Earth's Copper Supply Inadequate For Development? 838
ScentCone writes "Pennies, pipes, untold miles of CAT5 - they tie up a lot of copper. Unlike abundant iron and aluminum, copper is relatively scarce. But it's vital to electricity generation/transmission, plumbing, and other uses central to a modern standard of living. Scientific American is providing a quick overview of the situation. They report the conclusion that there simply isn't enough available. Canada, Mexico and the US average 170kg of copper use per person, and the most generous estimates suggest that only 1.6 billion unused metric tons exist. More reclamation and use of fiber, wireless, and PVC helps - but won't be enough to cover the billions of people who don't yet live in highly wired/mechanized societies."
It's not going to matter anyway... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:3, Insightful)
Space Mining? (Score:4, Insightful)
More realistically, I imagine that we'll move to other materials. Data lines don't need to use copper, but they do so because it's common and inexpensive. If the price of copper goes up, you might see fiber optics come down in price.
Same with power transmission lines. There's nothing stopping them from using Aluminum if copper becomes too expensive.
My guess, however, is that more emphasis will be placed on recycling copper. The price will rise some, pushing out the uses where it isn't needed. The remaining uses will continue to use copper supplied heavily by the recycling centers.
Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thought that sounded familiar.
ed
Pennies must go! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody uses them.
They are dangerous to children when swallowed, due to the zinc (unlike all other US coins)
And let's face it, Lincoln already has his picture in enough places!
(Ok, done ranting now...)
Silver (Score:3, Insightful)
Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I Guess You're Happy Now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Today I believe gold is undervalued almost 50% based on currency inflation and manipulations of the currency using imperialist mechanisms (war and threat of war) against other nations. I also believe that 2006 will be the year that the dollar starts a strong inflationary/devaluation cycle. I was bullish on gold in 1999 and started a newsletter that year -- and I've hit my target prices almost every 6 months since then. I was the only gold bug to publicly believe we'd see US$550 at the beginning of the year. I'm the only one who believes we'll see a BIG drop just before the end of the February as the futures market makes corrections (I foresee a US$100 drop almost), and I'm the only one who sees gold ending up at US$660-US$690 before Christmas.
I just noticed I said 1971 penny, I meant 1961, oops.
Ye Olde Silver Spoon (Score:2, Insightful)
Spoken like somebody who has never faced a tough financial period with a family. If everybody had lives as privileged as yours, then yes, change might be useless. But if you've ever had to live on a small amount of money, being forced to buy two of something that you only need one of is not reasonable.
"If I start my own restaurant, I will not take or receive change. Its heavy, and it would cost more of my employees time to count, sort, and organize the change than if they just threw it in the trash. Or maybe I could just throw it in the tip pool, and give it to them in cash later."
Are you planning on hiring simpletons that can't do those things on the fly?
Re:Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not Enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
And remember, we're moving away from a copper society, not towards it. With broadband technologies and cell phones these days, the need for copper as a medium for information transmission is quickly waning. A developing nation trying to modernize might very well skip all the copper (with the exception of power) and go straight to wireless technologies.
Thus, my gut says that the current level probably won't run out until we have at least 20-25 billion people on the planet. By that time, we will probably have much more important things to worry about---like being able to produce enough food and power, being able to purify enough water, and in general, having enough space for that many more people to inhabit without being packed in like sardines... not to mention that the sun will probably be on its last leg by then....
You get the idea.
Satue Of Liberty (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:5, Insightful)
If you worry about filtering your knowledge against all that has come before you and all that is going on right now, you will be paralyzed into inaction. There's just way too many people out there all working with essentially the same wetware for much unique thought to pop into existance. Outside of academia where novel thought is the currency of the profession, it's simply more practical to charge ahead with your own thoughts and claim them for what they are, yours. I'm perfectly willing to take it on faith that when someone says they thought something up on their own that they are bring truthful.
Anyone who has done any serious reading will know that eerie feeling of encountering someone else who has developed a similar line of thought as one of your own, especially when it comes from a source hundreds or even thousands of years old.
So what's my point? Not that you shouldn't point out the reference to Heinlein, just try not to be so condescending about it. As if it's somehow the person's fault they don't already know about someone else who has developed a similar or parallel idea. There's lots of ways of making a friendly connection to older material. If anything it's a bit of a compliment I think to mirror thought that has become recognized as important enough that people 50 years later still associate it with a particular person in history.
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, we have 10 roubles bill in Russia (about $0.3) and it has 3 years lifetime. Next bills are 50 roubles and 100 roubles and they are MUCH more durable than dollar bills. I usually carry money in my pocket (along with my keys and driving license) without wallet and it doesn't cause any problem.
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:3, Insightful)
481,253 Kilograms of Cu per year. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pennies are mostly Zinc now - only 2.5% Copper.
