💾 Archived View for sdf.org › mmeta4 › Phlog › phlog-2018-10-21.txt captured on 2024-05-10 at 11:30:33.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
October 21 2018 Recently finished reading 'Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet'[1] by Ugo Bardi. Bardi is an Italian chemistry professor and one of the original 'Limits of Growth'[2] researchers. He also blogs regularly about many of the issues revolving around humanity's current predicament at Cassandra Legacy[3]. Extracted is a fairly easy read and presents a good introduction into how many of the minerals we mine were formed, the geological processes that migrate them from the earth's core to the surface, and the general history of mining, both by humans and plants. It also explores the practical limits of mineral extraction, both in terms of Energy Return of Investment (EROI) and the environmental impacts as the quality of ores continues to fall since humans invariably pick the low hanging fruit first. There are also some attempt to correlate historical shifts in world powers with the growth and decline of various mineral deposits. Overall well worth reading as it clearly illustrates that humanity is facing much more than Peak Oil, it's really Peak Everything. For example, take Uranium[4]; apparently a significant switch to nuclear energy would deplete economically recoverable deposits in just a few decades - not really the salvation for this wired world that proponents of nuclear power make it out to be. [1] https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/extracted/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth [3] https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com [4] http://energyskeptic.com/2017/peak-uranium-from-ugo-bardis-extracted/