Great news, but just to tone it down to reality a bit. The current drilled orebody is only down to 400m and are only resources now and not fully reserves (important distinction in mining).
The massive numbers they are talking about are extrapolating drill results down to 4500m, which is pretty crazy. But let’s say the orebody does extend to depth at regular grades, that would be the deepest mine in the world, and there are a lot cheaper options.
If you're going to put money on a mining exploration result you want to put it on JORC (or equivalent) certified results from a filed Technical Report at the Toronto TSX (or London Metals, Sydney Mining, South African Exchange, etc)
JORC is Australian standard, however Anglo-Australian mining transnationals with the TSX as home base are the biggest mining concerns on the planet ATM.
Here is a third party discussion of the JORC definitions of 'Resource' Vs 'Reserve'
* Mineral Resources can be classified as Measured, Indicated and Inferred, according to the level of geological knowledge and confidence.
* Ore Reserves can be classified as Proved or Probable on the basis of the Mineral Resource classification and consideration of all JORC modifying factors.
'Resources' can be wishful thinking until they're actually Measured (to a degree of confidence).
I haven’t looked at the data, but junior mining and exploration is a bit of the wild west in terms of honesty and would not in the least be surprised if some trickery is at play to produce that result. Also a reason why it’s not advisable for new investors to get into this sector.
This is what I was curious about, thanks for clarifying.
But based on the 400m orebody results, do you have any suggestion for how much phosphate this "rock" might contain at reasonable mining depths based on todays technology?
I'm curious if this could turn out to be enough for 20 years, or a drop in the ocean.
Assuming it's enough for 20 years, and we estimate batteries will continue to get more efficient, does the 20 years in todays technology end up being 50 years?
Not with just that info. Lot of what I quickly found is all press release marketing fluff. You need the % phosphorus and a bunch of other variables.
Battery tech needs little phosphorous now, in terms of overall percentage and even with overly optimistic battery estimates I don’t think it will get to any more than 10% of demand. It’s mostly about fertiliser/agriculture.
"But based on the 400m orebody results, do you have any suggestion for how much phosphate this "rock" might contain at reasonable mining depths based on todays technology?"
Odds are they found a massive body of apatite. If so, huge amounts of phosphates.
Western Sahara but realistically it’s all morroco. They have largest reserves now and at the price to mine 4500m deep underground, it would turn a lot of resources in morroco to reserves.
I did feas work on a project in Tunisia a decade ago that was quite substantial but economics marginal and couldn’t get it over the line due to then prices of phosphorous and the ability of morroco to just ramp up production (actually should probably dust it off). There are lots of resources like this that would become economical faster. Supply/demand and all that.
That said the initial ore body may be great and 50 years from now who is to say
Sure. Super high level.
Resources are concentrations of some mineral that could be economically extracted.
Reserves are the economically mineable portions of those resources.
There are a bunch of levels to each, with varying levels of confidence.
I can drill two holes, 500m apart and by pure chance intersect nothing but lithium at same spacing between 10m-20m. I could theoretically say , you know what I think between these two drill holes it’s all lithium. It’s 500m spacing and according to grades I think we have 500ktons of inferred lithium resource here.
But for instance let’s say I did some more drilling and was confident I found a resource that indicates it has 1million tonnes of lithium in it. However, it’s located in the middle of Sahara desert, where there are no roads, water sources, or infrastructure of any type.
Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s economical to mine it (right now). So even though it is a resource it’s not a reserve.
To define something as a resource there is a lot of room for interpretation. Lots of statistical inference, and a bit of art meets science. From public company perspective you can announce you have calling a promising resource, but if you get it wrong, there’s a lot of leeway.
Calling something a reserve is a big deal. Not only are you extremely confident of the size, shape of the resource, but you have evaluated its economic viability to get it out of the ground and have determined that it’s net positive. You lie about this, and you are in trouble.
> A huge phosphate rock deposit discovered in Norway contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years, according to the mining company that controls it.
