Supplies of Rare Earth Elements Exhausted By 2017 958
tomhudson writes "While we bemoan the current oil crisis, I ran across an editorial that led me to research a more immediate threat. Ramped-up production of flat-panel displays means the material to make them will be 'extinct' by 2017. This goes for other electronics as well. Quoting: 'The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany's University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet's stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.' More links at the journal entry."
extinction of zinc? (Score:1, Insightful)
We're a bit stuffed then, whilst zinc is a nice-to-have with electronic stuff, its reasonably important for the well being of humans. Is the story scaremongering, or are we all doomed?
Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
copper (Score:5, Insightful)
is by far the most serious in the above list. Ok, so flat panel manufacturers and researchers would have to pay top dollar, no biggie. But copper is going to get more and more crucial as the combined crunch of oil shortage and increased electrical demands are going to combine.
Total ignorance of economics? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be mighty surprising if this chicken-little themed story was correct.
Most things when in short supply, their price goes up. People notice this and they either cut back on their use of the stuff, find a substitute, or go out digging for it.
We do have a terrible shortage of celluloid shirt collars, ivory piano keys, whale oil and pyramid shims. Who cares?
I have a secret supply (Score:3, Insightful)
Had the transistor not come along, doubtless by now the computer industry would have run out of the molybdenum for vacuum tubes.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
We arent doomed, zinc will still exist, the amount we consume/need is fractional and exists all over the surface of the planet...
Its just not "farmable" in large amounts that way, therefore they say its "all gone" as far as electronics and such go...
Re:What can and cant be done. (Score:5, Insightful)
And landfills will become valuable commercial property.
Gone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, if the point is that all of these elements are bound up in in-use devices, and always will be, then that's another matter. But I'd be a bit surprised to find that we've actually touched even close to all of the deposits available. Just the cheap ones. And recycling will probably be cheaper than, say, mining it on the moon or the ocean floor.
OftLoG (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:copper (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe that's another good reason to stop making pennies.
Time to crack open the old dumps (Score:3, Insightful)
At some point and it seems that point is soon, we are going to have to crack open all those old landfills. Think of how much has been tossed in there before we really started to pay attention to reuse.
I wasn't aware we were sending Iridium into space (Score:5, Insightful)
All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc.
We are of course not shooting our rare Earth elements into space, they won't be gone, they will be sitting in waste dumps in China and elsewhere.
Maybe the headline should have been "We will be mining landfills by 2017 for Rare Earths."
Heard it before (Score:4, Insightful)
A frew decades ago the supply of copper seemed to run out. This resulted in a large hike in copper prices that made the copper in AT&T's wires in the US more valueble than the stocks of the entire company. Then a bunch of people opened new copper mines that extracted copper ore that was not profitable to extract at the earlier lower price.
Then the price fell again, but to a higher level than it was before.
This is what happens with all kinds of raw materials. The price goes up, but the supply doesn't try out.
Oil has the same tendency, the oil that they have started digging now is much more expensive to get out of the ground than the 20$ a barrel they used to dig out a few years ago. (Ofcause the oil fields that were profitable at 20$ a barrel are now astronomically profitable at 130$ a barrel!)
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing that can affect the amount of Gallium available on Earth is nucleosynthesis or a fairly sturdy asteroid impact.
Stop treating economics like its a theory of everything. Stop treating it like it is theory at all in fact, because it has as much in common with real science as reading tea leaves does.
Illudium (Score:4, Insightful)
and without more Illudium how will we make moreQ-36 Explosive Space Modulators
Re:OftLoG (Score:3, Insightful)
all things come to an end, cowboy.. that's universal rule
Re:supply and demand - no real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
You should be modded redundant because this is now the third time in this discussion I've had to tear down this ideological pop-economic BULLSHIT.
The market doesn't govern the physical universe. At all. The amounts of material and energy present on Earth are in no way related to the laws of supply and demand. The universe is indifferent to your over-applied, unfalsifiable theories. Applying your (almost certainly feeble) understanding of economics implies the universe responds like a rational actor, an idiotic notion that underpins most religion and superstition.
Sometimes 'cheaper alternatives' just don't exist. This is why your precious markets have never got to grips with spaceflight. The markets reaction has always been "Wait till it is cheaper" on the assumption that all technology gets cheaper - ignoring the fact that there is a physical constraint on what you must do to get into orbit. The required delta-V isn't going to change just because it would be financially efficient for it to do so.
