China finds $83 billion worth of gold reserves in Hunan

2000 tons is about 1% of existing gold, to put in perspective. But I recall reading there are a lot more valuable and useful commodities like copper.

 

China has been buying gold all over the world lately... Question: If they really did find this much gold would the world gold prices suddenly fall? Yeah, this could be a ruse to get gold prices to fall so that they can buy it up on the cheap.

China lies far too often, we must absolutely verify in person before I believe that group of commies.

 

I could use some rice.

 

The bizarre thing about gold and other valuable minerals (platinum, palladium, etc.) is that 99.999% of these metals on earth are contained in the inner core of the earth, because of their high molecular weight and density. Scientists believe that volcanic eruptions are responsible for moving these elements to the surface in small quantities from the mantle. Maybe someday a technology will exist to extract these metals. The deepest anyone has ever drilled to date is about a fourth of the way through the thin outer crust of the earth. I would be curious to know if the island that is forming south of Hawaii has high enough concentrations of gold or other precious metals to justify recovery efforts.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/01/science/earths-core-gold-science-newsletter-wt#:~:text=Although more than 99.95% of,is seen in early May.&text=Speaking of precious caches, most,the planet's seething, molten core.

 

I read about that a few weeks ago. It's a lot of gold, but it is buried very deep and will be difficult to extract.

 

supposedly it will some time to get it out. But agree, and gold is up approx 2-3% from Friday.

 

China was buying gold in anticipation that Trump's foolish tariffs would cause a global depression, which would devalue currencies and stock markets.

 

Countries are looking for minerals more than they normally would, with Russia invading Ukraine and Ukraine's mines being out of service, and with China maintaining a near-monopoly on many of the minerals used in EV's and cell phone batteries.

 

An outcome of visiting relatives in northwest Ontario this week, I just learned of Canada’s vast resources of rare earth minerals and their renewed interest in their development. Recognizing how important such resources are to Canada’s and the global economy, these environmentally focused folks up here are interested in more mining and are apparently even improving roads to the north like the one I drove in on to make mineral exploitation more feasible. They are also negotiating with the tribes that control much of the land. Maybe Trump wants Canada as another state to avoid rare earth tariffs??

 

It's not wise to give Trump too much credit for complex thinking, based on what he's displayed so far with tariffs.

Besides, the western U.S. has a fair amount of these minerals, but environmental laws (especially in California) are fairly strict, and make them difficult to extract. Trump could much more easily weaken those laws, assuming that he could override state law on this.

 

Oh great, now we’re going to have global warming

 

Iceland is a wonderful country to visit and they have been generating geothermal energy exactly this way for some time. I visited the plant which supplies Reykjavik a few years ago and they were supplying the largest city with continuous hot water, heated sidewalks/roads and half the power to business/residents for like $40 per month. The Blue Lagoon...overflow from the geothermal plants. They said very little maintenance and more people were employed in the gift store than in the plant as there were very limited numbers of things to maintain.

Country wide approval was like 97% for their geothermal energy generating endeavors. They sit closer to the hot rock so it is more effective and really ramped up generating energy this way after the oil embargo in the 70's. Really nice people up there and well worth a visit. Whole country runs on renewable energy (hydro/geothermal) generating excess for export on top of that. I imagine electric vehicles are a big thing up there these days since gas is expensive and electricity is free. Little known fact is in the 70s they were one of the most polluted areas on earth since they had to burn things to keep the lights on and had no alternatives...today they are one of the cleanest environments on earth. Maybe we can buy them....or at least threaten them.

Geothermal Iceland: this land of fire and ice is pushing the limits of its natural energy | EnergyTransition.org.