Supplies of Rare Earth Elements Exhausted By 2017

tomhudson writes "While we bemoan the current oil crisis, I ran across an editorial that led me to research a more immediate threat. Ramped-up production of flat-panel displays means the material to make them will be 'extinct' by 2017. This goes for other electronics as well. Quoting: 'The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany's University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet's stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.' More links at the journal entry."

Comments

Re:We're running out of 'X'! News at 11...

[damburger]

You are one of these dolts who thinks austrian economics can overrule the laws of physics, aren't you?

The invisible hand isn't some sort of benevolent god-of-the-technological-harvests. Simply because there is a market for something does not mean that the universe will conjure it up for you.

Stop reading your ideology-sodden essays on how the market is The Best Thing EVAR and learn yourself some proper science.

Re:Total ignorance of economics?

[damburger]

Modded 'Informative' are you kidding me? This is just regurgitated libertarian political rhetoric:

1. Who creates the biggest food shortages in the world? Your governments do. They subsidize production of the wrong products (subsidizing means going against the market's forces), causing price increases for the wrong reason. They restrict growing of certain crops in certain areas, or monopolize which crops can be grown.

So in the 19th century, when there was little or no government interference in the economy, people didn't starve?

2. If you're living in poverty and are hungry, doesn't it make sense to cut back on producing offspring? Yet when I've traveled the world for work, I always tend to try to seek out the poverished areas. They're spending more time on replicating DNA than they are on devising new ways to grow food. Sad. Usually they're living under a fascist or communist regime, which means revolution is their only probably solution. I know that Professor Popkin (University of North Carolina) said in 2005 or 2006 that the world's obese are growing in number while the malnourished are shrinking.

Then he, like you was wrong. The number of malnourished people in the world is increasing, has been constantly since the end of the cold war when pretty much the entire world subscribed to American-style capitalism, and you can check that fact for yourself.

3. Market economic theory may be predicated on supply and demand, but many people are ignorant of those who hamper both (again, usually governments). To me, the people who best stabilize markets are the speculators, who can often times stabilize pricing enough for farmers to weather bad seasons or deal with oversupply. If it wasn't for the speculators, pricing would be much more peak-and-valley, causing more hardship for those on relatively fixed or declining incomes.

The universe doesn't run on market forces. Speculators can't make your soil more fertile or you crops flourish. Your market rhetoric is both tiresome and misguided.