That likely resulted in many species going extinct!
Many of our iron ore deposits we still mine today are from that rusting. (That iron used to be mostly dissolved in the oceans.)
Our present technology based on iron and steel owes itself to early life on Earth, from 1.6 to as much as 4 billion years ago. As with petroleum and coal-bed formation, a process unlikely to repeat in Earth's future. Iron ores are abundant, but still a finite resource.
The iron doesn't go anywhere (ok, except for the iron making up our space probes). It is infinitely recyclable.
That's what ores are. Ores are useful because they are concentrated, the result of some ore-formation or ore genesis process.
The "not going anywhere", after it's been dispersed throughout the lithosphere, is precisely the problem.
<https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...>
That's a loss of 2/3 of production to non-scrap effluvia on an annual basis. I'll let you work out the ultimate resource depletion cycle from that. Recycling is useful, but it's no magic bullet, and there are always losses.
The most heavily recycled metal in the US is lead, per USGS data and prior comments of mine, with recovery rates of about 75%, accounting for 40% of net production.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20164506>
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26412585>
Source citation: "USGS 2020 Minerals Yearbook: Recycling — Metals"
<https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics-and-i...>
Considering that the amount of stuff in our world made from steel at any one time is steadily increasing this makes sense.
>The most heavily recycled metal in the US is lead, per USGS data and prior comments of mine, with recovery rates of about 75%, accounting for 40% of net production.
There's little to no "post consumer pre-recycler" use for lead whereas every tom dick and harry can find a use for some old pipes or beams or whatever.
I wasn't aware that concentrated stores of iron are also an important part of this story!
There's plenty of coal left, and we will likely never exploit it, because solar is getting so cheap.
Also, despite long prophecies, peak oil never arrived either. So it doesn't look like we are running out of that stuff.
Everything around us is bathed in warm oxygen, just waiting to catch fire! Our homes, our clothes, our fields, our possessions, …our hair. Ready oxidation brings vitality to Earth but it’s also ridiculously dangerous.
"Your planet is how close to that star!? H20 would be liquid! How do you protect yourselves from the polar solvent leaking down into the rock?"
Far more an Eden, then.
Related: highly recommend Robert M. Hazen Great Courses and book