{"id":40781,"date":"2017-11-08T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40781"},"modified":"2017-11-07T11:45:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T16:45:03","slug":"debunking-the-were-going-to-run-out-of-mineral-x-hysteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/08\/debunking-the-were-going-to-run-out-of-mineral-x-hysteria\/","title":{"rendered":"Debunking the “we’re going to run out of mineral x” hysteria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall<\/a> explains why you need to ignore reports that we’re going to run short of this or that critical metal or other mined resource:<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s return to their greater misunderstanding: that there\u2019s some shortage of metals out there. It\u2019s true that there is a limitation, of course it is. There is a number of nickel and or cobalt atoms on the planet and that\u2019s a hard limit to the number we can use. But what we want to know is how close we are to it.<\/p>\n

As I point out in that linked (and free!) book: we\u2019re nowhere near any limit that need bother us. We\u2019ve some 800,000 years of nickel left (assuming no recycling) and 34 million of cobalt \u2013 enough to be getting along with, given the average lifespan of a species is three million years.<\/p>\n

So why the worrying that we are? Mainly, it\u2019s because people misunderstand the technical jargon used in the industry. They talk about mineral reserves and mineral resources without realising that these are not a fair indication of useable resource. No, not even a guide, not an estimation, there simply is no link at all.<\/p>\n

A mineral reserve is something that we have drilled, tested, dug up a bit and processed, and we have now proven that we can extract this at current prices, using current technology, and make a profit doing so. This is an economic definition: roughly speaking, the stock at already existing mines.<\/p>\n

A mineral resource<\/em> is where we\u2019re pretty sure all of that is true \u2013 we\u2019ve just not proved it yet. And then there\u2019s the stuff we\u2019ve not got around to looking at \u2013 which is true of the bulk of the planet and the bulk of all minerals.<\/p>\n

It costs millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, to prove a resource into a reserve. It also costs millions to tens of millions to qualify a resource in the first place. So we don\u2019t do this for things which we\u2019re likely to use 30 years hence. Why spend all that money now to then wait for decades?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, if you go and look at mineral reserves, you\u2019ll find we\u2019re going to run out of everything in 30 \u2013 50 years. And that\u2019s because the best definition of a reserve is what we\u2019ve prepared for us all to use in the next 30 \u2013 50 years. To complain about this is like complaining that the food in the fridge is about to run out \u2013 without referring to the supermarkets and food production system which exists to fill up our fridges again.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this mistake which leads to the insistence that we must recycle everything for we\u2019re going to run out. We\u2019re not. That underlying contention is simply wrong.<\/p>\n

Just look at that famed Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth<\/em>. They, entirely correctly, note that mineral reserves are going to last 30 \u2013 50 years. They then, again entirely correctly, note that mineral resources can and will be converted into reserves by the application of time and money. But they then simply assume that resources out there are only 10 times current reserves. Hmm, 10 x 30 \u2013 50 years is 300 to 500, isn\u2019t it? So it\u2019s not all that much of a surprise that they tell us that society is doomed, doomed, in only a couple of centuries when they add a bit of exponential growth in usage. Their prediction comes from their assumption, that wholly incorrect one, that current reserves are an indication of the total amount available to us.<\/p>\n

All too many predictions of this sort are based on entirely and totally wrong assumptions. The truth is we simply do not have a shortage of any mineral, over any human timescale, that we might want to use. Any policy based upon the assumption that we do is provably wrong. So we\u2019d better revisit those policies based upon this incorrect assumption pretty sharpish, shouldn\u2019t we?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall explains why you need to ignore reports that we’re going to run short of this or that critical metal or other mined resource: But let\u2019s return to their greater misunderstanding: that there\u2019s some shortage of metals out there. It\u2019s true that there is a limitation, of course it is. There is a number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,15],"tags":[809,649],"class_list":["post-40781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-technology","tag-mining","tag-recycling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aBL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40782,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40781\/revisions\/40782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}