Talk:Peak minerals

Minerals are unlike fossil fuels in that their formation and concetration is largely derived from crustal sources, rather than from organic sources. For this fundamental reason, we simply cannot 'run out' of most minerals, unless we first run out of rocks. For most minerals, the size of the resource increases exponentially with each lowering of grade, in other words there is about 10 times as much copper at 0.8% in the earth's crust than at 0.9% by volume, and about 100 times atr 0.7%, and so on. For this reason it is actually impossible to 'run out' of copper, the same goes for most other minerals, with a few exceptions (notable those produced organically, which are much smaller in volume, such as fossil fuels). Therefore with regards to what is economically recoverable, parallels with 'peak oil' are not justified, as with most minerals it is actually human and social factors, rather than supply factors, which ulitmately determine demand and production levels. And these human and social factors are virtually impossible to predict in the longer term, it is therefore not menaningful to estimate production of gold or copper in 100 or 1000 years beceause these things will be determined largely by human and social factors, and largely not by supply factors. Therefore estimates of peak production are also highly suspect. There is an entirely different supply/demand context for minerals as opposed to that of fossil fuels and in particular oil, which is not originally sourced from the earth's crust.

In addition, the attached article contains many other errors. Production costs for most mineral ores are getting lower, not higher as stated, for the very reason that lower grades are now being mined, because this achieves larger economies of scale. This is true for most minerals, although other factors such as transport costs and other factors makes this somewhat variable. However for most minerals, average production cost have come down in the last 50 years or so, with some degree of fluctuation, but this is expected to continue as long as demand remains high, again a highly variable social factor, not primarily a resource size/supply factor.


 * Most of this comment is just plain wrong and shows no understanding of engineering or the mining industry.Phmoreno (talk) 13:18, 18 January 2015 (UTC)