[Eclipse]

Hi all,
a recent Worldchanging article had me again wondering just what we were going to do when we've "mined it all". That is, how are we going to run civilization when we've mined all the economically extractable metals and minerals that we depend on?
The article starts...

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Where does your stuff come from? Before the store, before the factory, where did it really begin? If it isn't made of wood, cloth, or other living matter, it was dug out of the ground.

and then part way down states:

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Peak Minerals How much mining can the Earth sustain? The answer is not quite zero, as you might think from the Natural Step principle quoted above. Mineral compounds can return to the Earth's crust on their own, slowly. Steel can rust away in a few decades, and aluminum takes between 200 and 500 years to degrade. (Estimates vary widely, but a page by the state of Nevada has a nice and well-illustrated list of how quickly various materials degrade. Compare Aluminum's degradation rate to styrofoam's.) But minerals are clearly a non-renewable resource on the time scale of our lives.
Some researchers have begun to argue that just as we are hitting peak oil, we will soon be hitting peaks for other minerals, and have already passed peaks for some. Italian chemist Ugo Bardi published a research paper on The Oil Drum: Europe in October, whose abstract follows:

We examined the world production of 57 minerals reported in the database of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Of these, we found 11 cases where production has clearly peaked and is now declining. Several more may be peaking or be close to peaking. Fitting the production curve with a logistic function we see that, in most cases, the ultimate amount extrapolated from the fitting corresponds well to the amount obtained summing the cumulative production so far and the reserves estimated by the USGS. These results are a clear indication that the Hubbert model is valid for the worldwide production of minerals and not just for regional cases. It strongly supports the concept that “Peak oil” is just one of several cases of worldwide peaking and decline of a depletable resource. Many more mineral resources may peak worldwide and start their decline in the near future.

The minerals Bardi and co-author Marco Pagani found to be peaking were Mercury, Tellurium, Lead, Cadmium, Potash, Phosphate rock, Thallium Selenium, Zirconium, Rhenium, and Gallium. Note that most of these are key components in computers and other electronics.
How serious is "peak minerals"? In May, NewScientist released a report with excellent charts plotting expected years to depletion for twenty of the most-used minerals, as well as the percent recycled, the amount an average US consumer will use in their life, and a map of the world showing where the various metals are mined.


According to the report, copper has between 38 and 61 years left before depletion, indium (used in LCD monitors) has between 4 and 13 years, silver (used in catalytic converters and jewelry) has between 9 and 29 years, and antimony (used in flame retardants and some drugs) has between 13 and 30 years. It appears that the market already knows this in a dim way: copper prices have tripled in the past decade, and as the report points out, indium is even worse: "in January 2003 the metal sold for around $60 per kilogram; by August 2006 the price had shot up to over $1000 per kilogram."

http://www.worldchan...ves/007708.html

Any ideas for a 100% renewable world? Remember, all those wonderful solar thermal electricity plans need stacks of steel to work, and according to the article "Steel can rust away in a few decades". I once took great hope in the sheer quantity of recycling we are getting into with metals, but how many metals are dumped at tips? How many just rust away unused? If we are going to maintain the modern world, we are either going to have to substitute our need for these materials with some magic-nano-tech, or face some major lifestyle changes... ones we may not like.

[ecoli]

reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink.

[Eclipse]

Of course, but we need exponentially more steel each year and babies born today could live to witness the end of iron ore mining. It's not just that we need a constant supply of the stuff running through the industrial ecosystem, it's that we need ever more.

[Mr Skeptic]

The big problem is here is energy. If you have enough energy, you can mine much poorer ores.

[iNow]

Why couldn't we engineer a stronger and more sustainable material?


To ecoli's point, rethink.

[insane_alien]

this is what landfills will eventually be used for.

if you look at them as 'natural' ore deposits they are immensely rich. they have an abundance of nearly every mineral we could ever need including premade plastics.

eventually it will be come economically favourable to strip mine them.

[CPL.Luke]

also as prices rise we will start looking at ways of mining the undersea deposits (of which there are plenty), also we will start looking at economiclly viable methods of harvesting steel from asteroids. its not a terribly difficult matter to capture an asteroid and cut pieces of pure iron-nickel off of it. even 1 500 meter wide asteroid could fuel the american steel industry for a year.

not to mention carbon fibre, nanotubules and composites are going to take over most applications.

[ecoli]

iNow said:

Why couldn't we engineer a stronger and more sustainable material?


To ecoli's point, rethink.

bingo. I didn't have much time when I left that other post. Isn't material science coming up with materials that are as strong as steel but are pure carbon... And stuff like that.

[SkepticLance]

We will not run out of minerals at any time in the foreseeable future, with the possible exception of a few very rare materials (Helium comes to mind).

By way of analogy, think of gold.
50,000 years ago, the odd nugget of gold would be found, and bashed into shape as some kind of jewellery. It was enormously valuable because of the rarity.

A few thousand years ago, alluvial gold was found, and panned. Gold became more common. Then better methods, such as sluicing were designed, and gold became more common still.

