Non-Typical Resource Shortages

Awhile ago (possible a year or two) I was listening to the radi that had a man on talking about shortages in the coming years of various metals and other resources which would be running low and causing problems, most likely before shortages of oil and gas for power would. I think it might have been from 2008 but i'm not sure and I looked through ATS and found one thread from around that time.

Basically the idea was that things like Platinum, tantalum and other metals were in short supply and mostly coming from South Africa and China, the latter having started to ration the exports of which. Other things that might become in short supply were things like Helium which I understand is mostly from places like Texas but is often managing to get out from under the earth through fissures. Helium being lighter than air makes it drift off into the atmosphere and inevitably lost.

Having searched around for this information it seems difficult to find alot of it, though a few websites making reference to it in articles more concerned over the prices of such. Though more importantly, to me, atleast would be the fact that is countries like China have the largest and then soon to be last reserves of such materials, are in we for trouble when China decides to rake the prices up to a unimaginable level due to the monoply?

If we ran out of these various materials the medical and technology industries would cease to be. Things like platinum are used for cars and electronics which, if we couldn't make anymore, would put us back a few hundred years. If we had no helium used for medical instruments our health services would suffer being able to only use more basic equipment.

I would be interested to know if any people on ATS have more information about this, which can shed more light onto it. I do not know if there are any recent threads about this as I could not find them, either way it wouldn't be a bad idea if this was brought to the lime-light again lest people forget about it.

Some relevent links from various times:

www.independent.co.uk...
www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk... -project-soon-12716.html
sciencewise.anu.edu.au... - Unlucky for the hydrogen car market