If you are a true economist, then fuck off and play with your stock markets and leave actual science to actual scientists.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:5, Insightful)
They disappear in a usable format for electronics though. It will prove interesting to see what happens when it truly does disappear (I'm not sure if 2017 is an accurate date). Either we'll develop vastly different technologies, recycle somehow, somehow create the elements synthetically or mine the stuff from asteroids.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
I think were all right with plastic we can always 'grown' it from biofeuls once we sort out this pesky demand for oil thing.
Re:What can and cant be done. (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I've often wondered when "landfill mining" was going to take off as a viable enterprise, as the higher cost of materials justifies the complicated means.
Re:Recycling (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. This is just scaremongering. In the end, we have literally TONS of copper and zinc, and most of it is trivial to extract for recycling. If there becomes a large enough demand for it, the U.S. Mint might very well stop making pennies out of zinc, or stop making them altogether, leaving tons of zinc available for recycling. Then there's gazillions of miles of copper cable, copper pipes and tubing, etc. Much of it is already being recycled, in fact.
Add in the copper and zinc that can be pulled out of recycled electronics, old Duracell batteries (just kidding, there!), dismantled military hardware, etc., etc., plus copper deposits that haven't been found yet....Heck, not even 1% of the ocean floor has been explored.
Really. These people lack imagination.
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:5, Insightful)
But the price of gallium will affect the availability of gallium in a form that humans find easily useable.
An increase in price means an increase in resources that can be devoted to extracting gallium and still leave the extractor with a profit.
An increase in price also means that alternatives that used to be more expensive could be less expensive now, which lowers demand for gallium.
Economics isn't a perfect science, and it often heavily relies on imperfect data from a biased world. But I wouldn't put it in the same realm as reading tea leaves.
Re:Maybe not all bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Sod the asteroids...
We've got a huuuuge chunk of something derived from the same material as our planet a few hundred thousand miles away. Why go millions when the moon is right on our doorstep?
Re:supply and demand - no real problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:supply and demand - no real problem (Score:3, Insightful)
*Ding* Correct Answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been saying this for years. We'll be exploring landfills soon after they're no longer viable for producing methane gas. Meanwhile, states that refused to bury, and opted to dump their garbage elsewhere will be kicking themselves - hard.
Such "exhausted" landfills will be packed with little more than inorganic waste, like easily harvested metals. Point at anything on the periodic table and it'll exist in a landfill at concentrations far higher than what exists in ore deposits we're mining today; so this will be ridiculously profitable. Add to that the fact that they're all close to home, and you have yourself an industry that does a brisk business in mining landfills. And since all the stinky stuff has long since decomposed, you only have heavy-metals and toxic runoff to worry about (read: just like a normal mine).
After that, companies will look to cut out the middle man and buy back everyone's e-waste after the recycling plant has sorted it out. So the landfill will dissapear, leaving a closed loop from the recovery of raw materials all the way to the consumer and back again.
"SQL Error", you have the board. Pick a category.
Re:What can and cant be done. (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise. There's a whole world of landfill sites (a whole western world, at least) full of things we didn't recycle efficiently, either because we didn't know how or we just didn't bother. I don't know enough about the techniques involved to judge this, but it seems that if deep mining operations are commercially viable today, landfill mining could become commercially viable in the not-too-distant future.
I think the other thing that will have to change is this idea that you buy something but then "upgrade" it after only a very short period of use and throw the old one away, even though the old one still worked perfectly well or needed only routine maintenance to repair. Our culture has become terribly wasteful, because today's economics (and poor customer service when it comes to getting things repaired) practically force anyone sensible to buy a new replacement for things. That's just crazy.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you just contradicted yourself there. The loss of feasibly mineable zinc deposits will spell disaster for applications that use it. We should be recycling zinc from batteries, from electronics, everything, but we arent! Will by the time we realise this is a problem will it be too late? Even with recycling, there may not be enough materials avialable for recycling to supply new demand. So it is a serious problem, and like peak oil, there it is human nature to try to avoid looking at the problem because it is too painful to look at reality, so people have to try to desperately convince themselves it doesnt exist and detach themselves from reality, like the ostrich sticking its head in the sand. But this does not make our problems go away. They say, ignorance is bliss, but only for so long.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not scaremongering, it is just cry from people that the game is changing but they don't know themselves in which way. The issue boils down to investments. Plenty of alternatives, enough undiscovered country (as you said, ocean floor) and many old mines will become economically viable again. BUT, you do need investments for those, and people do need to realize the consequences.
8 to 10 years ago, you could here these same stories about the oil demand outgrowing the oil supply due to lack of investments and geopolitical issues. Now that that time is here, politicians act like they didn't see it coming and consumers are complaining they can't afford to fill up their SUV's.
