A specific example that comes to mind would be a species of tree known as Swietenia mahogani. It was used in 18th century furniture due to its high quality richness and utility. In any case, the last tree was cut down within 50 years of its first use in furniture.
Well, there are still bats around and they are still pooping.
Its rather inexpensive at garden stores.
Actually Swietenia mahogani is still common. I have one growing in my front yard as a matter of fact. They grow quite well in southern California. And the trees are still used to make furniture.
Possibly true on some particular West Indian island, but the species itself still exists through much of the Caribbean and Florida, and is cultivated in plantations. Most mahogany wood today, however, comes from related species.
Please don’t make this thread degenerate into batshit insanity.
That’s an infinitely renewable resource, at least as long as the internet lasts.
it’s formed continuously. if you’re talking about nauru, yes it’s exhausted AT PREVIOUS RATE OF EXTRACTION.
there’s the forests in iceland, according to national geographic.
Isn’t that an animal, though?
the mineral reserves located near the earth’s surface have not been fully mapped out, and some deposits previously uneconomical may become viable soon. as to the reverse (the thread question,) it’s so hard to call. i would know that the reserves for the following metals will take us well into the next century:
gold-silver-copper
lead-zinc
tungsten
nicklel-cobalt
uranium
iron-chromium-titanium
rare earths are really “rare” but no indication we’ll run out soon.
one rare metal that was discovered only in the 20th century is rhenium which is now in high demand for making jet engines. i heard of only one dedicated rhenium mine so far (australia.)
It seems to me that I have read that gold is mined in ores that have a half ounce of gold per ton. This illustrates how you cannot really exhaust a mineral; it just gets harder and harder to exploit it.
half oz = 14 grams. per tonne? that’s high grade. deep south african mines profit at 5 grams per tonne. open pit mines can turn a profit at less than 2 grams a tonne.
I guess the OP’s restriction on animals is intended to avoid questions of simple extinction. But if we allow that we are interested in resources, as an economically important commodity, then some animal populations should probably be allowed. We don’t need to drive them to extinction either, but if we deplete a specific population to the point where the resource vanishes, that should probably count. In which case there are ample examples of fisheries that have been destroyed, and with them the eco-system that sustianed them. Thus the resource won’t return or recover.
Mineral resources are a curious issue. There are economic forces that cause the known reserves minerals to never exceed a few decades. This is because a known economic reserve needs to be properly explored and understood. This means a mining or exploration company needs to put enough money and effort into the resource that it comes a valuable entity in its own right. At this point the company will want to claim mining right to it - otherwise they have no claim on the resource, and any other company would be entitled to bid for rights to mine it. However mining rights are not free. Indeed they usually come with significant ongoing costs, where the country that owns the land levies an annual fee against the claim that is proportional to the claims value. Thus where there are often pretty good ideas about where new resources might be found, the exploration for new resources is always targeted at finding only the next decade or two worth.
"The identified rhenium resources in the United States are estimated to total 5 million kilograms. These resources are found in the southwestern United States. The identified rhenium resources in the rest of the world are estimated to total 6 million kilograms. Countries producing rhenium include Armenia, Canada, Chile, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Uzbekistan. Even though the United States has significant rhenium resources, the majority of the rhenium consumed in the U.S. is imported. Chile and Kazakhstan provide the majority of the imported rhenium. The rest is imported from Mexico and other nations. "
whoa! that’s what i get for shooting off too fast. the above producers mentioned are primarily copper / molybdenum mines that have rhenium as a by-product, much like gold and rare earths (man has been using rhenium for decades now.) i have to repeat what i said, there is only one dedicated rhenium mine and that is the merlin deposit in australia. it’s actually a mix of molybdenum and rhenium but it will be mined primarily for the latter metal.
They’re not gone completely, but there aren’t many harvestable trees big enough to get really wide boards. They’re rare enough that people make a living finding and recovering big logs that sunk to the bottom during float-down-the-river log drives in New England in the 1800s.
Admittedly the customer here is basically “I want a really authentic restoration of my 1781 barn and I don’t care what it costs”, because plywood or 2"x4"s are obviously easy to find and a lot cheaper than pulling logs out of the bottom of a lake, but still, trees to make wide boards are a nearly depleted resource, if you consider national parks, etc. off-limits.
It’s my understanding that a significant chunk of gold mined nowadays comes from mines that primarily mine copper or other metals. Even if the gold itself isn’t enough to be economical, it makes a nice icing on the cake of the copper mining.
Then, too, most metals are recycled. Your wedding ring might well contain gold from the treasury of Nebuchadnezzar, or Cleopatra’s crown. Gold has a tendency to stick around, through the ages.
Is a mineral found only in Greenland. It was used as a flux to refine aluminum-the mine closed down in the 1970’s.
A synthetic substitute was found, which costs less and works better.
I think many of our present problems with minerals will be solved by advanced materials…there is speclation that the price of palladium (catalytic convertors for cars) will collapse soon, as an iron-based catalyst has been developed.
the only economical mine for cryolite then was in west greenland but deposits have been identified in the US, brazil, etc. but you raise a good point. how many non-renewable resources have been rendered obsolete by substitutes and what would have happened had technology been slower?
The rare earth elements are actually quite common, but mostly exist in too dispersed form to be economically feasible to extract. Rare earth ores, where they are sufficiently concentrated to be economically feasible to extract, are somewhat less common.