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Earth's Copper Supply Inadequate For Development?
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."
When I was a kid, my dad made me spend hour after hour knocking the cores out of laminated transformers with a 15 lb. sledge so that the copper wire was free.
...
I also had to sit and cut the plastic off of foot after foot of copper wire with a utility knife and leather gloves so we could recycle the copper wire for cash.
At last, I can now put these valuable skills on my résumé! I just hope my career in technology doesn't come around full circle
My work here is dung.
They are Zinc, at least that is the predominant ingredient in their composition
When I was in the supply installation side of IT consulting, the company that I co-owned ran network cables (and phone cord and work with electrical contractors that laid electrical wire). Copper price could KILL us if we bid a project and then the price of copper went up. In fact, on the largest projects we actually took advantage of futures-style market provisions to pre-buy our copper at a set price (even if it fell, we still paid a certain price).
To say that copper is scarce is not really accurate -- the price of copper has gone up but not in the way you'd expect if a needed item was about to run out. I blog (and publish a print newsletter) about gold -- I do about 90% of my research trying to find the manipulators in the gold market. One of the "worst" manipulators is the mining industry itself, but I believe hiding trade facts is very important for a free market. If copper was truly disappearing, you'd see the market react by the price hyperinflating, not just steadily growing. Mining companies spend 10-15 years just opening a mine. If they knew they were running out, they wouldn't sell it so cheaply.
I believe the steady growth in the price of copper is more of an effect of fiat currency inflation causing all consumer goods and salaries to go up (basically devaluing everyone's labor even if they feel they're earning more). When copper goes up 1000% in a week, there will be a problem. 1% fluctuations is nothing.
Just as I don't believe we're anywhere near to running out of oil in the next 1000 years, I don't believe we'll be running out of copper. I study 5-10 mining reports a day and all I see is more and more oil, gold, carbon and copper being found. As we innovate and are able to drill deeper and deeper, we're finding that MOST of what geophysicists warned us about 10 years ago isn't true -- we keep finding more to consumer, not less. I think we will be able to say the same thing 10 years from now and 100 years from now -- we're amazed and what we're finding as we dig deeper.
All these "fear the scarcity" news reports on vital materials are bunk -- you'll know when there is a shortage when the price skyrockets (supply and demand is very hard to manipulate in the long run). And when the price skyrockets, it will give innovators reason to find new ways to recycle more efficiently, dig deeper or find other ways to provide the same service with a different product.
The day that copper is gone for good is the day that we take clay out of the ground and find a way to offer room temperature superconductivity. Serendipity doesn't end, and higher copper prices give innovators more reason to find new solutions to yesterday's problems. One of the reasons I formulated my anarcho-capitalist belief system is based on finding that supply and demand really does set prices in the long haul, even if government and industry tries to manipulate prices in the short run.
Is this Peak Copper?
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
The oil and natural gas we use to generate electricity to power devices that require copper will become too expensive to use long before we run out of the copper we use in the construction of these devices.
I urge everyone to see Stephen Gaghan's: Copperica, about the global reach, power structures and conspiracy of the copper elite. People die everyday over Cat5e.
Hamster computing, here we come!
Ñ'
...a copper gap!
This is what asteroid mining is for! :)
Seems to me that at 170Kg a head, 1.6 billion tons is enough to support 9.6 billion people. At the standards to which we in North America have become accustomed. So, where exactly is the shortage?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
So anyone know any good asteroids that are rich in copper? ;-)
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
in a society obsessed with consumption and materialism that we might actually deplete our natural resources...
use Gold.
oh wait...
... and that at the (surely bloated) North American rate!
One solution is to stop using copper for pennies, this would save tons of copper for other uses.
"The largest known Copper ore deposits in the world are in Chuquicamata in the Chilean Andes, and the largest deposit of native copper is in Michigan's Upper Peninsula."
This is an interesting article about Copper. Apparently Copper is also released as pollution during the mining and refining process, possibly more could be saved if there were more efficient ways of extracting and refining the metal.
One other solution is to go wireless.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I hear that this newfangled wireless stuff might just catch on...especially for the rural areas that are not yet wired.
Might wireless result in a copper *surplus* as we all turn in our newly liberated copper wires?
We should make pennies out of nickel and iron. All copper pennies should be returned to banks for redistribution.
Hell, maybe we should get rid of pennies anyway when paying in cash. Electronic transactions should be denominated using pennies (single cents) but cash has to round to the nearest nickel.
So I'm not sure what value there is in going "OMG it took two gagillion tons of copper to get us where we are today" and multiply that by everyone else and come up with a meaningless number. Even power doesnt need long transmission lines: local generators, fuel cells.
Really I see no problem. Did these "researchers" by lots of copper stock recently?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
It is the worlds largest man made hole in the ground, and one of the few man made wonders that is visible from space.
http://www.utah.com/attractions/kennecott.htm
they actually produce 15% of the countries copper annually. But I have been hearing that the mine is basically tapped (at least the current mine) And that they will be starting a new mine a little futher back in the Oquirr mountains in order the meet the needs of the country.
Interestingly enough, they also produce a significant portion of the countries Uranium, Iron, and other precious metals. But i can see how we could eventually run out of resources. Hence them being natural resources. Luckily, since copper is a natually occuring element, it should be more abundant at deeper sub-terrain.
"but won't be enough to cover the billions of people who don't yet live in highly wired/mechanized societies.
This statement contradicts itself with an earlier statement. Developing nations will skip some of the copper uses that are deployed today, just like more developing nations use cell phones rather than land lines. New pipes will be PVC, new data roll outs will use fiber, alternate methods will be found. Seriously this sounds like FUD to me.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
Galvinized steel and PVC are obvious alternatives to copper plumbing. Big transmission lines are now all steel/aluminum these days... and pennys are now more than 96% zinc... (which is why you can "melt" them on the burner on the stove)
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
--Mike--
there was some other material that would do the same thing...like PVC instead of copper pipe, aluminum instead of copper cable, fiber instead of cat5, etc.
If and when we run out of copper, it might be a bit annoying for the plumbers, but AFAIK there's no widespread, critical job that can only be done by copper...
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
If this shortage is going to be as they say in the article, I could just see the ads for Monster Cable... "Our newest premium cable! New! Gold cable with copper connectors, just $199.99!"
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
It never hurt anybody...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Gas, lubricants, untold miles of plastics - they tie up a lot of oil. Unlike abundant iron and aluminum, oil is relatively scarce. But it's vital to electricity generation/transmission, transportation, and other uses central to a modern standard of living....More reclamation and use of solar, wind, and other fossil fuels helps - but won't be enough to cover the billions of people who don't yet live in highly developed/mechanized societies.
Thought that sounded familiar.
ed
Gold prices returned to levels not seen in 25 years. That would be an inverted bell-shaped curve, BTW.
Were you bullish on gold in 1983? Uhhh... huh... financial genius.
There's a fair amount of landfills out there that probably have useful amounts of copper. That'll probably be the first place to dig. The hard part is separation and removing toxic waste from useful minerals.
Mining the asteroids is currently prohibitively expensive, but costs will eventually go down. I'd like to see some legislation to encourage such endeavors, which might be the next profitable commercial activity after space tourism.
Of course, we could always wait for them to fall to the Earth, but that requires lots of patience.
I've heard this tune before.
My blog
To offer all the copper running into my house in exchange for fiber. That's right, I'm so dang benevolent I make myself sick!
You're welcome.
A friend here has been investing in gold for some time, maybe he is on to something.
BTW, pennies are not copper anymore. From the US mint:
The alloy remained 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc until 1982, when the composition was changed to 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper (copper-plated zinc).
Copper is very recyclable, and in demand. It pays anywhere between pennies to $1.50/pound or more to recycle it.
Now that electronics are disposable because of quick upgrades and poor reliability, they will be recycled more in the future. There is a bunch of copper and gold and other nice stuff in there.
Its a crime that the zinc industry lobbies congress with cash every time we try to get rid of the penny. Its useless. In fact all change is. What can you really buy for less than a buck? If its less than a buck, splurge and get two.
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.
Sheesh. Time to make plastic fiber to replace Cat5. Something around 10GB oughta be possible over plastic for, say, 5km or less. I'm betting it's already out there.
Then we can consider optical connects for HDTV, all audio, etc. More copper saved?
