SUSTAINABLE MINERAL PRODUCTION
The Probable Cause of the Slide off the Reliable Path to Discovery
So, why has the mining industry misconstrued its own exploration history and self-destructively abandoned the greenfields mineral exploration para- digm that supported it so well for so long?
The answer to this question is the probable anchoring effect4 of the post- 1970s emphasis on finding bulk mine- able gold deposits that could be mined using open pit methods. Reducing this sort of exploration down to its essentials, the approach was (and is) to simply find surface gold anomalies in greenfields or brownfields environments and then drill them. While an effective strategy for locating and defining shallow bulk mineable gold deposits, this elementary method of conducting mineral explora- tion does not work very effectively for any but the very shallowest of ore deposits.5
Figure 5. World-wide gold mineralization discovery data for the period 1950-2009. These re-graphed data obtained from a 2010 Schodde presentation show clearly that greenfields gold exploration work has always been much more productive than exploration work con- ducted in brownfields environments. Green symbols and lines-of-best-fit correspond to his- torical greenfields exploration efforts, while brown symbols and lines-of-best-fit correspond to historical brownfields exploration efforts. Note that even during the post-1980 period when the greenfields exploration paradigm began to be very seriously neglected, more gold was still found by the relatively few geologists working greenfields.
4.
https://www.behavioraleconomics. com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of- be/anchoring-heuristic/
5. The failings and ramifications of this exploration approach are discussed in much more detail at https://www.
linkedin.com/pulse/fatal-ramifica- tions-neglect-geochemical-law-larry- turner/
Tales from the Field, continued from p. 18
plenty of trees around, and with holes in the ground every 50 feet, everybody was able to escape unhurt, but badly shaken. One or two had suffered near misses from shrapnel. The next morning I went to the Lieutenant Colonel commanding the Battalion to request that we be given an officer. He did even better: He gave us his 2 I/C, a Major, and the major had a walkie-talkie.
We had begun this project just before the rains, so that all
the reeds that we would usually have cut to thatch our wattle- and-daub huts had already been burned off. I had managed to scrounge quite a few corrugated iron sheets from the mine, but not nearly enough to roof all the buildings, so I myself had had to spend the entire rainy season in a 6’x6’x7’ high WWII-style British Army officer’s tent. This was an El Niño year, and instead of the usual roaring thunderstorm every afternoon at four o’clock, it seemed that year to drizzle almost
www.aipg.org
continuously almost every day. There was a large village close to our camp, since there was no other surface water within ten miles. Of course, I got malaria even though I was taking the preventative Daraprim: I had regular attacks every six weeks, lasting for 24 hours of hell.
The nearest doctor was the army M.O. at Tug Argan, and
I eventually decided that anything was better than suffering through the fever until it ended of its own accord, and drove over there. All the officers were in the Officers’ Mess, but the doctor kindly agreed to take time out to treat me: he gave me a huge pill – not one of the anti-malarials that I knew - and then gave me an enormous shot in the backside. The effect was almost miraculous. So much so that he invited me over to the mess for a drink. I discovered that after secondary school in Zambia he had been trained at Edinburgh, one of the most
Oct.Nov.Dec 2020 • TPG 59
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
