The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

ob,
for an article addressed to the lay person it's not too bad. the only thing i found particularly heinous is:

Rare earth deposits, unlike most base or precious metal deposits, normally contain multiple mineral phases – or in other words, have complex mineralogy that formed over different time periods and environmental conditions - making processing difficult and expensive.

the first part of that sentence is just flat out false.

in addition, folks should not focus on rarity of any particular REE but rather the demand of specific REEs relative to their abundance. For example, the demand for Nd for magnets going into windmills is probably much larger relative to supply than for samarium going into machines for cancer treatments. [i don't understand why folks would use samarium anyway since Nd magnets are more powerful]. As another aside, the green folks who make claims that significant amounts of hydrocarbons can be offset by things like windmills might want to count up how much Nd would be required to actually accomplish those numbers. i suspect they'd find that there isn't that much Nd in the earth. if they argue that they'll go to other magnets, then they'll have to change their efficiency numbers and they'll still have a problem.