Darryl,
<snip>
I realize elements are in a fairly constant quantity on the human time scale
and that we recycle those that are expensive and that when some materials
get too expensive a less expensive alternative is found. But what I was,
and still am, wondering about is that as our technology grows there may be
some uses for which only one material is suitable and that use may range
from being a convenience to being essential. From what little I know about
it many of the materials on which our modern technologies rest are materials
which are not common, or are not uniformly distributed around the earth in
amounts that can be economically viable. And, after their use in
manufacturing etc, some of this stuff inevitably winds up being scattered
around in such small quantities that the cost of recovery is less than the
cost of producing the raw material, at least up to a point, and that point
is where the trouble will start.
<snip>
It probably all comes down to economics. As I mentioned in my previous
post, if the materials we need is valuable enough, we will make sure we
don't scatter it around, e.g., diamonds, gold. The point "where trouble
will start" is not really a "point" but more of a time period. When the
stuff gets to be scarce, only the wealthy can afford it and the rest does
without.
Some examples, some probably better than others.
Palladium went from some tens of dollars per ounce in the 1960's to its
current value of around $600 per ounce. It went up because someone found a
use for it and there wasn't much to be had. And who cared about rhodium
until a few years ago? It's price bounced along from $100 - $500 per troy
ounce until 1978 and was as low as about 350/troy ounce in 1983 before
staraing a rocket ride to over $3500 per ounce in 1992 before falling back
to less than $500/ounce in 1997 and 1998. Its recent price was back over
$2000 per ounce some few months ago because Russia was either holding out on
us or couldn't get the stuff shipped. And scandium?!!. When I first saw
the cost curves on that metal I couldn't believe my eyes - according to
Spectrum Chemical Fact Sheet <http://www.speclab.com/elements/scandium.htm>
http://www.speclab.com/elements/scandium.htm (5/22/00) "The metal is
expensive, costing about $120/g with a purity of 99.9%", and according to
the USGS data for the year 1998 (the most recent I have) it was $285/gram
for the powdered metal form, 99.9% pure. Even at $100/gram this is $3100 -
$2835 per ounce (depending on whether you are using troy or avedpois ounces.
That is a lot more than gold and it makes me think this stuff has to be
really good for something other than being added to aluminum to make
baseball bats; and either there isn't much of it or it costs a fortune to
refine it out of the parent rock/mineral. I have to think that it wouldn't
take much to interupt the flow of this stuff and if that flow is cut off
someone somewhere (other than little league ball players) is going to be
mightly inconvenienced. How many other metals are there such as these whose
availability play an increasinly important role in industry and thus in
international policy because of their ability to affect nations abilties to
improve their standard of living? I don't know. But as things get more
complicated it seems to me that small glitches in supply will have
increasing significance.
I think that there is relatively little Sc in the earth's crust and it is
chemically similar to other elements, which makes separation difficult. I
was not aware that is was used in baseball bats but there can't be much Sc
in each bat, otherwise baseball bats would be priced so that only
professional baseball players could afford them. Some years ago, Cr was in
short supply and the only major suppliers, I believe, were the Soviet Union
and Rhodesia. When Ian Smith's regime in Rhodesia passed the UDI
(Unilateral Declaration of Independence), the West banned the import of Cr
from Rhodesia. One result: a lot less chrome on cars. And so it goes:
supplies dry up and we find alternatives. A lot of things, like chrome
trims on cars, we can do without. Elements such as Ta and Se are used in
semiconductor industry and one would think that the semiconductor industry
would be hard up if the supplies of these elements dried up (not likely for
Ta; there is a large deposit less than 100 km from here). But, think of all
the motherboards that have outlived their usefulness. A convenient source
of precious elements if we wanted to go through the bother to separate it.
Again, energy prices come into play. If it is cheaper in the short run to
mine tantalite, purify it, and ship it to Silicon Valley, we're not likely
to recycle old motherboards.
On weather and water,
Being a geologist and teaching historical geology each spring I am aware not
only that there are much hotter places on earth than Amarillo Texas, but
also that there are places which are simply more uncomfortable and/or more
subject to serious consequences of weather changes and that the global
climate chages. I heard this morning on my way to school that Oklahoma City
was expecting a daily high near 100 and given their usual realtive humidity
I wouldn't go there for less than a lot of money. I'll take the high (3300
ft +/-) and dry. Houston is also pretty hot I think, though I haven't heard
any specific numbers or complaints from friends and relatives who live
there, but the flood last month shut down most of the medical center part of
town. The last estimate I heard was > $2 billion in losses with one
hospital system I know of taking a 300 million dollar loss + 5 million a day
in lost income for a couple of weeks before they began bringing buildings
back on-line. I think one major teaching hospital is still shut down though
they may have re-opened in the past week or so.
Yes, and we don't know what causes these calamities. Even if it could be
shown with 95% certainty that these calamities are caused by CO2 emissions,
we'd all collectively point our fingers at our neighbours.
The atmosphere in southern Ontario has been distinctly foul the last couple
of weeks, according to the media. Yet, do you think that people drive less
and use their air conditioners less?
