Is the supply of any resource on this earth, unlimited?

[Pure]

Is the supply of a any given resource, unlimited, in practical terms?

This suggests that, for example, regardless of the increasing demand for copper, there will always be "enough".

There was a famous wager between two economists, on this topic, see the account below.

Paul Ehrlich essentially predicted scarcity in the long run, and this would apply, for example, to several minerals—chromium, tin, tungsten—which were chosen for the wager. Julian Simon argued that “scarcity” is an illusion; it doesn't hold for the long run. What’s available is a function of price people will pay. [See the copper quotation, below.]

[See the explanation by Brian Carnell, below, for more detail.]

If Ehrlich is right, one would expect rising prices, for the long run. If Simon is right, one may expect falling prices, long run. Simon was proven right, for the period of the wager, ten years.

Incidentally, Simon apparently lost a similar wager with South, regarding the price of timber.

This present debate is a repeat, in a slightly new form, of the old debate begun by Malthus, when he predicted food scarcity because of the limitations of agriculture and the exponential increase of population.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=44

[Pro Simon Article from Capitalism Magazine]

Reason vs Faith: Julian Simon vs Paul Ehrlich

by Joseph Kellard (April 26, 1998)

In 1980, Julian Simon, the recently deceased economist and author of The Ultimate Resource, offered to environmentalists a wager based on his assertion that the price of any raw material would indefinitely decline on a future date. The wager was taken up by Paul Ehrlich, author of the best- selling 1968 book, "The Population Bomb," which predicted that during the 1970s "the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." These predicted deaths were off by hundreds of millions.

"In October 1980, Ehrilch and Simon drew up a futures contract obligating Simon to sell Ehrlich the same quantities which could be purchased for $1,000 of five metals (copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten) ten years later as 1980 prices," writes Ronald Bailey in his book EcoScam. "If the combined prices rose above $1,000, Simon would pay the difference. If they fell below $1,000, Ehrlich would pay Simon.

Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07 in October 1990." During the 1980s the combined prices of the metals selected by Ehrlich declined by over 50 percent. Simon easily won because he knew that the supply for resources was not becoming more scarce but more abundant, since the economic history of predominantly free capitalist nations had demonstrated how the prices of most major commodities have declined over time. [end magazine excerpt]
====

Simon’s position, in his own words:

A couple quotes from Wikipedia:

Julian Simon believed in the long term-sustainability of humanity and claimed in a 1995 policy report for the Cato Institute

We have in our hands now—actually in our libraries—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years. Most amazing is that most of this specific body of knowledge was developed within just the past two centuries or so, though it rests, of course, on basic knowledge that had accumulated for millennia. Indeed, the last necessary additions to this body of technology—nuclear fission and space travel—occurred decades ago.[2]

[Simon on copper]

“Simarily, the quantity of copper that will ever be available to us is not finite, because there is no method (even in principle) of making an appropriate count of it, given the problem of the economic definition of "copper," the possibility of creating copper and its economic equivalent from other materials, and thus the lack of boundaries to the sources from which copper might be drawn.”

[This passage was later expanded and revised, though the central point and reasoning remain the same.]

--Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, 1981 pp 47

Explanation of Simon’s position:

http://www.mnforsustain.org/ehrlich_ehrlich-simon_bet_simon_view.htm
Are Resources Infinite?

Brian Carnell*
May 18, 2000

Economist Julian Simon’s claim that all natural resources are infinite has provoked a lot of discussion and debate, often by people on both sides who miss the fundamental insight Simon had about resource availability.

Simon’s point is not that at any given moment there are an infinite number of gold or copper atoms in the Earth. Clearly the mass of the Earth is finite, and current cosmological theories imply the mass of the universe is finite as well.

Instead resources are infinite in the sense that human beings will never run out of them for whatever purpose they decide to use them for. This directly contradicts the conventional environmental wisdom which claims the more of a resource removed from the Earth, the more scarce that resource becomes.

Simon uses copper as an example of why resources are infinite. Copper has been used for thousands of years for a variety of uses. The amount of copper taken from mines has increased over the last few millennia, yet copper-based products are actually cheaper today than at any other time in history. If it were true that the more a natural resource used the more scarce it becomes, this is a puzzle.

