CT Only: How much for the planet?

[BlackBat242]

I can weld, not great, I have to know it though, otherwise when they come to do the x-rays there would be bad welds. Many of us work in the field, it is just up or out, so I went to business management school 20 years after my initial degree. I looked at the req's for Mars personnel (mech and struct), and could fulfill them, told my wife, and she said she'd divorce me if I went. She said the same thing though when I was offered an Army job after 9/11, and I was thinking of taking it.

I have panned for gold, fun, I have a vial of about $200 worth on the shelf in my office, though I know that 90% of claims were worked by companies. There are still claims active, one can buy them for about $150,000; none really worth it though, most mineral extraction is subsidized. It is an artificial scarcity economy, same as OPEC and oil. It was the timber that was really valuable, those stands are gone now.

In Utah, just a few miles from the capital of Salt Lake City is the largest open-pit mine in North America - it is actually the largest excavation of any type in the world.

In WW2 it produced 30% of the copper used by the Allies - currently it produces 8% of the US consumption (1% of the world copper production), making it the #2 copper producer in the US.
Geologists estimate that at least as much profitable ore remains as has been removed.

If only copper was being extracted, as it was during most of its history (digging began in 1906), it would lose money - "trace" (secondary) minerals (including gold) are produced in large enough quantities to keep the mine profitable - despite more than $450 million spent in remediation of toxic wastes over the last ~40 years (most of it in the last 20 years).

The vast majority of ANY mineral extraction comes from large-scale industrial-level mining.