Re:Recycling (Score:5, Insightful)
With population growth and new countries wanting to raise their standard of living, we will run out of these elements even faster.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:5, Insightful)
somehow create the elements synthetically
Let me go fire up my heavy fusion reactor and get to work on that.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sticking one's head in the sand is just as bad as crying wolf. We haven't hit peak oil yet. We haven't even explored all of the oil fields in the oceans, under the two polar caps....etc. We're depleting the known fields yes, but we haven't even tapped the unknown fields yet.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
Zinc anodes are a CHEAP solution for corrosion. they are not the ONLY solution.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:5, Insightful)
The premise of this article, and your post as well, are both rooted in a fundamental economic misunderstanding.
It is almost impossible for a resource to suddenly go extinct. What happens is that as available stocks shrink, and the cost of mining more increases, the cost of that resource also goes up. This provides a natural economic incentive both to find alternatives, and to recycle, at the point where it is economically feasible.
Gallium and zinc will never be used up. They will simply go up in cost and end up used for more important applications while enterprising individuals and companies discover and develop alternatives, and consumers shift their buying habits to products that use less of them.
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah, We don't need "technology". We can just use Economics instead.
Can't reach that can on the top shelf? Economics can help!
Is that lump in your armpit getting bigger? Don't worry; Economics will have it out in a jiffy.
Fallen down a gully in the mountains and shattered your pelvis, hundreds of miles from help, with no ways of communicating with anyone? Just chant "Economics" three times, for a speedy and efficient rescue.
Economics is the new God of the Gaps. You don't know the answer? Silly old physical laws getting in the way? No problem; Economics dictates that someone else will be motivated to come up with a solution. It's impossible? Why, that just makes it more valuable!
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:3, Insightful)
My 6 year old has the solution for you. He just went to see wall-e... A few autonomous robots, pointed at a land fill, zinc over here, lead over there... problem solved.
I think at some point we will realize that our materials are scare and landfills will start to look good as a mining operation. The trick is to develop efficient ways to harvest.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? It seems to me that landfills would be more concentrated and easier to mine than natural ores are!
Re:Myth of sufficient plenty (Score:3, Insightful)
If global population continues climbing then it overwhelms anything else you can do.
Now how you get population to level out or even decline is another can of worms.
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's extremely short-sighted for a number of reasons.
Regardless of whether it's short-sighted, your answers are nothing but strawmen because you ignore his point.
They're spending more time on replicating DNA than they are on devising new ways to grow food.
No, they're not. There are generally two reasons why "poor people" have more children:
* The need for more humans in places where manual labour is the rule, rather than the exception.
* Very poor (if any) access to sexual education and contraception (or extensive brainwashing that contraception and/or sex is a "sin").
Poor and dumb people aren't spending any more time fucking than rich and smart people. In fact, given how much less leisure time they typically have, they're probably spending a lot less.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:1, Insightful)
Only in your pathetic little mind it has. The market has never been able to provide universal literacy, healthcare or nourishment.
Wrong once more. Take your head out of your arse and look at the real world for once. Enclosure (based on the principles of property markets) is what drove people to famine in the first place.
First you accuse me of a lie, then you admit what I said was true and then you try and backtrack on your original statement with a little casual racism.
I'm done with you, you right-wing tosser.
The U.S. should have abolished pennies long ago (Score:2, Insightful)
It's embarrassing to have to throw the things in the trash because they're completely useless and (by law) can't be recycled. Usually, I just refuse them when I get them. But on the rare occasions when I end up with them, I would rather throw them in a recycle bin than the trash.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bringing up salt water - there are a lot of minerals dissolved in the ocean.
There are also a ton of minerals contained in our trash dumps.
As others have pointed out, the solution is alternative elements or recycling. Once again almost all of humanity's current problems could be solved with a cheap enough energy. Energy would obviously be solved, water would be solved (desalinization), and if that was practical enough, food would be solved (since water is a key issue with not being able to produce crops. If the new source was comparatively clean (compared to the new demands for energy), pollution would also be solved.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Copper, plumbing, thefts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because those fields are harder to get to. Therefore their oil is harder - more expensive - to extract. That expense includes not just money but energy. I.e., we'll need to use more oil to get that oil out.
That's the point of the "peak oil" idea. We've plucked the low-hanging fruit. To get more fruit, we need to climb the tree. But tree-climbing is hungry work. Fortunately, we've got a food source - the fruit we've been harvesting. Unfortunately, that means there's less fruit to go into the boxes...
