How long will it last? Graphic shows number of years left of various materials [pic] | Hacker News Reader

How long will it last? Graphic shows number of years left of various materials [pic]

newscientist.com

20 pointssoundsop12 comments

Here is a simple reason why these type of graphs are flawed: they ignore economics. If you've taken Econ 101, you'll know that the demand is sensitive to price and scarcity drives up prices. Present demand is meaningless while making forecasts, since future demand is a function of future prices. Plus, increasing demand would also enlargen reserve base, since operating certain low-yield mines would become profitable.

I think it's a quite informative set of graphs that provides interesting information about which resources, and hence which technologies, can be expected to increase in price, relative to other technologies, within the next decennia.

The fact that you consider something meaningless does not make it flawed. The legend clearly states these predictions are based on current demand, so the only flaw is in the person that thinks these graphs indicate when we will actually run out of these resources. You are perfectly right about that: that requires economical considerations.

"The fact that you consider something meaningless does not make it flawed."

True, but the fact that this issue is covered clearly by larger thinkers in Econ 101 does make it meaningless in terms of "conservation" or "planning for the future".

This hole idea is so common they gave it a name: Malthusian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe)

And there have been empirically proven answers to this question. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Simon)

If this chart means anything, it really only applies to commodities brokers, not to end consumers.

As reserves shrink and cost goes up, I suspect recycling will play a bigger role (I'm impressed to see Aluminium is nearly 50% recycled).

This probably hasn't been a significant player before because we've never 'run out' of something so fundamental before so the pressure to make recycling happen, and the financial reward for doing so, hasn't been strong enough before. (OK, it has on the small scale - see the UK during WWII for instance, where we even cut down garden fences around the country for the metal).

Also, I guess recycling is helped by improvements in technology (to extract usable pure materials from a mix), so it will become more practical in the future than it is now, which is more practical than it was 50 years ago.

With electronic communication for coordination it will be more feasible than it ever has been to collect recyclables from 'everywhere', and perhaps one of the micropayment systems that have been hovering on the edge of reality for the past decade will pop into existence and become a driving force. (Maybe. Would I be less inclined to recycle something for cash value 0.001p than for the feeling of doing the right thing?).

We talk about things running out, but where do they go? At some point, it might become feasible and worthwhile to go through the last 50 years of landfill sites in the first world, for instance.

Unless we do develop nano-manufacturing to construct materials from scratch at scale, when this whole discussion ceases to matter so much.

If the price is so high that we can't use the stuff do do things we do now, isn't that essentially the same problem?

No because that drives substitution where people find substitutes for the material or for the process the material is used for.

I can't wait for when we start mining land fills looking for all the stuff we've thrown away.

I've heard of plans for robots or even bacteria to be engineered to gather the materials together.

I've even heard the argument that it will be more environmentally friendly to NOT recycle directly but to landfill and use 'agents' to gather the elements we need.. time will tell.

There are any number of which we have "only X years of proven reserves left", for which we've had X years left for 3X years. That's because mining companies only prove out reserves for many ores only as far in advance as necessary to show they are a viable concern to invest in.

99.99% of the earth's crust has never been explored. When oil got scarce on land in temperate climates, companies began looking -- and finding -- oil in cold, tropical, and ocean environments.

Then there's the very real possibility of substitution by other technologies. No doubt there were those who predicted the world would run out of silver for developing photos. Now we have digital photography getting better all the time.

And dont' get me started in carbon nanotube technology.

And finally, why didn't they include the numbers for iron? (Over 1,000 years worth proven.)

Irrelevant note but as nice as this graph is (and it's clear plenty of thought went into it) why does it include materials they didn't have information on? For instance, Hafnium.

Agreed, and moreso why don't they have information on Hafnium? Is it a secret? Does nobody have an estimate of how much there is scattered about? Are mining companies busy digging for diamonds or copper and oops a lump of hafnium pops up ('ooh what luck, I know a power station owner who will want that!')?

I do hope there's some big Hafnium mining monopoly conspiracy behind this! ;)

I'm the type of guy who goes and googles this kind of thing..... It looks like halfnium is a byproduct of zirconium production (1:50 ratio is what the pdf says), and that we have a decent chunk of reserve (worldwide), compared with the rate it's mined.

It's a riveting read: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/zirconium/m...

Two investment opportunities:

Gold Canyon Resources - has a US property that contains what might be the only mineable deposit of gallium (other than as a byproduct of other mines) which is used in solar panels and other high tech stuff.

Geodex Minerals - Has perhaps the world's largest deposit of indium (plus lots of tungsten, moly etc) in New Brunswick, Canada

The bad news is that both are a long way from production and the economic climate is not helping. The good news is they are dirt cheap. They're both traded on the Toronto Venture exchange.

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