[MD]

....particularly metals.

Here's another project for my to do list, which is currently overflowing with money-making tasks. (I do have to eat, you know)

Start off with looking at the extraction rate history for various metals.

If possible, find the current mean ore to metals ratio for each, with as much history as possible.

The result will reveal which metals are actually in depletion that is concealed by cheap energy input.

Next you project a "rate of impact" by factoring cheap FF depletion over mineral production rate. It may generate an interesting chart.

Copper is a good example, I think.

Are there any dense veins of copper in production? Or is it all coming from strip mines at some ridiculously low yield? If the ability to strip mine goes away, will prospecting efforts find new dense veins somewhere?

Those are the questions that interest me here.

Again, I hope someone with a little time will be interested enough to dig into it. No way I can get to it until next year.

[venky]

Very interesting. Most folks, even peak oilers tend to forget energy is but just one of the several resouces that will be in short supply sometime this century due overconsumption and overpopulation. That is why I am still pessimistic over the long term, if not the short term. Has any study related to what you have suggested been done you know before? I do think the limits to growth study did take several resource curves into account....wonder if they allowed for how energy resource constraints might affect it in the future.....?

Any idea how we could get data to study something like this? We will have to short list perhaps a certain number of resources which are critical for modern industrial civilization and for which there are no substitutes. I think we also need to take price and availability into account on a regional basis as I dont think the effects of energy depletion will be uniformly felt around the world, and the more energy intensive techniques will carry on for different times in different parts of the world........

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('venky', 'I') do think the limits to growth study did take several resource curves into account...

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('venky', 'I') do think the limits to growth study did take several resource curves into account...

[venky]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('venky', 'I') do think the limits to growth study did take several resource curves into account...

[unbrkable]

How accurate do you expect this to be? and how far back would you want to model I believe theres a site that has amounts mined in pounds the only problem would be estimating the amount of energy used.

[Cobra_Strike]

At some point landfills will have better 'ore' to waste ratios then the mines, until then mining will be the best option...However in some cases waste recycling is already worthwhile, like electronics...many contain gold and rare earths, which are all very useful.

[pup55]

I have bumped up a couple of threads.

David Roper a prof from Va Tech has beat you to it by about 25 years.

I believe he has logged into po.com as "droper" so you might be able to PM him.

It has been awhile since a lot of this has been updated, but the main theory at the time was that minerals, like oil, should have a hubbertian peak and decline, and so you should be able to learn something about what oil will do based on what a lot of these minerals have done.

Kind of interesting.

I keep wondering if there is any newer data on this.

[venky]

I was able to dig up an article by David Roper on this issue. "Depletion theory"



http://arts.bev.net/roperldavid/minerals/DepletTh.htm

Does a generic analysis that might refer to the extraction profile of any non renewable resource. Models its production in the early, middle and late periods of its production. Also makes the connection that the depletion of one resource say crude oil might make the production of another resource say Iron more difficult.

Dont know if this theory has been applied to model the production profile of any specific resource; which would certainly be an interesting exercise.