You mentioned that Amarillo is only 1000 miles from water. Such ideas have
been discussed periodically, but not recently, around here. Some had
suggested building canals from major river systems etc but the economics
were never there so they dammed the Canadian River instead. Now the
situation is turned around completely. Amarillo and a good part of the
Texas Panhandle are underlain by the Ogallala formation which varies in
thickness from 0 - 500 ft +/- and in most places is a very good aquifer.
But it is finite in volume, the water table has been falling for decades due
to irrigation and so the city of Amaillo has purchased water rights from
various landowners out to a radius of some 75 miles. The water from the
wells now being used and those that will be drilled in the future are
blended with the lake water. But now the landowners adjacent to those who
sold their water rights to the city for its future use are looking for a way
to sell their water to someone and they are considering building pipelines
south and soutwest. This has caused some political controversy around here
for a couple of reasons. First, water is held in esteem pretty close to God
by most of the rural folks and the thought of selling it to another region
just goes too much against their way of doing things. Second, the person
heading the movement to sell the water is Boone Pickens whom you and some of
the other list readers may remeber as being a famous/infamous oil and gas
man from this part of the country. Whatever your opion of the way he ran
his business and his opinions on how such businesses should be run, it's
hard to argue with his thesis that when the city starts pumping water from
those new wells in a few years, the water under his land will move laterally
toward the wells and he will be loosing an asset. The only way he sees to
protect himself (and the other in the same area) is to set up a system
whereby all the landowners sell their water simultaneously. Time will tell
how this will resovle itself.
My comment about Amarillo being 1000 km (not miles) from the Gulf of Mexico
was a bit tongue in cheek. I am aware of the Ogallalla reservoir and that
it is being depleted: another example of a non-renewable (on a certain time
scale) resource. How much water is being recycled in Amarillo?
Thanks for the info on water rights. I can't imagine how somebody can "own"
this stuff, especially considering how mobile it is, laterally.
Chuck
--- Original Message -----
From: Vandergraaf, Chuck <mailto:vandergraaft@aecl.ca>
To: 'Darryl Maddox' <mailto:dpmaddox@arn.net>
Cc: asa@calvin.edu <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 8:07 AM
Subject: RE: possible future shortages of other resources
Darryl,
The Hubbert curve for the production of resources (a modified Bell shaped
curve indicating growth, equilibrium and decline) applies to all
non-renewable, finite resources. Some resources are considered so valuable
that we don't throw them out but recycle them. For example, you won't find
many gold rings in landfill sites. For other elements, such as iron, there
is so much around, that most of us in North America think twice about towing
the old family chariot to the dump.
We need to keep in mind that we have exactly the same amount of Au, Fe, Cd,
Si, Al, etc., on the earth now as we had 5 000 years ago. Well, with the
exception of U-235; the amount has decreased somewhat as it is fissioned in
nuclear reactors. It just has been redistributed. From a thermodynamic
perspective, we concentrate ores and extract chemical elements (decrease
randomness). This takes energy. For many elements, we simply toss them out
or otherwise disperse them (increase randomness). To get the stuff back in
higher concentration, we have to decrease randomness again and that takes,
... energy.
So, in the final analysis, energy is the required component to reorganize
the elements in the way we want/need them. The alternative is to wait until
geological processes do the rearranging for us, by moving the diluted
elements around through moving water and depositing them in sediments and
then let the rock cycle form them into ore deposits again. Most of can't
wait that long, though, at least not the military. ;-)
As for water, the same applies: there is no less water now than there was 5
000 years ago. It is just being redistributed. I sympathize with you po'
folks in Amarillo, but (and I'm not trying to be callous) you are no worse
off than the poor folks in the sub-Sahara that see the sand of the desert
coming closer and closer, or the people in Kiribati or in parts of Florida
who may risk losing their country when the Ocean level rises. But, there
again, in Amarillo, you are only ~1 000 km from a very plentiful water
supply: the Gulf of Mexico. All you need to do is build a desalination
plant along its shores and pipe the water to Amarillo. All it takes is
energy. And that's where people like Glen Morton raise the warning flag.
Chuck Vandergraaf
Pinawa
-----Original Message-----
From: Darryl Maddox [mailto:dpmaddox@arn.net]
Sent: Wednesday August 01, 2001 6:40 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: possible future shortages of other resources
The recent information and discussions about oil production curves and the
effects of a decrease in annual hydrocarbon production at a time when
nations are trying to improve their standard of living by increasing their
utilization of energy for manufacturing, travel, and agriculture caused me
to wonder if anyone has applied similar mathematical models to other natural
resources which may be cricital to a high standard of living. The first
that comes to mind is good old low tech water, but that is because we here
in Amarillo Texas have come through the hottest (as measured by the number
of days the official daily high temperature reached or exceeded 100 {13 vs
10 for previous high in 1934} and driest (0.04 inches of rain vs mothly
average of 2.64) July on record for us. While most people understand our
need for water I suspect most don't have any idea there are many minerals
and elements which are critical to some degree or other to our standard of
living, to our technologies for manufacturing luxury items, for
manufacturing things that make the daily tasks of living easier or more
pleasant, for manufacturing items that are essential to our current way of
living, working and communicating, and lastly and most importantly to our
defense AND that some of these elements and minerals may be getting in short
supply.
Anyone have thoughts or information on this variation of the energy shortage
qustion?
Darryl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Aug 01 2001 - 22:08:18 EDT