The Death of Gallium
Here’s a chilling article about the gradual extinction not of flora and fauna, or even of something like oil, but of elements.
But now comes word that it isn’t just wildlife that can go extinct. The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet’s stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.
Running out of oil, yes. We’ve all been concerned about that for many years and everyone anticipates a time when the world’s underground petroleum reserves will have been pumped dry. But oil is just an organic substance that was created by natural biological processes; we know that we have a lot of it, but we’re using it up very rapidly, no more is being created, and someday it’ll be gone. The disappearance of elements, though—that’s a different matter. I was taught long ago that the ninety-two elements found in nature are the essential building blocks of the universe. Take one away—or three, or six—and won’t the essential structure of things suffer a potent blow? Somehow I feel that there’s a powerful difference between running out of oil, or killing off all the dodos, and having elements go extinct.
If not all of those elements sound immediately familiar, look them up. Almost all are commercially vital (gallium and hafnium, for instance, are used extensively in electronics, and zinc and copper, of course, are two building blocks of industry). It’s not quite as bad as all that, in that most of those elements are still around somewhere, just converted beyond recognition, dispersed over the planet (most, of course, in landfills and dumps), and amazingly difficult to recover. At best, however, the gathering and use of those elements in the future will become astoundingly expensive.
One can’t help getting the impression, between this, global warming, massive destruction of nature, consuming energy sources like we were snorting coke off a stripper’s ass, and all the other ensuent problems that the human race have put upon our environment, that sans something like nano-technology, colonizing other planets, or mass techno-reversion, the future is going to suuuuck.
All the gallium is divided in three parts.
Comment by Rojas — 7/5/2008 @ 11:25 pm
That aside, one presumes that gallium and hafnium are, like copper and zinc, the most economically viable ingredients at their current level of abundance, rather than the only materials out of which components can be made. Which would mean a future in which electronics would be more costly, but not entirely absent.
We are, after all, nearly out of whale oil, yet we don’t lack for indoor lighting.
Comment by Rojas — 7/5/2008 @ 11:37 pm
Yeah, and I honestly don’t know. I do know that in microchips and a lot of high-end electronic parts, they didn’t pick choose gallium and other elemental components out of a hat, and they usually aren’t very cheap. I have a friend who sells elements to steel processing companies, for instance—couldn’t tell you the elements now—and it’s a lucrative market precisely because the component parts have such a specific requirement that literally they have to pay to mine the stuff out of like, one mountain in the Ukraine to service the entire United States steel industry. Point being, I can’t imagine that in the case of, for instance, high end computing, any old metal will do, or at least not without some kind of massive tradeoff.
Comment by Brad — 7/6/2008 @ 12:18 am
Optical computers, then?
We’re clever monkeys. We’ll figure something out.
Comment by Rojas — 7/6/2008 @ 12:43 am
Amen Rojas.
Extinction is completely the wrong word. We will not wake up in a decade and realize there is no more gallium in the world. Expect to see many ingenious solutions to a dwindling natural supply. It could be everything from mining landfills to an alternative material.
While there will likely always be some high end uses for specific materials, the free market has the job of ensuring enough to satisfy the most demanding customers.
Consider gold which is used in everything from spacecraft to supercomputers. I once read an amazing statistic: all of the gold mined in all of human history would fill a cube the size of a baseball diamond. That’s a 90 foot by 90 foot by 90 foot cube. That’s it. All of the gold ever touched by human hands would fill a tiny little area. Granted that’s a lot of gold. But when you divide it by six billion people it suddenly doesn’t seem very large. Yet, though it may be expensive and exceedingly rare, it’s still available to those willing to pay the price.
All hail the invisible hand.
Comment by Cameron — 7/6/2008 @ 1:08 am
An agrarian lifestyle ha smuch to be said for it, and we’d perhaps learn to marshall our resources with them so dear and scrace. We have indeed been consuming like a bull elephant coming off a 40 day fast for the past 50 years or so.
I’m always amused at how copious the consumption of the erstwhile conservatives.
Comment by TisHerself — 7/6/2008 @ 5:36 pm
I don’t know that there’s any modern American political ideology that advocates significant decreases in consumption. Certainly neither of the major parties do so, and I don’t know that even the Greens actually advocate major changes in individual lifestyle as part of their platform.
Comment by Rojas — 7/6/2008 @ 6:14 pm
A decrease in consumption is a decrease in wealth. As both individuals and society we’re driven to increase wealth. A policy of decreasing consumption is a policy of decreasing wealth. Such a policy is the horrible antithesis to the essence of human beings.
Comment by Cameron — 7/6/2008 @ 7:50 pm
While I appreciate the enthusiasm for the ingenuity of capitalism, I’m not quite sure you appreciate how precious elements are precious preciously because they have incredibly specific properties which other metals or synthetics can’t replicate. At least take a minute to check them out (elements are kewl).
Hafnium.
Gallium.
Indium.
Zinc.