Then we learned to extract it from quartz rock. Then we learned to extract it with cyanide. It became even more common, to the point where the price is kept high only by stock-piling thousands of tonnes in government coffers.

Today we know that microcrystalline gold is found in relatively large quantities in quartz rocks, and we are designing methods of extraction. It is also found in solution in geothermal waters. In Iceland, a team is learning how to extract it. In the future, gold will be even more abundant.

A similar process is going on all the time for other minerals. All minerals are present in vast amounts in the Earth's crust, and we simply need better methods of extracting it.

And then there is the ocean. Did you know that there is 50 million tonnes of Uranium dissoved in the ocean? Once we learn to extract it, that will be enough for thousands of years. And the amount of other minerals in the ocean is even more vast.

What we lack is not minerals. Just the extraction techniques.

[Markus]

SkepticLance said:

What we lack is not minerals. Just the extraction techniques.

However, as with everything else we humans take out of our environment, there are usually negative consequences to our actions.

Would mining for Uranium in the sea floor destroy the ocean ecosystem - as with so many land ecosystems that have been bludgeoned nearly to death with our search for materials to feed our exponentially-expanding populous?

Just as there are quite a few untapped oil reserves in Alaska especially under the ANWR - but is it worth threatening the ecosystem and destroying its pristine beauty? Or how about offshore drilling in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort Seas (also known as the Polar Bear Seas) which could very well put the Polar Bear on the extinct species list?

Every action DOES have an opposite and equal reaction! :eek:

[SkepticLance]

Markus said

"Would mining for Uranium in the sea floor destroy the ocean ecosystem "

Perhaps a slight misunderstanding here? The 50 million tonnes of Uranium is dissolved in sea water. It would not be mined. Instead, it would precipitated from sea water, probably alongside many other minerals.

However, we must always be aware of negative environmental consequences when obtaining raw materials, by whatever method. It is a bit like the statement that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance". So it is with environmental responsibility.

However, there is always a means by which things can be done with minimal harm. It is just the need for exercising the will to do things that way.

[bombus]

Sir Fred Hoyle in 1964 put it bluntly.
It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only. (Hoyle, 1964)

[Eclipse]

Yes, and while I think that philosophy has some truth to it regarding a hi-tech industrial world beginning with a good endowment of easy to mine metals and fossil fuels, aren't we getting to the point where we can harvest renewable energy economically (and wean ourselves off the fossil fuels)?

It's the metals side that still concerns me a bit though. I know nothing about what is possible with chemistry and nano-technology. So while there might potentially be many hundreds of times today's energy requirements in solar, tidal, wave and wind energy... it's the components and "ingredients" in these structures that may prove to be the final limit.

For those who love Fred Hoyle's theory, you can't go past http://dieoff.com/ or the http://en.wikipedia..../Olduvai_theory

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The Olduvai theory states that industrial civilization (as defined by per capita energy consumption) will have a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years (1930-2030). The theory provides a quantitative basis of the transient-pulse theory of modern civilization. The name is a reference to the Olduvai Gorge in Africa.

[SkepticLance]

To bombus and PO Man

I think you are too pessimistic. Humans are very flexible in the technologies we develop and use. Metals will never disappear. Iron is one of the most common elements on this planet, and is available in amounts so massive that it will never be unavailable. Aluminium ditto. We may use up all the readily available sources of such things as Iridium and rarer metals, but even they will still be available in smaller amounts through extraction from sea water.

We will use substitution techniques. For example : we are learning to use light-weight composite organic materials instead of metals, ceramics for specialty purposes, and a raft of alternatives. Fuel can always come from biological sources. Cement from limestone. etc etc. There is nothing that cannot be sourced or substituted for that is vital to advanced civilisation. There may be a few items that our descendents do without, but it is not likely to crimp their style to any substantial degree.

Even if humanity became extinct, and a new species, in a few millions of years evolved to sentience, there would be plenty of resources to use to build a civilisation. It would just take a bit longer to reach the same heights.

[John Cuthber]

I can't see how the world can run ot of minerals. Apart from the tiny quantities that we have shot into space, all the minerals are still here (OK helium might be a problem but who uses it on a day to day basis?).
They aere now more dispersed than they were which means they are more difficult to recover.
The problem, as has been said before, is running out of energy.
BTW, since oil is already becoming scarce, I don't see carbon fibre or plastic composites helping untill we get the hang of using plant derived (and therefore renewable) sources to make them from.

[SkepticLance]

John

Glad to see we are in agreement.
I suspect that even Helium will not be a major problem, though its cost will rise. Helium is a component of normal air, albeit in tiny amounts, and can (at considerable cost) be extracted by fractional distillation of liquid air. However, history tells us that if we are dependent on a specific extraction method, we improve it and bring the cost down.

Oil will run out in 30 to 60 years. That is ample time for humanity to learn to substitute using biological sources. Coal is available in vast amounts - enough for hundreds of years. However, its use will be curtailed by environmental concerns. Hopefully within the next 30 to 60 years.

[bombus]

To SkepticLance

I do hope you are right. But I wouldn't bet our future on it! We should start being frugal now!

