Political Thoughts - the magazine

"If the projections are correct they will show one thing for certain: politicians, economists and scientists cannot assess risks correctly." New Scientist this week had a short article on the "Limits to Growth", revisiting the 1972 book by Meadows et al.  The book gave an account of a computer model of how the world's population, resources and economy would function over the coming 130 years.  It predicted a disaster in the twenty first century if nothing were changed.  At first the book created a stir and world leaders all agreed that action was needed.  It then attracted ferocious attacks on ideological grounds, the media carried uniform condemnation and declared the predictions to be incorrect. Within 5 years the book and its predictions had been forgotten by the bulk of the population. This media furore was a forerunner of the recent reactions to predictions of "global warming". The New Scientist article pointed out that the predictions in Limi...

We can never extract all of a mineral from the earth but we can extract all of the ore that is easy to extract and end up with progressively less yield. Minerals "run out" when they become so rare and expensive that they can no longer be used in their previous roles. The amount of a mineral remaining in the ground and the ease of extraction will affect its price and as the price rises other materials will be substituted.  These substituted materials will then also be in danger of running out. Whether the consequences of resource depletion are dire or not depends upon ingenuity of substitution and whether there are serious dislocations as substitution occurs. The chart below shows the adequacy of current reserves of most commercial minerals.  The adequacy is how long the known reserves will last at current rates of production. Global mineral reserves. The red line marks 2012 The chart has a logarithmic adequacy scale.  According to this chart Indium should no...