[jeffbee]

There are unimaginable mineral resources under the Greenland ice sheet, stuff that literate humans have never seen and which is therefore not describe in any history. There should be enormous boulders of pure copper, rich deposits of gold, silver, and lead, and of course mercury. Greenland without its ice sheet will be like a museum of pre-human geology.

[pcrh]

This is akin to the "unimaginable" resources in asteroids.

By and large, we really don't need more resources to mine, but to use what we have more efficiently.

I'm sure there are a few edge cases, but the attitude that we should look for more and more to exploit is what leads to deforestation, the biggest loss of species diversity since the last ice age, global warming and a serious toll on the health of today's people.

[dheera]

I really hope at some point in the future we will have the tech to arbitrarily convert a pile of one element into a pile of another element. Without that, colonizing other planets is going to be hard.

[leafmeal]

This sounds really interesting and would love to learn more about this. Do you know of any resources, articles, books, etc. that talk about this?