ABSTRACT
how important is it to find better methods of exploring for minerals? For the long pull, no one can say for sure. Perhaps future generations will be most concerned with radiation levels or with population pressure on food supply and living area, and will look upon our efforts to anticipate their needs as totally unnecessary, although well meaning and even quaint. On the other hand, it may be that mineral shortages will limit mankind’s ability to provide better for more people, so that some future generation may curse us for leaving them an earth depleted of mineral resources. The fact that presently-known domestic reserves of many important minerals can be exhausted in twenty-five years or less would make it seem that mineral shortages are inevitable. From today’s standpoint, therefore, the supply of minerals, and better techniques of enlarging them, are practical questions of some urgency. Adjustment to any plausible physical limit can only be made by striking an ultimate balance between supply on one hand, and population and per capita consumption on the other. To calculate this balance, however, it is essential to know the limit of the mineral resources for the future.