Of course, it will probably take 2 pounds of copper to manke enough plastic fiber to replace 1 pound of copper wire.
If it's not one thing, it's your mother.
rick
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yet another reason to get rid of this useless coin. Add this to:
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...)
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
buy calls on copper... serioulsy, has anyone access to historical datas on commodities?
\u262D = \u5350
If you read the article, it does note that usages is down from the 1999 high of 238 kilograms per person to only 170 kilograms of copper per person in 2005. At this rate will there be a shortage?
You've heard of peak oil and now peak copper, but there are only 12-25 years of known silver deposits left, and silver is the best conductor of electricity and is also used in a lot of other (yes, non-photographic) industrial uses.
Economics is all about how we deal with scarcity. Prices go up, alternatives are found. If prices went up, we'd go 220V to use thinner wires, we'd prefer local sources of energy to use shorter lines, we'd go all fiber for data and voice, and so on... and we'd find new sources, alternative metals.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
There are vast amounts of copper and other valueable materials in the dumps around the world. Eventually the dumps will be gold mines given many of the materials like copper are recyclable. It's not that copper is so rare but it's been cheaper than it should have been. What it really means is our technological society depends on cheap copper like cheap oil. Oil won't run out in our lifetimes and neither will copper but but it will go up drastically in price. It may not affect the price of electronic components that use realitively little copper but it will have an affect on things like power lines. It may not be practical one day to build vast infastructures of copper lines. Localized power would solve that problem and is another reason solar may not not be a solution but it can help. Copper pipes will be one of the first to go once copper gets scarce. Pastic in some ways works better these days. Copper isn't the new gold or silver but it could it could go up three or four fold in our lifetimes which is enough to change everything.
Didn't Homer make Bart do that too? Oh wait, that was grease reclamation.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
Not much. Considering that pennies are not made of copper, only coated in it.
Pennies are made mostly out of zinc these days.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
PSSSSSSSSTTTTT!!! Want to know where you can find all sorts of copper lying around, preprocessed? The local landfill! People have been throwing away copper-containing components since Edison's day. All the garbage dumps in the world are probably brimming with old wires, telephones, vacuum tubes (did they use copper?), and all sorts of detritus containing copper. Start digging and don't mind the stench!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Surely we have worse things to worry about than a copper shortage.
I think our infrastructure can handle adopting different metals for certain purposes, and using what copper we have left for critical applications.
This is the way everything works, you piss away resource X like it's going out of style (e.g. copper tubing !?! ) and then when the resource starts to bottom out, you find replacements for most of the uses, and conserve the remainder for the neccessary applications
No big deal.
I swear, the media's getting worse by the day, what's next on the worry list? Not enough sand for making CPU's?
Ahhh Fuck.... just went through a price increase over PVC/CPVC because the they are oil based products to the tune of 50% in 2 months. Now this....
As it is, if it wasn't for the installation cost, the old Cast Iron pipe and fittings as the say price as PVC (Waste Pipe). The labor is alot higher because kids today have no gumpsion to lift cast iron pipe and be a real plumber, you know "Worker of Lead".
Right now CPVC ( Water Pipe ) is about the same as copper Pipe. Labor is higher through. It's easier to glue shit together than to prep copper and heat it up to 1000 Degrees and solder it.
Man this is just going to kill the construction industry which keep the economy afloat during the Dot Com Bust.
If copper becomes expensive, developing countries will just use aluminum. The biggest problem with aluminum wiring is joining it to copper; this is the only thing that really inhibited aluminum wiring in this country, where there was already a ton of copper wiring everywhere. Places starting from scratch won't have that problem so much. Long-distance transmission lines will likely be copper for a long time due to the lower resistance. (Gold, BTW, is a worse conductor than copper, and is quite comparable with aluminum. Silver is slightly better than copper, if you're willing to pay.) There will be more and more transmission lines being built with superconductors, though!
Of course, the incredible energy requirements of aluminum production yields its own set of headaches. But if we don't solve that problem, the wiring dilemma will be moot anyhow.
Copper/aluminum alloys are often used in electrical connections, where either pure copper or pure aluminum must be connected. The alloys are less conductive than either of the two pure metals, but only small amounts are used, and their purpose is to reduce or prevent the possibility of electrochemical corrosion when dissimilar metals are in contact.
Thus, CAT5 could in theory be replaced by a heavier-gauge pure-aluminum cable, and the connectors on the end could be either copper/aluminum alloy or something better, like gold-electroplated aluminum. Aluminum is a very plentiful element compared to copper. The electrical industry found that it could not use the metal reliably in end-use situations (homes, businesses, etc.) because the metal is soft and the connections loosen (and sparks across the gaps have caused fires), but it IS used quite reliably in major power-transmission lines. It COULD be used in communcations wiring because the current loads are tiny (and the appropriate heavier gauge, to match the lower resistance of copper, still costs less than copper). You just need to ensure the communications wiring is well-sealed away from corrosive stuff like "salt air" at an oceanside resort (such as by electroplating exposed aluminum with gold).
Is there an efficient way to recycle old wire? I'd rather not have to throw it away. How about alternative metals?
not really. A penney (post 1982) is only 2.5% copper, and 97.5% Zink.
Looks like Tesla's wireless conduction dream gets more and more attractive. No need for long High Voltage lines.
Maybe a lot of /.ers are too young to remember the great penny hoarding of a few decades back. At the time, copper reached a price that a penny contained more than a penny worth of copper so people started hoarding them and melting them down. There was a shortage of pennies for change and some shopkeepers resorted to rounding to the nickel, others used candy for change.
The composition of the penny was changed to use copper plate. I seem to recall that the feds outlawed melting of pennies as well but that was a long time ago.
Anyway, I agree that eliminating the penny is long overdue but the feds don't seem to want to make that embarrasing admission that inflation exists and money is becoming worthless. Back in the day when Nixon imposed the (ill-considered and ineffective) wage and price freeze it was in response to runaway inflation at ~3%. Nowdays we call that rate "controlled". Hell, during the reign of the great inflation-controlling Greenspan, the dollar lost about half of its purchasing power. Time to drop the charade.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
There are several interesting links between the Royal Mint and Neal Stephenson's ( Slashdot Interview) Baroque Cycle , including references to Hooke and Newton, to whom the quotation "standing on the shoulders of giants", which is engraved around the edge of £2 coins, is ascribed. The Trial of the Pyx, which forms part of the plot, exists, and has been carried out ever since 1282.
you could replace copper with something else. My house (in Argentina) has PVC pipes. There are a lot of varieties. PVC and Teflon, aluminum shielded, etc. Also, you could stop using copper in coins. Why use such an expensive and heavy material when you could use something lighter (your pockets will thank you).
There are not enough trees to sustain the industrialization of the western world.
All the factories will be shutting down any day now.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Pennies haven't had a significant copper component since, what, 1983?
Chill.
that those minimal spanning tree algorithms I learned in university would come in handy!! :-)
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Because every price in the country would have to round to numbers divisible by five. And guess which direction they'll all choose? (UP)
Sales tax going from 8.25% to 10% won't be too bad, but wait until the federal/state/city taxes jump from like 16% to 20%. Each.
"Waaaaaah we dont have enough food"
"Waaaaaah there arent enough Xbox 360s!"
"Waaaaaah we dont have enough copper" - cause its all in the 360s!
Christ, people all over want everything!
As an Employee of Kenncott / Rio Tinto I have to say this is music to my ears! All Your copper mines are belong to us
It has already replaced copper in electrical applications that benefit from it being twice as conductive per unit mass.
It is 65% of the conductivity of copper by volume, close enough that one can just use a slightly fatter (though lighter) wire, and still get the same resistance.
As it becomes scarce, the price will increase and people will start using something cheaper instead.
Deleted
Wonders? I'd say structures. Wonders should have more, you know, wonder in them. Like a hughe wall, giant statue, hanging gardens. More than hole-in-the-ground.
But it is probably impressive!
The thing is, Copper, unlike oil is something we can go get if we have to. There's long been talk of the possibility of mining asteroids for minerals. We have the technology today to fly an unmanned probe out to an asteroid and bring it back into orbit so that we can mine it. It's a risky and expensive operation, but if we absolutely need copper, it becomes viable.