Simon points out, however, that as the price of copper increases due to scarcity human beings find new sources of copper, find ways to recycle existing copper stocks and develop alternatives to copper.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

The logic with respect to Copper is seriously flawed. Simon is saying that since we have taken more and more copper from the earth it's become cheapers, therefore, it will last forever.

In fact, copper oar is more expensive to mine today than it ever has been. The difference is 20 years ago, the United States consumed one-third of all the copper mined. Then it was processed in the this country, made into wire, roofing, sheet etc and marketed. The sell price of the finished product included American labor and machine/factory investment.

Today, China has displaced the United States as the number 1 consumer of copper. With their new factories and cheap labor the price of finished goods has fallen.

But, the price has nothing to do with the quantity of minable copper left in the earth. The price is a function of "value added" after the ore has been extracted.

Recycling? 30% of all the copper mined is recycled. Isn't that a 70% LOSS? So, let's look at oil - maybe 120 years left in the ground. Once it's burned - it's gone. No recycling. Iron? A somewhat higher rate of recycling because of current scrap price than copper, but still at a loss over all.

Face it. There is only so much earth. Eventually it has to run out and recycling can only set the final date back into the future so far. New sources? Get serious. New sources would simple use other resources that will run out too.

 

[rgraham666]

If you look at it in a strictly linear fashion, as most people do, no resources are unlimited.

Some, to my mind, are definitely limited, oil for example.

Human stupidity is unlimited, but not a resource.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I hit ALL on your poll, my knee-jerk reaction.

Bnd now that I think about it, it's possible that copper can and will be recycled indefinitely, and that all the "lost" copper will be reclaimed. And obviously, the original debate wasn't about our most un-reclaimable raw material, oil. Do you think that someday we'll be able to de-constitute all those incalculable tons of styrene and other plastics, and break them down into a fuel source?

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The supply of human ingenuity and innovativeness is infinite. For this reason, the question asked in the threadmaker's poll is meaningless.

(PS. You forgot the solar system and the stars.)

 

[Pure]

well, sorry, rox, i think it's a fair question, fairly posed, with Simon or his followers' words used to clarify the points. IF the UNlimited (Simon) position is simply that any mineral, due to human ingenuity, can and will be eventually accessed in a far corner of he universe; AND that, for example, copper atoms in the universe are essentially infinite-- it's not a very interesting thesis. to me, at least.

further Simon and most of those like him are perfectly willing, as shown in the wager, to limit the discussion to earth, though they did not always do so.
---

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The supply of human ingenuity and innovativeness is infinite. For this reason, in the context of human life and activity (which is the only context in which even raising the issue makes any sense), the question asked in the threadmaker's poll is meaningless.

In existential terms, obviously even the universe itself has a finite amount of stuff. In the context of human life and activity, this is a meaningless fact.


PS. "Scarcity" itself is not meaningless in a different sense: Every human only has limited amount of time, and at any given moment the amount of life-sustaining and enhancing goods we actually do produce is finite. Thus, the problem of economics, which is to distribute the production of those goods in a manner that encourages their continued production, and increased production of more and better goods. (And before someone says, "We have enough," health care is one of the many goods whose production we would like to increase.)

 

[R. Richard]

Yes, ther is one 'resource' that is not only limitless in supply but grows on a dsay by day basis. That resource is bullshit.

 

[shereads]

Define a time-line here, Pure. Never is a long time; even the sun will eventually run out of fuel.

When that happens, the earth will have an abundant supply of only two things: rocks, cockroaches, and members of the Osmond family. Those might not be "resources" to us, but you can bet that other planets are already researching practical uses for the Osmonds.

 

[gauchecritic]

In an infinite universe there is ipso facto an infinite supply of everything.

Limited to the earth however, the falling price of anything has no bearing whatsoever on its supply. The price of all goods is relative only to the supply of money. (and economies of scale)

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[yevkassem72]

We should conserve everything. Just not too much.

 

[Jubal_Harshaw]

Human stupidity is unlimited, but not a resource.

I beg to differ. Ask any politician, lawyer, CEO or investment banker, they'll tell you its THE most valuable resource.

Insurance companies use it a lot too.

 

[only_more_so]

While people are perfectly capable of "squandering" resources, the real truth is that people don't destroy those resources, except in a very few cases. Oil for instance is actually destroyed when it is used, but we could recreate oil if there was a reason to do so. It would take much more energy to produce that it would eventually release, so there is really no reason to do so.

