DEBUNKING THE FIXED-STOCK PARADIGM -- USING THE CASE OF COPPER

Recent journal abstract below -- plus part of the Introduction

Assessing the long-run availability of copper

By John E. Tilton et al.

Abstract

This study questions recent research [Gordon, R.B., Bertram, M., Graedel, T.E., 2006. Metal stocks and sustainability. Proc. Natl. Acad. USA 103(5), 1209-1214] that concludes that the world is likely to experience a growing scarcity of copper over this century. In particular, it focuses on the methodology used in this work that assumes the usable copper contained in the earth is a fixed amount. While the fixed-stock paradigm is intuitively appealing-after all the earth is finite so the amount of any commodity it contains must also be finite-and used with some frequency by others as well to assess long-run trends in the availability of non-renewable mineral resources, it is flawed and can lead to overly pessimistic as well as overly optimistic expectations. A more useful and appropriate approach, the opportunity-cost paradigm, assesses long-run trends in availability by real prices or alternative measures of what society has to give up or sacrifice to obtain another ton of copper or barrel of oil. This approach indicates that copper could conceivably become less scarce by the end of the century. Whether this will be the case or whether copper will be more scarce, however, depends on a number of factors, including the future course of technological change, whose influence no one can predict with any degree of certainty decades in advance.

Introduction

In a recent and interesting article Gordon et al. (2006), hereafter GBG, contend that the cumulative extraction of copper for the world has been growing faster than cumulative discovery and more disturbing that cumulative extractions are now approaching cumulative discoveries. They also estimate the copper the world will need by 2100 if population reaches 10 billion, as many now expect, and if the average stock of copper in use per person reaches 170 kg, the current per capita average for North America. The results show that the copper needed (1.7 billion tons) exceeds the total recoverable copper available in resources (estimated at 1.6 billon tons). In addition, they present new and interesting data indicating that 26 percent of the copper available in resources is either currently in use or has been discarded into wastes (from which its recovery and reuse they suggest is too costly to be economic). For these reasons, they conclude that the world will soon be running short of copper resources. As a result, real copper prices will rise over the current century promoting the more efficient use of copper. They anticipate as well that growing scarcity will foster a transition away from copper (and numerous other metals) and towards the geological more abundant metals, including iron, aluminum, and magnesium.

In the hope of initiating a debate over what we think is an important issue, we question these findings in the pages that follow, arguing that the evidence and analysis that GBG present do not in fact support their conclusion that copper is destined to grow scarcer over time. Instead, we contend, first, that copper could conceivably be less scarce by the end of the century, and second, that whether or not this is the case will depend on numerous factors, many of which one simply cannot predict with any degree of certainty.

Our second and more important objective, however, is to demonstrate that methodology matters in assessing the long-run availability of copper and other non-renewable mineral commodities. GBG use a fixed-stock paradigm. This approach sees the amount of usable copper in the earth as a given quantity, and then compares an estimate of this stock with the needs or demand of society at various points in the future or over time. Since the earth is finite and so the amount of copper it contains must also be finite, the fixed-stock paradigm seems quite logical. It has also been used by numerous researchers in the past. As shown below, however, this methodology can be misleading and in any case is less useful than the opportunity-cost paradigm, which uses prices and other measures of what society has to give up to produce another ton of a mineral commodity to assess the effects of depletion and long-run trends in availability. Reserves, resources, and the resource base...

We do know that current estimates are misleading when one assumes they reflect a fixed stock. The earth's crust contains prodigious amounts of copper, and once used and discarded copper is still physically available for reuse. As a result, unlike resources, the resource base actually is a fixed stock. Yet, it too is of little use in assessing future scarcity since much of the copper it contains presumably will never be profitable to exploit. An alternative approach that avoids the problems of the fixed stock paradigm focuses on trends in the opportunity costs of acquiring another ton of copper, measured usually by long-run trends in real copper prices. When real prices are rising, copper is growing more scarce in the sense that society has to give up more and more of other goods to obtain another ton of copper. When real prices are falling, just the opposite is the case.

The secular trend in real copper prices has been more or less flat over the past 130 years, as the cost-reducing effects of new technology have offset most or all of the cost-increasing effects of depletion. This means that, despite the explosion in consumption and production over this period, the availability of copper has changed little. In the future, the growth in copper demand should be somewhat more modest, and the slower the growth in demand the easier it is for new technology to offset the adverse effects of depletion. Nevertheless, the future course of copper prices is impossible to predict with any accuracy, given the great uncertainties surrounding (a) the pace and direction of innovation and technological change, (b) trends in population growth, per capita income, consumer preferences, material substitution, the recycling of copper, and the other determinants of future copper demand, and (c) the nature and incidence of copper-containing resources that are currently uneconomic to exploit.

For better or worse, the future is inherently uncertain. As a result, it is perhaps not surprising that the scientific community has been and continues to be divided regarding the long-run trends in the availability of copper and other mineral commodities. While some claim scarcity is not likely to ever be a problem, others such as GBG foresee growing scarcity during this century. Those who propose such scenarios are implicitly or explicitly asking the rest of us to accept their belief that technology will or will not continue to offset the cost-increasing effects of depletion.

In the case of copper, what we do know is that the US Geological Survey estimates for resources are currently 3.7 billion tons. This figure is more than double the 1.6 billion tons assumed by GBG, and more than is needed to supply the world's needs over the coming century even under optimistic assumptions regarding the growth of copper demand in the developing world. In addition, resources of copper are likely to increase over the coming decades. More importantly, there is no reason to believe that the cost-reducing effects of new technology will suddenly abate or cease in the future. As a result, while copper could conceivably grow increasingly scarce over the coming century, it could just as well become less scarce and more abundant. Given the many unknowns, there simply is no way to know the availability of copper decades in advance.