:)
With oil... well, there aren't oil fields flying around space so far as I know
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
There's plenty of aluminum around (although it's energy-intensive to extract). If we just switched to that for normal wiring applications and saved the copper for long distance lines, the problem would be solved (or at least greatly reduced).
[begins serious part of post] ...in Venezuela, we do not use that much cooper. The water pipes are made of galvanized Iron, for instance. And no bronze leafs in the curches or old houses.
;-)
As per the cooper recycling, some people, due to the poverty, steal the ground wire of the 3phase electrical distribution to recycle it (and yes, they screw the Electricity supply for the rest of us).
BTW, PVC is not advisable, vecause, when it burns, it releases toxic fumes......
As per de coins, ours used to have a huge content of nickel, and people began melting them for the nickel in 1988.
[end seroious part of post]
[begins the funny part]
So, if you wasteful americans want some consulting on the subject
[the funny part ends]
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
As the quantity of copper decreases, the cost will go up. This will make using alternative materials more attractive.
Also, as the costs go up, it will become economically feasible to recover copper from old wires. All of the worthless scrap electronics and cables that everyone has will become valuable and will end up recycled.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
This is a bit alarmist. The prediction is that by 2100, all 10 billion people in the world will be living at the same wired standard as the average US citizen today.
That's a bit alarmist for me. By 2100, the technology will be radically different. Networking will obviously be completely wireless for most applications (reducing the need for all that cat5). Other copper uses will be outmoded by new technology (see: Fibre Optic). And, by 2100, there will be many more options that have yet to be imagined that probably won't use copper.
Just my 2 pennies worth.
"Its a crime that the zinc industry lobbies congress with cash every time we try to get rid of the penny. Its useless. In fact all change is. What can you really buy for less than a buck? If its less than a buck, splurge and get two."
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?
Yes, one metallic asteroid has more heavy metals than we can mine from the Earth's crust. If you really want oil, get a carbonaceous asteroid and process it; but you'll get more energy from the fissionables in a metallic asteroid.
Do not worry, I am sure a Trainer will be released by one of those l33t groups :) and we will be able to get 99999999 copper
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
...that generates power by splitting copper atoms will not be looked upon kindly by the world community?
Maybe they could open up the mines in the UP of Michigan again. There's still a lot of copper up there, it was just not economical to keep digging anymore in the early 1900s.s t.html
From http://www.exploringthenorth.com/cophistory/cophi
"By 1900 the shafts of Keweenaw were the deepest in the world. Bringing copper to the surface required increasing amounts of physical plant investment and it was apparent to geologists that the mines of the district had reached maturity.
When the mines were no longer profitable, the companies and employees left. All that remains are ruins of mines, ghost towns and a lot of copper."
...won't be enough to cover the billions of people who don't yet live in highly wired/mechanized societies.
... yet.
Who cares? We're Americans and George W Bush is our President. We have what we need and the rest of the world needs to just be happy that we haven't decided to invade
"What can you really buy for less than a buck? If its less than a buck, splurge and get two." A diet coke? And no I just want one thanks.
Coke is $3 or $4 a 12 pack. Sometimes less than $3.
If you really like the taste of diet coke, then have at it. If you're _still_ trying to loose weight by drinking it, your fighting your hypothalamus that responds to sweets and slows down metabolism in expectation of caloric input from the absent sugar. If you only drink one coke a day (which you imply), that is only 150 calories (~10%) of your daily intake. A cookie can be 200 to 400 per cookie.
In other words, water is your friend. Coffee for caffeine.
Looks like this bitch is gonna need to be melted down. Not like it means much anymore anyway...
Yeah right. You're linking to the mint. I suppose you believe NASA when they tell you they landed on the moon too. I know a government conspiracy when I see one; that's why I made myself this copper hat, exclusively out of pre-1971 pennies. It's made out of 150 pennies but it's worth at least four bucks!
"Spears, arrows, untold piles of sticks for cooking - they tie up a lot of wood. Unlike abundant dirt and water, dry dead wood is relatively scarce. But it's vital to heat genereation/transmission, cooking, and other uses central to a modern standard of living. Ugh the caveman is providing a quick overview of the situation. He reports the conclusion that there simply isn't enough available. That place over there, over there and the past that tree average 170 grunts of wood use per person, and the most generous estimates suggest that only 1.6 billion unused metric ubergrunts exist. More reclamation and use of grass, sunshine, and dragons breath helps - but won't be enough to cover the billions of people who don't yet live in highly sophisticated/modernized societies."
When the copper runs out we'll be whining about something else "going to run out".
Most recently, there was a famous bet between Julian Simon and Paul Erlich on the price of copper... Erlich bet the price of copper (and other rare metals) would rise... and lost.
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/People/julian_si mon.html
From the article:
"In 1980, economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich decided to put their money where their predictions were. Ehrlich had been predicting massive shortages in various natural resources for decades, while Simon claimed natural resources were infinite.
Ehrlich agreed to the bet, and chose copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten. By 1990, all five metal were below their inflation-adjusted price level in 1980. Ehrlich lost the bet and sent Simon a check for $576.07."
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
One common misconception is that technological innovations will come along and solve our problems as resources begin to run out. While it may be true that nuclear, solar, wind and wave energy may be able to offset reduction in oil output and carbon nanotubes (which happen to be excellent conductors) may replace copper wire, in general, any first generation technology causes more problems then it solves.
A great example is insecticides. There's no denying that they've increased food output in many nations, but many of the first insecticides that were used were highly toxic and are still being cleaned up today.
In short, if we hope that technology is going to solve our problems, we better start fixing them early, because it will take a couple of tries to get it right.
I want a portable pebble bed nuclear reactor in my back yard to power my house and charge the electric company $500.00 a month to use my excess electricity.
But I am a type 2 Diabetic. I am not drinking diet coke to loose weight I am drinking it because sugar is bad for me even in relatively small amounts. And a regular coke is not a small amount of sugar. I don't like coffee and I like my cokes cold from the machine at work.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Thank goodness I have Monster Cables. They're made of gold. My computer and audio equipment runs better on them too.
Isn't everything switching over to wireless? Especially in the developing nations?
Fiber optics baby, that's the way to go. Verizon just wired my in-laws neighborhood with fiber. Initially they'll get 5Mbps broadband cheaper than from Comcast (cable) and by spring they'll be getting TV (including HDTV) through the same fiber. Hell, my PS2 has a fiber connection to my receiver.
Now since fiber is glass, and glass comes from sand, we shouldn't have a shortage of that anytime soon, right? And if we ever run out of sand, well, there's always this wireless thing I keep hearing about.
In Argentina, kilometers of copper cables (from phone and power lines) are stolen all the time, and sold on the black market.
Entire neighborhoods can be without electricity and/or phone for days because of this...
Time to tear down the Statue of Liberty and melt it down for Cat5!
(Dear NSA: I'm only joking)
One other solution is to go wireless. ...would be to go optical.
A. No. It's fine. And if we ever do run out, other worlds exist that might have some.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
What you seem to be missing is that, to even care about copper at all, you have to presuppose the end of oil. The markets already do so, and will continue to do so as more evidence of future scarcity comes to light.
While oil must be literally consumed as it is used, copper doesn't have to be. Unfortunately however, copper is currently treated as a consumable. Electronics are scrapped and put into dumps without thought.
In reality, copper is a precious metal. We just don't know it yet. In one way or another, a decrease in the amount of oil will cause an increase in the use of copper. Couple that with ongoing industrialization of a huge percentage of the world's population, and you get scarcity and the opportunity to profit by hoarding it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
As dada21 already stated, this is the result of inflation. If you account for inflation, gold prices would have to rise to over $1266 per ounce to be at an 25 year high. More pondering on the subject.
Finding substitute materials/techniques is possible but currently speculative. There should be a heavy tax placed on the extraction of hydrothermal ores and the tax money put to prize awards for the creation of substitute materials.
Seastead this.
Posterity, my posterior.
More important than the end result is the subject of the adjustment process. You are stating the theoretical end result that would come to be if markets were perfectly flexible and property rights were well established. But in real life things are not so perfect and well defined. That is why economist dedicate most of their time studying and optimizing the adjustment processes. It all boils down to the rate of growth of the demand for copper when compared with the rate of technological progress. If they are not very different, it will be possible for innovation to do its job. But if the growth in the demand for cooper is much greater than the rate of tech progress (which could happen due to the pervasiveness of copper in modern life and the stress new industrialized countries put on global demand of cooper), the adjustment will be harsh and long.
