Monday, January 26, 2009

For All the Gold in the World?

As it turns out, it would be about enough to fill two Olympic size swimming pools. This figure takes into account all of the gold ever mined since mankind decided that this intrinsically worthless metal is worth suffering for. The cover story of the current issue of National Geographic (APL also subscribes to National Geographic en Espanol) describes in detail the very high price paid by the individuals extracting gold from the ground as well as the considerable burden on the environment imposed by this remarkably wasteful activity. Consider this, 250 tons of rock were drilled through, pulverized, chemically treated, and finally disposed of just to mine enough gold to cast and polish a single wedding ring.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't think it's worth anyone suffering over. I am allergic to gold, so that says something about it. Thanks for posting this!