In my opinion, there are two caveats that are always worth considering when looking at something like this.In a sense every economic good is limited, more-or-less scarce. On the other hand, many things can substitute for one another: perhaps organic carbon for the kind of metallic wire we have used to conduct electricity for so long.
1. “Reserves” are an engineering number that are based on economic viability. Technically speaking, there are small concentrations of gold everywhere. It is just not usually viable to mine 0.1 g/t gold. When we will “run out” of each mineral in this chart is based on current reserves and prices. If the gold price doubles, then suddenly it is economic to mine more.
2. This chart is a reminder that something has to give. Either prices are going to have to go up, or new amazing discoveries have to be made to keep prices down. It’s basic economics, and either way it seems that there are many opportunities in the mining industry for investors and speculators on both fronts.
Still, it's the kind of exercise that xkcd would have enjoyed putting together -- only without the clever ALT text.
7 comments:
Given past predictions for when we'll run out of oil and other resources, I'm not too worried.
Besides, it's not like we vaporized the metal, Just think of how much metal you could mine from an old dump.
I read a book a few years ago that was written in, I think, the 70s or maybe 60s. It was meticulously researched and lucidly argued, and concluded that were were going to run out of all kinds of minerals in the near future. The author had no notion whatever of the changes in materials science that would render most of his calculations irrelevant. It was like reading predictions of a whale-oil and whale-bone shortage.
Exactly so.
Indeed, technically we can even make one element from another (though it's very expensive and energy-intense).
I think Grim has the right of it...that when one resource becomes too expensive to extract or produce, that's when substitutes become economical.
I was replying to Douglas but my links apply to Texan as well...it was the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth that predicted various resources would "run out" in years that have long since passed us now....though Paul Ehrlich also specialized in this when he wasn't predicting mass starvation that didn't happen either.
(One of his books, Extinction, opened with a metaphor that showed this kind of thinking clearly. It was the "wing-nut popper." A plane's about to take off, but a crazy man is on the wing popping off the nuts that hold the wing in place; he explains that he can get a lot of money by selling them and he doesn't think the wing needs so many anyway. Explore the metaphor and you'll see how Greens model the world...and why they're so weak on economics.)
Exactly: their view of economics is ignorant and insane, which explains why they're constantly arguing that their policies need to override economics. If I thought that was how economics worked, I'd probably want to undermine it all the time, too.
This is like the stuff market manipulators use to drive up or down prices so they can get rich. Still working, I see.
It's also the kind of stuff Greens hand out to support their state-totalitarian ideas so they can get power. The mentality of..."we'll all die if you let the market price these goods...so let us ration them instead." An investor who knew the markets would not fall for it (he's doubtless up to date on the data anyway); but a voter who doesn't might.
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