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An international team of researchers, led by the University of Delaware's Saleem Ali, says global resource governance and sharing of geoscience data is needed to address challenges facing future mineral supply.
Specifically of concern are a range of technology minerals, which are an essential ingredient in everything from laptops and cell phones to hybrid or electric cars to solar panels and copper wiring for homes. However, base metals like copper are also a matter of immense concern.
The research team, which included experts from academic, government and industrial institutions across five continents, the U.S., Europe, South Africa, Australia and South America, reported their findings today in a peer-reviewed paper in Nature.
"There are treaties on climate change, biodiversity, migratory species and even waste management of organic chemicals, but there is no international mechanism to govern how mineral supply should be coordinated," said Ali, the paper's lead author and Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and Environment at UD.
The researchers reviewed data and demand forecasts on the sustainability of global mineral supplies in coming decades. The study showed that mining exploration is not keeping up with future demand for minerals and recycling in and of itself would not be able to meet the demand either.
Saleem H. Ali, et al. Mineral supply for sustainable development requires resource governance. Nature, 2017; 543 (7645): 367 DOI: 10.1038/nature21359
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fishybell on Monday March 27 2017, @02:28AM (13 children)
...or recycling?
(Score: 5, Informative) by sgleysti on Monday March 27 2017, @02:35AM (10 children)
To quote the sentence from the summary immediately prior to the one you quoted,
The study showed that mining exploration is not keeping up with future demand for minerals and recycling in and of itself would not be able to meet the demand either.
(Score: 4, Touché) by fishybell on Monday March 27 2017, @03:18AM (6 children)
Did you expect me to read the *entire* summary?
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday March 27 2017, @05:23AM (5 children)
Honestly, he should feel lucky that we bothered to read his whole comment--well, at least enough of it to appear that we read it all. Look, verbally dense prose is an art appreciated by only the educated and cultured.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday March 27 2017, @07:13AM (1 child)
Too long. Better:
How to convey your thoughts:
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday March 27 2017, @11:54AM
language bad.
1. Kiss friends
2. kill enemies
3. growl menacingly
4. ???
5. profit!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Monday March 27 2017, @07:28AM (2 children)
Are you saying that my comment is verbally dense? There's not even an entire sentence before the quote.
I enjoy reading all sorts of things, including novels, news articles, electronics datasheets, and file format specifications. It greatly surprises me when my coworkers don't read or complain about having to read something. One recent case was an email containing three labelled internet links and two sentences explaining what the links were for. This situation is frustrating, as complaining about having to read that email seemed tantamount to complaining about my attempt to communicate in the first place.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday March 27 2017, @07:07PM (1 child)
Verbally dense, no, your comment is not. My thoughts started out as a cynical reflection in regards to reading comprehension on the internet in general and devolved from there into the MBA/Trump briefing format of my post and the preposterous accusation that your post was long winded. I know it is tradition carried over from the old site to not RTFA, and it is becoming more common for people to not even bothering to RTFS completely. However, I've witnessed a few times were people don't even bother to RTFC before replying to it--which is precisely what I wanted to lampoon. As NotSanguine [soylentnews.org] implied in his post [soylentnews.org] words are hard and perhaps should be banned.
It's hard to tell if your coworkers are extremely lazy or stupid. If I were in your situation, I'd be highly tempted to enlighten them across the head with the staff of education or encourage them by tossing the chair of self-motivation at them. While I wouldn't expect those methods to really fix your coworkers problems, it might fix your own problems by replacing them with other resolvable issues like an immediate lack of coworkers or unemployment.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:05AM
encourage them by tossing the chair of self-motivation at them
The Ballmer is an oldie but a goodie; I like your style, sir. DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2017, @11:20AM (1 child)
Then, the shift in materials used has to be made. Copper as conductor will have to be replaced with Aluminum, one of the most abundant elements on Earth, or with graphene.
New technologies to achieve same ends will have to be acquired. Good bye soldering with tin, hello micro-welding, or conductive gluing. Meta-materials from abundant, easily sourced elements, instead of mineral-sourced materials.
Humanity already went through this before, when we transited from Bronze Age into Iron Age. It was a qualitative technological setback, which came from necessity due to depletion of then-known reserves of tin and copper, and accompanying crash of their societies and civilization, probably due to skyrocketing prices of their main technological material. This time around we are hopefully better prepared for change, because we have wider base of knowledge, but we need to act before social forces produce another extremism and perform yet another erase of our collective scientific brain.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Monday March 27 2017, @03:50PM
Right; there are some nice alternatives. I have been using ceramic or Aluminum-polymer capacitors instead of Tantalum ones in electronic designs.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 27 2017, @08:52PM
The study showed that mining exploration is not keeping up with future demand for minerals and recycling in and of itself would not be able to meet the demand either.
Doesn't have to when the future mining has already been discovered. A common thing overlooked here is that what is economical to mine depends on the price. The higher the price the more existing things that are worth mining. This is a non-issue because we have already found the stuff that we'll mine in the future; we can recycle what we've already used, even the stuff currently in landfills; and we can use our existing resources more efficiently. A rise in the price of the material on a market will encourage all that to happen.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday March 27 2017, @06:33PM
One is all ready to go, the other I still need to take the hard drive out.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:57PM
or just make quality products that are made to last, and make fewer of them?