{"id":46641,"date":"2019-02-25T01:00:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T06:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46641"},"modified":"2019-01-24T12:21:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T17:21:33","slug":"qotd-defining-mineral-reserves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/02\/25\/qotd-defining-mineral-reserves\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Defining mineral reserves"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European chemists organisation \u2013 EuChemS \u2013 has just added to the torrent of environmental drivel with their new periodic table. They\u2019re trying to tell us which elements are going to run out when and thus tell us all that we\u2019ve got to recycle. The entire process is bunkum because they\u2019ve not understood the first thing about the supply of minerals. They simply do not know the meaning of mineral reserve that is.<\/p>\n

Just for the edification of anyone who does drool when contemplating their own nasal effluvia \u2013 you know, a member of Greenpeace, that sort of person \u2013 a mineral reserve is something we\u2019ve proven, yes proven, that we can extract from using today\u2019s technology, at today\u2019s prices, and make a profit. It costs a lot of money to prove these facts. Thus we only prove for what we\u2019re likely to use in the next few decades. Mineral reserves are, to a reasonable level of accuracy, just the working stock of current mines.<\/p>\n

There is no relationship, no relationship at all, between our mineral reserves and how much of that element or mineral is available to us to use. Really do grasp this point. It\u2019s not that the amount is larger. It\u2019s not that the multiple is high. It\u2019s that there is no relationship at all. There are, for example, absolutely no mineral reserves of hafnium anywhere on the planet. Nothing, absolutely nada. At current rates of usage we might run out some few billion years after the Sun goes Red Giant. The European Chemical Society tries to tell us that there\u2019s a serious risk of running short of Hafnium in the next 100 years. This is so gibberingly stupid that it would get a laugh from German geologists \u2013 I know because I told some this once and they giggled. Seriously, German \u2013 German<\/em> \u2013 geologists, giggling.<\/p>\n

Tim Worstall, “More Environmental Drivel With New Periodic Table \u2013 We\u2019re Going To Run Out Of Helium”, Continental Telegraph<\/em><\/a>, 2019-01-23.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European chemists organisation \u2013 EuChemS \u2013 has just added to the torrent of environmental drivel with their new periodic table. They\u2019re trying to tell us which elements are going to run out when and thus tell us all that we\u2019ve got to recycle. The entire process is bunkum because they\u2019ve not understood the first […]<\/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":[25,65,41,16],"tags":[872,1159,809],"class_list":["post-46641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-quotations","category-science","tag-chemistry","tag-materials","tag-mining"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c8h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46641","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=46641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46642,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46641\/revisions\/46642"}],"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=46641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}