A good example of what happened with nickel from the outrageous commodity price bubble was that “pig nickel,” nickel that was economically unfeasible to process under $8-10/pound, was being processed big time in China. Nickel is one of the smaller metal markets controlled by fewer players and it had the biggest price manipulation and was priced the furthest from the mean at the peak of its bubble. China was importing this previously waste ore, processing it, and able to make money.

The non-metal natural resources are very different, forests, water, oil, etc, many of these seem to get used up faster then nature can replenish them …

Metals run into constant supply problems, either over supply or under supply, causing price collapse ( just happened) or price bubbles (also just happened prior to the price collapse.) But they do not run out. Look at copper, in the first km depth of the earth there is in the range 1000 times more per person then a person would use in a lifetime.

Looking at the example with nickel, there was probably enough exploration because of the bubble pricing to find locations that would ultimately lead to hundreds of years of supply. Because of the price collapse little will be done to move these properties from known resources to reserves. Last price collapse mining companies were unloading properties because they could not afford the maintenance cost of the properties.

And here’s a difference between the US and Australian mining industry, or at least it used to be a difference, in Australia the mining industry the industry was goal orientated to just have 5-10 years of reserves planned out. You are looking at significant investment to move properties from resource to reserve and the earlier you do that, the longer you have money invested with zero return.

This chart has taken that difference to a new level to suggest that if it is not in reserves we are going to run out …

I tried to find the original post, but I was lead to another post questioning how long uranium will last, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last, 230 years by the this estimate of known existing deposits and with technology that enabled it to be pulled from the ocean, 30,000 years …

Uranium can be thought of a metal in its infancy, or early childhood, in terms of human exploration for it on this planet and we’ve already located enough to last through every one of our lives.

Silly post I have seen in a long time…

Big problem with this chart – the assumption that known global supplies do not increase, and that we can extract exactly as much as we need each year. Neither is true.

New supplies of many of these commodities are being discovered every day (or at least they were when people were investing in risky exploration companies). New uses for them are also being discovered, which also leads to problems with supply and demand.

No way in hell we will run out of silver in 9 years. I can put good money on that.

The chart is understandably challenging our assumptions of infinite resource endowments, but it would be nice to do it in a way that doesn’t lead to false conclusions. Grant me a false premise and I can prove anything.

Cellmate: …and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.
H.I.: You ate what?
Cellmate: We ate sand.
[pause]
H.I.: You ate SAND?
Cellmate: That’s right!

this: “The planet is a finite sphere, and thus has finite resources.”

is, to me, a limited view.

see: Ludwig von Mises: “Rational conduct means that man, in face of the fact that he cannot satisfy all his impulses, desires, and appetites, forgoes the satisfaction of those which he considers less urgent.” – Human Action
+VangelV Says: April 26th, 2009 at 10:23 am , above..

and read some: http://www.mises.org/resources/3250

LSS: We are on the Planet that you reference, I don’t believe our Intellect has Limits. With that, much in the same vein as Dr. King, “We shall Overcome”.

If you want ‘Limits’, you’ll find them via Fiat, in Spades, or in Calculus. Past that, as the PGA Tour will remind you: “Anything’s Possible~”

“Not the way it is, folks.”

The planet is a finite sphere, and thus has finite resources.

Unless of course you believe the world is flat, then it and the natural resources it provides can go on ad infinitum.

I said nothing about: “Just like the ozone, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead paint, etc., etc.”

those are Your words, not mine.

as I’ve told you before, don’t do that, it’s the worst of cheap tricks.

w/this: “Scoffing is risky business.”

you should remember a few things: Politics posing as Science is, truly, ‘risky’, and Science, unlike Politics, is not a Popularity contest–Things are, either, verifiably True, and repeatably so, or they are not.

in the meantime, you may care to brush-up on: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/