Re:The Scariest, Most Boring Armageddon
by Animats on Sunday January 31, 2016 @02:41PM
(#11007665)
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
It doesn't take some disastrous event for this to happen. It just takes time. The USGS has resource estimates for all major minerals.[1] For each one, there's an estimate of world resources. Check out iron ore.[2] "World resources are estimated to exceed 230 billion tons of iron contained within greater than 800 billion tons of crude ore." That sounds huge, until you see that current mining is 3.2 billion tons a year. There's less than a century of iron left.
It's like that for most minerals. There are not millennia of supply left. In most cases, it's a century or two.
The original article says "From about 1760 onwards we've improved our situation dramatically." I've been saying something similar for a while, but I usually date the start of the industrial revolution from 1825, when the first steam-powered railroad started carrying goods and passengers commercially. This was the moment when the industrial revolution got out of beta. It was also when humans started making serious dents in mined natural resources. Before steam power, mining was a small-time activity. Nobody could dig much, and nobody could move much. Today, as mentioned above, 3.2 billion tons a year of iron alone are mined. That's all in less than 200 years.
It's not going to go on for another 200 years. The highest grade minerals in easily accessible areas were mined out decades ago. Most mining today is already working low-grade ore. Going for even lower grade ore is possible, but that just postpones the end.
Minerals are more of a problem than energy. There are many energy sources, some of which are renewable. Minerals can be recycled, but you lose some at each go-round. Asteroid mining might help some day, but not unless we find some far cheaper way of operating in space.
Heavy industrial civilization has a finite lifespan.
It doesn't take some disastrous event for this to happen. It just takes time. The USGS has resource estimates for all major minerals.[1] For each one, there's an estimate of world resources. Check out iron ore.[2] "World resources are estimated to exceed 230 billion tons of iron contained within greater than 800 billion tons of crude ore." That sounds huge, until you see that current mining is 3.2 billion tons a year. There's less than a century of iron left.
It's like that for most minerals. There are not millennia of supply left. In most cases, it's a century or two.
The original article says "From about 1760 onwards we've improved our situation dramatically." I've been saying something similar for a while, but I usually date the start of the industrial revolution from 1825, when the first steam-powered railroad started carrying goods and passengers commercially. This was the moment when the industrial revolution got out of beta. It was also when humans started making serious dents in mined natural resources. Before steam power, mining was a small-time activity. Nobody could dig much, and nobody could move much. Today, as mentioned above, 3.2 billion tons a year of iron alone are mined. That's all in less than 200 years.
It's not going to go on for another 200 years. The highest grade minerals in easily accessible areas were mined out decades ago. Most mining today is already working low-grade ore. Going for even lower grade ore is possible, but that just postpones the end.
Minerals are more of a problem than energy. There are many energy sources, some of which are renewable. Minerals can be recycled, but you lose some at each go-round. Asteroid mining might help some day, but not unless we find some far cheaper way of operating in space.
Heavy industrial civilization has a finite lifespan.
[1] http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals [2] http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/iron_ore/mc...