90% of mined phosphates are used for fertilizer and pollution of waterways with it is a growing problem, but the mining company PR firm is telling us about electric cars and solar panels.
This is similar to discovering a massive new oil field, and telling the world that it'll help with electric cars because they all have plastic components.
> Pollution is a huge problem, but climate change is literally an existential problem
100% agree. If there's a choice between a small amount of pollution vs a large payoff to cut carbon emissions, it's definitely a good idea. For instance, any pollution that comes from the production of solar panels and batteries is probably something we should accept, because the payoff is a large cut in emissions.
But we're not talking about pollution directly in the cause of cutting emissions here. We're talking about separate pollution which is avoidable and has nothing to do with cutting emissions.
The point is, if we use all of this phosphate to make better batteries it would be great and have a good impact on emissions, but most of it will be spread on the ground and let run into rivers because that is the main industrial use of phosphates
Visually present all the exploration and mining in the world and add to it visualisations of the resource costs of extraction and the downstream uses of that material in a manner that ties into global climate factors.
Isn't running out of phosphate rock almost a similar scale problem? I thought like a billion people were going to starve to death without it or or something?
I’d say number four should be first in your list. Had they not been sensible they might not even have found this deposit, nor would they have had a massive sovereign fund. They’d been buried in rusty lambos and warlord money.
Yep, just look at Australia - bending over backwards for the foreign mining companies, quivering in fear at the prospect of taxing them even a fraction of Norway's 78%. Spine vs spineless.
Why would Australia be doing that? What's the threat? That the foreign mining companies leave? Wouldn't that be a neutral outcome to Australia? Then the mines could be seized for non-operation somehow, and given to domestic companies with a 78% tax?
Mostly capture of politics by shareholder interests. Once a political system becomes thoroughly permeated by the interests of a specific industry (i.e. through campaign contributions, individuals moving from industry into politics, labour interests, etc.) it becomes quite hard for governments to make sensible decisions in that area, because industry interests and identity politics at some point become indistinguishable. See also Germany's car producers and the military-industrial-complex in the U.S.
Political campaign contributions is the perfect euphemism for corruption.
Corporations aren't allowed to make direct campaign contributions in Norway; political campaigns are paid for by the public.
(I've been an expat for over two decades, please correct me if anything has significantly changed - of course the companies still have political influence through choices of where to invest etc, but at least it's nowhere as blatant).
One might say it would be a waste of taxpayer money to do the same in Australia, but in the end we would be far better off by cutting off the direct corporate influence.
We might not have gotten an EV tax instead of incentives if we had politicians not directly receiving money from big petrol.
And we might just be able to raise corporate mining taxes to a far better level, clearly state that if you don't like it then just pack up and leave - and let someone else who is willing come profit instead.
And howdy from Texas and its somewhat widely distributed mineral rights, creating a landed gentry that sometimes doesn't even have to deal with the inconveniences of owning said land, but often has, on a personal level, an even more vested interest in continued petroleum extraction than the average employee of Exxon-Mobil.
Norway had successfully georgist tax policies in place for hydropower for half a century at that point. He was not fighting as much of an uphill battle as he would almost anywhere else:
(Update: This is not to detract from his achievement, but to harp on the fact that Georgism is one of the most useful, underrated tools in the economic toolboxt)
This is honestly such a bizarre degree of skepticism for something so widely reported, I’ll try not to impute what might be motivating it. Farouk Al-Kasim was knighted by the King of Norway for his efforts in this of all things, so no, not really. You’re quite wide of the mark. His guidance was also shaped more by the experience of Netherlands in the 60s as much as it was Iraq, as is cited in the article.
For those unfamiliar with the resource curse [1] this isn't usually a ticket to victory. The largest proven oil reserve in the world isn't in Saudi Arabia, it's in Venezuela - the poorest country in the Americas.
What Norway deserves huge credit for is the way they manage their natural resources, and how they designed their sovereign wealth fund.
