When will it be ALL GONE?

[suspectnumber961]

BBC - Future - Science & Environment - Global resources stock check

[ksa8907]

What do you suggest we do?

[IamIan]

The article / graph presented incorrectly labels materials that are renewable as ones that are not.

Aluminum does not stop being aluminum ... silver does not stop being silver ... for example.

Unless the material is leaving the planet out into space ... it is only a question of how easily available is it ... not a run out of it kind of thing.

For example ... Even with zero oil on the planet ... if you have enough desire , energy , and time ... you can make oil chemically from scratch ... you can mine land fills ... etc.

And we have several billion more years of the solar energy input.

Now run out at a specific Price $ point ... that is different ... but that is not actually running out ... it's just more expensive.

[NeilBlanchard]

Reusable/recyclable is not the same as renewable, I think.

[Patrick]

If "A renewable resource is a natural resource with the ability to reproduce through biological or natural processes and replenished with the passage of time," is not a rainforest renewable? And if it's cut down, does it not become potential agricultural land? And can it be replanted with new trees as it's cut as many other forests are?

[Ryland]

Mining landfills is not as practical as not putting it in the landfill to start with, there is very little that should ever end up in a landfill! but it ends up there because we are lazy, mining land fills takes energy and resources too.

I've never seen a prediction before of when we might run out of copper, but the amount of copper we use is amazing, same with silver, silver has so many practical uses that I wish it wasn't used for jewelry, gold on the other hand has very few uses and the uses that it does have require very little of it, but it's used as a currency so it's value is absurdly high!

[Duffman]

Numbers look excessively conservative to me from other numbers I have heard. There is 100 or so years of extraction out of the oil sands left. I have heard there is 300 years of coal in north America left.

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by ksa8907

What do you suggest we do?

...eliminate the USERS and the remaining MATERIALS/RESOURCES should last forever (sarcasm embedded)!

[niky]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Numbers look excessively conservative to me from other numbers I have heard. There is 100 or so years of extraction out of the oil sands left. I have heard there is 300 years of coal in north America left.

Somewhat conservative, but many estimates put worldwide coal reserves at 50 years given current global consumption.

300 years maybe, if you only cover US consumption... and those numbers will change as the power generation mix changes. But 300 years globally? No.

Oil is tricky. Economically extractable traditional oil will probably last just thirty years. Oil sands, fifty, maybe? We are teetering at the point where new oil is getting prohibitively expensive to scout for and extract.

[oil pan 4]

Projections from years past say that we should have ran out of silver and gold in the 1990s, the polar ice caps should have melted in 2010, Oil should have ran out around 2000, natural gas should have ran out in the late 1990s.
And all the rain forests should have been cut down by now or killed by acid rain or the hole in the o zone or something by now.

So we have no reason to believe your little chart.
Why should we believe this one when all the other predictions from years past failed by such a huge margin?
Is it because this time you are really, really sure its correct?