Natural resource economics
Resource economists study interactions between economic and natural systems, with the goal of developing a sustainable and efficient economy.
Academic and policy interest has now moved beyond simply the optimal commercial exploitation of the standard trio of resources to encompass management for other objectives.
Research topics could include the environmental impacts of agriculture, transportation and urbanization, land use in poor and industrialized countries, international trade and the environment, climate change, and methodological advances in non-market valuation, to name just a few.
[6] Simon has stated that the supply of natural resources is infinite (i.e. perpetual) [7] These conflicting views will be substantially reconciled by considering resource-related topics in depth in the next section, or at least minimized.
The Federal Government suddenly became compellingly interested in resource issues on December 7, 1941, shortly after which Japan cut the U.S. off from tin and rubber and made some other materials, such as tungsten, very difficult to obtain.
Resources change over time with technology and economics; more efficient recovery leads to a drop in the ore grade needed.
[8] Cobalt had been in an iffy supply status ever since the Belgian Congo (world's only significant source of cobalt) was given a hasty independence in 1960 and the cobalt-producing province seceded as Katanga, followed by several wars and insurgencies, local government removals, railroads destroyed, and nationalizations.
This was topped off by an invasion of the province by Katangan rebels in 1978 that disrupted supply and transportation and caused the cobalt price to briefly triple.
Rather than the chaos that resulted from the Zairean cobalt situation, this would be planned, a strategy designed to destroy economic activity outside the Soviet bloc by the acquisition of vital resources by noneconomic means (military?)
Some criteria for a satisfactory substitute are (1) ready availability domestically in adequate quantities or availability from contiguous nations, or possibly from overseas allies, (2) possessing physical and chemical properties, performance, and longevity comparable to the material of first choice, (3) well-established and known behavior and properties particularly as a component in exotic alloys, and (4) an ability for processing and fabrication with minimal changes in existing technology, capital plant, and processing and fabricating facilities.
[11] Materials can be eliminated without material substitutes, for example by using discharges of high tension electricity to shape hard objects that were formerly shaped by mineral abrasives, giving superior performance at lower cost,[12] or by using computers/satellites to replace copper wire (land lines).
An abundant resource is one whose material has so far found little use, such as using high-aluminous clays or anorthosite to produce alumina, and magnesium before it was recovered from seawater.
Identified resources are those whose location, grade, quality, and quantity are known or estimated from specific geologic evidence.
Metals such as copper, zinc, nickel, and lead will be obtained from manganese nodules or the Phosphoria formation (sic!).
While Europe and North America might use anorthosite or clay as raw material for aluminum, other parts of the world might use bauxite, and while North America might use taconite, Brazil might use iron ore. New materials will appear (note: they have), the result of technological advances, some acting as substitutes and some with new properties.
The potential currently recoverable (present technology, economy) resources that come closest to the McKelvey relationship are those that have been sought for the longest time, such as copper, zinc, lead, silver, gold and molybdenum.
Since all materials are 100 times weaker than they theoretically should be, it ought to be possible to eliminate areas of dislocations and greatly strengthen them, enabling lesser quantities to be used.
Some materials that have perpetual resources such as salt, stone, magnesium, and common clay were mentioned previously.
Thanks to new technology, synthetic diamonds were added to the list of perpetual resources, since they can be easily made from a lump of another form of carbon.
A firm named Liquidmetal Technologies, Inc. is utilizing the removal of dislocations in a material with a technique that overcomes performance limitations caused by inherent weaknesses in the crystal atomic structure.
A Korean firm plans to start developing a manganese nodule recovery operation in 2010; the manganese nodules recovered would average 27% to 30% manganese, 1.25% to 1.5% nickel, 1% to 1.4% copper, and 0.2% to 0.25% cobalt (commercial grade) [23] Nautilus Minerals Ltd. is planning to recover commercial grade material averaging 29.9% zinc, 2.3% lead, and 0.5% copper from massive ocean-bottom polymetallic sulfide deposits using an underwater vacuum cleaner-like device that combines some current technologies in a new way.
Rio Tinto is using satellite links to allow workers 1500 kilometers away to operate drilling rigs, load cargo, dig out ore and dump it on conveyor belts, and place explosives to subsequently blast rock and earth.
Probably by customers continuing to disappear (i.e. convert to other kinds of energy for space heating), the supply network atrophy as anthracite coal dealers cannot retain enough business to cover costs and close, and mines with too small a volume to cover costs also close.
This is a mutually reinforcing process: customers convert to other forms of cleaner energy that produce less pollution and carbon dioxide, then the coal dealer has to close because of lack of enough sales volume to cover costs.
