Mike PSS
04-17-2008, 03:32 AM
I started watching a show on Natural Geographic Channel called Human Footprint. (http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/human-footprint-3224/Overview)
Using science and revelatory visual events, NGC delivers an extraordinary personal audit of how much of the world's resources each of us consumes, illustrating the average American's human footprint.
Well, I turned it off after about 10 minutes because they really didn't show a lot of science but glorified the "revelatory visual events". It was a bunch of stacking of milk cartons, dumping of diapers, and breaking of eggs that really didn't explain a whole hell of a lot and instead employed that well known GEE WHIZZZ type of screenplay to try and impress the audience in how much stuff the average American consumes in his/her lifetime. "600,000 miles of sewer lines could wrap around the world 24 times." The numbers thrown about in the show were just that, numbers. The show didn't analyze anything except to try and assign some basic land use values to the items mentioned. "The entire state of Wyoming is needed to grow all the wheat we consume."
The show really doesn't tell you whether wheat will be available next year, or twenty years from now. Whether the fertilizers that are needed to support this growth will be available. How about the scandium that coats the CRT glass used in the GPS system on the Combine Harvester? What happens if scandium runs out? Is there a replacement?
This world operates on minerals. From precious metals to gravel pits, gemstones to limestone, and from uranium to lead only without the decay sequence.
A quick look at the periodic table shows how many recognizable items are mineral commodities in the world today. Iron, gold, antimony, alumin(i)um, titanium, tungsten.
http://can-do.com/uci/lessons98/I-periodic-color.gif
Then you have the minerals, the source rock that all this stuff is refined from.
So the question becomes "Do we have enough STUFF on this earth to support even our present consumption?"
Surprisingly... yes.
The January 2008 Minerals Commodity Summary from the USGS is a tome of statistics and tables, but they do write-up some interesting notes on the state of minerals production in the world today. I'm using this study since it's very recent. The British Geologic Survey I found online was from 2004 so don't think I'm biased.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2008/mcs2008.pdf
Here's THE LIST...
Abrasives, Aluminum, Antimony, Arsenic, Asbestos, Barite, Bauxite, Beryllium, Bismuth, Boron, Bromine, Cadmium, Cement, Cesium, Chromium, Clays, Cobalt, Niobium, Copper, Diamond, Diatomite, Feldspar, Fluorspar, Gallium, Garnet, Gemstones, Germanium, Gold, Graphite, Gypsum, Hafnium, Helium, Indium, Iodine, Iron Ore, Iron and Steel, Kyanite, Lead, Lime, Lithium, Magnesium, Manganese, Mercury, Mica, Molybdenum, Nickel, Nitrogen, Peat, Perlite, Phosphate Rock, Platinum, Potash, Pumice, Quartz Crystal, Rare Earths, Rhenium, Rubidium, Salt, Sand and Gravel, Scandium, Selenium, Silicon, Silver, Soda Ash, Sodium Sulfate, Stone, Strontium, Sulfur, Talc, Tantalum, Tellurium, Thallium, Thorium, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Vanadium, Vermiculite, Yttrium, Zinc, Zirconium
There are a few questions that come up with this type of analysis.
1) What minerals are scarce, or have a global reserve of less than 20 years at present consumption?
2) What minerals have no substitute and how much reserves exist?
3) What global impacts will be seen if some countries restrict trade/export of key minerals?
1) and 2) can be gleaned from the report, and I'll try and answer these questions in subsequent posts, unless someone else beats me to it.
3) is more analysis and discussion of present and near future events. The "sucking sound" from China in the global commodity consumption to feed its growth has some surprising effects on the minerals in this study. China has become the world production leader in many of these commodities. The "sucking sound" of many of these minerals are the inevitable supply/demand imbalances that an industrializing country experiances thorugh its growth. For example, China imported 5 million tons per year of finished phosphate fertilizer in 1998 because the country had only a small and inefficient local industry. Now it is a worlds largest miner of phosphate ore because it took 10 years for the country to develop mining and manufacturing industries within its borders.
But problems exist where politics plays in the global marketplace.
The high mineral prices and mining company profits during the last few years have lead host countries to want to capture a larger portion of the rents from minerals development for local and national economies. In some cases, this has resulted in direct expropriation of assets or of shares of companies. In other cases, it has involved the use of license revocation to accomplish the same purpose. Bolivia, China, Russia, and Venezuela have been cited as countries in which mineral exploration is particularly risky owing to threats of such actions (Mining Journal, 2007d).
At the end of the day the worldwide demand for minerals means that countries with large mineral reserves could create other "OPECs" (say, a OTEC or Organization of Tellurium Exporting Countries).
That is why I want to look at questions 1) and 2) closely to see where, if anywhere, there are unreplaceable minerals that are focused in key areas of the world.
One note on the tables, the minerals listed have both a Reserves and a Reserves Base. I'll clarify which I'm using because, as we know, statistics can lie if not properly defined. As an analogy, in my work I would use Reserves for spending money (a known project) and Reserves Base for long term projections for feasability.
