Why engineering forecast fuck up

The approach of the engineering analysts who rely on physical principles is as follows. They estimate quantities and "qualities" of resources in the earth, assess the present methods of extraction, and predict which methods of extraction will be used in the future. With those estimates they then calculate the amounts of resources that will be available in future years, at various costs of extraction (in the better forecasts) or just at the present cost (in the less-thoughtful forecasts). At the root of this material-technical view of natural resources is the assumption that a certain quantity of a given mineral "exists" in the earth and that one can, at least in principle, answer the question: How much (say) copper is there?

 Too often we view natural resources as we view the operation of a single copper mine: Dig some ore, and less is left.

There is one resource that has shown a trend of increasing scarcity rather than increasing abundance, human beings. Yes, there are more people on earth now than ever before. But if we measure the scarcity of people the same way that we measure the scarcity of other economic goods--by how much we must pay to obtain their services--we see the wages and salaries have been going up all over the world. This increase in the price of people's services is a clear indication that people are becoming more scarce even though there are more of us.

Material-technical forecasts of resource exhaustion often go wrong for two reasons. (1) No matter how closely defined, the physical quantity of a resource in the Earth is not known at any time, because resources are sought and found only as they needed. (2) Even if the physical quantities of particular closely defined natural resources were known, such measurements would not be economically meaning, because we have the capacity to develop additional ways to meet our needs. Thus, the existing "inventory" of natural resources is operationally misleading; physical measurements do not define what we will be able to use as future supplies.

Reserves are but a small part of the resources of any given commodity. Reserves and resources are part of a dynamic system and they cannot be inventoried like cans of tomatoes on a grocer's shelf. New scientific discoveries, new tech, and new commercial demands or restrictions are constantly affecting amounts of reserves and resources. Reserves and resources don't exist until commercial demand puts a value on a material in the market.