I was watching BNN and a fellow in the copper mine industry was explaining how sulfuric acid, which is used to process copper, has gone up in price because it is used to make fertilizer. This is due to the ethanol industry. I think these little connections will be the key to peak everything.

"Peak oil is different partly because it has never happened before despite having been predicted frequently and because we don’t have “peaks” in other commodities. There is no “Peak Wheat” or “Peak Copper”."

I don't know mining so I can't comment on copper, but as an old farm boy I'm always suspicious when someone declares a peak in grains or any other agricultural commodity. The price of wheat has more to do with a few bad harvests than peak anything, and can easily reverse after a good harvest. The only distorting factor is the ethanol subsidy, but that is politics.

Climate change will shift crop zones about, but if one area goes to desert, other areas in the north will open up. Grain-fed beef might dwindle away, but rangeland grazing will still be with us. In Alberta, crop production is shifting slowly northward. Anyone who wants a long-term speculation might want to look at buying farmland in the Peace River district of northern Alberta.

One reason I don't mind seeing high oil prices (besides owning mineral rights and small investments in junior petes) is that it will encourage local market gardening and re-populate the productive agriculture lands. In my parents' day, every village had a market garden but they were wiped out because it was cheaper for supermarkets to buy produce imported from California than what the local farmers could do. I never understood how California produce could be trucked to Alberta via long-haul diesel semi-trailers and still be cheaper than a local farmer. With higher diesel prices, this hopefully will re-start local economies, not just in Alberta but anywhere in Canada or the USA where produce is imported despite local farmland.

There are gobs and gobs of sub-economic (less than 0.5%) copper in Arizona. For a price you can have all the copper you want.

Robert a Tucson

It is likely worth pointing out that there is a difference in kind and not degree between PO and shortages of metals such as copper, steel or even wheat. Once the copper is mined and refined it exists. It may be stolen from a decrepit house and resold but it remains. To be "consumed" would require a nuclear reaction (i.e change to a different element) or to be again dispersed or adulterated by impurities to the point of being economically worthless. Yes, iron may rust. But the overall point is valid. Even food, will be renewed, barring catastrophe or human intervention.

Oil is different, its consumption entails an increase in entropy. Or to put less scientifically and to borrow a phrase from the Shawshank Redemption, once it is burned it, "up and vanished like a fart in the wind". It existed in the first place because photosynthetic organisms took energy and (locally) reduced entropy by storing the energy in carbon hydrogen bonds. Once burned, for energy, it ain't coming back (without energy).

There may be peaks in non-energy related commodities but they are fundamentally different and influenced by different factors than fossil fuels.

I will say again, as I have said consistently while I have been on this board that while PO is deadly serious the incoherent to counterproductive lack of public policy is what may likely be the proximate cause of harm. Just heard Ford is mass producing a 65 mpg diesel which can only be sold in Europe. Wonder whether there is the know-how (rhetorical) to mass produce it as a diesel-hybrid.