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All members of this list will be aware of Bob Gordon's contribution's to
archaeometallurgy over the years, but many will not be aware of the fact
that he has made profound contributions to many other areas of science. He
has a long-standing interest in the potential exhaustion of the earth's
non-renewable resources - see in particular Towards a New Iron Age?
Quantitative Modelling of Resource Exhaustion, co-authored with T.J.
Koopmans, W.D, Nordhaus and B.J. Skinner (Harvard University Press, 1987). 

 

For the latest update on this line of research, see R.B. Gordon, M. Bertram
and T.E. Graedel, "Metal stocks and sustainability", Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 103(5)1209-1214, 2006. In this Bob and
coauthors examine when we might expect to exhaust the earth's stocks of
exploitable ores of copper, zinc, platinum, tin, silver and nickel, given
prior assumptions about the size of the earth's population by 2050,
recycling, loss of metals to corrosion and landfills, and general standards
of living (and thus consumption). They suggest that platinum ores will be
the first to be exhausted, followed by zinc and copper. After that time all
users of these metals will have to make do with what can be recycled.

 

David Killick
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721-0030
U.S.A.

phone (520) 621-8685

fax       (520) 621-2088