Here We Go Again

The world may soon find itself running out of rare metals used to form key components in high-tech devices from cell phones to semiconductors to solar panels, according to a report in New Scientist magazine.

In the respected British publication’s audit of “Earth’s natural wealth,” David Cohen writes that reserves of elements from platinum (used not only in every pollution-reducing automobile catalytic converter in use today but also in fuel cells) to indium (used in flat-screen TVs and computer monitors) and tantalum (used in mobile phones) are “being used up at an alarming rate.” These metals are chemical elements—no synthetic replacement can be developed.

Even more common metals like zinc and copper are in increasingly short supply as they are used in rapidly developing economies like India and China. Over the last year thefts of copper from power lines and electrical substations have soared, as has the price of copper.

Cohen cites the work of researchers like Armin Reller, a materials chemist at the University of Augsburg in Germany, who has predicted that supplies of indium, used in liquid-crystal displays, and of hafnium, a critical element for next-generation semiconductors, could be exhausted by 2017. The world’s zinc will be gone by 2037, Reller contends.

They were saying the same things in the 70s about the 80s. Gee.

The Earth is composed on an insane amount of raw material. All they have to do is find new sources. They’re out there. Copper is still a common metal. But I think we need to come up with something better as a conductor. I believe carbon nanotubes might be one answer. And that’s something we can manufacture. 

1. I’m ready to place a bet if Cohen is.
   Sucker!

   Posted by  on  05/31  at  09:57 AM

2. I read somewhere recently that the warming off the northeast coast of Canada is freeing some islands of the constant ice. The story said this would result in Canada being able to mine these areas for a multitude of minerals,including a mention of gold. The chicken littles are always proven wrong and somehow never have to admit their failures.

   Posted by  on  05/31  at  04:30 PM

3. What warming off the northeast coast?  The entire Newfoundland sealing fleet got frozen into the ice for weeks!

   Posted by  on  05/31  at  08:35 PM

4. It’s warming in the media’s so called mind

   Posted by James Hudnall  on  05/31  at  08:37 PM

5. Julian Simon had to right 20 years ago.  The one thing these “Chicken Littles” never factor in is the power of human ingenuity.

   Posted by  on  06/01  at  07:50 AM

6. Or Bjorn Lomberg, who said: “We didn’t leave the stone age for lack of rocks.”

   Posted by  on  06/01  at  11:45 AM
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