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106 comments on Peak Minerals
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106 comments on Peak Minerals
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You are in error.
It is impossible to restore the total original content of any given thing once it has been manufactured and put to use.
Atoms fly off, friction, chemicals, the sun, time, what have you degrades every thing, ever made, constantly.
While it may not be destroyed it certainly is dispersed or transformed into forms that can longer be put to their original use.
Please explain how those change one element to another.
If the resource - e.g., lead - is not fundamentally changed - and in the case of lead, that requires changing it to a different element - then all that happens is the resource is dispersed. Re-collecting that resource requires energy - perhaps too much to make it economically viable - but that doesn't mean it can't be done.
Not to mention that you've missed the point, which was that complaining about future lead shortages is nowhere near the most pressing of our problems.
You are confusing loss of usable lead (or other mineral) with the concept of entropy. However, it is an important point you note that all recycling is not 100% efficient and eventually it will be uneconomic or otherwise not feasible to scrap off all the bits of lead that have been strewn about the globe in our growth.
The point I was getting at was that for oil the curve of production and the curve of consumption are the same. For lead the "consumption" curve is higher than the production curve because the lead can be consumed multiple times through recycling. By this mechanism it is theoretically possible to maintain or even increase consumption after production has peaked.