Simon Michaux And Why We're Going To Run Out Of Minerals And, Aiee! We All Die

Reader: we don't

There’s a guy working up in Finland who keeps trying to tell us that we’re all about to run out of lovely metals. Therefore - as with the Club of Rome beforehand, Blueprint for Survival and all those guys - we’re all gonna die.

Aiee, eh?

Now it is possible to work through all his assumptions and nip at them in detail. For example, he assumes we need about 20 million tonnes of lithium in order to replace the global internal combustion engine fleet with battery powered. Not a bad assumption. The Tesla Master Plan 3 comes to the same answer. But if we want to have weeks and weeks of battery power for the whole of society we’re going to need much more than that. Which is a problem, mineral resources are only around 90 million tonnes, so, we’re stuffed.

And, well. Here’s the problem. We’re all - including Michaux - using United States Geological Survey Numbers. In 2023 lithium:

Owing to continuing exploration, identified lithium resources have increased substantially worldwide and total about 98 million tons.

In 2024:

Owing to continuing exploration, measured and indicated lithium resources have increased substantially worldwide and total about 105 million tons.

Wait, what? We can get more mineral resources if we go looking for them? Well, if that’s true then the size of mineral resources cannot be the limitation on how much is out there, right?

This then brings us to the basic mistake that has been made here. We’ve been through this here a number of times.

It’s this:

Figures 28 & 29 shows the needed quantity of metal to phase out fossil fuels (assuming all four power storage buffer capacities) is compared against the total metal content in the whole planetary environment, including the deep ocean polymetallic nodules under sea resources (Hein et al. 2020). So, Figure 28 shows reported mineral reserves plus estimated mineral resources on land plus estimated undersea mineral resources. This is the summation of mineral reserves, resources, on land and under the sea, in the planetary environment. Even with this extreme summation of conventional and unconventional sources, there was not enough copper, nickel, lithium, cobalt, or vanadium to manufacture even just the first generation of renewable technology to replace the existing fossil fuel industrial system.

That’s on page 240 and yes, I had to read (OK, speed read/skim) to get to his simple statement of his mistake. You owe me guys, 239 pages worth.

He’s right that mineral resources can be converted into mineral reserves by the application of time and effort - capital, really. But he thinks that mineral resources are the definition of the mineral deposits that exist. Which just ain’t true - mineral resources are mineral deposits that people have applied time and effort - capital really - to defining. That’s how mineral resources, as defined by our common source at USGS, can increase year on year.

Now the only estimation of total availability - what’s actually out there - that I know of is one that was done by me. So, take with the pinch of salt and all that. Relying upon me for accurate scientific calculations, well. Even if I do grasp the logic and definitions. But say I’m an order of magnitude out. Heck, that I’m two or three of those out. My estimation is that there’re 2,850,000 billion tonnes of lithium out there. Three million billion tonnes. So, it turns out that we’ve only 3 million million, tonnes. Or, heck, it’s only three hundred thousand million tonnes. Still a lorra lots of lithium and far, far, more than we need.

He’s wrong. Wrong because he’s not understood the technical terms in use. He thinks that “total metal content in the whole planetary environment” is defined by mineral resources. It ain’t. Therefore he’s wrong. Wholly, wildly, to the extent of tens of orders of magnitude, wrong.

I’m sure he had lots of fun with his different coloured pens and perhaps we should all club together and send him a new plastic pocket protector. But as science - and yes, I know this is peer reviewed - it’s somewhere between junk and misleading shit. Sorry and all that but it is.

My thanks to Thomas Kruemmer for alerting me to this paper.