The simplest: No exhaustible has been depleted yet. See table 4. Add the years in columns 3 or 4 or 5 to 1972. Gold, mercury, silver were predicted to be exhausted by 2017. None are.
You are correct. In fact, they never will be depleted. Same with the oil. Most of the oil that is still in the ground will stay there.
"These forecasts are made possible by assuming the limit on the amount of oil extracted is the amount of oil in the ground. In fact, the limit is likely to be a financial (debt) limit that comes much sooner." https://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/01/13/why-eia-iea-and-rander...
Please also see: Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet https://www.amazon.com/Extracted-Mineral-Wealth-Plundering-P...
It is well possible we are beyond the peak already. This brings us to the "Seneca effect" http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/08/seneca-effect-or...
Otherwise: Business as usual.
Own words? Most of the blog posts are done by people much smarter than me. I could do a 1 or 2 hour PPT Presentation trying to get to the point. I think only a few people would be able to follow me. Not, because I am so tremendously smarter than them (I have a PhD), but because the topic is so tremendously complex and interlinked.
This being said. It does not hurt to read this blog posts and think about them. The conclusion would be: We are f...ed. I may have a very negative outlook into the future and I hope that I am wrong. But I am afraid we are running into mathematical limits. Quote from the last blog post (Galactic energy scale) "But let’s not overlook the key point: continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes." Then again, if you understand how energy, debt, growth and our society are interlined, this is NOT good news. Stay on the level we have now? Impossible. Read the first blog post. We are running in circles.
My take-aways: all energies except nuclear are finite in about 200 years barring unrealistic technical advances (like 100% efficiency). Don't forget the catch-up consumption for the other 6.7B world citizens. That would shorten the process. Supply and demand for energy could easily create incentives to better allocate our 7000TW budget. In the long run (and we are talking really long run) S&D should allocate research (nuclear fusion for one, but consumption lowering as well) incentive compatible with our energy budget. The end of the demographic divide suggests falling population rates in 100 yrs. One of the largest drivers of that growth percentage is population growth. But that seems ending. I agree with the CoR there. Another big energy saver.
Energy usage is not my worry. Man induced climate change without the political will the make pollution endogenous to markets, that is. Market forces cannot work on CO2 without world wide agreement. I'm a market optimist and a political pessimist.
Thanks for the reference, seems a nicely concise overview. The resources and industrial output graph almost jumps out ...
I was mostly asking about details of what exact points you said they were wrong about.
> The simplest: No exhaustible has been depleted yet. See table 4. [...] Gold, mercury, silver were predicted to be exhausted by 2017. None are.
Indeed. Thanks! Though I should add that these tables are not based on their system simulation, but simply on known reserves and know rates of consumption at the time.