Come back Copper!
Maybe that was your dad, speeding away with the neighbor's still-hissing A/C compressor unit in the back of his truck?
It's all very well suggesting PVC as a substitute, but ISTR it's not quite such a good conductor.
Use PEX tubing for plumbing and fiber optics for data. Copper isn't exactly the only conductive metal, either. I'm sure that once it's scarce other materials will look pretty good for power transmission.
Couldn't this serve as justification for switching to fiber for ethernet cabling, instead of copper CAT-5?
How much copper would we reclaim by eliminating pennies in the US? Let's start rounding out prices, etc. to the nearest 5 cents.
From what I recall, people in California basically pioneered the recycling movement.
Guess what - apparently almost no one in California recycles. (I could be wrong about this, I'm going on anecdotal evidence from relatives/friends.)
Meanwhile, New Jersey has quite a few recycling programs (although they still don't have the bottle deposit system - wtf?). For the NJ government, recycling IS cheaper than dumping in a landfill, because there is very limited landfill space in NJ and much of NJ's non-recycled trash gets carted to PA.
New York State varies as far as recycling, in some cases there are major variances between towns. Ithaca has hefty surcharges on normal trash pickup, forcing people to recycle or pay hefty fees. NYS has bottle deposits statewide, and it is EXTREMELY easy to get your deposits back - almost all supermarkets have automatic bottle/can recycling machines that take your cans and give you a voucher for store credit.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
http://www.usmintquarters.com/steelcents.htm
When we can cut the grid (all homes solar powered) and use wireless technology (phones, etc...).
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
...but there's plenty of sand. Fiber optics is the way
If there really is a copper 'shortage' then I suppose someone will eventually reopen one or two of the scores of abandoned copper mines in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Most copper mines were closed when the telecom industry switched to co-axial cable and later optical fibre, which caused demand to drop spectacularly some 25 years ago.
Oh well, what the hell...
Yes, pennies are now 97.5% zinc, with a 2.5% copper coating.
However...
At 2.5g per penny, with a 2.5% copper composition, with the minting of 7,700,050,500 pennies in 2005, you've got around 480 metric tons of copper tied up in the creation of pennies alone in the past year. Figures for 2003 and 2004 are around 430 metric tons. Coin minting, in general, tends to increase, so if/when we exceed 8 billion pennies, we'll top 500 metric tons.
Moreover, as referenced in the subject here, it's interesting to note that the Nickel is 75% copper, the dime, quarter, and half-dollar are nearly 92% copper, and the dollar coin is 88.5% copper.
Now, 500 metric tons of copper a year for pennies isn't a lot in the face of 1.6 billion, but I'm not sure I'd call it a trivial amount, either.
Now, I'm not saying I think I'm afraid of copper running out. I'm just saying we use a fair bit here in the US to mint coins.
Aluminum can carry power just fine as long as you use the proper interconnects; the lack thereof is why aluminum home wiring got a bad reputation.
Computers don't use a whole lot of copper and are probably moving toward more exotic technologies anyway (carbon nanotubes, optical switches, etc.).
Networks are beginning to migrate over to fiber or RF.
People are increasingly switching from landlines to cell phones.
I'm sure Bad Things would happen if we ran out of copper, but is there anything we're currently using it for that couldn't be converted to use something else?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne sells giant penny found in cave on property, becomes trillionaire. Next up, sports!
When we first started producing copper (centuries ago) the ore had a purity of about 30-50% Cu by weight. We are now down to mining copper which has a purity of less than 1%. It takes a huge amount of heat energy to extract copper from low grade ore like this. So everything is against copper production right now - impending energy shortages and diminishing quantities left in the Earth - not to mention increasing demand.
So, buy stocks in Cu - expect to see 10x increase over a decade
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
PVC might not be in short supply like copper, but it has nasty environmental consequences. It's over 50% chlorine by weight, it cannot be incinerated safely, and when put into a plastic recycling machine, it corrodes the machine by releasing free chlorine radicals. As little as 1 ppm of PVC is needed to damage recycling machines.
Perhaps iron or aluminum pipe would be a better replacement. Likewise, aluminum is a better conductor than copper and with properly crimped ends, it is just as safe as copper wiring.
But it's vital to electricity generation/transmission...
Most power lines use steel reinforced aluminum cable, and have since the 1950's. It's a lot cheaper and a lot lighter than copper. The drawback is that, at high voltages, the aluminum gets hot, hotter than the steel, and sags. There is a fair amount of research going on into better aluminum alloys to avoid the problem.
-h-
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?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
So maybe the day will arrive when copper pennies will have true intrinsic value, like gold and silver coins have in the past.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And here I mistakenly thought that world war III would be fought over oil and all along it was copper.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
"And certainly as much currently processed copper, platinum and zinc should be conserved as possible; the world needs it."
Whenever you see a statement containing the words "as possible" you can
tell for sure that the author isn't thinking too clearly. "As much as
possible" means that copper conservation takes precedence over everything
else. IE surgeons should forego doing heart surgery if it would save copper.
You mean the wireless revolution didn't solve this problem?!!?
Penny. What a great coin it is. And it is completely unnecessary. The prices can be rounded to 0 and 5.
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe controlling the metals needed for technological progress could put a dampner on any foreign nations trying to build up technology to compete with us.
If the government eliminates pennies, there are going to be a LOT of pissed off grannies with empty plastic jugs just perfect for smacking people around with.
*shudders*
See, if he didn't take that plunge into mediocrity, go partially insane, and then die in obscurity, we'd all be transmitting power wirelessly by now. WHY DID HE HAVE TO BE OBSESSED WITH 3. Now Tesla's dead, and we're gonna run out of copper. GREAT.
Pre-1982 pennies are already worth more as scrap than as currency. (Post-1982 are mostly zinc).
It takes abou 145 pre-1982 pennies to get have a pound... at the current copper price of just over $2 pound, they appear to be worth more as scrap than as money, although I suspect logistical considerations would eat into any profit making scheme based on this fact.
Zinc is worth just under $1 pound, and it takes over 160 of the current pennies to make a pound - so they are worth more as money. US Mint statistics say it costs them .81 cent to make a penny, of course there is more than raw material costs there.
By the way, I don't know what planet you are on, but gold and silver coins still have intrinsic value :-)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I thought I'd point out another resource that won't be replaced, either, but that doesn't get mentioned very often: Helium.
I wasn't partiuclarly aware that this was a consumable resource until recently, but it is. Every cubic foot of helium gas that's released up into the atmosphere is basically lost forever -- it's so light that it just keeps going up and up, and eventually escapes our atmosphere.
Although it's not as important to us as a civilization as copper, and will probably take longer to become scarce, it's not something that's partiularly easy to get. Right now we get most of our supply from the natural gas industry -- helium is present in natural gas but doesn't burn, and if not extracted from the gas prior to use just goes out the tailpipe. There are (or were) government-backed programs to extract and store the He prior to use of the natural gas, but I'm not sure if that's still going on.
We use an increasing amount of Helium in its liquid form as cooling, partiularly for MRI machines. I can only see this usage getting bigger in the future; plus, liquid He is one of the only ways to reliably get objects down to ultra-cold temperatures, which might become very important in the future. (Superconducting computers?) The point is that we really haven't exploited Helium very far, and yet we're 'burning' through it fairly quickly, along with the natural gas supply.
It's just another thing that when it's gone, it's gone. It may seem frivolous now, but when you consider the difficulty of synthesizing a hydrocarbon chain, it's not partiularly tough. Make me a mole of helium atoms cheaply on an industrial scale? Now that's difficult.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
For some strange reason I am reminded of Jimmy Carter's report Global 2000.
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb020404.shtml
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Just don't buy d'Anconia copper. That's all I'm saying...
International Socialist Black Metal
build rocket, goto asteroid belt, find big rock, move, into earth orbit, ( or fumble it ), profit!
Question Authority before IT questions You
Electricity in this country is generated primarily from coal (60%), nuclear (20%), and hydroelectric (>10%). The U.S. has enough coal to last for centuries (environmental damage notwithstanding), and enough Uranium to last for millenia (if breeder reactors are used).