[SkepticLance]

To bombus

A little food for thought

The Earth's crust weighs in at about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes. If an important element is found in tiny amounts - on average at one part per trillion, there will be a total of 100,000,000 tonnes of that 'rare' substance in the crust of our planet. Most important elements are present in much greater amounts.

Now, of course, it is sometimes difficult to obtain these rare elements, because of the dilution factor. Fortunately, a very large fraction of each such element is found in 'concentrated' form. Maybe in hundreds of parts per billion in the relevent ores. Your 'rare' one part per trillion element will be present in tens of millions of tonnes in such form. It is only a matter of learning how to extract them.

The vast majority of the materials we use in quantity, are present in large amounts. Iron, for example, makes up 5% of the Earth's crust and Aluminium makes up 8%. Work out how much of each is present, and tell me we are likely to run out!

[Mag]

I believe the question is not whether we will run out, or whether have the ability for reusable energy sources... but to be the biggest problem and question, is will the politics and $ behind what we currently have change, before it is too late?
How much will prices have to go up, before companies are forced to change their ways?

[Eclipse]

SkepticLance said:

Even if humanity became extinct, and a new species, in a few millions of years evolved to sentience, there would be plenty of resources to use to build a civilisation. It would just take a bit longer to reach the same heights.

Hi Skeptic, how would this happen? I've been thinking about this scenario on and off now for a while, ever since hearing about the Olduvai theory (which actually came about because the author — Ken Duncan, hear Sir Fred Hoyle's lecture on advanced civilization being a "one shot affair"). It does not even have to be for a hypothetical new species. What if we ,are really stupid and completely nuke each other back to the stone age. :doh: Imagine we nuke each other in about 100 years, after we've exponentially used up every last scrap of the easy pickings in metals and fossil fuels. Surely an Industrial revolution is impossible the second time around without coal and easy to pick at metals that one can mine manually? There'll be no working underclass coming home saying "Been play'n down t'coal pit."



Long aside: Ever read Niven and Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye" duet?

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Matthew 7:3
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

It's a "first contact" novel with aliens that live in a nebula that looks like "God's eye". Mote is the olde worlde way of saying "speck". The "speck" in God's eye is where the "Moties" live.

So the Moties are advanced technologically and advanced biologically — in that it appears they have had to EVOLVE specific classes in order to survive some harsh biological imperative. They have warrior class and mechanical class and a tiny, brownie sized "worker" class. Have you read it, or are you likely to read it? It's great. Something terrible keeps the evolution process going. It did not plateau as it appears to with us with the arrival of technology. Also, metals appear very scarce and they use them very carefully — any scrap of metal seems as valuable as gold. Why? (Warning, spoiler below if you are considering reading it, it's one of my favourite Sci-Fi novels and I recommend it)....


spoiler below....




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spoiler below....



The big secret is that the Moties HAVE to breed on a regular basis, or they die. And the horrible FACT of their existence is that this leads to regular and repeated overpopulation and Dieoffs. They are doomed to repeatedly build up and then "smack down" again in a never ending competition for mates and resources. This terrible population trap, with no "demographic transition" possible, keeps them stuck in the dieoff cycle, which the authors argued led them to evolve various classes and not just remain a fairly homogeneous group, the way we are.

(An aside: so the very title of the book seems to be these authors rather cheekily imply that such an abomination in the "created order" would just have to be a mote in "God's eye" — a fault with Him. Interesting point I'll have to look up one day, being a fairly conservative Christian myself. Great, :rolleyes: more work.)

Now looking back on myself reading it as a teenager many years ago, I'm wondering why I was so dense as to not ask the basic question:

How on earth did they build up again each time when all the decent resources were just plain gone! :confused::eek:

SkepticLance said:

The vast majority of the materials we use in quantity, are present in large amounts. Iron, for example, makes up 5% of the Earth's crust and Aluminium makes up 8%. Work out how much of each is present, and tell me we are likely to run out!

You see skeptic, that's exactly my point! You are counting every last gram of the stuff, but that's not how we mine. We use up all the good stuff first. It's just like peak oil that I've been raving about for 4 years now, and appears to be becoming common knowledge, even in this thread. We use the cheap, easy to get to stuff first. We're even at the point of having to build different refineries because we used all the light sweet crude on the top of the fields and now have to mine the heavy sour crude at the bottom. The age of sweet oil is turning sour, and this is going to be expensive to build a new generation of "hydrogen cracker" refineries to use the sour stuff. And yet even the sour oil is concentrated.

I guess oil is slightly different because we are mining it for energy. When oil takes more energy to mine than we get back from it, we generally pack up shop and go home.

So maybe assuming a future with lots of beautiful cheap solar electricity, and one of those REALLY big electric digging doovers and a heap of drag lines, then maybe there'll be some sort of situation where we can economically mine for these 1 part per trillion resources. Maybe. Or maybe this need will catapult us into space?

"Cause just look at the size of this thing..."

We're going to run these things on solar for a 1/1000 000 000 000 resource? :confused:




Or maybe we'll end up living a bit more like this?