The analogy is sort of like playing with Legos, with a giant chest of them available to you (but once you start scraping the bottom of that chest, you’re out of luck, barring finding another cache of them hidden under your floor beneath your chest, or, say, a Lego-bearing meteorite crashing through your roof). You can build all kinds of cool stuff, but eventually, as more and more pieces go into your constructions, your options become more inherently limited. You can, of course, decide if you would like to spend the afternoon snatching out all the green six squares from everything you’ve built and replacing them with two blue three squares, the sort of process you’d have to start repeating every time you came across some other kind of piece that you’re desperately wanting for. Of course creativity can stretch it, but eventually, there are only so many pieces (and, the more specific the piece, the less you can settle for something else (wheels, say, or heads, or those little spinny things, or lights).
Legos, by the way, are also kewl.
Comment by Brad — 7/6/2008 @ 8:39 pm
Exceedingly rare doesn’t mean unobtainable. For the applications where gallium is make or break it will be obtainable, albeit at a price.
There isn’t a reason to be concerned because you will have to pay for the privilege to use a gallium infused thingamajig. We are clever little monkeys and I’m completely confident in the ability of the free market to allocate rare resources competently.
I really think this is a non-issue. There’s no reason to think that a dearth of a specific element or three will be cause for alarm or fears that the world of electronics will soon collapse.
Comment by Cameron — 7/6/2008 @ 10:14 pm
Non-civilization destroying catastrophe does not a non-issue make.
Comment by Brad — 7/6/2008 @ 10:32 pm
I’m impressed by the commitment to willful ignorance masquerading as optimism exhibited by humanity as a whole and exemplified in this thread.
Comment by Jerrod — 7/7/2008 @ 12:16 am
I don’t know what policy proposal would alleviate the shortages of gallium and hafnium without bringing on precisely the economic problems that it seeks to avoid.
Comment by Rojas — 7/7/2008 @ 3:39 am
You know, civilization (at least one predicated on a growth model) WILL collapse.
http://tinyurl.com/5nlqad
And I’m not just being hysterical here.
Comment by Jerrod — 7/7/2008 @ 10:06 am
Armin Reller was referred to a couple months ago in this New Scientist article on the same subject.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19426051.200
Comment by sconnor — 7/7/2008 @ 1:07 pm
Regarding your link Jerrod, I cannot disagree more. It sounds like the essential complaint is one of increasing complexity and global integration. The question that begs to be asked is why now? Our entire history has been one of increasing integration, increasing complexity, increasing connections, increasing trade and a shrinking world. The doom and gloom predictions that have been thrown about since time eternal always assume that our current predicament is unique and that this time progress really can’t be sustained.
The concept of diminishing returns seems to the be gist of the entire article. I’m puzzled by this argument. If anything we’ve had exponentially increasing returns for an hour labor. She says, “The extra food produced by each extra hour of labour — or joule of energy invested per farmed hectare — diminishes as that investment mounts.”
Is it really denied that our economy is far more energy (specifically oil) efficient than it was during the 70s? Do you really think that each extra hour of labor is worth less today than it was in the 50s? We’ve been living in an age of skyrocketing productivity, not diminishing returns.
The worry about increasing connectivity is laughable. Since we began congregating in cities in ancient Iraq, we’ve been increasing connectivity. Everytime there is a need to purchase something that you yourself didn’t produce from scratch you’re living in a world of connections. As our economies have grown and we’ve prospered the level of connectivity has increased a million fold, but again, I ask why now?
Is our current age of interconnectivity much different than the explosion of connections during the industrial revolution? Why are we special here in the 21st century to warrant civilization ending collapse?
We’ve been integrating at various levels throughout human history. Originally it was low level integrations such as buying a pair of assembled shoes from a skilled craftsman down the street in a village. Then we bought watches from a highly specialized worker from a large shop all the way across the city. We then started to buy imported animal furs from across our country. Then there was a need for minerals brought all of the way across the continent. How is it any different or worse today to buy some cotton from Brazil, ship it to Indonesia on a ship built in Denmark, assemble a shirt with machines designed in Seoul but built in Taiwan and fly it to Denver on a plane designed in Seattle and built in over 20 countries?
It’s the brilliance of humans, of capitalism. And friend, it’s our entire essence as humanity. It’s our history and our future, to a degree unimaginable today.
Comment by Cameron — 7/7/2008 @ 3:10 pm
Man, I didn’t realize what a bunch of futurists you lot all are.
Comment by Brad — 7/7/2008 @ 3:26 pm
sconnor, that was actually quite a while ago, that NS article. I remember that issue well and tried to find the graphic they used showing the number of elements and minerals that are in short supply. Thanks for the link.
Here is that graphic.
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2605/26051202.jpg
Comment by Jerrod — 7/7/2008 @ 8:41 pm
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1300/
USGS has information on consumption and production and lifecycle of materials. That report suggests enough Indium for “several decades.” Not sure what the source of discrepancy is. Perhaps the shorter timelines are due to extrapolations of expectations in increased consumption whereas the US numbers are based on current consumption? Just a guess.
Comment by Jerrod — 7/8/2008 @ 12:59 am
Given that Indium is primarily used (now) for LED, LCD, and LD displays, I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that usage has jumped dramatically from 2004 to 2008.
Comment by Brad — 7/8/2008 @ 1:27 am