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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.
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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.
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use Gold.
oh wait...
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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Didn't Homer make Bart do that too? Oh wait, that was grease reclamation.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
I'll take it all, Be really funny to see you try and plug a lamp into fiber.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
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.
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.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
that those minimal spanning tree algorithms I learned in university would come in handy!! :-)
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
"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?
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!
Time to tear down the Statue of Liberty and melt it down for Cat5!
(Dear NSA: I'm only joking)
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.
Exactly. I've read articles from the 1950's and 60's about how, by the year 2000, we'd have critical shortages of such vital resources as mercury and asbestos. Today, no one even produces mercury for mercury's sake - it's all a byproduct of gold mining, because it's cheaper to sell it than to dispose of it properly. And asbestos - you literally have to pay people to take it.
This is the same way in Connecticut and Maine. If you sell a particular brand, you need to take those bottles back. Conversely, you're not required to take back any brands that you don't sell.
The problem is if you buy a bunch of bottles of some weirdo brand, they're a pain in the butt to get rid of later, because no local place will take them. At my parents house there is a flat of glass root beer bottles that have been sitting around for almost a decade, because we can't figure out where they should go.
(And you can't put deposit bottles into the curbside recycling bin -- for reasons I don't quite understand, the guys on the truck will actually pick through the crap in your bin, and reject deposit bottles. I guess they really want you to get your 5 cents back.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
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."
All the Californians I know (and I live here) recycle bunches.
"They" make it pretty easy, and "they" take pretty much everything for recycling so you can recycle just about everything that comes in the house.
To the point where if I don't take my recycling out every week, it backs up in the house, whereas I only need to take the trash out every three weeks or so. For reference, that's two people (not so much trash), and I get a newspaper (more paper).
You should tell your Californian contacts to get with the program - seriously - recycling is easy and what kind of slob are you if you can't even do that for the planet? Shameful, imho.
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
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.
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"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
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.