I described it more in post 1, but the constraints on minerals are on the timing (the time required to open mines) and on scale (the quantities required are too big, the large majority of metals is expected to peak by 2100 given exponential growth).
What matters the most, though, is energy—mining, refining and smelting require a lot of energy (mostly from diesel trucks and coal for high heat manufacturing, both very difficult to substitute). The grade of ores is already declining. Given infinite energy, we could mine common ground and get anything we want, but this is of course impossible. Mining from common ground would actually be the prospect of space mining, since there is no geological process that makes concentrated ore on asteroids and other planets.
Overall, the amount of metals we can mine depends on the amount of energy at our disposal. Which is a problem since it will decline.
As said above, you can find in the additional doc a full section on metals.
I described it more in post 1, but the constraints on minerals are on the timing (the time required to open mines) and on scale (the quantities required are too big, the large majority of metals is expected to peak by 2100 given exponential growth).
What matters the most, though, is energy—mining, refining and smelting require a lot of energy (mostly from diesel trucks and coal for high heat manufacturing, both very difficult to substitute). The grade of ores is already declining. Given infinite energy, we could mine common ground and get anything we want, but this is of course impossible. Mining from common ground would actually be the prospect of space mining, since there is no geological process that makes concentrated ore on asteroids and other planets.
Overall, the amount of metals we can mine depends on the amount of energy at our disposal. Which is a problem since it will decline.
As said above, you can find in the additional doc a full section on metals.