I don’t want to alarm you, but we’re running out of helium.
Whoa! Calm down people. Let’s think about this rationally.
I always wondered where we got helium from. Since it’s a noble gas, it doesn’t combine with anything and only exists in its pure form. So I guess there are helium deposits underground, and people just dig until someone announces in a high-pitch voice, “We struck helium!” And apparently we have a couple helium deposits and that’s it, as we can’t make more. I mean, the sun is constantly making it, but we’re not really at that level. We just have to wait for other elements to decay into helium, and that’s a lot of waiting.
So, it’s a non-renewable resource and we put it in kids’ balloons. Scientists are saying we should stop doing that, but I don’t know what else we can put in the balloons. Hydrogen seems dangerous. Also, scientists say we should have a recycling program for it. I guess everyone would get like a helium bin (maybe in place of the newspaper bin since that’s kinda outdated), but I’m not sure how’d you’d get it in there and make sure it stays there.
So anyway, enjoy your lighter than air balloon, for it be a fleeting thing. In the dystopic future, a red balloon filled with helium will be worth more than its weight in gold… except it has a negative weight, so I’d guess you’d have to pay other people to take it. Wow, helium is confusing.
Water balloons are better anyhow!
I blame all the blimps…
In Hollywood and Congress.
Old news. Technical divers have been worried about this for the past few years. We use helium to replace nitrogen, which turns out to be a very bad gas when you are diving below about 100 ft.
So most of us have big industrial bottles of helium in our garages, which is probably what caused the shortage in the first place…
Wait… Can’t we just change your brilliant “Nuke the Moon” proposal to “Nuke Someplace That’s Low on Helium”? Like Tehran, maybe?
See, fusion by way of H-bombs solves all kinds of problems!
Frank’s Helium humor is going over like a Lead(Pb) balloon.
“Since it’s a noble gas…” Unlike Methane, which as Mad Max found out, ‘cometh from pigshit’.
And who decides what is ‘noble’ anyway? Science!-tists are such elitists
Their solution, ”Raise the price of Helium!”,(That way, only ‘noble’ elitists will be able to afford it.)
Wow! This is causing me great distress. I think I will pour me a drink and contemplate the impact this catastrophic event.
Yeah, Frank, innominatus is right. We just need to convert some Tritium and Deuterium to Helium. Of course, our Tritium stockpile is limited and won’t last long either.
Cilla, no fair. It’s not cocktail hour yet on the Left Coast.
Cilla, that’s not fair. It’s not c*cktail hour yet on the Left Coast. (Frank I used the actual word and WordPress is moderating me!)
That article said there’s no way to artificially produce helium. Just another reason we need to keep working on nuclear technology.
One of those smirt Science!-tists needs to invent a Helium centrifuge for air,which has trace (very small) amounts of Helium. Or perhaps Helium wranglers could round up Helium from all the Helium balloons that the little kiddies have lost over the years. Or we could just switch to Hydrogen balloons, I’m sure there couldn’t be any mishaps with Hydrogen in high concentrations. 🙂
In a high-pitched voice,”All of our helium has drained out of that hole in the Ozone! Run Away!”
We need to keep this information away from Al Gore, lest he develops a plan to trade Helium credits.
This is just a scare tactic by Big Helium. I saw a whole tank of helium for sale at Walmart the other day.
So that’s what’s causing all the flooding in Pakistan!
We’d better invade Munchkinland P.D.Q., before it’s too late.
And the best part about recycling helium… they pay by the pound!
The nation that controls the worlds helium supply, controls the world…Alfred Thayer Mahan
Remember when Han Solo asked Lando Calrissian how the tibanna gas mining was doing? I bet they were actually mining helium. Yet another instance of when George Lucas was light years ahead of his time – he foresaw this catastrophic collapse in the helium market 30 years ago. That’s why Cloud City was up in the sky – because that’s where all the free range helium and balloons got stuck at.
And to think I wasted all these years believing they were mining clouds or something!
There’s plenty of helium.
All they need to do is harvest the yellow strip out of the rainbow.
First you get the helium
Then, you get the power
Then you get the women.
I don’t know what else we can put in the balloons.
Liberals. There’s no shortage of them. From where you live, just drive south to Interstate 80 and then head west. Stop in Berkeley for a while and you can get lots of them. Then head across the bay to San Francisco, where both Interstate 80 and rational life end. You can get lots more there.
“Nobel Laureate Robert Richardson Hates Children and Wants Them To Cry” should be the title of that article. It seems like it was written for the Onion.
I’ll bet he has stock in party balloons. Now, read the last quote from Professor Chicken Little with a helium-pitched voice-
Funny, right? The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
I don’t know if I wanna live on an Earth without Helium. Oh, the humanity!
I don’t want my Helium taken away. I need my Helium!
Fraaaaaaaaaaaaaaank!
