{"id":56475,"date":"2021-01-21T09:16:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T14:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56475"},"modified":"2021-01-21T09:16:32","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T14:16:32","slug":"ugo-bardis-the-universal-mining-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56475","title":{"rendered":"Ugo Bardi\u2019s The Universal Mining Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a title=\"Permalink to Ugo Bardi\u2019s The Universal Mining Machine\" href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2021\/ugo-bardis-the-universal-mining-machine\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Ugo Bardi\u2019s The Universal Mining Machine<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"at-above-post addthis_tool\" data-url=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/2021\/ugo-bardis-the-universal-mining-machine\/\"><strong>Preface<\/strong>. Below I\u2019ve excerpted some of Ugo Bardi\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/europe.theoildrum.com\/node\/3451\">The Universal Mining Machine<\/a>\u201d (24 January 2008 europe.theoildrum), but I\u2019ve left a great deal out of this excellent article, I encourage you to read all of it if you have time. The biggest problem the world faces is \u201cPeak Diesel\u201d, which is what my book \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/energyskeptic.com\/category\/books\/when-trucks-stop-running\/\">When Trucks stop running<\/a>\u201d is about. Bardi points out \u201cthat\u00a0<b>34% of the energy involved in the US mining industry is in the form of diesel fuel<\/b>.\u201d Nor are there more minerals to be found: \u201cThere is little hope of finding high grade sources of minerals other than those we know already. The planet\u2019s crust has been thoroughly explored and digging deeper is not likely to help, since ores form mainly because of geochemical (especially hydrothermal) processes that operate near the surface.\u201d<\/div>\n<p><strong>Earth\u2019s mineral resources<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Earth\u2019s crust is said to contain 88 elements in concentrations that spread over at least seven orders of magnitude. Some elements are defined as \u201ccommon,\u201d with concentrations over 0.1% in weight. Of these, five are technologically important in metallic form: iron, aluminum, magnesium, silicon, and titanium. All the other metals exist in lower concentrations, sometimes much lower. Most metals of technological importance are defined as \u201crare\u201d and exist mostly as low concentration substituents in ordinary rock, that is, dispersed at the atomic level in silicates and other oxides.\u00a0<b>The average crustal abundance of rare elements, such as copper, zinc, lead and others, is below 0.01% (100 ppm). Some, such as gold, platinum and rhodium, are very rare and exist in the crust as a few parts per billion or even less. However, most rare elements also form specific chemical compounds that can be found at relatively high concentrations in regions called \u201cdeposits\u201d. Those deposits from which we actually extract minerals are called \u201cores\u201d.<\/b>..<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ugo Bardi\u2019s The Universal Mining Machine Preface. Below I\u2019ve excerpted some of Ugo Bardi\u2019s \u201cThe Universal Mining Machine\u201d (24 January 2008 europe.theoildrum), but I\u2019ve left a great deal out of this excellent article, I encourage you to read all of it if you have time. The biggest problem the world faces is \u201cPeak Diesel\u201d, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11836,14047,11859,30847,1482,25482,25483,2692],"class_list":["post-56475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-diesel","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-metal-mining","tag-mining","tag-rare-metals","tag-rare-minerals","tag-ugo-bardi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56476,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56475\/revisions\/56476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}