IvyMike

Peak Helium.

Back in January, I blogged about the fact that the planet is running out of helium, a non-renewable resource. This Wired article has a good summary of the issue.

Then, a month ago, I started noticing that I was getting a lot of hits on that article; for some reason, people were suddenly searching for "Helium Shortage". Gas-supply company BOC had increased helium prices across the board and had stopped taking new customers, and people were searching Google for more information.

Now Praxair has raised their prices too. This is a global shortage, and I fear we may have reached peak helium.

This is hitting the common man, too: a friend attempted to fill a HoverDisc over the weekend, but all of the party supply stores were out of helium.

We need to start thinking about conservation, and soon!

posted by IvyMike @ 9/11/2006 08:57:00 PM