The Big Bang created the first 4 elements on the periodic table. All other heavy elements were created in the center of exploding stars (novas, super-novas, hyper-novas) by smashing lighter elements together. By the way, the sun's power comes from fusing pairs of hydrogen atoms to make helium. The earth is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminum (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements (percentages from wikipedia).
Humans do not have the ability to create new elements by fusing lighter atoms together and because of this we will eventually run out of our favorites. What will happen when we run out of copper and cadmium? How will we make new electronics? I know everyone is freaking out over the limited supply of oil but we can always figure out new energy sources; what is truly scarce are the raw elements. Now from those percentages above it looks like we are ok with iron, silicon, magnesium, nickel, and aluminum however most of their locations are out of reach for humans. Future wars will be fought over mines.
Solution: we mine our garbage. I don't have the numbers on me but I'm certain that most of the elements used in cans, electronics (especially cell phones), appliances, etc. are not recycled. Don't think of landfills and big mounds of trash, think of them as our precious future raw material reserves.
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So that's why I keep finding scrappers in abandoned buildings... FYI The price of copper has doubled in the last 6 months and is 5x more expensive now than in 2002. In detroit they're having problems with people scrapping fire hydrants for the trace amount of copper there. The were several instances of fires occuring and the department not being able to find a hydrant within range because they were all scrapped. A number of people have also been fried stealing copper wrie from live power substations. Soon we'll be wearing copper jewelry instead of diamonds & gold. Ok maybe not.
Those are amazing numbers. I wonder how much one penny costs. I've heard of scrappers taking manhole covers but fire hydrants are new to me. The power substations I find funny because of the scrapper electrocutions. You'd think they would test which were live first. Oooo you could make copper jewelry to bring awareness to the plight of metals, like people wearing buttons for causes or those Armstrong wrist bands.
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