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't worry, there is plenty of zinc, etc in the planet.
Whenever you see a scare-monger story like this, remember: economics is designed to fix stuff like this. As zinc becomes harder to get, zinc becomes more expensive. That drives technological growth in zinc extraction, bringing the price back down. Alternately, it drives some of the existing buyers to alternatives, leaving only those that really need it. Alternately, it also makes currently uneconomical mines (such as current waste dumps) economical, increasing supply at the higher price.
This is the type of problem a free market is best at solving. The danger is government involvement - since you bring up oil, much of the current cost of oil is due to anti-oil lobbying preventing the "new" oil technologies being implemented. The Democrats are essentially preventing oil-shale (and, of course, offshore drilling) in the US.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many environmental concerns regarding this. In digging up a landfill, you are also exposing potentially harmful waste. The electronics itself are harmful wastes so there will be great concerns about how to process these without leaking toxics into the environment. Many electronics contain plastics that emit dioxins and other toxic chemicals when incinerated. All of this will be complicated by the fact that oil is also running out, so to do this all in an environmentally responsible way becomes more difficult.
As I said, there is also the issue that the amount recoverable from landfills might not be enough to meet demand, and that might see a drop off in supply. This spells economic problems and scarcity, and a partial regression for many people back into a less technological lifestyle. Also, the oil which is going to run out soon is going to combine with the other resources problems, since recycling is very energy intensive.
If we were smart we would have been placing metal bearing items and electronics, etc into seperate storage areas, and mandated that consumers properly dispose of electronics.
To say private corporations will do this is pretty naive. It usually takes a penalty, fines, of some sort to force people to recycle. Its just human nature that they wont bother to if you dont. Government can put in a legal mandate that can get this done. If we leave it to corporations it may never happen. Corporations are driven mainly by profit. This does not always lead to the best outcomes and can lead to serious problems. The chaos of market systems can often lead to unnecessary shortsightedness and lack of long term planning that worsens our future condition. Right now, it might seem cheapest just to dump electronics into the trash and not worrry about storing it seperately. The profit motivations, adn peoples lazy habits, are driven by short term interests, greed and a lack of long term perspective. Recycling and seperating electronics from other junk doesnt really have a profit interest for private corporations so they arent encouraged to do it.
Governments do have to play a role in mandating the recycling. It often takes government initiative and often we cant wait for private industry to do it.
For instance, with oil, we cant afford to wait until market forces decide oil is no longer affordable, and consumers get too fed up with oil prices. First of all, the oil companies have such a monopoly on the market, and really dont want to start offering alternatives now, and that it is too capital intensiv for smaller companies to offer renewable technology . Oil company solutions have been to keep drilling for more oil, which is doing more of exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. Drilling for oil will not solve the problem in the long run. Oil drilling will not solve it at all in the US because the amount of oil in the US is so small it could only supply a small percentage of our energy needs.
Then you have the environmental impact from polluted land, ruined landscapes, polluted water which always happens with oil. Big oil likes to present themselves as environmentally friendly. Dont believe it. Its marketing propoganda. Oil companies hide the true nature of their operations and hide and cover up the pollution that it causes so they can present the pretty delusion to the public. OIl companies will not admit they pollute the environment, when in fact they almost always do and cause health dangers for nearby communities. They will pollute the environment and then to the public they put out propoganda about how clean and wonderful they are, while at the same time they are basically destroying water supplies, peoples homes, well being, and health.
Market forces tend to be chaotic and not to have much long term vision or planning. In order to plan for the future we often have to look past what is more profitable in the short term. We often need to develop a plan rather than to leave it to chance and the chaos of markets. Government often is the only en
Re:I'm not worried in the least because I plan to (Score:5, Insightful)
Brazil has used methanol as fuel for about 20yrs now, and there is NO food shortage here. Actually, there is so much food here that we export it to USA, Europe, China... And this having the greatest number of cars using biofuel in the world.
Brazil has a rainforest shortage - the Amazon is on the verge of collapse.
This is allegedly done for grazing cattle, not for sugar. I don't believe it. I remember reading that Brazilian ethanol imports were increasing; where's it coming from?
Topsoil-based fuels are basically wrongheaded because as your energy consumption rises you need more acres of land which you would rather use for something else. "Green Revolution" architecture is horribly destructive to the land and the soil.
And what are they fertilizing with?