Class, over to you.... :D
Using science and revelatory visual events, NGC delivers an extraordinary personal audit of how much of the world's resources each of us consumes, illustrating the average American's human footprint.
Well, I turned it off after about 10 minutes because they really didn't show a lot of science but glorified the "revelatory visual events". It was a bunch of stacking of milk cartons, dumping of diapers, and breaking of eggs that really didn't explain a whole hell of a lot and instead employed that well known GEE WHIZZZ type of screenplay to try and impress the audience in how much stuff the average American consumes in his/her lifetime. "600,000 miles of sewer lines could wrap around the world 24 times." The numbers thrown about in the show were just that, numbers. The show didn't analyze anything except to try and assign some basic land use values to the items mentioned. "The entire state of Wyoming is needed to grow all the wheat we consume."
The show really doesn't tell you whether wheat will be available next year, or twenty years from now. Whether the fertilizers that are needed to support this growth will be available. How about the scandium that coats the CRT glass used in the GPS system on the Combine Harvester? What happens if scandium runs out? Is there a replacement?
This world operates on minerals. From precious metals to gravel pits, gemstones to limestone, and from uranium to lead only without the decay sequence.
A quick look at the periodic table shows how many recognizable items are mineral commodities in the world today. Iron, gold, antimony, alumin(i)um, titanium, tungsten.
http://can-do.com/uci/lessons98/I-periodic-color.gif
Then you have the minerals, the source rock that all this stuff is refined from.
So the question becomes "Do we have enough STUFF on this earth to support even our present consumption?"
Surprisingly... yes.
The January 2008 Minerals Commodity Summary from the USGS is a tome of statistics and tables, but they do write-up some interesting notes on the state of minerals production in the world today. I'm using this study since it's very recent. The British Geologic Survey I found online was from 2004 so don't think I'm biased.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2008/mcs2008.pdf
Here's THE LIST...
Abrasives, Aluminum, Antimony, Arsenic, Asbestos, Barite, Bauxite, Beryllium, Bismuth, Boron, Bromine, Cadmium, Cement, Cesium, Chromium, Clays, Cobalt, Niobium, Copper, Diamond, Diatomite, Feldspar, Fluorspar, Gallium, Garnet, Gemstones, Germanium, Gold, Graphite, Gypsum, Hafnium, Helium, Indium, Iodine, Iron Ore, Iron and Steel, Kyanite, Lead, Lime, Lithium, Magnesium, Manganese, Mercury, Mica, Molybdenum, Nickel, Nitrogen, Peat, Perlite, Phosphate Rock, Platinum, Potash, Pumice, Quartz Crystal, Rare Earths, Rhenium, Rubidium, Salt, Sand and Gravel, Scandium, Selenium, Silicon, Silver, Soda Ash, Sodium Sulfate, Stone, Strontium, Sulfur, Talc, Tantalum, Tellurium, Thallium, Thorium, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Vanadium, Vermiculite, Yttrium, Zinc, Zirconium
There are a few questions that come up with this type of analysis.
1) What minerals are scarce, or have a global reserve of less than 20 years at present consumption?
2) What minerals have no substitute and how much reserves exist?
3) What global impacts will be seen if some countries restrict trade/export of key minerals?
1) and 2) can be gleaned from the report, and I'll try and answer these questions in subsequent posts, unless someone else beats me to it.
3) is more analysis and discussion of present and near future events. The "sucking sound" from China in the global commodity consumption to feed its growth has some surprising effects on the minerals in this study. China has become the world production leader in many of these commodities. The "sucking sound" of many of these minerals are the inevitable supply/demand imbalances that an industrializing country experiances thorugh its growth. For example, China imported 5 million tons per year of finished phosphate fertilizer in 1998 because the country had only a small and inefficient local industry. Now it is a worlds largest miner of phosphate ore because it took 10 years for the country to develop mining and manufacturing industries within its borders.
But problems exist where politics plays in the global marketplace.
The high mineral prices and mining company profits during the last few years have lead host countries to want to capture a larger portion of the rents from minerals development for local and national economies. In some cases, this has resulted in direct expropriation of assets or of shares of companies. In other cases, it has involved the use of license revocation to accomplish the same purpose. Bolivia, China, Russia, and Venezuela have been cited as countries in which mineral exploration is particularly risky owing to threats of such actions (Mining Journal, 2007d).
At the end of the day the worldwide demand for minerals means that countries with large mineral reserves could create other "OPECs" (say, a OTEC or Organization of Tellurium Exporting Countries).
That is why I want to look at questions 1) and 2) closely to see where, if anywhere, there are unreplaceable minerals that are focused in key areas of the world.
One note on the tables, the minerals listed have both a Reserves and a Reserves Base. I'll clarify which I'm using because, as we know, statistics can lie if not properly defined. As an analogy, in my work I would use Reserves for spending money (a known project) and Reserves Base for long term projections for feasability.
Class, over to you.... :D