Everyone - Look at the second page of comments on the article.
environment.newscientist.com
This article real a bunch of junk. I expect there will be shortages and prices will rise on a number of metals, platinum especially - but we will run out of oil long before we run out of 98% of metals.
Uranium is a common a zinc. Nobody looked for it until after WW2, and everyone stopped looking after Three Mile island and Chernobyl.
Tanatalum Ta was a problem - about every 10-12 years the electronics industry creates a shortage. When Ta became super expensive, chips were redeigned to use standard ceraminc capcitors insteaad of tantalum. Also, at least one Japanese firm can now make capacitors from niobium, and there is a lot of that lying around.
The reserve numbers are based on what cn be mined at a price of X. Usually a 2 X increase in price will expand reserves at exisiting mines by some factor of 50 to 200 %
As Webster pointed out, the Freeport gold-copper mine in the Indonesian side of New Giunea did not make the picture. One of Indonesia's largest sources of foreign exchange.
They don't have Cobalt on their list, and one hell of a lot of people were killed over that - one of the main reasons for war in the Congo.
They have far more minerals in the US than in all of Africa north of South Africa. Look at Austrailia it's loaded up too !
See, if you publish in English, God puts more precious minerals in the ground for you.
Look at Europe - no tin in Cornwall, no mines in Germany or Austria or Spain, no iron in Norway, either.
Bad economics, too.
Take antimony. This shows up as a minor by-product at many metal mines, and becuase it has some toxicity (less than lead, but still nasty) it has to be segregated and either stockpiled by the refiner or disposed of.
This looks like a fifth grader who only looked at Wikipedia.
*** *** *** *** ***
The good news - these people will by the "peak aluminum" theory (Aluminum is about 4% of the Earth's crust, and we couldn't run out even if everybody owned a Boeing 707 like John Travolta.)
And we can sell them Aluminum mining stock for 3 X book value ! |