Even if both of those resources were completely exhausted, or were nearing exhaustion, there are many alternatives which are only modestly more expensive. Wind farms, geothermal plants, solar panels, tidal energy plants, methane hydrates, and others.
Even if all sources of power were to become scare (an impossibility), the first thing sacrificed would be air conditioning for the home, which consumes more electricity by far than computers and electronic equipment.
...But let's suppose that all coal and uranium were exhausted, and all alternatives became scarce, and home air conditioning had already been abandoned, and still there was not enough electricity to power computers. Then we could build desktop and server computers with power-saving technology similar to that used in notebooks today. At 45nm fabbing, we could make processors that are faster than today's but which consume less than 1W. 1W could be easily generated by power plants which harvest methane from pig farts, just like in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome." If we used the Thunderdome approach, the only remaining possible source of scarcity would be: if pigs learned to fly.
As a result, it seems unlikely that power will become scarce enough in the near future to render cabling unimportant.
Without belaboring the need for physical US cent coins... That's a different discussion...
However, remember that US cents are now primarily zinc, with a thin copper-plate coating. The amount of copper used for these "throw-away", "low-value" coins is significantly less than it was in 1984 (when cents were converted to primary zinc content).
With that said... It would be a very good idea for the world (especially the US) to be better about recycling in general, and for common civic recycling systems to begin dealing with copper.
A Passionate Independent Musician
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_o rigin
:) (there must be at least partial indegrients to a great SF story somewhere in that).
Intriguing ideas no matter if right or wrong and I don't think it truly matters in regard to oilprice in light of these Wired articles:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/gas.html
Can't help thinking about 'oil in space' when reading that wikipedia article though lol
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
...the Massachusetts ones have Ted Kennedy
:-)
He fits on a penny?! Who'da thunk?
I just used one of those machines in Pennsylvania last weekend, to the amusement of my 5-year-old son and my wife, who'd never seen one.
Yep - Still exist. Still fun.
Aluminum conducts well enough to work in many places. Its price shouldn't jump much since it's the third most abundant element in the earths crust. It's not as good as copper but it could still work.
I have maybe 50-60 steel pennies from WWII. Why not make them out of something else like steel, or plastic?
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
There's a big one in, I think, Butte, just sitting there because the price of copper is too low. It's the source for a copper gemstone called covellite. There's also copper in UP Michigan, around Houghton and Copper Harbor.
Supply and demand. Currently, the supply far exceeds the demand. When the demand grows, those mines will re-open, supplying the demand for copper as well as the small demand for gem covellite and native copper.
Don't sweat it, this is yet another phony panic.
Lemon curry?
I tend to wonder if some day, perhaps sooner than we think, it will be profitable to mine these landfills (many currently golf courses and home sites!) for that "wasted" material, for recycling purposes. Furthermore, I think about the tons of organic material (yard and landscaping waste, mostly) which is in our landfills (and more going in every day) which could be reclaimed, recycled, and then fed into thermodepolymerization plants tuned for the feedstock, allowing us to gain fuels and other useful materials from stuff that is just being thrown away.
Think about all the organic material from New Orleans which was simply bulldozed into landfills? Could that material have been run through a TDP process and used to offset, in whatever percentage, the fuel shortages caused by Katrina? Why do we throw this stuff away, when we can use it for other purposes?
Fortunately, most metals are recycled already, but there is still a lot of useful stuff in our landfills (including a lot of metals), just waiting for the day to be used again (unfortunately, in order to get at the stuff with any measure of safety, these landfills would have to be strip-mined)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
As money, a penny is always worth one cent, even if it is made of gold. However, if the metal has a higher value, then yes, a penny can be worth more than one cent. After all, it's only a medium of exchange.
"You can't even buy a cup of coffee anymore with a dollar bill."
It's true that you can't buy a cup of coffee at my company with a dollar. The coffee is 25 cents, and the machines only take quarters.
For one thing, aliphatic hydrocarbons may be made as well as mined, and thus their potential supply is limited only by the ingenuity of our chemists. File "sustainability" under "Marxism" and open your eyes.
One of my insider mining newsletters that I subscribe to just mentioned how zinc might end up being the most rare material in the coming years.
At least we won't run out of carbon anytime soon. I seriously don't think that running out of copper will be that big of a problem. If anything, it'll give a boost to the kind of long nanotube synthesis that we need to a space elevator.
Communications networks will be silicon or wireless. Power networks will be carbon.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"One common misconception is that technological innovations will come along and solve our problems as resources begin to run out."
How is this a misconception? Innovation DOES arise in times of need -- that's what drives innovation: a need. In every case this has happened. Show me 1 example where it hasn't ultimately worked out. It's not the first try. Almost nothing ever is perfect the first try. That's why it's innovation -- it keeps changing.
"A great example is insecticides. There's no denying that they've increased food output in many nations, but many of the first insecticides that were used were highly toxic and are still being cleaned up today."
That is a great example. You admit as much that they work! That they may be highly toxic or have other side effects is another issue! Not only have we learned from that, but we've continued to innovate so we have less toxic pesticides available -- in addition to other means of insect control (like using other insects).
Innovation takes time, and lots of trial and error, but it ALWAYS works. It's not just technology that solves problems -- it's thinking, and applying old things in new ways.
..I worked with Homer at the Nuclear(nu-cle-ar) plant, Uranium was used to generate the heat, to heat the water, to make the steam, to turn the turbines... I don't recall much being copper.
If we are that hard up for copper, start mining the garbage dumps, there is probably tons of copper there, clean out every wishing well from Portland to Portland.... shake down every homeless person for their pennies, and force nickels on them, warning them you will probably be back some day for those too...
Sig Hansen?
The pit in Butte/Anaconda ("The richest hill on earth"), MT is full of copper disolved in an acidic "lake." There have been reports stating that the amount of copper dissolved in the lake is equal to the amount that has been mined since the hill was found. Extracting the copper becomes the difficult part.
Please.
He is entirely accurate.
-- AC
I hear there's plenty of copper in the same magical fairyland that we can get abundant oil from indefinitely. A neocon told me so on Fox news. No worries mate! ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Pah... the ancient Romans are all dead.
In Germany the situation seems to be pretty bad - just about a week ago someone stole 30 meters of cable from some railroad tracks, rendering the track inoperative for two hours...
And it happened in the middle of Berlin too, so getting the cable must have been a risky and laborious task.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
because of the similarity (in size, color, and the scored edges) to a quarter. When they were more common (close to when they were first issued) I was the recipient of Susan B's instead of quarters as change on several occasions. If I didn't look closely, I didn't notice and someone's cash drawer was down $.75 at the end of the day. No one wanted to deal with them, because they weren't easy to distinguish from quarters and in a fast-pased retail environment, could easily be mistaken for them.
When the Sacajawea dollars were designed, they were made larger, a different color, and the edges were smoothed precisely to help avoid this confusion. This helped, some.
However, in the long run, would you rather have nine 3x6 folded sheets of paper in your pocket, or nine large coins? Most people prefer the weight and flexibility of paper.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
One guy said that pennies made before 1971 are worth more than 1c in copper, and that the newer pennies might soon be worth much more than 1c due to their high zinc content.
It was 1982, not 1971.
The copper is running out, but so is the energy supply, the oil, and several other major requirements for our current way of life.
These problems could be alleviated by tapping the resources of the greater solar system, but this will not happen because of the prohibitive expense and lack of established means of staking claims in space, along with the general greed and bounded thought of corporate morons.
That said, the general outcome will be the inevitable collapse of our society (meaning a severe decline in standard of living and possibly population along with world wars as we fight over the scraps) into a new era of feudalism over the next couple hundred years. This feudalism, if we are lucky, will give rise to colonization and tapping of the solar system, and if we are not will result in humanity's decline for the next hundred forseeable millenia
(until we're smart enough to produce zero point energy or some other much more efficient technology cheaply.. assuming that would be possible amid the political instability caused by tremendous hardships required to simply get by on an energy and resource depleted planet)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If we went to a higher voltage, (you never made mention of halving the amperage so I assume no for this question) why would we use thinner wires? Wouldn't putting practically double the power down a wire that's thinner than before effectively burn it out within a very short period of time?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Better yet, why don't stores adjust their prices to the nearest nickel AFTER adjusted for the tax increase? This way, no matter how many items you purchase, you will not end up with denominations in pennies for change.