I believe that kind of behavior explicitly qualifies under 'resource curse.' Even if they hadn't, check out the 'enclave effects' section of the Wikipedia article.
> "Oil production generally takes place in an economic enclave, meaning it has few direct effects on the rest of the economy."
Which is also mentioned in the article -_- in the "Violence and Conflict" section. Note that oil-rich states are both the targets and instigators of conflict. For instance, Venezuela's recent conflict with Guyana after their recent discovery of oil. [1, 2]
?
The latest official figure for Berlin is 3.6 million.
You mean the Berlin + Brandeburg metropolitan region, which is Berlin (city state) plus an area that’s at least as big as the metro area including the Berlin city suburbs expansions into Brandenburg.
With the resulting area, 6.2 million people still amount to a quite low density compared to many other cities. Paris would have been a better example.
You can't take this list seriously. Cheddar has similar score as Gruyère. Or Norwegian Salmon similar as 'Fish and Chips'. No wonder English cuisine is rated so high there.
Almost all food is great if you get the proper high end quality.
What matters more in my opinion is what you can expect to taste most of the time. If you go to the supermarket or an average restaurant in a medium sized city for example.
As a pedantic Frenchman immigrant living in Norway, I would say that Norway isn’t the best about food but also not that bad. They have good stuff and terrible stuff like most countries and once you know what to eat you can live happy.
Generic cheddar isn’t usually considered for these ‘National specialties’ lists though. I believe the full name is West Country Cheddar, like how not all sparkling wine is Champagne.
lmao, some stupid list. Scandinavia has world renowned cuisine, with some of the best (THE best) restaurants in the world, new inventions, and a food culture quickly spreading throughout the world.
Then some live laugh love travel girls and guy come to "list cuisines".
What a stupid list. I could as well just have pull something out of my arse by vacation photos posted here by HN contributors. If you think that list is in anyway meaningful or sophisticated I have a whole highway to sell you
Can't comment on that processed fish matter but mosquitos there are beyond ridiculous in the summer (Finland ain't much better). Having dozens of bites on every bit of skin that isn't completely covered, constantly. One hitchhiker who I've met who had his one hitching hand uncovered counted 168 bites, on one hand, within 2 hours. When you hike, you have easily 100 of them sitting on you, your backpack, everything. They are also huge compared to central Europe.
Sure, you get used to being full of red spots, you stop scratching them, but occasionally you run some part of your skin against something and all hell breaks loose.
Then you come back to sanity and realize freedom has many shapes, and being able to dress as you like in summer is definitely one of them.
Point 4: as a notorious economics philosopher once said, "never get high on your own supply."
Along with not immediately blowing the petro money on a national level, Norway taxes petroleum products more heavily for local consumption than even its high tax neighbors - for a long time, gasoline was cheaper in Germany than in Norway, and Germany has high fuel taxes like pretty much every other European country (EU and non).
I mean it'll be more expensive, but since their economy is doing so well I can imagine it's still a lower percentage of people's incomes than in e.g. Germany; all is relative.
I mean cost of living is higher in cities but so is income. Usually. Sometimes.
It's a high enough petrol tax it prevented Norway from being full of gas guzzlers, and that it has been a disproportionately large EV market, despite being a) a giant oil producer and b) cold.
Just got back from holiday in Norway and chatting to several locals they were under the impression that it was a huge problem. Looking at stats it seems that on an international basis it's it so high though, maybe just relative to other local issues.
The lack of proper nights (even if in the south there was technically a sunset) was really tough for me though, it messed with my sleeping patterns a lot. I can imagine winter being even worse.
Norway really should have their ill gotten carbon profiteering assets stripped away and redistributed to less advantaged nations. Hopefully that will come soon, and this rock deposit could help pay for some of the interest.
Yep. that's what happens we decide 4 million people get the territory the size of Western Europe more or less. They were there first so ... makes sense.
> And why do you think countries were distributed to people by some sort of collective decision?
