The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

i haven't looked at the Nature article but somebody looks to be greatly over-stating the significance of this 'discovery'. Firstly, i have doubts of the grade of the supposed ore based on geologic environment. Secondly, the story is written in a way that appears to be deceptive. There is no mention of the geologic context. It is stated that an area of 1 km^2 could provide 20% of current world consumption of REEs without any description of sampling and extrapolations/modeling. Then the authors estimate the size of the discovery at 80 to 100 billion metric tonnes without giving any indication of deposit geometry. That stretches credibility. Even if the WSJ writer doesn't have any technical education, you'd think a claimed 1000x increase over existing reserves would prompt some doubt.