Life is not for the lazy.
Anyone know where to find estimates of copper abundance in the asteroid belt? If there isn't enough of it down here, maybe we need to go find more somewhere else...
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
Both types were made that year.
prior to 1982 cents weighed 3.11 gr. each. After 1982 cents weigh 2.5 gr each.
wikipedia
The alloy remained 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc until 1982, when the composition was changed to 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper (copper-plated zinc).
Lead-lined clay? How last millennium. Nowadays, we use Uranium Bowls. Isn't that red Fiestaware just divine?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
use of fiber, wireless, and PVC
I'm sorry, but since when is PVC conductive?
My mining skill is well high enough to mine and smelt copper, and it always seems to be in plentiful supply in places like Elwynn and Dun Murogh. On a good night I can get 5, 6 stacks easily!
Though I must admit, I'm a little bit concerned about how the AH prices will react once the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj are finally opened. Yeah, it's nice to get 2-3 gold for a stack right now, but what happens when the demand goes way down?
The Brandt/DeLaRue MACH6 with coin recognition can do it.
(I used to work there). it essentially uses an alloy sensor to do discrimination.
Where it really shines is offsortin silver half dollars from the copper clad...
link to a distributer
I no longer work there or am affiliated with this distributer.
For people who don't know, Yasuo Hamanaka attempted to corner the copper market for Sumitomo in the mid 1990's; there was a "shortage" then, too, which was used to manipulate the market price. Also involved were Merrill Lynch, Global Minerals and Metals Corporation, David Campbell, and Carl Alm.
It's actually an interesting story - more interesting than this "Chicken Little" piece:
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/copper.html
And the 1999 FTC docket for the case:
http://www.cftc.gov/enf/99orders/enfglobalmm.htm
Hmmm... I guess that begs the question that, if the sky actually was falling, it'd solve our "copper problem" in short order; as it is, we'll probably have to send ships to the copper, instead of the copper coming to us... 8-).
-- Terry
If the price of copper goes up, you might see fiber optics come down in price.
Wrong. If two productss are interchangeable, and one goes up in price, the other will also go up in price.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
there's always platinum...
Give me bandwidth and nobody gets hurt!
hope george bush is busy finding out which country has the biggest supply of copper so he can start burying weapons of mass destruction in advance to avoid future embarassments!
Greenspan's been in for ~20 years, so dollar deflation at ~2.5% a year isn't that bad. Wages have been rising at close to the same rate, so the real difference isn't that great. However, deflation has been much greater in some sectors (a dollar claims much less real estate than before) than others.
The remaining untapped ore in the ground isn't the only remaining supply of copper because our processes for extracting the copper have vastly improved. Up until about 20 years ago, many copper mines primarily used smelters to extract copper from the raw ore as possible. That process was inefficient, leaving a lot of copper in the waste product (called "tailings"), which over the years has been piled into gigantic yellow hills near any mining site (you know, those giant yellow hills near any copper mining town that no plant life will grow on). However, they shut down their smelters a couple of decades ago because they've discovered a much better way of removing the copper from the ore, and more importantly, the waste product, which they now consider to be a new source of copper. The point is that there is more copper out there than just the raw ore still buried in the ground. As recycling technology improves, the amount of copper remaining in the ground will become less significant.
how much copper cable we can make out of the Statue of Liberty? I guess we ought to thank the French for sending us such a nice supply of copper.
Time for all the overclocking hot rods to turn down their 10GHz CPUs and return all those heavy copper heatsinks. ;)
RFC2119
I've seen this before; most of the metals with a salvage value, do so for this very reason. When it gets short, the price goes up, people find 1) other ways to not use the commodity and 2)ways to recycle more or "create" more through other means.
:)
Not to worry. Your pennies are safe.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Maybe this is a good time to stop using copper in pennies, or just get rid of the stupid coin altogether.
Market prices reflect short term scarcity, not long term scarcity. What matters is if the rate of consumption exceeds the rate of extraction, not the long term availibility of a resource. Corporations are concerned with short term (quarterly report) profits and routinely sacrifice the long term. Imagine what would happen if a copper mining company were to raise the price due to long term concerns in the current market. As long as enough other copper suppliers are willing to sell at the current prices, the corporation in question would lose 100% of its sales. Its next quarterly report would be dismal, if it stayed in business that long. Therefore, corporate management will continue to sell copper at lower prices and simply lay off employees and golden parachute out when supply ran out. The exception is if there is a widespread price fixing but the copper equivalent of OPEC is defunct (and the US rendered OPEC pretty ineffective as well through political and military means).
As long as there is enough copper that can be extracted cheaply to satisfy current consumption, copper prices are likely to reflect the lowest bidder. Copper prices will increase, however, if the cost of extraction for even a small portion of the mining needed to extract the current copper usage rate goes up. Imagine if current copper consumption is 1 million tons per year (actually, closer to 13.6 million) and we can extract 750 thousand tons/year at $1/pound and 500 thousand tons per year at $2/pound. At that point, the price of all copper will go to around $2/pound because no one who can extract it at $1/pound is in danger of losing sales by raising the price to just shy of $2/pound since demand is sufficient to guarantee the purchase of all of the "cheap" copper even though after windfall pricing cheap copper will only be a few cents cheaper than expensive copper. How fast copper (or most other natural resources) can be extracted depends on how much you are willing to pay for it if you are above the level where it is all easy to extract, with delays to deploy new mines or bring idle mines online. When demand exceeds total current production capacity, then simple supply and demand kick in and drive prices up even further.
You were dead wrong on your claims that there is plenty of oil availible. Sure, you may read about new oil discoveries all the time. But the rate of new oil discoveries is much lower than the rate at which oil is depleted. The price of oil has risen, though, not because of scarcity of total supply but because the current demand exceeds the rate at which oil can be extracted from the cheap easy oil fields. You have made the common mistake of looking at a numerator while ignoring the denominator or putting it into context. Even worse, you didn't even look at the whole numerator. New mine discoveries are meaningless without being compared to things like the number of mine closures (and their production levels), total consumption, and relative cost of extraction.
In some ways, the oil shortage may mitigate the copper demand - the third world simply is not going to rise to our standard of living due to energy costs; it is more likely that US standards will decline towards those of the third world. On the other hand, a scarcity of copper is an issue for alternate energy. Wind turbines and electric motors on hybrid and electric cars frequently use significant amounts of copper. Fortunately, we can probably substitute aluminum for the bulk of that with some loss of efficiency. But the time for that is before we use large amounts of copper in those applications, not after.
The worlds largest producer of copper is Chile, which produces 36% of the world supply and more than the next several largest producers combined. I have been there and seen the small backyard scale smelting operations; large scale copper mining has largely displaced the small scale operations, in recent years, however. If Chile decided to take a long term view and levy a substantial tax on resource extraction, it could double copper prices overnight. But that would probably be followed by a US backed coup attempt and other countries would ramp up production.
Copper is already being recycled; there are folks in developing countries who hack apart old computers to recover the copper. More old copper would be found as the price goes up.
Freon was banned, which led to the production of substitutes as well as a thriving secondary market for Freon.
So, even if we run out of copper, I say so what...the market will come up with substitutes, and meanwhile, there is plenty of old copper out there to recycle.
Penny - plain text accounting
While copper is a resource that can be tied up, it is not a perishible resource (like oil). As such, we just need to, you know, recycle. Also, lets stop the pennies - that has got to help, and it is the most useless piece of currency out there.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Mineral Deposits
Back in 1980, during the height of the Carter-era resource depletion scare, economist Julian Simon bet conservationist Paul Ehrlich $1,000 that the real price of any group of natural resources of Ehrlich's choice would be less at any given date in the future than in 1980. Ehrlich chose five minerals-copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten-and set the payoff date for 10 years hence. As Simon expected, the real price of those five resources dropped by 24 percent, 40 percent, 8 percent, 68 percent, and 78 percent, respectively. Ehrlich sent Simon a check-but no admission of error-in 1990. No matter which minerals Ehrlich chose, it was a sucker's bet. All but two strategic minerals (manganese and zinc) declined in price during the 1980s, reflecting the dramatic increase in mineral abundance that has occurred globally since the beginning of time. Simon renewed his offer to any and all corners in 1992, but to date there have been no takers. As the data in Table 1 indicate, proven reserves of virtually all important minerals have skyrocketed since 1950.