The US Mint makes 7.7 Billion pennies a year (2005) - so that still adds up to about 481,250 Kg of Cu, just for Pennies. (.025 * 2.5g /penny = 16 pennies to use 1 gram of Cu, 16,000 pennies per Kg)
So is over a million pounds of copper "a lot"? There are 300 Million people in the USA, so on a per-capita basis, copper usage is only about 25 cents worth, or about 1.6 grams per person.
So - 481,000 Kilos per country / 2 grams per person - a lot or a little?
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way to make the dollar coin work in the U.S. is to do what Canada did -- after the "Loonie" (dollar coin) was introduced, the 1 dollar bill was retired. The dollar bills in circulation were removed as they aged and were no longer fit for circulation. After a few years the dollar bill was effectively gone from circulation.
Canada then did the same thing with the "twoonie" (2 dollar coin). As long as dollar bills are available, they will be used over dollar coins just because that is what people are used to.
Re:Monster (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, though, I don't understand the big panic. So copper prices rise as the easily minable deposits get exhausted - and? There are replacement materials. There's silver for when you need great conductivity (better than copper), and there's aluminum for when you don't (and you can tolerate metal fatigue). There are many other metals that could be used in between the two, and many of the metals that are common in the ground but are hard to refine show signs of significant price reduction in the future.
So the length of runs of wire that you can use become shorter. So it uses a little more power. So bandwidth capability decreases. Or, so people pay a higher price. Copper will never disappear; the shortage just means that people will have to turn to mining less rich/harder to refine deposits.
So what?
And who is to say that copper wire is going to continue to be in such demand? Optical fiber seems to be going into wider and wider use. More technology is turning to wireless communication. In short, I really don't see this as a huge issue. There have been shortages of various ores throughout all of recorded history. We'll cope just fine.
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, it doesn't matter since the dollar coin has an average life span of 20 years. So even if they trippled the lifespan of the dollar bill, it would still be far short of the coin.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:1, Insightful)
That maybe true, but every time a barrel of oil goes up in price the oil "reserves" for oil companies goes UP. Why? Because "reserves" is an accounting term not a reflection of how much oil is in the ground. It means how much oil I can get to while making a hell of a profit. Just look at the Canadian tar fields, they have been siting there for thousands of years and no one cared,,, until oil company economic models set the base price of oil for the next twenty years at $40 per barrel. Now they are spending billions of dollars so they can make billions of dollars at field that is thought to be greater than all of Saudi Arabia.
see http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_Web_pro
Notice this line:
The sum of these covers an area of nearly 77,000 km2. In fact, the reserve that is deemed to be technologically retrievable today is estimated at 280-300Gb (billion barrels). This is larger than the Saudi Arabia oil reserves, which are estimated at 240Gb. The total reserves for Alberta, including oil not recoverable using current technology, are estimated at 1,700- 2,500Gb.
In other words, with better technology we have up to 10 Saudi Arabias sitting in tar.
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as I don't believe we're anywhere near to running out of oil in the next 1000 years,
That's a pretty unconventional view -- actually, a unique view -- in the minerals world.
One of the reasons I formulated my anarcho-capitalist belief system
Ahh
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:2, Insightful)
This can be observed when companies announce changes in their projected future earnings. Even if the earnings are only projected to start going up 5 years from now, the stock takes an immediate jump to a higher price because that's the present value of the future earnings. This is well-observed in the market, and applies to future "earnings" of being able to sell copper just as well.
The fact that current prices haven't risen significantly indicates that the people with the most to gain or lose from future price changes don't yet believe the shortage hype.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it's an untested hypothesis. Sorry, but you're talking about science, and "theory" has an established meaning. Also, this appeal to ignorance business isn't going to get you anywhere useful. Maybe His Noodlyness will provide us with an unlimited supply of oil. Who really knows? Well, we *do* know that oil can be synthesized from dead organic matter, and oil from abiotic sources isn't looking like a hot ticket idea, so let's keep it sane. We are probably going to run out of cheap oil. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but it's going to happen.
Re:Monster (Score:2, Insightful)
And since when did suddenly reality start to matter in the world of Hi-Fi enthusiasts?
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, there are laws that prohibit that on the books today (I believe those are what you are referring to, right?), but compared to the effort of getting rid of pennies in the first place, changing those laws to allow rounding to the nickle rather than the penny is pretty trivial.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, human ingenuity will allow us to keep finding oil but at some point it takes more energy to get it than it gives us back. At that point we will have run out of oil as far as it's use as a fuel is concerned.
Steal it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time I see one of those shows on TV (or an article online) about how the US has added x or y security feature to the new $ bill, I wonder why they bother since the old bills are still legal tender so the counterfiters will just counterfit those. And, there will probobly be enough bills in circulation that it would be difficult to say "anytime you see an old bill, check carefully to be sure its not counterfit"