Anyway, you have an incredibly simplistic view of the situation. Although there is no "food shortage" in the US (you can walk into any supermarket and buy the necessities) we have shortages of corn and barley right now because we are making ethanol from them. The former has seriously harmed the average Mexican and the latter has driven up the price of beer. (Especially on top of the hops shortage.) Clearly you don't understand the concept of shortages. Incidentally, though, world food supplies are in trouble. Meat is doing pretty well, but plants are having problems all over. This last season's weather was troublesome all over the world. Year before last the grape vines on the front porch were just covered in grapes; this year it got warm early and the grapes leafed out and prepared to put on a big fruit set, then got frozen hard. This happened over much of the world, and it happened to the grape and nut crops this year in particular. Most vineyards around my area - did I mention that the next county to the south is Napa, and Mendocino is to the West? - aren't even going to bother to harvest anything this year. It's not worth the trouble.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:1, Insightful)
We haven't hit peak oil yet. We haven't even explored all of the oil fields in the oceans, under the two polar caps....etc.
Methinks you don't understand Peak Oil. It's when increasing demand for oil outpaces it's supply--both the discovery of oil and the feasibility of extracting it.
It's not "when we run out" as you seem to think it is. It's when it's price begins an inevitable and irreversible climb. That started a long time ago. That was the peak. Domestic oil in the US peaked in the 70s....
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, given that we were talking about a future drained of resources, diesel powered doesn't exactly seem like a good alternative. Sail power is "free" energy to move things around.
Although, after I posted I did think that rather than wood, we could probably make sailing vessels similar in size to the old wooden ships out of fiberglass instead, which might prove a little more useful.
The markets... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality of it is that as we run low on various elements, the price will go up due to factors of supply and demand. This will help drive efforts to find alternatives, reduce the amount needed, and where feasible, recover/recycle those elements. We will never actually run out, but it may simply become too expensive to build TV's out of. Then we'll have to find another way to do it. If there's enough need and the price is worth it, we might end up prospecting asteroids to get the minerals we need.
As for peak oil, we don't know if we've hit it yet because there's historically been an incentive for many oil producers to keep their reserve numbers a secret. We don't know if they've artificially inflated or deflated their numbers for a variety of reasons. Being at peak oil does not mean we aren't going to discover more oil. What it means is that in the future, the oil we discover will be harder to get to, harder to produce, and will not sufficiently replace all the easy to drill oil we have had in the past. It will become impossible to increase oil production and we'll see a decline that will lead to drastic price increases, a switch to alternatives, and overall a decline in demand for it.
Re:The U.S. should have abolished pennies long ago (Score:5, Insightful)
When the cost of producing a currency exceeds it's value, it's shameful to keep making it.
Off topic, but coins are circulated more than once. Much more. Coins as currency last longer than paper notes.
The U.S. mint is essentially just subsiding lazy states who refuse to round off their sale taxes to the nearest nickel.
The Mint doesn't have the authority to boss the states around. Some might say the federal government doesn't have much authority at all as to how a state will issue its own taxes within its borders.
It's embarrassing to have to throw the things in the trash because they're completely useless and (by law) can't be recycled.
Are you sure they can't be recycled? Perhaps you're thinking of the law that prohibits people OTHER than the government to recycle the materials. I find it highly unlikely the trash bins behind The Mint has a bunch of money in it.
But on the rare occasions when I end up with them, I would rather throw them in a recycle bin than the trash.
Why not just roll 'em up and deposit into your bank account? Spend them? Use the coin counters at the supermarket? Truly it is the life of excess where you can decline money and wish you could just toss it away.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
Invoking the "free market" is just another way to say "humans will find a way to survive". It's probably true, but look at our level of survival in between great civilizations, or in areas of the world where these limited resources are not being exploited, and see if you think that's a solution you'd be happy to adopt. Because that's a completely viable direction for the market to take. Only we may be able to get around that if we as an intelligent group use some of these resources BEFORE they're too scarce to help us develop alternatives, since we have the potential to be a lot less reactionary than a dumb market system.
Re:copper (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrongo.
Aluminum and copper have different coefficients of expansion.
The "infinite wisdom" of the government, which you mock out of ignorance and stupidity, is the reason many houses are still standing. Aluminum wire and copper connections work themselves apart, similar to chip creap. That leads to sparks which leads to fires.
Re:Copper, plumbing, thefts (Score:3, Insightful)
It happens here in Minneapolis, but the bonus for us is since we are a cold weather climate and natural gas is the predominate heating method and even foreclosed houses are nominally heated to keep the pipes from freezing, we get houses that BLOW UP because there's often soft copper used to plumb the gas to hot water heaters and the dumb tweakers stealing the pipe don't know and leave the gas open.