I think Al Gore wrote the article. It has all the hallmarks of environmental Science! (Skip to bottom if you wish)
1) We’re not told about current consumption rates.
B) We’re not told about historical production rates.
3) One would imagine that production rates have been depressed during the past few years, given that the US is selling its strategic reserves. At the same time, lower prices would encourage greater usage. Thus, it would be impossible to extrapolate future supplies from current production and consumption levels
4) In calculating their 30-year estimate, Scientits! neglect to consider sources, now not economically viable, that will be tapped. Viewers at home are familiar with the ever repeated warnings of worldwide oil depletion. Similar flat line projections are used for the helium scare.
5) The article fails to mention at least 3 new overseas production facilities that have recently begun production. One of these now supplies Europe with all it needs.
6) Nor does the Scientist! look at current uses for which there are easy alternatives.
7) Helium balloons are a frivolous extravagance. They should be extensively used as evidence that we are frivolous with helium, despite the fact that, according to Wikipedia, airships and balloons are only minor uses of the gas.
8 ) Balloons should cost $100. No mention is made of the percentage of all helium used for balloons. Should helium supplies for welding, etc. be charged at similar rates, with resultant higher prices for metal work, etc.?
Here’s the important point:
Scientist Pointyhead’s “study” has now been cited 8.25 trillion times on the internetworks. Its crappy science is now unquestioned helium gospel.
That scientist nerd isn’t emphasizing anything. He’s doing the same thing I did when I was a young’un: repeating the ends of sentences under my breath, under my breath.
“Hey, Mom, will you make me a grilled cheese sandwich, grill cheese sandwich?”
What a nerd!
Eventually, I overcame this problem. I am generally liked or at least respected by women. Is the same true for Professor Tim T. Nerd?
Pshaw. Running out of helium? I call BS. “Progressives” have been hoarding it, and storing it in their skulls. Nature abhors a vacuum; the helium is what keeps their little brainpans from exploding. It’s also why they’re always so light-headed and dizzy, and also why they talk funny. All this time you thought it was just their IQs being lower than Tiger Wood’s average score on 18 holes of golf.
There’s only one solution to the world helium shortage: drill, baby, drill. IYKWIMAITYD.
Everytime I tried to read the part about finding helium I cracked up and couldn’t repeat it! Frankie you are hilarious!!!
I hate to be the wet blanket, but this is actually a bonafied big deal.
Ever needed an MRI? If you don’t have liquid helium to cool the magnet, you will not have another.
It is indispensable to important chemical analysis systems such as high pressure liquid chromatography and nuclear magnetic resonance. I can say from a position of knowledge as a working pharmaceutical chemist, that if you rely on any drugs that came on the market since 1985 or so, you have relied on systems that must have helium to discover the drugs and ensure the purity and absence of dangerous side products.
Once it is released to the atmosphere it is effectively gone as the Earth’s gravity is insufficient to keep it at more than trace levels that can not be effectively recaptured as it is too dilute.
Due to a quirk of geography, the US and Canada have an absolute duopoly on the world’s commercially recoverable helium supplies and the (censored) (censored) pieces of (censored) are selling helium, an indispensable industrial material significantly more precious than gold, to fill up kids balloons at fractions of a penny on the dollar.
Sorry about the downer on the Internets best humor site, but teh funny ain’t here, this is a travesty and a tragedy.
Comment 25 will make a whole lot more sense if/when the moderators release the two posts I put up as “Brain The Adequate”
[Fixed it in queue before it got released. Now you look silly, don’t you?
Then I realized this was a post by Frank. Now I look silly, don’t I? – B.]
I Blame Clinton!
A Science!-tist had an incident with hydrogen baloons this summer,
“It’s an illustration to students of the dumb things you shouldn’t do.”
@Brian: Perhaps the author is correct, but where’s the actual Science!? Just because helium is an essential, but non-recoverable resource doesn’t mean that it will run out in 30 years. The US and Canada currently produce most of the world’s helium; however, it is quite likely that this is because the US and Canada have the easiest to recover reserves as opposed to the only reserves. This would explain why two overseas reserves have been tapped recently.
Balloons make up only a small part of helium consumption. Jacking prices to $100 per party balloon would have little effect on helium supplies, and given that balloon helium was easily available prior to the government sell off, it’s hard to claim that the sell off is responsible for current levels of consumer sales.
Perhaps we are facing a shortage of an essential resource. Perhaps not. But bad science does nothing beyond creating a scare and resulting dis-economies.
Meh, just use Hydrogen. Lighter than air AND explosive. Just the thing to brighten up a kid’s birthday party.
An added bonus, Hydrogen balloons would instill children with a proper fear of clowns. Could save their life someday
I couldn’t find the video, but does anyone remember this?
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/84/84btippiturtle.phtml
well okay thann, dont get your panties in a wade its not a big deal.