But other resources such as copper, iron, etc. are not actually destroyed when they are used. Sure we only recycle a small fraction of what we mine, but in time people will be mining trash dumps for resources because it is cheaper than digging in rock. The only way there would be a scarcity of these materials is if the human population greatly increases their demand per capita and the population of the earth greatly increases.

Food and drinkable water are the obvious limits on human population (well aside from the fact that a greater population density would lead to more murders/wars/terrorism/plagues/etc). But technology has improved faster than the population. But, in the long run, I believe that food will be the only resource that we would truly be in danger of running short on. At some point food might push out other renewable resources such as timber, but that day is a long way out.

 

[Pure]

hi, only m

thanks for a cogent posting! for some reason the other adherents to the "unlimited" view are declining to state their case.

 

[only_more_so]

thanks for a cogent posting! for some reason the other adherents to the "unlimited" view are declining to state their case.

Well, it seems like I am the only one who votes anywhere near that side of the scale, so I figure I had to say something.

Unfortunately, I think people are going to continue doing the same stupid thing that mankind has been doing its entire existance: Worrying about the wrong problem.

 

[Pure]

here is an example of the "UNlimited supply" argument.

in another thread, roxanne argued that the supply of uranium was essentially unlimited. in this she was echoing the views of the World Nuclear Association (and a number of mineral exploration and mining companies). so here is their view, in their word, from their website (check the website for the full argument and look at the graphs, e.g. for aluminum):


The paper below, from the World Nuclear Association, essentially argues that there is, practically, an unlimited ("sustainable"--i.e. not running out) supply of all minerals, tin, uranium,...Well, maybe oil supplies will become scarce, says the author, but NOT all the other minerals..

This is essentially the argument of Julian Simon that "finite" does not apply to resources. He applied the argument to oil as well:

"Our energy supply is non-finite, and oil is an important example . . . the number of oil wells that will eventually produce oil, and in what quantities, is not known or measurable at present and probably never will be, and hence is not meaningfully finite."

The argument is essentially that what's a 'resource' in the ground is dependent on the economics; i.e. based on the quality of ore, will the price of the extracted mineral be higher than anyone will pay? This has the following apparent point: If we say there are 1 billion tons of Mineral X in the ground for $1/pound, then when buyers will pay $2/pound, there is MORE of Mineral X, say 2 Billion tons. IOW, as you lower the quality of ore required, say from 1% to .1%, there is suddenly much more (usuable) ore.

Generally, then, one may expect FALLING prices. The 'prophets of doom [=depletion]', of course, predict RISING prices, as did Simon. He was wrong in the period he chose to wager on. The case of aluminum is used to support the author's point. Oil is an exception, say the author; he apparently agrees that prices are going to rise and yes, there, will be depletion; not running out, but just too great an expense to use very much oil.


http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html
World Nuclear Association

The Sustainability of Mineral Resources
with reference to uranium

[Substantially derived from 2003 WNA Symposium paper by Colin MacDonald, Uranium: Sustainable Resource or Limit to Growth? - supplemented by his 2005 WNA Symposium paper.]
[verbatim extracts, starting here]

In summary, historic metals price trends, when examined in the light of social and economic change through time, demonstrate that resource scarcity is a double-edged sword. The same societal trends that have increased metals consumption, tending to increase prices, have also increased the available wealth to invest in price-reducing knowledge and technology. These insights provide the basis for the economic sustainability of metals, including uranium.

Geological Knowledge

Whatever minerals are in the earth, they cannot be considered usable resources unless they are known. There must be a constant input of time, money and effort to find out what is there. This mineral exploration endeavour is not merely fossicking or doing aerial magnetic surveys, but must eventually extend to comprehensive investigation of ore bodies so that they can reliably be defined in terms of location, quantity and grade. Finally, they must be technically and economically quantified as mineral reserves. That is the first aspect of creating a resource.

For reasons outlined above, measured resources of many minerals are increasing much faster than they are being used, due to exploration expenditure by mining companies and their investment in research. Simply on geological grounds, there is no reason to suppose that this trend will not continue. Today, proven mineral resources worldwide are more than we inherited in the 1970s, and this is especially so for uranium.

