A Forecast Of When We'll Run Out of Each Metal [VisualCapitalist.com]

From VisualCapitalist: http://www.visualcapitalist.com/forecast-when-well-run-out-of-each-metal/

See link for description and discussion. Obviously we wont "run out", but there will come a time when each metal will no longer be economically viable to mine. As someone pointed out, a better title would have been: "how long before each metal is uneconomical and difficult to mine".

 

So should we be lead stackers?

 

I wonder how much time someone spent on that to be so wrong?

 

Yes, some lead, others follow.

 

Sold my lead the other day - got SFA for it.
Couldn't justify having it continuing to take up room.

 

Should've done some value add, like turn them into sinkers. Maybe have some mint ones too with a COA for even higher premium.

 

If this chart is even a couple decades accurate things are going to get interesting.

 

Water! Stack water. It, along with fresh air, is going to be THE limiting commodity of the future.
Energy can be almost totally replaced tomorrow if there were the political will to do so.
The true 'industrial' metals such as lead, copper & zinc are going to be the sticking point for future generations - more people with less to go around.

 

Energy solves your fresh water problem, assuming the filters don't rely on any specific metals that are becoming increasing scarce.

Depletion of ore reserves can be offset by advances in extraction and refining technologies, at least for a while. As they become both more scarce and more in demand, the economic pressures help drive further technological advances. But given the fact that accessible metals on Earth are finite, there may soon come a time when technology can no longer solve the supply problem.

 

Carbon to the rescue - eg graphene, carbon fibre.

 

Will we run out of these commodities, or will there price rise so much because of limited quantities, that people will find alternatives??

 

I just watched a video posted by Bullion Barron here (and embedded below) on the available abundance of silver and now I think these estimates may be total B.S.

There's 1.4 Trillion metric tons of silver in the crust alone. Humanity has mined maybe 1.56 million metric tons to date.

That's:

Code:

1400000000000t in the crust
      1560000t mined
1399998440000t remaining

That is, 1 trillion 399 billion 998 million 440 thousand tons of silver remaining in the crust.

That's enough for every person alive today to have almost 200 tons of silver if we could extract every ounce of silver from the crust (obviously that's not economically viable with current technology).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dBL2IY3pYo[/youtube]