Oil can be synthesized from inorganic sources as well: the Fischer-Tropsch process that Germany used during WW2 to produce their fuel.
Had I bothered to preview I would have used abiotic instead of inorganic. Apologies to any chemistry buffs reading my previous post.
The limited supply of copper is already becoming a problem long before we have any supply problems, as the price for copper increases. theft of copper has become a big problem in the developing world, especially as policing the thousands of kilometers of kilometers of copper wire and copper piping is an impossible task. As the price for copper increases, the problem will only get worse.
I can see it now. Take that old "usless" penny jar and turn it in bills or at least larger charge to keep North America happy and as charity to 3rd World dev. projects. Now if we could move the penny to being just copper "coloured" or make out of an easy to find metel. We're all set.
Life is like untied shoe laces; it always tripping you up and getting in your way.
Not copper. There is just a thin copper plating on them. I penny weighs 2.5g, 2.5% of which is copper, or 0.0625 grams. $1M in US pennies contains approximately 2/3 cubic meter of copper, 6250kg.
Pennies aren't the problem.
However, nickels are 75% copper and weigh 5 grams, so each coin has 3.75g of copper in it. $1M in nickels has 75000kg of copper, or approximately 8.3 cubic meters of copper.
So, nickels aren't really the problem either.
1 km of AWG-14 copper wiring for a house (14/2) has 3 km of copper wire with a cross section of 2.08mm, for a total volume of 6.24E6 cubic mm, or 0.00624 cubic meters.
1 km of three-phase high tension wire, AWG-000000, has 0.51 cubic meters of copper. String a high tension wireset over 1000km, and you have 500 cubic meters of copper.
third world economies to develop automobiles.
I think that there is a mistaken assumption in the argument that developing economies will need to have everything we had to develop as they will. The argument seems to go: We had wire. Now we have wireless. They will need wire to get wireless as well.
I don't think so.
And what if they do? Maybe they have thriftier habits, and will be able to do more with less.
( Count how many wires in CAT-5/6 actually carry a signal. See: This tutorial)
( Who has never had that tiddly tin-pot plastic retaining clip fall off an RJ-45 plug? }
Measure the conductivity of the pennies. The pure copper pennies should have much less resistance than copper-plated zinc pennies.
Vending machines already use conductivity, so it is not hard to do. (In the US, it is used to identify dollar coins. For this reason, the Susan B. and the Sacajawea dollars both have the same conductivity.)
Nothing to worry about, in the future we'll replace copper with high temperature supersonductor.
Oh wait, HTS are curprates.
There is no resource that can be stretched to support billions of wasteful monkies indefinitly. So yes the oil is going to run out, so is copper and zinc and fresh water and farmable land, wood, animals, etc etc etc all of it. Too many monkies end of story. End of silly psuedo scientific debate. It's all going to run out. Not today and not tomorrow but it will.
Is this a pump and dump operation to get rid of copper? Copper is not running out.
However, engineers are resourceful and so long as you can put up with inferior solutions things will be done based on known laws of physics.
Meanwhile, expect more large modern art bronze sculptures to vanish and power lines in lawless areas getting torn down by locals and sold for scrap.
I dont think the copper issue will be a problem for much longer.
Copper pipes and whatnot are slowly but surely being replaced by pvc, copper is now only used in small pieces of pipe or where there's going to be a lot of heat going through the pipes. PVC is used for just about everything else.
Cabling in the next decade or two will be replaced by fibre, if copper prices rise, many companies will find it profitable to just go all out on fibre and rip their copper lines off the poles, out of the ground, and out of the walls. cable tv, IPTV, broadband will all do this eventually, plus fibre's cost to maintain is noticeably lower than copper's. you dont need to repeat signals as often, better transmission, etc.
Cabling in computers, minus electrical uses, will soon be fibre, at least for hard drives and cdrom drives, as it will be the best way to send data, sound cables may eventually be fibre as well, digital does have its perks in that respect.
We do have the means to make plastic (which lower end fibre can be made from), even when petroleum is gone, we still have methods of making oil for those purposes. Then there's glass.
Then the last resort too are landfills, which are the goldmines of the future. all the organics will be broken down, there will be a huge abundance of metals in them, and gasses that can be used for energy.
You can buy Canadian pennies for .85 cents, giving you the added bonus that up till 1997 they are made with 95% copper.
start mining those pockets.
Silver tarnishes and is bad for the connection end.
OTOH, it is nice to know there is at least ONE other person who knows the in it's pure state, silver has higher siemans.
I worked with this uppity MIT* guy. Made him eat serious crow over that. I'll never forget the expression on his smug ass face when I should him the outer valance band.
Yeah, he was a jerk.
In general, I grant people with MIT degrees A little leyway in the uppity departmant.. but this buy, sheeesh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Calculate copper usage over a period of time
WHen the usage breakes10% of the wieght of the earth, we're boned. Probably much less.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"In fact, residents of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. required an average of 170 kilograms of copper per person. Multiply that by overall population estimates of 10 billion people by 2100 and the world will require 1.7 billion metric tons of copper by that date--more than even the most generous estimate of available resources. "
ok... you do realize civilization has been using copper wiring for less than 200 years correct? So why the "gloom and doom" scenario set 100 yrs in the future ? As they mentioned we've already got great alternatives like wireless, fiber and PVC, do they really think we're gonna need copper 100 yrs from now as much as we do now?
I predict that long before 2100 we find an alternative, remember 100 years is a very long time when it comes to technology, just look at planes, computers, plastics, glue, etc.
Also they're assuming the entire world will be at the level the average American is now by 2100. Let's not forget there's many people in foreign countries still without electricity or running water, things most Americans had over 100 years ago, so why assume that everyone on the planet will have them 100 years from now?
This has got to be the most absurd "sky is falling" scenario I've ever read, I wouldn't be surprised if it was written by recycling companies or copper lobbyist.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
You sodding softy!
I had to do everything you mentioned, but I had to post about it on slashdot from a WINDOWS machine....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
What's your point?
If you are going to make up straw-man (or starving woman) arguments out of thin air for off-topic rhetorical purposes, I will simply embelish the situation and say said woman and her family are standing in a well stocked market.
Now what does she do? Take the gold! It can buy a lot of food (assuming there is a "market" for gold, blah, blah blah).
A pound of something useful is "worth" more than a pound of something otherwise valuable, but not useful at the time. It is all in context.
Obviously I'd rather be stranded on an island with a knife than a gold coin, but the gold coin represents a lot more intrinsic value than a piece of sharpened steel. Precious metals are valuable because they represent a naturally scarce resource that takes a lot of work to get. A modern gold mine typically processes 20 or more TONS of ore to get an ounce of gold.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
his point is that ~2.5% used to be bad.
Personally,I think the acceptence of have two working parents, and the children locked up and cared for by others, or left alone, increased the disposable income. People became willing to spend more on items, so their cost went up.
Of course, the per person pay didn't go up, and now the price has caught up with the additional income.
I believe this is strongly mirrored witht he price of housing.
1970, my dad made 18K a year. Is nice house, in a new neighborhood cost 20K.
That same house cost 500K today. So I would need to make about 450K to be in the same mortgage spending bracket.
This about how people make purchases. They don't say, whats a reasonable price for this house. They say, how much can we spend on a house PER MONTH. hence 40year loans.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes, they will eventually work. My point is just to start innovation now. The first attempt will be imperfect, it takes time to solve problems via technology. The trick is to realize the problem early enough to get through those
The answer is not clear to me.
Innovation will continue and I think that's a good thing. It will take some people looking ahead and seeing the problems before they are widely known.
All of this discussion is a good thing and a positive sign that perhaps some smart people will start solving the problems before the politicians start looking for the solutions.
Homer: "Awww, $20?? But I wanted a peanut!"
Homer's mind: "$20 can buy many peanuts!"
Homer: "Explain how."
Homer's Mind: "Money can be exchanged for goods and services."
Homer: "WOO HOO!"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
4 bands good, three bands bad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One possible way of reducing our copper usage is to change the ways we transport energy. Carrying electricity for thousands of kilometres is a waste of copper and electricity when the electricity can be generated locally using generators (wind, solar) that are constructed with much less materials than the actual cables. Wireless telecommunications also require much less copper cabling (as do optical cables). The developed world could use much less resources if we shared our possessions rather than insisting on owning everything (why does every house need fifty power and garden tools that are only getting used occasionally and decaying from time rather than use). In reality, most the stuff that the developed world buys (and the developing world often makes) is luxury - gifts that are not needed and rarely used.