A 3 day hold period is a great idea, even better would be 7 day jail sentences for owners, officer or other officials of recycling companies on a per-offense basis for accepting stolen copper. I have a hard time seeing how they "don't know its stolen" when 2 tweakers in a '93 Pontiac show up with 400 lbs of brand-new 3/0 copper wire. I think they just don't care.
Re:I'm not worried in the least because I plan to (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of the major gold deposits now being mined are low-grade, broadly disseminated Carlin-type deposits, where the gold is found in iron sulfides as ions or sub-micron particles.
Vein-type deposits may be high-grade, but the typical total recoverable amount of gold is relatively tiny, not to mention the fact that the majority of the readily accessible veins have already been exploited, meaning that you have to use expensive underground mining tech instead of a cheap pit.
So, circuit boards are actually a really good source of gold. Hell, you could probably throw them in a cyanide heap leach and get a pile of copper out as well.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
We haven't hit peak oil yet.
This statement is confused at best, a bald-faced lie at worst.
At any moment, there was another moment in the past at which oil production has peaked. That was peak oil. We won't know whether it was THE peak until we either exceed that past peak or until we've waited ... how long? How many years do we have to go past a peak in oil production until you people will admit that this was THE peak oil?
Crude prices have exploded over the last couple years and yet the production peak of May 2005 has never been exceeded [theoildrum.com]. If we can not increase production at $140 per barrel over that when it was $50 then I'm puzzled where anybody gets the sheer pigheaded ignorance to claim that we haven't hit peak oil yet (or mod such a claim "insightful").
There's always the chance that we haven't. There's always the possibility that something completely unforseen happens in the future -- that's why it's the future. But to look at the flat line in that graph and pretend that it is magically going to go up at some time in the future betrays a confidence born exactly out of putting one's head into the sand.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... wrong. You know civilizations have fallen before, right? Ancient trading centers in India destroyed and abandoned when they cut down every tree in a 200 mile radius and had no fuel source left, or civilizations in Africa wiped out when the climate changed and there was literally no alternative to make up for the lack of water. Civilizations absolutely have collapsed due to lack of natural resources. Just because we're operating on a global scale with our current civilization doesn't protect us from the fact that certain problems simply do not have solutions.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:2, Insightful)
The price of commodities will have to go up to make new mines economical. The deposits that are profitable at current prices are already being exploited. As prices rise, the deposits that the mining companies are holding in reserve will go into production.
Also, despite what Fox News may tell you, complying with environmental regulations isn't usually a deal-breaker for opening a mine. Mitigation & remediation are relatively inexpensive when you plan for them ahead of time, but the impacts of not doing so can be terrible. Have you ever seen the impact of a major mine dump from a mine that was developed before the current regs were put in place? Take a trip up past Leadville, CO some time. You've got a huge valley full of cyanide-soaked mud and rock to deal with, right up in the top of the watershed. The thing with screwing up the environment is that we're screwing up *our* environment.
I'm all for mining (used to be a geologist) but as a society it doesn't make sense to allow mining companies to externalize their cleanup costs onto the rest of us. If they're going to create problems that the rest of us ae going to have to deal with, they need to pay to make sure that those problems are solved.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:2, Insightful)
NEVER! As a race, the only time we go backwards is because of politics, not economics.
That's a pretty broad statement you've made there. I'd try and dispute you but I suspect that you are one of those free-market types that would find a way to twist every example of economic contraction I could find into the Government being responsible.
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Most food shortages are not caused by governments. At least not in the way you are suggesting. Poverty stricken countries that cannot feed their population have food shortages for a number of reasons and blaming everything on government is very simplistic. The causes are as diverse as first world market manipulation through subsidy to civil wars.
As an example consider post war Europe. Before subsidies Europe did not have enough food to feed itself. If there was shortage people went hungry, perhaps even malnourished. Subsidies manipulated the market so that farmers over produced food. This is bad in good years, but in bad years it ensured food was still available. It is a simple calculation to perform. If the price of food in a good year was $10 per acre (supply exceeds demand), $20 per acre in a normal year, and $50 per acre in a bad year and almost all years are normal, then no farmer is going to develop much land that costs more than $20 dollars an acre to operate.
Problem comes when you have a nice big market like we have today where farmers around the world are trying to compete with heavily subsidies first world farmers. Subsidies have made even cheap viable land in the third world unprofitable. So even in stable countries it is not desirable to grow much excess food. Even worse shipping over food aid for anything other than a crisis actually makes matters worse.