Simply put, metals which are more abundant in the Earth's crust are more likely to occur as the economic concentrations we call mineral deposits. They also need to be reasonably extractable from their host minerals. By these measures, uranium compares very well with base and precious metals. Its average crustal abundance of 2.7 ppm is comparable with that of many other metals such as tin, tungsten, and molybdenum.

Many common rocks such as granite and shales contain even higher uranium concentrations of 5 to 25 ppm. Also, uranium is predominantly bound in minerals which are not difficult to break down in processing.
[…]
Technology

It is meaningless to speak of a resource until someone has thought of a way to use any particular material. In this sense, human ingenuity quite literally creates new resources, historically, currently and prospectively. That is the most fundamental level at which technology creates resources, by making particular minerals usable in new ways. Often these then substitute to some degree for others which are becoming scarcer, as indicated by rising prices.

Uranium was not a resource in any meaningful sense before 1940.

More particularly, if a known mineral deposit cannot be mined, processed and marketed economically, it does not constitute a resource in any practical sense. Many factors determine whether a particular mineral deposit can be considered a usable resource - the scale of mining and processing, the technological expertise involved, its location in relation to markets, and so on. The application of human ingenuity, through technology, alters the significance of all these factors and is thus a second means of "creating" resources. In effect, portions of the earth's crust are reclassified as resources.

A further aspect of this is at the manufacturing and consumer level, where technology can make a given amount of resources go further through more efficient use.(aluminium can mass was reduced by 21% 1972-88, and motor cars each use about 30% less steel than 30 years ago)
[….]
Depletion and sustainability

… the exhaustion of mineral resources during mining is real.
Resource economists do not deny the fact of depletion, nor its long-term impact - that in the absence of other factors, depletion will tend to drive commodity prices up. But as we have seen, mineral commodities can become more available or less scarce over time if the cost-reducing effects of new technology and exploration are greater than the cost-increasing effects of depletion.

One development that would appear to argue against economic sustainability is the growing awareness of the global depletion of oil, and in some regions such as North America, natural gas. But oil is a fundamentally different material. This starts with geology, where key differences include the fact that oil and gas were formed by only one process: the breakdown of plant life on Earth. Compared with the immense volumes of rock-forming minerals in the Earth? crust, living organisms on top of it have always been a very tiny proportion.

But a more important fact is that the world has consumed oil, and recently natural gas as well, in a trajectory of rapid growth virtually unmatched by any other commodity. Consumption growth rates of up to 10% annually over the past 50 years are much higher than we see for other commodities, and support the contention that oil is a special depletion case for several reasons: its geological occurrence is limited, it has been inexpensive to extract, its energy utility has been impossible to duplicate for the price, and its resulting depletion rates have been incredibly high.


This focus on rates of depletion suggests that one of the dimensions of economic sustainability of metals has to do with their relative rates of depletion. Specifically, it suggests that economic sustainability will hold indefinitely as long as the rate of depletion of mineral resources is slower than the rate at which it is offset. This offsetting force will be the sum of individual factors that work against depletion, and include cost-reducing technology and knowledge, lower cost resources through exploration advances, and demand shifting through substitution of materials.

[end excerpts]

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Double post...oops.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

There is one resource that is unlimited and the potential has yet to be explored completely. It is with us day in and day out, it is around us without end, at least in our childrens, childrens, childrens, ad infinitum life times. It is the one resource that is so abundant that you can't go anywhere without seeing it.

Anyone care to take a guess?


Sunlight. Pure energy for the asking if we could get the fat assed politicians off their collective asses and push the oil companines out the PAC door. *scratches head*.

As far as all those other resources go...*shrug*.

 

[only_more_so]

There is one resource that is unlimited and the potential has yet to be explored completely. It is with us day in and day out, it is around us without end, at least in our childrens, childrens, childrens, ad infinitum life times. It is the one resource that is so abundant that you can't go anywhere without seeing it.

Anyone care to take a guess?


Sunlight. Pure energy for the asking if we could get the fat assed politicians off their collective asses and push the oil companines out the PAC door. *scratches head*.

As far as all those other resources go...*shrug*.

Well, not quite unlimited, but if mankind hasn't weaned itself from the sun by the time it goes out, then we deserve living in the cold.

Also, if you have enough energy, anything else just takes science.

 

[Edward Teach]

Simon points out, however, that as the price of copper increases due to scarcity human beings find new sources of copper, find ways to recycle existing copper stocks and develop alternatives to copper.

