{"id":12461,"date":"2013-12-30T09:45:39","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T09:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12461"},"modified":"2013-12-30T09:45:39","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T09:45:39","slug":"the-modern-economy-depends-on-60-obscure-metals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12461","title":{"rendered":"The modern economy depends on 60+ obscure metals"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_12462\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12462\" style=\"width: 259px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/coltan.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12462\" alt=\"Mining coltan\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/coltan.jpg\" width=\"259\" height=\"194\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12462\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mining coltan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Over half a century ago, the global economy largely depended on just ten or so different materials. Most important products were made out of wood, brick, iron, copper, gold, silver or a few plastics \u2014 and that was about it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Things are wildly different today. A huge chunk of modern-day technology, from hybrid cars to iPhones to flat-screen TVs to radiation screens, use dozens of different metals and alloys. A computer chip typically involves <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0921344913000396#fig0015\">more than 60 different elements<\/a> that are specifically selected to optimize performance, like europium or dysprosium.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And that&#8217;s long raised a concern: What would happen if we run short of any of these valuable metals? Say there&#8217;s a war. Or unrest in a crucial mining region. Or China decides to lock up its strontium deposits. Could we easily come up with substitutes? Or is modern society vulnerable to a materials shortage?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Here&#8217;s the case for vulnerability: A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2013\/11\/27\/1312752110.full.pdf+html\">fascinating recent paper<\/a> in The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science looks at 62 different metals that are widely used in modern-day industry. For a dozen metals, potential substitutes are either inadequate or flat-out unavailable. And there are no &#8220;excellent&#8221; substitutes for any of the 62 metals. A shortage of any of them could do some damage.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.enoughproject.org\/publications\/mine-mobile-phone?page=show\">more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over half a century ago, the global economy largely depended on just ten or so different materials. Most important products were made out of wood, brick, iron, copper, gold, silver or a few plastics \u2014 and that was about it. Things are wildly different today. A huge chunk of modern-day technology, from hybrid cars to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12461\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The modern economy depends on 60+ obscure metals&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[7897,7903,7899,7902,7901,2493,2276,7898,7900,7896],"class_list":["post-12461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-brick","tag-coltan","tag-copper","tag-dysprosium","tag-europium","tag-global-economy","tag-gold","tag-iron","tag-silver","tag-wood"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/coltan.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12463,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12461\/revisions\/12463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}