your workers by exsanguination. Summer way up north is a sodden peatmoss Hell of winged blood sucking parasites. They can literally darken the sky and blot out the sun with their numbers. A couple of cans of Raid won't fix that.
Do you think Enviro-whiners will swallow the rape of sacred virgin tundra quietly? Diamond mining is rather loud and messy.
BTW, Cornell University abuts a kimberlite pipe, but nobody has ever found a diamond in it. Follow the service road from the Snee Hall parking area to its intersection with College Ave. A kimberlite dike crosses Cascadilla gorge just upstream from the College Ave. bridge.
Kimberlite is mantle rock from 100 miles down. it requires one nasty crack in the Earth to bring that stuff to the surface. One such crack extends from Slave Craton in far Northern Canada to Crater Of Diamonds State Park in southwest Arkansas. There is every reason to believe the US has major diamond deposits. Finding them is not trivial. The State park forbids all but individual manual exploration.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm
(Do something naughty to physics)
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