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  • Yermo
    Yermo
    Supplies of Rare Earth Elements Exhausted By 2017
    07/02/2008 1:45PM
    Nothing like a little very serious doom and gloom from slashdot:

    "While we bemoan the current oil crisis, I ran across an editorial that led me to research a more immediate threat. Ramped-up production of flat-panel displays means the material to make them will be 'extinct' by 2017. This goes for other electronics as well. Quoting: 'The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany's University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet's stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.' More links at the journal entry."

    Slashdot article
  • Comment By:
    -unknown
    -unknown
    07/07/2008 9:46AM
    Edit Comment
    <p> Umm... yeah, whatever</p> <p>Nothing like a "sky-is-falling" grabber to draw attention to resource scarcity and point the more forward-thinking folks to ponder stuff like more efficient resource extraction, use, and reclamation -- especially reclamation.</p><br> <p>Not to put to fine a point on it, Zinc is 3x as abundant as iron in the earth's crust.</p><br> <p>Indium production nearly vanished due to lack of demand during the Clinton presidency but the popularity of flat-panel displays caught the industry by surprise. Indium went from ~$100 to $600/lb seemingly overnight a few years back and now run $700-1500/lb depending on purity.</p><br>-drh
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