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Right, so energy can be substituted for arable land. But I wonder if the real limit to human population is mineral-based, rather than energy-based. Every perso
by tsuyoshi 15y ago
Right, so energy can be substituted for arable land.
But I wonder if the real limit to human population is mineral-based, rather than energy-based. Every person needs a certain portion of different minerals: calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, selenium, etc. Maybe we would run out of one of those minerals before we would run out of energy?
This could be a topic for science fiction. We run out of zinc, and then have to send an unmanned spaceship over to some other galaxy to mine some zinc... but there would have to be some other complication, because unmanned spaceflight is boring.
- ctdonath 15y agoPot growers manage to substitute energy for arable land.
- jacques_chester 15y agoI once calculated that at a constant doubling rate of every 15 years, the human race would need to use all of the resources of the asteroid belt in about 12,000 years. There's a lot of stuff out there.
- bryanlarsen 15y agoWe're not going to run out of minerals. Choose a mineral, any mineral, even a trace mineral. Look on Wikipedia to see what percentage of the earth's crust it makes up. (for example, iron is 5%). Do the math and realize that we've got thousands to millions of years worth of minerals left. Sure, we can run out of "easy" deposits. We did that for Copper decades ago. Copper mines today are essentially giant processing plants that extract the tiny amount of copper in pretty much ordinary dirt -- "copper ore" these days only has about 10 times as much copper per kg as the stuff in your backyard.