[startupfounder]

Here is a list of NEO Earth Close Approaches:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

1. Not a bad ROI to save a global economy with a GDP of $77.609 trillion and population of 7.095 billion.[1]

2. The side benefit is understanding how to mine NEOs worth billions.[2]

3. I would like to buy an insurance policy against an impact. I bet it would be super cheap as there is very low risk, but would get me to Mars or ISS.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

[EGreg]

"Based on known terrestrial reserves, and growing consumption in both developed and developing countries, key elements needed for modern industry and food production could be exhausted on Earth within 50–60 years.[2] These include phosphorus, antimony, zinc, tin, lead, indium, silver, gold and copper"

Sounds ominous! Why aren't we more worried? Because Capitalism?

[oilywater]

Mostly that. But realistically there's no education on any of this stuff.

For example 2017 is the year when some of the most used rare earth elements will be depleted and should be retrieved through recycling in the next years (gallium for the LCD displays is disappearing, so either we figure out the displays or massively recycle). This is not a surprise because the demand for rare earth elements has been rising exponentially, with the number of electronic devices produced :D

Although, food production is definitely getting more and more efficient. But biology of living beings on Earth is too inefficient for the current production to be sustainable. Just compare the vast amounts of food (energy) a single duck, chicken or cow needs to maintain body heat, with the weight (energy value) of meat. This coupled with growing consumption in developing countries won't really work.

Without Hot Air is an excellent book written by a problem solving pragmatist and excellent machine learning researcher David MacKay exposing the pure numbers and limits and extrapolating them carefully, to get the same conclusions. http://www.withouthotair.com/Electronic.html

[ridgeguy]

Gallium supply: Wikipedia [1] says USGS estimates gallium reserves as > one megaton. Production in 2012 was an estimated 273 metric tons. I don't see us running out of gallium soon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium

[oilywater]

I'm not pulling these numbers out of my butt.

There's absolutely no way that there's one million gallium reserves economically viable for extraction. If there was, the price wouldn't be that high.

Hafnium and indium too. 2017-2020.

https://scholar.google.hr/scholar?q=indium+hafnium+reserves&...

[mapt]

I'm sure you're not. The issue is, "economically viable" is a useless phrase by itself, and is usually used to imply "economically viable at current prices".

For most non-energy non-renewable resources, humanity can just pour more energy than they do now into securing the scarce resource, and things will be a bit more expensive, but less concentrated ores will be targetted and more expensive extraction methods used and the supply will hold up at a higher price. Substitutes will be sought and some will maybe be found, if they work out better than the now-pricier resource.

Finance abhors an inexpensive depleting natural resource it has no substitutes or emergency supply for: if it is economically viable for one investor to buy all the world's remaining supply of Technetium, he will stockpile it and trickle it out to the resource-starved market at ten times what he paid. To assert that "lack of education" is the problem is ignoring the numbers issue: it only takes a single smart investor to turn the whole market towards appreciating reality-mandated scarcity, and he earns a very large profit for educating the market.

Fossil fuel extraction concerns have a better basis: they have a floor at which it is mathematically impossible to profit from extraction, EROI<1, so long as you are using the energy you extracted to harvest more energy. I was for a period of five years or so an alarmist on this point. Even so, it looks like there exist enough positive EROI deposits to raise global CO2 by an untenable amount (an amount which depopulates >10% of the world's presentday habitation due to high wet bulb temperatures), long before we run out of coal, oil, gas, & kerogen shales.

[EGreg]

I have a question: if squeezing a market results in a guaranteed profit, how come so few companies were able to do it, even on small markets? Goldman Sachs did it with bread and steel I think... but failed. Why would pumping cost less than the dumping makes?

[marcosdumay]

The discrepancy is probably due to different definitions of "reserve".

In the end of the day, that probably means that we'll get our gallium, but we'll have to pay more for it.

[gizmo686]

The standard answers are:

1) Known reserves likely represent a fraction of what is available because we have not had reason to search for new reserves.

2) We do not really consume any of those resources in the same way that we consume fossil fuels, so as a worst case scenario, we can simply mine them from our landfills. This arguably falls under new, more expensive, reserves.

[dawnbreez]

Most likely, we're not worried because we didn't know about it. The companies that rely on/mine these materials are probably worried, but are most likely just not mentioning it since doing so would hurt their sales (and in turn lower their budget, which means they'll have less money to solve the problem).

[shasta]

3. I would love to sell you that insurance policy.

[cmsmith]

I'm also offering USD denominated insurance against the United States descending into anarchy.

[philippnagel]

Does such an insurance policy exist already?

[sangnoir]

> Does such an insurance policy exist already?

Not to my knowledge. I believe parent is being sarcastic. If an impact event occurs: a) claimant might be too dead to make the claim or b) markets would probably collapse, making the payout worthless. So there is very little point in buying that kind of cover, the only party with an upside is the insurer - hence parent volunteering.

[dankohn1]

USD-denominated Credit Default Swaps on US Treasuries (which were a thing in 2008) fall in this category. Any scenario bad enough for the swaps to be redeemable is one in which you are unlikely to be able to redeem them.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-26/why-would-a...

[jfoutz]

Warren Buffet might sell you that. He'll insure just about anything, and the terms are interesting. There's no negotiation. You get to present 1 time the about of coverage vs the premiums you'll pay. Keep in mind, the won't take a losing bet, the premiums must be more than the risk of payout, if you want 10 dollars of coverage for an event with 10% happening, you're going to have to pay well more than $1 for the premium.

On the upside, if you're really worried about needing $10,000,000,000 of coverage, and you're willing to pay the premium, you can get it. You just have to make the deal sweet enough for him to take it. and you have to guess right the first time.

[patcon]

Someone should really scrape that site into an API and re-surface it to make it as well-designed as it deserves to be. Would be a fun UX/design side-project...

EDIT: The first site you linked, that is :)

[mattbeckman]

I believe there is one here: https://data.nasa.gov/