FULL PAPER here






Before Gore

D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt." The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and "at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."

"This was one of several such articles I have found at the Library of Congress for the 1920s and 1930s," says Mr. Lockwood. "I had read of the just-released NASA estimates, that four of the 10 hottest years in the U.S. were actually in the 1930s, with 1934 the hottest of all."

Reacting yesterday to word that certain European governments and officials are suddenly trying to abandon their costly "global warming" policies, Royal Astronomical Society fellow Benny Peiser, of the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University in Great Britain, recalls the teachings of Marcus Aurelius: "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." [Where have I seen that quote before?]

Source




More perspective on the recent NASA temperature-record correction

Ever since the correction became a hot topic on blogs, the pro-warmers have tried to downplay its significance, insisting, for example, that the alterations merely amount to "very minor rearrangements in the various rankings." It's true the changes aren't dramatic. But the optics are.

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. Imagine the shrieking of the warmers if we had previously thought that hot years were scattered throughout the past 130 years, but after a correction the warmest years could be seen to be concentrated in the past decade. They would insist the revised data proved their case. They would blitz every news organization and talk show. They would demand to be allowed to indoctrinate school children on the evils of cars and factories.

So they shouldn't be permitted to brush aside this new data, which makes their claims harder to prove. Ten years ago, warmers found a similarly small error in the temperature data collected by weather satellites. The satellites were a thorn in their sides because while the warmers were insisting the Earth was getting hotter, the satellites showed it was in fact cooling ever so slightly.

Then the warmers discovered that the scientists who maintained the orbiting thermometers had failed to account for orbital decay, the almost infinitesimally small downward drift of the "birds" every year. When the effects of drift were added into the observations, the cooling was found to be just 0.01 degree per decade rather than the 0.04 degrees previously claimed. On this basis, the warmers now insisted then that even the satellites were somehow in agreement with their theory.

Of course, the current NASA changes are only for data collected in the United States. But available surface temperature readings cover only half the planet even today. Before the Second World War, they covered less than a quarter. So U.S. readings for a period that goes as far back as 1880 are among the most reliable there are. Perhaps we will have uncontrollable warming in the future, but it likely hasn't started yet.

Source






It's Time to Worry about Global COOLING

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest solar cycle of the past two centuries. They say this will likely lead to unusually cool conditions on Earth. It is also predicted that this cool period will go much longer than the normal 11 year cycle, as the Little Ice Age did. The climate threat is actually cooling, especially to countries like Canada. On the northern limit to agriculture in the world, very little cooling would likely destroy much of its food crops.

The Little Ice Age-the coldest period in the past 1500 years-corresponded perfectly with the Maunder Minimum. There was virtually no sunspot activity for almost seven decades in the Maunder Minimum(per Willie Soon/ Harvard/Astrophysics). It turns out that for those 60-70 years the northern half of our globe was in a deep freeze. The New York harbor froze, allowing walkers to journey from Manhattan to Staten Island, and the Vikings abandoned Greenland--a once verdant land that became tundra. In that Little Ice Age, Finland lost 1/3 of its population and Iceland 1/2.

In the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots are violent storms on the surface of the sun. Marine productivity and total irradiance match very well with records that have been kept for centuries on visible sunspots. Hundreds of studies of sunspots and earthly climate indicators(tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula, to water levels of the Nile) show exactly the same thing-that the sun drives climate change.

Even though it has been discovered that the sun is brighter now than anytime in the past 8000 years, the increase in solar output was not calculated to be sufficient to cause all of the past century's modest warming. But that amplifier was discovered(starting in 2002) with scientific papers from Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svendsmark(Danish National Space Agency).

All these scientists have proven (particularly w/Svendsmark) that the sun's protective solar wind(from sunspots) blows away deep-space cosmic rays. With fewer sunspots there is less solar wind, more cosmic rays, and more cloud formation from those cosmic rays. More cloud formation means more cooling effect on the planet.

In a 2003 poll, 2/3 of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries did not believe greenhouse gases were the main reason for global warming. In fact, overlays of CO2 variations show little correlation with earth's climate on long, medium, and even short time scales. The science is nowhere near settled.

Nigel Weiss (Mathematical Astrophysics/Cambridge) states that "Variable behavior of the sun is an obvious explanation." He admits that we are now living in a period of abnormally high solar activity, and that these hyperactive periods do not last long(50-100 years), then you get a crash. "It's a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon." And when the crash occurs, the Earth can cool dramatically. [Weiss has now denied that he said that. Whether the denial was made under pressure we do not know]

Dr. Kukla (Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences) says he and many others realize that global warming always precedes an ice age. Each lasts about 100,000 years, punctuated by briefer, warmer periods called interglacials. We are in an interglacial now. This ongoing cycle closely matches cyclic variations in Earth's orbit around the sun. Kukla says "The relationship is just too clear and consistent to allow reasonable doubt. It's either that, or climate drives orbit, and that just doesn't make sense."

No one knows when a `crash' will occur, but scientists expect it soon. Mainly because the sun's polar field is now at its weakest since measurements began in the 1950's. A deep crash last occurred in the 17th century-and it was the Little Ice Age, or the Maunder Minimum. "Having a `crash' would certainly allow us to pin down the sun's true level of influence on the earth's climate," concludes Dr. Weiss. "Then we will be able to act on fact, rather than from fear." It's not likely greenhouse `gassers' will be converted in 12 years. They'll be busy looking for something humans have done to make it so cold.

Source

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The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film but it is in fact an absolute gift to climate atheists. What the paper says was of course all well-known already but the concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years really is invaluable. And the one fact that the paper documents so well -- that solar output is on the downturn -- is also hilarious, given its source. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even be the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 for more detail on the Lockwood paper

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