Economic issues in mineral resource adequacy and in the long-term supply of minerals

Abstract

In the context of questions about future mineral supply, much can be said for considering the results of mineral resource assessments as working material too undigested to be presented as such to the public. Immense--and immensely misconstruable--figures for mineral resources fail to impart a clear picture of mineral resource adequacy and long-term mineral supply. Such figures are almost routinely mistaken for amounts that will be available at acceptable prices when and where needed, as if the world were economically frictionless.It is proposed that the geological expertise required for resource assessments be meshed with engineering and economic expertise, to be applied in concert toward portrayals of plausible scenarios of mineral supply from various resource categories.Everything has been thought of before. The difficulty is to think of it again.Goethe