2. If you are living in poverty it makes perfect sense to have lots of offspring. After all, some might die, and you will need them to take care of you. Even more are going to die if you are malnourished. It is in the interest of the collective good to control population growth, but no in the interest of the individual. It is a giant game of prisoners dilemma. The poverty + western medicine and aid causes the population boom which causes yet more poverty. And we again make the situation worse by making it more desirable to rely on the west rather than fix problems. We also prop up the very fascists you mention which help cause all the poverty.
3. The bottom line is that both you and the GP appear to me to be ideologues. You think that government in all it's forms are bad, the GP thinks that simplistic government intervention and feel good economics are the way forward. The truth is much more complicated than either of you are presenting. You cant just take a situation with moral hazards or natural monopolies and pretend that the market will fix them, and you cant point at the markets insurance brokers (speculators) and assume that because sometimes they incorrectly allocate resources our best bet is to put them all up against the wall and let daddy government fix it all.
Here is my take on the original point. Some of the deposits of these rare materials have not be mined yet because the sources are not economically viable at the current price. If demand increases or supply drops then the price will rise, and these sites will become viable. All well and good. But there is a finite amount of these materials available. Eventually the cost of obtaining them will so high that they are not used in some consumer goods anymore, and instead used only where no substitute exists (or where the substitute is more expensive). So far this all sounds fine, the market has fixed the problem right? The only thing is that the market hasn't fixed anything here. All it has done is find the best fit solution. The problem still exists because the problem is an overal reduction in some quantity we care about (quality of life, GDP growth, take your pick). If tomorrow food spontaneously appeared in peoples fridges then general quality of life would go up (so would GDP growth eventually, after the shock of millions of famers having no jobs wore off). This because having lots of resources is a very good thing. Shortages aren't a problem because the market cant correct for them, they are a problem because they require us to allocate larger amounts of resources to obtaining necessarily materials.
So shortages are bad even though the market can f
Re:The markets... (Score:2, Insightful)
The technology required to scale up production of bio fuels to sufficient levels to replace the world's oil consumption isn't there yet. The number of algae farms required is substantial, and even if the technology were fully developed at this point, the money required for that kind of production effort is incredibly huge, and wouldn't happen without government help. Now, I'm all for replacing oil with something homegrown and renewable, and would be overjoyed to see the US lead the way on this so that we could become a net exporter of biofuel rather than importing oil. With time and a lot of money (some from the government, the rest from smart, long-term investors), this will happen.
Getting back to the subject of the article, it's a little disturbing that we're within a decade of all those elements being essentially used up. It's one thing to know they're going to run out (obviously they are), but so soon? Best solution to this, in my mind, is to dump billions upon billions into the space program. This rock isn't going to support us indefinitely, especially with the way the Chinese and Indian economies are growing - adding another 2.5 billion Western-style consumers will rapidly dry up the planets resources of not just these elements listed in the article, but even things like iron. I don't mean to sound like a doomsday-spouter, but the writing is on the wall. It will happen eventually, it's just a question of when.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:4, Insightful)
Key word: "current".
"Economic realities" change on a regular basis. Do we really expect everything to stay static over the next 100 years?
This is exactly why "peak oil" predictions have continued to change. The original predictions had us hitting peak oil around, what, 1985? None of the predictions ever take into account new technologies. When the newest predictions were made, oil sands still weren't an economically feasible source of crude. Now they are. That makes a HUGE difference.
Actually, no, we're not. The US is refusing to exploit many easily accessible reservoirs due to political considerations. You're also barely touching your oil shales. Meanwhile Canada has just recently started to exploit oil sands, and we're increasing production at a staggering rate.
So what you're saying is that it's akin to fortune telling? Read my palm and tell me how much oil we're going to need?
I dunno ... that's not my understanding of the peak-oil predictions, but if you're right then it's even more idiotic than I thought.
The current rise in price has more to do with the fact that oil has been artificially under priced for the last few decades. Now we're starting to pay for the true cost. But you're right - as China and India continue to grow, we're going to see even more demand. That's why it's important that we start opening new drill sites and start investing in oil sand and shale projects. We can offset the increased demand by opening new lines of supply, as well as by developing alternate fuel technologies.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, it is pretty hard to argue politics are not involved in these things when the solution most politicians come up with to a shortage is to punish the suppliers - any economist (and most people with a modicum of common sense) will tell you that will have the opposite effect... see what the Democrats are doing about the oil shortage, vs the Republican response. Ignore morals - which solution will work?
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:4, Insightful)
nah, you've missed the boat. You would have to have a Big Zinc executive as president, going to war in the zinc regions of earth to raise price, with a vice president who was a Big Zinc Warfare profiteer. then you'd have a parallel to oil.