Even the huge copper pipelines for oil and gas (and in some cases even water) are built to keep up with the demand of developed-world excess and refusal to use green energy and transport, and many of our developing neighbours are copying our wasteful habits.
I suspect in the next fifty years we will start digging up landfill to recycle metals and other minerals.
When carbon nanotubes become (much) cheaper to produce, we may see copper cables replaced with carbon - very high tensile cables, with high conductivity. And at this stage there is no shortage of carbon...
This sig is covered under the GPL.
It depends on what you are recycling. You made an unfair statement. I know the local scrap metals place will give you cash for many metals. Maybe it isn't worth your time and energy, but for some of us, we have things that can be recycled in a cost and energy efficient manner. Aluminum scrap (not just cans), steel, car batteries, copper, etc. Plastic bottles? maybe that isn't cost effective. But aluminum is very energy intesive to smelt and get out of the ground. Hell, I dump aluminum all the time at the scrap yard, for free, just because they are performing a service and the amount of money is insignificant to me (because it is such a small amount). Do I make a trip there just for that? (and waste gas) No, I do it when it is "on the way" already. If you have kids with nothing but time on their hands (I don't but I was a kid on a farm) you can put them to work and it will make a difference in your wallet. Some recycling programs are a waste, of time and money, but not all. Extracting the gold in the plating on your circuit board is a very difficult and energy intensive process, and not worth it (at the moment).
Many countries are adjusting there population forcasting due to aids.
Eventually, we will need to do something very drastic. Or find a cure. Personaly I am all about finding a cure. However at what point do we say "this needs to end now" for the survival of the species?
Not implying right now, but it should be considered.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is bad news for me. Ore was already only available from three hexes, even less now. I guess I'll have to start embracing the longest road strategy. Dev cards are nice becuase nobody sees it coming!
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
I live in Chile, South America. We are one of the main producers of copper in the world; in fact, it is our main export by far.
The price of copper has been claiming so fast, that the amount of Dollars coming to our country is messing with our economy, in fact, there are people trying to intervene the value of the Dollar so it doesn't keep going down as is doing now
I don't know if the value of copper will keep rising, but it is coming to a point when our country is depending suffering because we are getting "Dutch disease"
-- Entropy isn't what it used to be. JackI'd pay 5$ for one!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
However much is necessary, though, I am hopeful that tomorrow's scientists and engineers will be up to the task.
Helium actually forms in the Earth's crust by radioactive decay; it's emitted as alpha particles when certain radioactive elements break down. It then accumulate in natural traps, usually in oil or gas fields. The trick then is how quickly helium accumulates, and while I don't have specific numbers, the answer is "not very quickly." As in, don't go to bed tonight hoping you'll have new helium to mine in the morning -- think in terms of geologic time.
There's also a "primordial" helium reservoir in the Earth that is slowly being outgassed, and can be partly discerned from the alpha particle source based on mass, but this is also a small reservoir and will not replenish helium quickly (where quickly = economically useful time scales -- again, think in terms of geologic time).
Most of the oil and gas fields from which helium is currently recovered have been existed for tens to a few hundred of million of years.
There is plenty of helium off the Earth but that's certainly expensive to recover, albeit possibly cheaper than manufacturing helium by inducing alpha-decay in susceptible elements. We're definitely not, however, going to wait for helium to accumulate again in those natural traps from which we're currently recovering it.
About Mars:
The same processes of radioactive decay and outgassing that exist on Earth act on Mars. The mnost important differences between the Earth and Mars might be differences in the initial concentration, and subsequent fractionation in the Martian crust, of radioactive elements that decay to form helium, and the susceptibility of Martian geology to form traps for helium. I suspect the concentration of radioactive elements is close enough to Earth's that this isn't much of an issue. Mars doen't have continents, so the concentration of radioactive material (a process related to fractionation by partial melting) may not be as pronounced, in which case the helium produced by radioactive decay would be more evenly distributed through the crust, reducing the ease with which it could accumulate in any particular spot. Earth has a more active geology that might be better suited to forming the kinds of folds and rock layers conducive to trapping helium, but that's pure speculation on my part. Conversely, the relative geologic stability of Mars may allow particular reservoirs to accumulate helium for a longer period of time. Maybe we'll resolve these alternatives when we get there...
In short, I can't make a strong case for the availability of helium on Mars, but I strongly suspect that by the time this becomes an issue for us it'll be a lot cheaper to import helium from elsewhere in the solar system.
I'm pretty sure I remember from my materials science class that pure elements conduct electricy better than any alloy. This is because the alloys have more complex crystal lattices and thus always have a shorter mean free path for electrons, which means higher resistance.
Obviously it's not always true, as the high temperature superconductors are all composites, not pure elements. But at room temperature and high-flux levels (as in electrical transmission), I think it holds true.
Am I wrong?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
One of the semantic tricks pulled by the Science News story and perhaps by the original authors is to term consumption a "need". In other words, just because the world is consuming copper at unusually high rates due to its low cost, this consumption is "needed". My take is that once copper rises, the "need" will dissipate.
And that brings me to my final point. Why is this a problem? If copper becomes scarce then its price will rise and people will comsume less of it. My point here is that this problem is already solved. The economy will adjust for it naturally.
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.
It's not even that bad, I'll bet. Think really closely about the article text:
In fact, residents of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. required an average of 170 kilograms of copper per person. Multiply that by overall population estimates of 10 billion people by 2100 and the world will require 1.7 billion metric tons of copper by that date--more than even the most generous estimate of available resources.
What do all three of these countries have in common? You got it -- really low average population density. Wanna bet that the typical Tokyo resident who lives three inches from the next resident doesn't need quite as much long-range power transmission infrastructure as the guy in North Dakota who lives ten miles from anyone?
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I recall that acetylene polymer is a conductor. Graphite is as well. Perhaps not that great, but there will be some that compounds that are.
I suppose the wide-spread use of organic compounds as conductors will only happen if we stop burning the oil supplies before they are depleted.
*Ice Wewe slides his block of copper into the closet, and waits until it appriciates in value.* Hey, that's actually a good reason for hanging on to all those old PCs and networking gear you have. In 2050, assuming you're still alive then, you can sell it for your retirement fund. ^.^
we need less people :(
before recorded history & we survived that too! Really, we don't
even need any new fangled energy sources greens, alternatives, nuthin'.
We never had it then & we're doing just fine NOW and always will!!!
http://free.seekon.com/NonNuclearFusionEngines/. htm
bbrrrr; Gettin' cold in here today. Someone
turn the air conditioner around and turn it on.
http://www.newpath4.com/WorldwideClimateEngineMsg
Ah, the old ways. The campfires and the
campfire girls. Why change em? Why change ANYTHING??
The socialists at Scientific American always get it wrong when they discuss economic issues, probably because they do not understand economics, but just parrot the socialist clap trap from academic "sages" like MIT's Paul Krugman or Noam Chmosky (who isn't an economist). Copper production is down because prices are down. EPA regs have shut down large copper mines under questionable criteria (as all gov't statistics are). Nothing will spur copper production like higher prices. The industrializing world's demand will spur production using new technology and new sources and all of a sudden the shortage will be gone. Unless of course we let the socialists at Sci Am regulate and create an artificial shortage.
My highschool chemistry teacher could crank out mole jokes without end- sometimes dozens in a single day. I haven't heard a good one in *years*... any mods with a similarly quirky sense of humor want to give that post a +1 funny?
I feel slimy from just reading your thoughts.
But because I'm so nice, I'm going to give you directions to a free market libertopia. It's a land with no official government, no taxes, no lawsuits, and no regulations. Private militias provide security. Businesses print their own money. There are no business licenses, no medical regulations, no welfare, no subsidies.
It's a little slice of heaven called Somalia. Perhaps you've heard of it?
The fact that you aren't living there right now is the de facto proof that you don't even believe the garbage you spew. I doubt anyone could pay you enough to move there, which says more than any argument you make ever will.
If we run out of stuff on earth, it's not like there is a shortage of materials in space.
This is my sig.