Tonight (again stupidly), John would tell us we will soon (like as early as 2040) run out of copper, if we keep building wind turbines. (The graphic at right is a legacy — from his last set of lies about Russian / Chinese copper.)
Nonsense.
While it is a very carbon and resource intensive extraction and refining process, once freed, it is the most widely recycled metal in the world. And John’s source is flatly wrong: new copper turbine wire can be fashioned from reclaimed post consumer copper.
So — no one argues the first extraction is cheap or easy. The point is, once the turbines are built and running, we won’t consume as much coal for home electricity.
That is beyond serious dispute.
While Montana’s and Arizona’s remaining unmined copper ore is lower grade, and now dwindling… over a century of supply (high grade) sits in Chile alone. With Peru and Mexico, the supply approached two centuries’ worth.
Read on, from actual copper miners / suppliers:
The term “peak copper” was coined because some experts believe that copper reserves may be diminishing; as a result, it’s prudent to know the top copper reserves by country when considering investing in the mining industry.
The Copper Development Association pegs the current known worldwide copper ore resources at nearly 5.8 trillion pounds, of which only about 0.7 trillion pounds, or 12 percent, have been mined throughout history. Plus, nearly all of that mined copper is still in circulation, as the red metal’s recycling rate is higher than that of any other engineering metal.
With that in mind, what are the biggest copper reserves by country? According to the most recent data from the US Geological Survey, the countries with the largest copper coffers are Chile, Peru, Australia, Russia and Mexico. Read on to learn more about these copper kingpins.
Chile — Copper reserves: 200 million MT
Chile has the largest copper reserves of any country by far, with 200 million metric tons (MT) as of 2020. That is more than twice the reserves of neighboring Peru, the second largest copper producer. Chile’s reserves guarantee copper production for roughly the next 100 years at the current extraction rate.
Chile is also the world’s largest copper producer, having produced some 5.7 million MT of copper from mines in 2020. Copper plays a significant role in the Chilean economy, with an estimated 20 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product attributed to copper production. The steady rise in copper prices has made Chile’s economy one of the strongest and most robust in Latin America.…
So yeah. He’s an ill-informed chucklehead.
Y A W N.
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