Countries were not "distributed
I obviously don't think that, hence what I wrote. I think they were in many cases fought for and the strong got the best land for the most part. There was no collective decision making. And I'm hinting that maybe the current situation doesn't make much sense for team humans.
> I think they were in many cases fought for and the strong got the best land for the most part
That's an incredibly simplistic way to see History. Lands are not ranked from best to worse. How a modern population ended up where is a long and complicated process of migration and moved back and forth several times. Great lands have been scorched and abandoned and changing technology, trade and population patterns change drastically what is great land from one generation to another.
Not to mention until very, very recently, Norway was very poor land. The people who ended up being there for the oil boom in the 70s were not, by any means, some very strong people who fought their way into prime land.
You don't see extreme inequality here? OK guess we'll disagree then.
Also - very poor compared to who? Compared to Africa - probably not. Compared to China, also probably not. It was very poor compared to itself and a few super wealthy entities. When was the last case of extreme hunger in Norway ? Happened quite recently in both China and India and still happening in Africa.
lmao, when Danes, Swedes, Norwegians travelled as vikings it was because our lands were horrible and we searched for fertile lands... Norway was poor until recently. Like really poor.
Our relative wealth[1] has a lot to do with a lack of wars and conflicts, and a fairly progressive, social mindset. Not just that we had a lot of natural resources to export.
The current Sami people may have been first in the northern parts of Norway. The actual time line is difficult to establish (politically charged). What we can say is that the current Sami people were first in the northern parts of Norway compared to the "germanic" group living in the south.
Most discussions end up in agreeing that there were two main groups in Norway. One started from the south of Norway and spread north, while the Sami people started from the north and spread south. Finding out who occupied a certain area first is very difficult, and have a tendency to be based more on politics and patriotism, than scientific facts. (on both sides)
Both groups have been in Norway for thousands of years, so there is actually not much point in debating who was first in Norway. What they can agree on is to make sure that the rights of all are protected. That was not the case historically, where the Sami people were not treated well.
for context here, phosphorus is the 11th most common element in the earth's crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... making up 0.1% of the crust. phosphorus and oxygen be sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, so virtually all of it is in the form of phosphate (PO₄), which is 33% phosphorus by mass, so the earth's crust is about 0.3% phosphate. the most common phosphate is apatite, which is ubiquitous in igneous and metamorphic rocks. you can find phosphate literally anywhere on earth; there is no danger of any country monopolizing world phosphate supplies
if the crust is 3 × 10¹⁹ tonnes then phosphate is about 10¹⁷ tonnes of it, and phosphate rock a slightly larger amount
this article says the humans use 50 million tonnes of phosphate a year, much of which ends up in the oceans. at this rate, in 18 million years, the humans will have consumed 0.001% of the phosphate in the crust
but being able to find phosphate isn't the same thing as being able to mine it profitably, because, thanks to modern shipping, another phosphate miner halfway around the world can sell phosphate to your local customers at almost the same price they can sell it to their own neighbors. if they are working from more concentrated phosphate deposits, their price will be lower, and you'll lay off the miners and declare bankruptcy
so what's going on here is that local mining companies are fishing for government subsidies with rhetoric about sovereignty based on a completely imaginary phosphate shortage crisis
i'm not a hard rock mining engineer, just interested in questions of natural resources
That is a really interesting response and I hadn't considered any of it. TIL.
Relating to this:
> so what's going on here is that local mining companies are fishing for government subsidies with rhetoric about sovereignty based on a completely imaginary phosphate shortage crisis
Is this kind of the same as the occasional panics about rare earths? My understanding is that they're not really that rare but the environmental impacts and costs of extraction are both high enough that in essence, nobody wants to bother for so long as it remains someone else's problem and the materials remain available.
even though
rare earth metals are much less abundant than phosphorus, they still aren't rare. elements rarer than cerium include copper, nitrogen, lead, tin, tungsten, and fortunately arsenic
> elements rarer than cerium include copper, nitrogen, lead, tin, tungsten
rarer in the sense of % on (in) earth, or % in the crust? I would have thought nitrogen requiring no mining would make it easier to obtain, even if technically rare?
