Asian Scavengers Feed China’s Hunger for Steel
With its relentless industrial rise, China, once known as the Middle Kingdom, has become a massive magnet inexorably drawing scrap metal from across Asia.
Resource Depletion
Russia’s unpleasant future
As soon as natural resources start running out or some alternative energy sources come up, Russia will start slipping down into a bottomless precipice and will inevitably collapse into small territories.
British Petroleum states that Russian oil reserves equal to 60 billion barrels.
Such relatively modest amount leads us to believe that a new Russian law consummated in February 2004 was no coincidence. According to the new law, any information concerning oil reserves in the country is in fact State secret. Actual oil and gas reserves in Russia turned out to be not quite as big as the Russian elite had envisioned them. Taking into account today’s export tempo of oil products, Russia could soon begin importing oil.
THE COMING COPPER CRUNCH
“…With the current growth rate in demand for copper running at over 400,000 tons annually, even assuming all capacity is brought on line, within 3 to 4 years available supply will not be able to meet world demand. Why the looming imbalance? As is so often the case these days, look to China and India, where the rush to build the infrastructure necessary to sustain economic growth is soaking up commodities on a global scale. It is a very good time to start paying attention to copper…”
The coming helium shortage
Where will you be when the world runs out of helium? It’s surprising how many scientists and nonscientists alike are oblivious of the pending helium shortage. But it is a fact—we will run out of helium.
Safe to breath
The Guardian recently ran an article titled: “The oxygen crisis: Could the decline of oxygen in the atmosphere undermine our health and threaten human survival?)
Not to worry. The O2 released from photosynthesis comes from H2O. Thus there will never be a shortage of material for the production of O2 so long as there is water on this planet. There is no “peak oxygen.”