Peak Phosphorus: The earth's supply of life's essential element is soon used up. What then?

Temadel om fosfor i regi av styret for Den matematisk-naturvitenskapelige klasse: Foredrag av professor Koop Lammertsma, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam "Peak Phosphorus: The earth's supply of life's essential element is soon used up. What then?"

Kommentar ved Anders Rognlien, Yara

Møtet innledes ved at Per M. Jørgensen holder minnetale over Hildur Krog

Sammendrag:
With fertilizers becoming abundantly availability since the middle of the past century, the world population has grown from three to over seven billion people and is projected at nine billion by 2030.  Compounding this growth is the accelerated desire to better feed the existing population. This beg the question how sustainable is the availability of fertilizers. Current analyses paint a sobering picture, both for nitrogen and phosphorus. Whereas dinitrogen will remain abundantly available in the atmosphere, the conversion of N2 to ammonia, to N-fertilizer, to N2O, and back to dinitrogen has a damning effect on our atmosphere and, in fact, exceeds our planetary boundary already multifold. Even far more disturbing is the projected availability of phosphate fertilizer. Our world has only a limited number of locations where phosphate ore can be mined. The projected reserves are limited. This has led to the concern formulated as "Peak Phosphorus" as the consumption still increases, without effective mechanisms for recycling used phosphates. Phosphorus is a crucial  element, without life ceases. 

This lecture summarizes the current issues on "Peak Phosphorus". Some relationships can be drawn with other minable resources, such as the ores containing rare earth metals, which are embedded in high-tech equipment. Mining, protectionism, and economic issues of these popular elements are of a similar nature as those for phosphor, recycling is of an entirely different dimension.