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Hubbert peak theory
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==Criticisms of peak element scenarios== Although M. King Hubbert himself made major distinctions between decline in petroleum production versus depletion (or relative lack of it) for elements such as fissionable uranium and thorium,<ref>{{cite web |last=Whipple |first=Tom |url=http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13630 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080811001036/http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13630 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2008-08-11 |title=Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels |publisher=Energybulletin.net |date=2006-03-08 |access-date=2013-11-03 }}</ref> some others have predicted peaks like [[peak uranium]] and [[peak phosphorus]] soon on the basis of published reserve figures compared to present and future production. According to some economists, though, the amount of proved reserves inventoried at a time may be considered "a poor indicator of the total future supply of a mineral resource."<ref name = reserve_economics>James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Russell S. Sobel, David MacPherson. ''Economics: Private and Public Choice, 12th Edition''. South-Western Cengage Learning, p. 730. [https://books.google.com/books?id=yIbH4R77OtMC&pg=PA730|Online extract, accessed 5-20-2012]</ref> As some illustrations, tin, copper, iron, lead, and zinc all had both production from 1950 to 2000 and reserves in 2000 much exceed world reserves in 1950, which would be impossible except for how "proved reserves are like an inventory of cars to an auto dealer" at a time, having little relationship to the actual total affordable to extract in the future.<ref name = reserve_economics/> In the example of [[peak phosphorus]], additional concentrations exist intermediate between 71,000 Mt of identified reserves (USGS)<ref name = USGS2012>{{cite web|url=http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/phosphate_rock/mcs-2012-phosp.pdf |title=Phosphate Rock |author=Stephen M. Jasinski |publisher=[[U.S. Geological Survey]], Mineral Commodity Summaries |date=January 2012|access-date=2013-12-27}}</ref> and the approximately 30,000,000,000 Mt of other phosphorus in Earth's crust, with the average rock being 0.1% phosphorus, so showing decline in human phosphorus production will occur soon would require far more than comparing the former figure to the 190 Mt/year of phosphorus extracted in mines (2011 figure).<ref name = reserve_economics/><ref name = USGS2012/><ref>American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #V33A-1161. [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.V33A1161P Mass and Composition of the Continental Crust]</ref><ref name=Greenwood>Greenwood, N. N.; & Earnshaw, A. (1997). Chemistry of the Elements (2nd Edn.), Oxford:Butterworth-Heinemann. {{ISBN|0-7506-3365-4}}.</ref>
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