Technological innovations may make resources less expensive in the short term through more efficient methods of finding raw materials, extracting them, recycling them, etc.

The demand for a resourse cannot rise forever without its cost rising. At some point, either the demand for a resource has to stabilize or decrease (alternatives to the resource get discovered or invented) else it will become scarce and the cost will rise.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." But he only created a finite amount of earth. The earth's resources are, in fact, unlimited in that no matter can be lost or destoryed. It changes state, it oxydizes and breaks down, it volitilizes and recombines into other "stuff", but it's still there.

Ultimately, there is a question that must be asked: What do you mean by unlimited? If you mean, will each particle or subatomic particle of matter exist forever, the answer is: Maybe. On the other hand if the intent of your question is intended to mean within the framework of mankinds conscienceousness, the answer is: Yes.

However, both answers rely on technology coming up with new ways of identifying and extracting pre-used resources. For instance, you take an old t-shirt and a can of Brasso to a copper pipe fitting. Everytime you polish that fitting a small amount of copper-oxide ends up on the t-shirt. Ultimately, the t-shirt is discarded to a landfill, burned and buried. How much copper is on that t-shirt? How do you then locate it? Is it fesible or even resonable to reclaim the copper-oxide from that rag? If you did, how much copper would you get and how much would you again lose to the environment in the extraction?. This is not just about copper, but about every resource.

My own opinion is that "forever" refers to some ego-centric time that only defines man's existance on the planet, not the existance of the plant itself.

There are extraction technologies coming on line such as "Electroplate Winnowing" which does a good job of the extraction of certain metals from raw ore at a high price in electrical energy, but it doesn't get the ore out of the ground. Every year, the ore is found deeper, open pit, also known as Strip Mines, get larger and deeper to get to the oar at a greater cost in dollars and in cost in repairing the scar left when the mine is no longer producing. Mine owners promise year after year to refill the scars they leave when the mines finally shut down. But at that point the mines are producing no dollars and they are finding it cheaper to accept fines and losses from bankruptcy than to do as they promised. The fact is, very few of the sites where strip mines were in this country or any other have been actually reclaimed.

Again we are back to relying on technology to find a way to get the ore out of the ground without disturbing it and creating more havoc or finding all the mineral waste discarded and reclaiming it.

I'm afraid when the world comes to that point, if it ever does, we won't be around much longer and forever will have arrived.

 

[shereads]

I beg to differ. Ask any politician, lawyer, CEO or investment banker, they'll tell you its {stupidity is} THE most valuable resource.

You're partly right, Jub. We in marketing and advertising value stupidity, but only to the extent that it doesn't interfere with the process of acquiring and spending money. If I may, I'd like to propose that DENIAL is the most valuable human resource. Even a genius i.q. cannot protect anyone from the desire to ignore the likelihood of terrible consequences.

Without denial, a temporarily drop in the price of gasoline wouldn't lead to an increase in SUV sales among people who only a year ago were considering the purchase of boring subcompacts.

Without denial, we'd be forced to elect leaders based on more complicated criteria than "I know, but I just didn't like that other guy," as if we were electing a dinner companion or an addition to our bowling league and not someone with the power of life and death over billons of human beings.

Later, when we learn that this likeable new leader of the free world thinks De Nile is a river in..in...in Panama, home of the Suez Canal, we might feel stupid; but only a portion of us can actually blame an inability to process information. For most of us, what looks like stupidity is just laziness and selfishness, reinforced by denial.

 

[Pure]

so, sher,

care to weigh in on the issue at hand. NON finitude ("sustainability") of supplies of resources, as argued, for instance by the uranium producers in my posting #17 above?

is there or is there not a possible problem in having "enough" uranium from this earth, for human needs in the next, say 200 years?

is the case of oil different, or basically the same?

and the more political ramification: can we rely on prices to direct the processes (of exploration, mining, etc.), without government stepping in and regulating or "coercing" the resource people?

 

[Pure]

hi jenny,

you've made some excellent points in the postings above. taking the most recent, you bring up a problem that uranium producers were silent about. ASSUME that one can sustain supply by going after less and less rich ore. That instead of the usual ore with 1% uranium oxide, one can move to .1% or .01%, etc. How does the extraction work? Where do the tailings go?

Further, most important, what energy is required for this process? At some point doesn't the energy expended exceed what one can gain by the extraction?