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All credit to my colleagues in academia, but the pace of technological change in mining is often wildly overstated by mining companies as an attempt to attract

All credit to my colleagues in academia, but the pace of technological change in mining is often wildly overstated by mining companies as an attempt to attract investors, greenwash, or genuine misunderstanding of the underlying technology. Most notably, many of the newer techs encounter meaningful difficulties as they attempt to scale. Nearly all of the advances in current mining have been either driving economies of scale (larger trucks, larger plants, block caving undergrounds) or sweating efficiencies (electronic detonators, computer-assisted monitoring and design, reprocessing tailings). One of the great things about mining is the ability to simultaneously accept there is often lots of free cash flow around to invest in the next great thing while acknowledging the brutal realities that all the tech in the world won't help if you don't have a matching orebody. While the author does a messy job of their pitch, it's indisputable that the overall quality and size of deposits is going down over time. For many of us in the industry, we know that the problem is not going to be running out but rather is society able to handle increasingly frequent supply/demand shocks without losing the collective plot. We already see a bit of this tension now: for every bio-mining initiative we have another set of lunatics who are proposing to "mine" sea beds. There are interesting times ahead.

nickpinkston 4y ago
Yea, I'm not denying the quality of deposits are down, costs of processing are up, or that it's hard to make the tech work. I'm just saying that we haven't seen the dire need that would cause big changes because the industry's unique R&D and CapEx requirements to change. Dire = severally decreased production of vital end products because of mineral costs/shortages (ie the 1970's oil crisis). Generally, there are known technologies already past the prototype stages just waiting for the prices and other factors to make them viable, and once they are they then ride the experience curve to better productivity. Re: supply/demand shocks - Interestingly, this is where the state can have a good roll in helping smooth these out. For instance, Biden's recent bill included guaranteed oil/gas purchases that the oil industry needed so they can justify running their refineries on with uncertain future demand, with the USG taking the risk on via filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with the excess. [1] I'm reacting to an effect that this chart [2] highlights where academia / industry is being overly conservative in their predictions. In this case, every year they predicted PV was about to run out of steam, when it was actually growing exponentially. I think this paper is doing the same thing by ignoring tech development increases in its analysis. Are you aware of any systematic study of new mining tech development, economics, etc. that has a thorough analysis of this? This isn't my field. I'm in manufacturing, but follow the space because it's adjacent and has some things in common, so I'd be interested to get your take / sources. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-gas-prices-energy-oil-2022-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-gas-prices-energy-oil-... [2] https://zenmo.com/en/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-projections-of-the-international-energy-agency-with-2018-update-2/ https://zenmo.com/en/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-proj...
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Maybe we could tap the breaks on extraction from virgin deposits while we work out how to more sustainably use what's already been extracted? Or we could just keep plunging headlong into a future where it takes 2 barrels of oil to produce 1.
  - nickpinkston 4y ago
    I think we'd do well to look at the full implications of what you're saying: 1.) We're in agreement that energy sources need to be positive sum where you're putting in less energy than you get out. Using my point of "tech isn't the problem" here points to a ton of tech you can buy today that does this (from nukes to solar, wind, etc.), and we need gov't intervention to help fund more R&D, adoption, etc. 2.) We actually get to our carbon goals faster when we grow GDP, especially those of the developing world who can bypass old tech and techniques. Just see how much people vote for expensive climate measures when they're poor. 3.) "Wait until we're sustainable" is easy to say when you don't have to look at your family starving or in some other personal hell because you can't afford things for basic living because some high income Westerners want to tell you to pay more for them while they live in luxury and have never known true hardship. That's the real choice we have to make, and I'm not willing to accept a no-growth world that forces us to put those people through hell. I'd rather have a 100 years of superfund sites to clean up and 1000s of species go extinct than to make billions of people suffer through that.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      > That's the real choice we have to make, and I'm not willing to accept a no-growth world We live in a mostly closed system, except for the solar energy beamed from the sun. So hard choices will have to be made sooner or later. Taking action now should lessen the impact once the easy energy runs out. So you can believe and accept what you like, but the laws of physics aren't negotiable. 8 billion people cannot live like most United Statians do today. Asteroid mining and planetary colonies are not going to scale enough to change that, even if we boil the oceans trying.

nickpinkston 4y ago

Yea, I'm not denying the quality of deposits are down, costs of processing are up, or that it's hard to make the tech work. I'm just saying that we haven't seen the dire need that would cause big changes because the industry's unique R&D and CapEx requirements to change. Dire = severally decreased production of vital end products because of mineral costs/shortages (ie the 1970's oil crisis). Generally, there are known technologies already past the prototype stages just waiting for the prices and other factors to make them viable, and once they are they then ride the experience curve to better productivity. Re: supply/demand shocks - Interestingly, this is where the state can have a good roll in helping smooth these out. For instance, Biden's recent bill included guaranteed oil/gas purchases that the oil industry needed so they can justify running their refineries on with uncertain future demand, with the USG taking the risk on via filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with the excess. [1] I'm reacting to an effect that this chart [2] highlights where academia / industry is being overly conservative in their predictions. In this case, every year they predicted PV was about to run out of steam, when it was actually growing exponentially. I think this paper is doing the same thing by ignoring tech development increases in its analysis. Are you aware of any systematic study of new mining tech development, economics, etc. that has a thorough analysis of this? This isn't my field. I'm in manufacturing, but follow the space because it's adjacent and has some things in common, so I'd be interested to get your take / sources. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-gas-prices-energy-oil-2022-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-gas-prices-energy-oil-... [2] https://zenmo.com/en/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-projections-of-the-international-energy-agency-with-2018-update-2/ https://zenmo.com/en/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-proj...

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Maybe we could tap the breaks on extraction from virgin deposits while we work out how to more sustainably use what's already been extracted? Or we could just keep plunging headlong into a future where it takes 2 barrels of oil to produce 1.
- nickpinkston 4y ago
  I think we'd do well to look at the full implications of what you're saying: 1.) We're in agreement that energy sources need to be positive sum where you're putting in less energy than you get out. Using my point of "tech isn't the problem" here points to a ton of tech you can buy today that does this (from nukes to solar, wind, etc.), and we need gov't intervention to help fund more R&D, adoption, etc. 2.) We actually get to our carbon goals faster when we grow GDP, especially those of the developing world who can bypass old tech and techniques. Just see how much people vote for expensive climate measures when they're poor. 3.) "Wait until we're sustainable" is easy to say when you don't have to look at your family starving or in some other personal hell because you can't afford things for basic living because some high income Westerners want to tell you to pay more for them while they live in luxury and have never known true hardship. That's the real choice we have to make, and I'm not willing to accept a no-growth world that forces us to put those people through hell. I'd rather have a 100 years of superfund sites to clean up and 1000s of species go extinct than to make billions of people suffer through that.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    > That's the real choice we have to make, and I'm not willing to accept a no-growth world We live in a mostly closed system, except for the solar energy beamed from the sun. So hard choices will have to be made sooner or later. Taking action now should lessen the impact once the easy energy runs out. So you can believe and accept what you like, but the laws of physics aren't negotiable. 8 billion people cannot live like most United Statians do today. Asteroid mining and planetary colonies are not going to scale enough to change that, even if we boil the oceans trying.