Could we run out of clay?
Short version: there's a kind of clay that is mined in a certain location in Japan for industrial purposes. It is a deposit from over a million years ago. The news story was about the mine, but I wondered about what happens when we run out?
The human interest bit on the lunch time show was a newsy being shown around a mine. Turns out that this mine produces a certain variety of clay that bakes into white utility forms -- I'm not quite sure what they are used for. But in the course of showing her around, they explained that this kind of clay is made of plankton that's something like a million years old, and that the bed that they are mining doesn't extend too far. They showed where branches of the mine had stopped, as they hit the edge of the bed. Not that they seemed worried about it, but it's clearly a limited resource.
So we're talking about a resource that got laid down some time ago, and is being used up. Kind of like oil.
You know, we're going to have to run the planet through another era of dinosaurs and shallow seas and such to replenish this stuff once we use up the current crop. Not that I'm likely to be around to worry about it, but . . .
Oil, diamonds, clay -- wonder just how many nonrenewable resources we are busily chewing up?
I wonder why the news person didn't mention it.
The human interest bit on the lunch time show was a newsy being shown around a mine. Turns out that this mine produces a certain variety of clay that bakes into white utility forms -- I'm not quite sure what they are used for. But in the course of showing her around, they explained that this kind of clay is made of plankton that's something like a million years old, and that the bed that they are mining doesn't extend too far. They showed where branches of the mine had stopped, as they hit the edge of the bed. Not that they seemed worried about it, but it's clearly a limited resource.
So we're talking about a resource that got laid down some time ago, and is being used up. Kind of like oil.
You know, we're going to have to run the planet through another era of dinosaurs and shallow seas and such to replenish this stuff once we use up the current crop. Not that I'm likely to be around to worry about it, but . . .
Oil, diamonds, clay -- wonder just how many nonrenewable resources we are busily chewing up?
I wonder why the news person didn't mention it.