I remember reading part of a PhD thesis about the implications of “peak phosphate” more than a decade ago. (Not my area of expertise, but the guts of it weren’t particularly difficult to understand).
My takeaway (though not the author’s) was that it’s way down the list of things to worry about.
Basically, the cost of phosphate is such a miniscule component of the cost of food that it would make essentially no difference if we had to mine lower-grade sources of it.
Higher prices might also reduce the amount wasted as runoff, which also would reduce the environmental damage caused by fertiliser use, something we’re going to have to take more seriously at some point.
Phosphate in soil is mostly in fixed, unavailable forms (like ferrous phosphate). Prolonged application of phosphate fertilizer would cause their accumulation. At that point, I think it would be worthwhile to look for ways to tap into that store, for example Phosphate Solubilizing Bacteria (PSBs), or plants genetically modified to perform the same function in their roots.
Phosphate removed from fields by erosion or in plant matter would have to be replaced at some point.
Just 10-20% of applied phosphate fertilizer is taken up by plants. The rest gets lost in these insoluble forms. So there's a lot of room for improvement here.
Perhaps I live under a rock, but phosphate is expensive. I was buying diammonium phosphate at $250 per ton a few years ago. Then it went to $340. Then COVID happened and it went to $600. Then the next year it was over $800. The ag supply company didn't even have enough cash to pay for a truck load. They've completely stopped carrying it now.
yeah, lightly processed minerals are super cheap; dap sold as fertilizer is full of other crap because phosphate just fucking loves every polyvalent metal ion it ever laid its little orbitals on. fortunately because all that crap is insoluble it's pretty easy to filter out of an aqueous solution
a list of materials that cost less than US$600/tonne, aka 60¢/kg, near me at retail in the last few years:
- steel scrap (30¢)
- aluminum scrap (58¢) (this is what recyclers pay the cartoneros)
fine minerals for cosmetics, pottery, or foundry work:
- bentonite (28¢)
- mesh-80 calcite (45¢)
- mesh-200 calcite (20¢)
- dirty beach sand (6.2¢)
- tierra de Junín for aluminum casting (20¢)
- red clay (30¢)
- ball clay (30¢)
- 200-mesh quartz flour (30¢)
- pure quartz sand (35¢)
- 200-mesh talc (40¢)
- baryta (46¢)
- magnetite (10¢)
- infusorial earth (40¢)
- calcined metakaolin (35¢)
construction binders:
- plaster of paris (30¢)
- slaked lime (11¢)
- portland cement (26¢)
aggregates for construction:
- clean construction sand (2¢)
- pumice (42¢)
- broken-rock aggregate for concrete (8¢)
- ungraded gravel for concrete (0.8¢)
- 6–20 mm gravel for concrete (1¢)
- quartz gravel aggregate for concrete (15¢)
landscaping materials:
- pure white marble pebbles (12¢)
- quartz gravel for landscaping (2.1¢ in minimum quantity 6 tonnes)
- ornamental 1-4 cm landscaping rocks (8¢)
- round 1–3 cm river rocks (9¢)
miscellaneous:
- gravel for fishtanks (19¢)
- water (0.06¢)
materials this cheap vary a lot in price depending on location, because most of the cost is shipping. diammonium phosphate around here is about US$1/kg
Salt is about a third the cost. You can get a 1 ton pallet of salt, processed, bagged up and delivered to a business for far less than $600. It is amazing to see in action.
Yea. For other's reference: a tractor trailer can haul something like ~40 tons and costs ~$4k to go cross country, so shipping costs from mine to fertilizer processor to farm are already going to be in the general ballpark of $100/ton.
Mining, as I've known it, uses Haulpak trucks onsite that each carry > 110 tonnes.
They fill a train a day (at least), the trains being some 2.4 kilometers in length carrying some 29,000 tonnes that typically travel some 100km from minesite to coastal port.
