IKN

Ah, it seems like only yesterday. The whole excerpt is worthy but your humble scribe highlights and underlines the…errr…moneyline:

Dr Jenkin said: “Mobile phones contain copper, nickel, silver and
zinc, aluminium, gold, lead, manganese, palladium, platinum and tin.
More than a billion people will buy a mobile in a year — so that’s
quite a lot of metal. And then there’s the neodymium in your laptop, the
iron in your car, the aluminium in that soft drinks can — the list
goes on…

“With ever-greater use of these metals, are we running out? That was
one of the questions we addressed at our meeting. It is reassuring that
there’s no immediate danger of ‘peak metal’ as there’s quite a lot in
the ground, still — but there will be shortages and bottlenecks of some
metals like indium due to increased demand.

“That means that exploration for metal commodities is now a key
skill. It’s never been a better time to become an economic geologist,
working with a mining company. It’s one of the better-kept secrets of
employment in a recession-hit world.

“And a key factor in turning young people away from the large mining
companies — their reputation for environmental unfriendliness — is
being turned around as they make ever-greater efforts to integrate with
local communities for their mutual benefit.”

So, our appetite for technological goodies will be satisfied for some
time to come still — as long as sufficient people with the skills to
seek out the metals emerge into the marketplace.

Professor of Geology at Leicester University, Dr. Gawen Jenkin, said that at a meeting of the Geological Society of London in October 2011. How y’all doing out there, newly graduated geols?