6.5 quadrillion dollars?

@Dan_Lyons The National Geographic channel values planet Earth at 6.5 quadrillion dollars. from gold water and minerals.

You can find a starter list here.

Gold, silver, platinum, palladium, are ill precious metals, but there are also a lot of other metals that are valuable, such as nickel, aluminum, copper, magnesium. There are a whole host of commodities that have value.

When Nat’l Geographic (or anyone) does an exercise like that, they take estimates of the known amounts and multiply it by the current value as reflected on commodity exchanges. Then they add it up, et voila! A sum of the current value of the untapped resources.

And completely ignore the planet’s ecosystems, its ability to support life, and life itself.
Which are all far more valuable than all the minerals.
A worthless estimate.

@ragingloli What is your estimate then?

Time is the most valuable resource, since none of us knows how much we have left.
Clean, potable water is probably the next most valuable resource for earthlings.

The “value” of “things” seems pretty arbitrary to me. For example – what use is gold, other than for shiny baubles? When the economy collapses it will be worth nothing, because it has no practical application that I know of.

@talljasperman
Infinite.

Water, love, compassion, consideration, kindness, sweetness, etc.

1,000 count Egyptian cotton bed sheets and 80% Cacao bars and someone to share the with.

@hearkat There are a lot of very valuable uses for gold other than jewelry and money. It’s very useful in precision electronics and in whatever device you are using to access Fluther. It’s very useful in dentistry; it’s very useful in high end optometrics, especially to protect against solar radiation.

I agree with @ragingloli (when will that ever happen again? :) Trying to put a price on things in that manner is a worthless exercise, and misses the intrinsic value of life.

@zenvelo – That’s why I said “that I know of” because I did not know that gold is being used in those applications. Thanks for the information!