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:3, Insightful)
They couldn't grow more food because the soil was exhausted. How could "politics" have prevented that?
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:4, Insightful)
see what the Democrats are doing about the oil shortage, vs the Republican response
The Democrats are being idiots but "drill more!" isn't a acceptable solution to our addiction to a finite resource. If the Democrats are guilty of ignoring supply and demand then the Republicans are equally guilty of just sticking their head in the sand and ignoring the larger problems, mainly that A) Oil is a finite resource that WILL run out sooner or later, B) Using Fossil Fuels is pushing the climate over the cliff
You should also take a look at some of the reasons for Democratic opposition. Starting with the basic question of why aren't the oil and gas companies using the leases that they already have on public lands instead of trying to get rights to new land?
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:3, Insightful)
"They disappear in a usable format for electronics though."
So, you really believe Zn, Ga, In etc. were found somewhere in the ground as nice ingots of pure metal ?
Re:eek! (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you just use the costs of getting something up off the ground to claim that dropping something down to the ground would be too expensive? Semms to me that launch costs would be needed upfront to establish space-based industry, true. But once done, launch costs would have to little to do with the per ton cost of extracting and returning rare and valuable metals.
It's like saying that because it costs a fortune upfront to dig a diamond mine, the diamonds will be too expensive, irregardless of how many there are or how cheap it is to get them back to the world. Quite wrong, because those other two things really do affect the bottom line.
Re:Total ignorance of economics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep! Sure will! By creating a market for short ladders, grabbers, cabinetry with lower clearances, and houses with more ergonomic designs.
Is that lump in your armpit getting bigger? Don't worry; Economics will have it out in a jiffy.
You betcha! By creating an incentive for people to go to medical school, become licensed, and open practices.
Fallen down a gully in the mountains and shattered your pelvis, hundreds of miles from help, with no ways of communicating with anyone? Just chant "Economics" three times, for a speedy and efficient rescue.
Why would you do that, when you could have availed yourself of a mobile phone, satellite phone, or GPS rescue device? All of which are available because there's a market for them consisting of people who go out to the middle of nowhere with a risk of shattering their pelvises.
I'm not going to pretend that free-market capitalism is the optimal solution to all mankind's problems. It's only the best and most efficient one we've created thus far. Economics only attempts to describe how people allocate scarce resources. It is neither God nor Devil.
Re:Scaremongering... (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course it's *exactly* the things that others have no cost incentive to pursue that governments have to do. What else are governments good for? Any kind of social organization and government is only there for things that are either not profitable (but necessary) or where profits are not leading to what's in the public interest.
Industries don't care the fuck for what happens to your children later. Governments should and if they don't, go and fuck *them*.
new peak (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, January 2008 is the new May 2005 [theoildrum.com].
Re:extinction of zinc? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why "peak oil" predictions have continued to change. The original predictions had us hitting peak oil around, what, 1985?
Those predictions were for US oil fields, and they came true almost exactly on schedule. Current predictions are for world-wide supplies. These are a bit shakier, since some countries (Saudi Arabia, for one) treat oil reserve data as state secrets.
None of the predictions ever take into account new technologies. When the newest predictions were made, oil sands still weren't an economically feasible source of crude. Now they are. That makes a HUGE difference.
The cost of extraction continues to rise. Yes, it's cheaper now to extract from shale and oil sands than it was a year ago, but it's still more expensive than drilling, and I don't see anyway that it (or deep sea drilling) will ever be cheaper than land drilling. The only reason why these other avenues are being pursued now is that the easy/cheap places to drill are tapped out. We'll never completely run out of oil, but when it requires more energy to extract an amount of oil than that oil can provide, we'll stop using oil for energy. The economic consequences of even approaching that price point are staggering to contemplate.
I dunno ... that's not my understanding of the peak-oil predictions, but if you're right then it's even more idiotic than I thought.
No, the grandparent poster is wrong. Peak Oil simply refers to the point when half of an area's economically-extractable oil has been depleted. By itself, that not too bad; it took 140 years to extract one trillion barrels. But production increases over time. For example, if production increases at 5% per year, then production doubles every 14 years. And if you do the math, no matter how long it took to get to that point, once you hit peak oil, you've got 14 years until it becomes economically infeasible to extract any more oil. Unfortunately, the industrialization of China and India has driven the rate of increase even higher, closer to 7%, which means a doubling period of 10 years.
I expect that you aren't interested in reading propaganda from admitted peak oil enthusiasts, but how do you feel about the American Association of Petroleum Geologists? http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2007/05may/nehring.cfm [aapg.org]