Ship capacities are 380,000 to 400,000 tons deadweight and travel about the globe.
"Tractor trailors" (or two to three trailer road trains) as you're describing are used to bring food and supplies and general light goods too and from a minesite.
Fair enough, but the phosphorus has to be delivered to a farm (either before or after being combined into a fertilizer), and that's done with a truck, right? Are you arguing that the total transportation cost of the phosphorus that eventually gets it to the farm where its used is going to be much less $100/ton?
Separately, what term other than tractor trailer should I use to sound cool?
It highlights how much profit is made on repackaging things into smaller quantities for consumers. Mind you, in the US you have Target which a lot of people go to, because bulk buying is cheaper. We do the same, 5 kilo bags of rice instead of pound bags because we go through enough of it, it's less than half the price of buying pound bags individually.
But if you ever have a larger landscaping job to do, go to a wholesaler, they can deliver tons of materials at your doorstep for relatively cheap.
So for NPK fertilizer, I now know that nitrogen is manufactured cheaply with the haber-bosch process, and we've got a lot of phosphate available. Do we also have plenty of potassium around? i.e. enough to realistically never worry about "peak potassium".
I have to object to the last sentence. I’ve gotten lots of soil tests from various locations in soil and greenhouse media where I need more nitrogen (almost always) and potassium (sometimes), but never phosphorus.
And I even live in one of the blue states with lower P in the soil.
There's a gardening channel on youtube I watch (RED Gardens) where the guy does all sorts of small scale experiments with organic gardening. He was a bit surprised to discover his soils have excess potassium, from the various organic materials he had been using (like wood chips for mulch; pot ash, right?) The soils were also sodium deficient, so he was thinking of spreading measured amounts of salt!
He also discovered commercial compost can be crap, since it hasn't broken down enough and soaks up nitrogen as it finishes its decomposition in the ground. So if your potatoes are struggling in something like that, slather on some urea and they'll perk (and green) right up.
You are right that I did not express that well, because as said it is true only in natural places, not in artificial cultures.
For modern cultivated lands potassium must be indeed used as a fertilizer, because much of what exists in the soil is removed by remaining in the plant parts that are harvested then transported elsewhere. Another part of the potassium may be washed away by intensive irrigation.
So the potassium that is taken away depending on the cultivation methods that are used must be replenished. However its abundance is such that this will never be a problem.
Fun little thing to mention about Phosphate mining.
A tiny island country called Nauru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru) got super rich off of Phosphate mining which kept going into the 1990s. This led their government to invest in many projects abroad, including what may in fact be the worst large-scale well funded musical ever.
Now Nauru is getting that money back via Australia's off-shore detention program! A bipartisan program by previous governments that spends hundreds of millions on private security companies to run private prisons for asylum seekers who tried to get to Australia by boat. (likely illegal under international law?)
>By August 2021, the number of asylum seekers and refugees held on the island had fallen nearly tenfold, but the costs of running the offshore program remained broadly static. In that month, there were 107 refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru at a cost to taxpayers of $464,486 a month for each person, or more than $15,000 a day.
Imagine getting paid $15,000 per day... I guess Nauru is getting its P money back.
Not wanting to stray into too culturally sensitive topics, but I am glad to see a find like this land in a country like Norway.
Maybe it's something about the cold weather/caution as a people, Protestant/Lutheran/Calvinist cultural restraint, or factors along those lines, but I have relatively more confidence that this country will not squander and flush the money from this resource down the toilet like some other countries. (at least under the country's political leadership that has given an observable track record with the oil resource as an example)
Maybe it's that they can manage the expectations of their people not to suddenly want to get rich and live off of mineral resources and nothing else. Like some other countries have fallen into the trap of.
While I'm happy we got Freedom of Religion from the movement, if you look at the actual belief system its regressive(dogmatic interpretations of 'holy' text). I find myself in the Catholic camp when I study philosophy. It aligns more with what the Deists think God would want if he was interested in Earth/Humans. (Do good vs believe in 1 holy human)
Still happy we got Freedom of Religion so I can be a skeptic. I can't help but roll my eyes that the perfect, all knowing, all powerful God doesn't care if we are good, he want's us to believe 1 human is the son of God. Deism is so much easier to rationalize.
