"...takes in one blip in construction and we could see those inventories diminish quite rapidly."

I agree that traditional sources of copper demand look very promising...long term...even though today "fear" trumps "fundamentals."

Indeed, Frank Holmes and his team at US Global Investors put a great paper together mid 2008 where they predict some $41 trillion will be spend worldwide on infrastructure development. That paper had a slide saying copper production over the next couple decades would be more than all the copper mined in human history.

That's traditional demand.

But the reason I posted Lifton's piece is he's saying something different. He's positing that new demand from REEs and minor metals -- increasingly criticial in clean tech, energy and electronic applications -- will drive (indeed lead) base metal production.

Readers new to rare earth elements should note that the term "rare earth" is a bit of a misnomer. They aren't all that rare in terms on their occurance in the earth's crust, but they are rare in economic concentrations hence so much of their production has been byproduct of copper, zinc, aluminum and other more conventional metals.

If our world is increasingly dependent on technologies that requre molybdenum, rhenium, selenium and other "technology metals" -- and those metals are a by-product of base metal production -- then we have an additional demand trend that is usually not accounted for when the pundits talk about copper demand.

Lifton's prediction is for $11 copper in 2011. And while I've heard forecast of $4 or so a couple of years out, I don't know of anyone else so bullish three years out.