I liked what the Muslim Philosophers said: "Religion is for the masses, philosophers can logically deduce what God wants."
I'm primarily a Skeptic/Agonistic, but Deism solves the cause and effect problem. I generally don't find skepticism useful for real-world uses, despite it being so easy to argue from.
Some phosphate deposits are high in cadmium, to the extent that cadmium contamination of the derived fertilizer (and the fields it's applied to) is an issue. I wonder how much cadmium is in this deposit.
I also wonder if it could be mined by dissolving it underground with acid, rather than mining it and dissolving it at the surface.
stuff like this really makes it seem like simulation theory might be real, there have been people warning about phosphate shortages leading to food crisis for years and even as recently as a few months ago, then Norway finds this massive supply
The world is very large and we have a detailed accounting of what, maybe a fraction of one percent of it? It would be FAR weirder if we stopped discovering new things in a mostly unexplored planet.
You are exaggerating. but there is definitely more to find. some of the largest mines are just like the first place they started digging without any modern exploration techniques. Mostly doesn't matter. humans will run out at some point of critical materials.
Good luck getting deeper, temperatures rise, everything becomes much harder, thus costly. You can't do any serious extraction of solid minerals, only gasses and liquids (oil) are possible in certain situations
You could craft that same type of argument about literally thousands of technical challenges from 200 years ago that are now thoroughly solved. Is this one super extra special?
We don't have 200 years to figure it out. I'm not the one that lacks perspective here. Hard problems also often take over 200 years to solve, we can't rely on the dogmatic belief that we will somehow figure it out.
This, and also: all the discoveries that don't immediately help solve our problems rarely make the news, or if they do we gloss over them and forget them immediately.
Vital demand for a resource caused people to go looking for the resource. Attributing this discovery to 'the simulation' or benevolent gods seems silly to me.
I would definitely say the Arabs are more blessed. They have massive oil reserves, favorable warm weather and a central location in the world to sell that oil. Norway is a frozen wasteland in the north.
50°C in the shade is not 'favourable warm weather'.
And Norway is not a frozen wasteland. Where I live in Norway is currently rather warmer than where I am visiting family in southern England. And the average annual temperature is 13°C, hardly a frozen wasteland.
There's loads of untapped resources still, but it costs money to find & extract it; it's a cost / benefit tradeoff, or an investment / risk tradeoff. Nothing weird about it.
Seems like this is warnings about crises working exactly as intended. If someone hears a fire engine siren and as a result doesn't pull into a road and get hit by a fire engine, what you're saying is that sirens are pointless because nobody was hurt?
I don't think the causative direction is like that. I think the market responded as it did. People didn't find new oil fields because experts said there will be Peak Oil.
This is fortuitous as we reached peak phosphorus in 2016, and should also be capturing and recycling it if we want to continue producing food cheaply and efficiently.
It's a good thing it's in Norway, because Norway has already proven themselves capable of competently managing valuable natural resources, avoiding the resource curse. In most other countries, particularly developing or underdeveloped countries, such a windfall would probably cause long-term damage to their economy and political stability / freedom.
The biggest curse is to be resource-rich and to also be an underdeveloped country within reach of some imperial power who wants to extract those resources. As a country in Europe on the periphery of America’s backyard, that seems like less of a concern for them.
I suspect it's same here in New Zealand. It's absolutely impossible for incumbent company to get into big gov or enterprise scale projects. Everyone knows each other. In Health everyone are even from same school. Hundreds of millions are spent on software licences that no one uses.
The massive numbers they are talking about are extrapolating drill results down to 4500m, which is pretty crazy. But let’s say the orebody does extend to depth at regular grades, that would be the deepest mine in the world, and there are a lot cheaper options.
(I’m a hard rock mining engineer)