231–240 of 269 posts
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Yes, we're going to liquify the earth's crust and efficiently extract all the lithium...
Please do not post low-quality, shallow, dismissive remarks. If you have meaningful information to offer, post that instead. If not, don't.
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Hmm. I’d love to see which IPCC reports have been found to be wildly wrong if you’ve got any links. Otherwise this just kinda sounds like hearsay to me.
It is hearsay. The IPCC reports predicted a range of possible outcomes, depending on what we did. We did the things that implied the results they predicted and we got.
Sigh. It is extremely discouraging that people continue to misunderstand even basic concepts around climate change.
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Context my friend. Read what OP and I are talking about and note how your post has nothing to do with it. We're certainly not discussing things which are currently in the realm of unrealized dreams.
I was giving a solution to the obstacle you pointed out. It doesn't get more relevant than that.
Op mentioned someone doing a simulation that claimed that scaled up solar+wind+hydro generation with only 5 hours of storage capacity would be sufficient to meet the needs of Australia. That seems odd given that cloudy, windless conditions can last for days in many cases. You would at least need sufficient storage+hydro capacity to cover several days worth of shortfalls from wind+solar.
Battery systems are great. Pumped hydro storage is great. But I'm unaware of such systems coming anywhere close to the capacities required in the near term.
At this point, the hydrogen infrastructure is years away. It looks like hydrogen storage underground is sufficiently proven to be feasible, but there are a host of other issues in the hydrogen energy chain that need to be addressed, most notably green generation at scale.
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Dirty forever isn't an option. Dirty is not renewable. We could decrease dirty energy usage to 0% right now. People would starve, quality of life would plummet, and we could direct our available green energy(hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, etc) to building out more green tech. Is that what you're advocating? I don't think so. So let us talk like engineers who need to make trade-offs to best achieve our goals. Cut…
You very, very evidently did not read what you replied to. That appears to be a pattern. You could learn just by paying attention to what people took time out to explain to you. Go ahead, I can wait.
Strangely enough, I feel like saying the same thing here. I don't think our viewpoints are that far off. Unless you had a problem parsing my language in the last post, you might have seen that I wasn't strongly disagreeing with you. It appears to have triggered you emotionally however so I suppose this discussion has reached its endpoint.
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The big rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, CA is back online.[1] The MP Materials magnet plant in Texas is supposed to start delivering to GM in 2023.[2] Although Google Earth shows a vacant lot at the announced location. Groundbreaking was a few months ago. Australia is the largest producer of lithium ore. Over 50% of world production. China is down around 6%. Lithium Americas finally got approval this year to build…
My point wasn’t about the sourcing of natural resource. It’s about the steps within supply chain, most of Australia’s lithium is refined/processed in China[1]. It will take roughly a decade for other countries to ramp and move back down the learning curve for refining/processing capacity at market cost. China’s control over this bottleneck step won’t change for this decade, as they continue to consolidate state inves…
- Metso:Outotech (Finland) - mostly does dry source minerals.
- SaltWorks (Canada) - mostly does wet source (brines) minerals. They claim a near closed-cycle process for water, rather than needing vast amounts of fresh water.
US Plants under construction or proposed.
- Silver Peak, NV [1]
- Proposed Tesla lithium plant in Texas.[2]
- Miner Piedmont plant in Tennessee,[3]
China currently has about 80% of world lithium refining capacity, but that's rapidly changing. China is a net lithium importer. The big mining countries are Australia and Chile. China is under 10% in lithium ores. New refining plants are being built in Australia, too. Pilbara Minerals in Australia claims to have the largest single lithium mine in the world. They are expanding into refining.[4] The Kermerton plant in Australia, which cut production in half in 2020 due to low lithium prices, is going back to full production and looking at expansion.[5]
The price of lithium has gone up about 8x in the last few years. So everybody in the industry is now expanding. Expect a capacity glut 3-4 years out.
[1] https://archive.ph/2DDdw/again?url=https://www.reuters.com/b...
[2] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/tesla-proposes-texas-lithi...
[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/miner-piedmont-unveils-plans...
[4] https://www.miningmagazine.com/plant/news/1409915/lithium-re...
[5] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-16/lithium-expansion-aga...
[6] https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=...
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Panels are so cheap now that they pay even if you waste most of what they could have produced. A smallish battery that captures only some of the excess, and delivers it when you need it, suffices. Battery cost is still falling fast as new chemistries come online. Hydrogen synthesis and storage might displace batteries for domestic use, particularly if hydrogen-fueled cars succeed. (Advice: keep all that equipment out…
Are you tokey of monetary cost or the total amount of energy needed to actually build/deliver/install/maintain/dispose of these technologies? If the former, you are clearly right. If the latter, I'm not so sure (with current tech).
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The s-curve has two important parameters, but looking at any amount of history before the first inflection you can only ever deduce one of them. So, how exactly to you intent to fit the renewables (that are pre-inflection) production curves into it?
You are certainly right about renewables that are pre-inflection. I was thinking of solar and wind, which I understand are both in the steep part of the S curve.
What part again? Are you claiming that their growth is linear?
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People who insist things cannot be done get in the way of the people out there working very hard doing them. If you cannot help, at least stay out of the way. All of the stuff you say you will replace in 10 years will be much cheaper by then.
Ah sure, since I've invested more than half a million euros in the "green tech" studying it and draw my conclusions and they are far different from the current propaganda I have to shut my mouth. I can help actually, those who want that help, for instance suggesting to ARREST for crime against humanity top neoliberals in chiefs from G8/T20 to "World Government" [1] to top companies CEOs from pharma to energy stating…
Roving bands of supersonic aluminum Nazi hell zombies from beneath the hollow Earth may figure prominently among the latter. (Maybe they do already?) But securing dietary calories would probably present more frequent difficulty.
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You very, very evidently did not read what you replied to. That appears to be a pattern. You could learn just by paying attention to what people took time out to explain to you. Go ahead, I can wait.
> You very, very evidently did not read what you replied to. Strangely enough, I feel like saying the same thing here. I don't think our viewpoints are that far off. Unless you had a problem parsing my language in the last post, you might have seen that I wasn't strongly disagreeing with you. It appears to have triggered you emotionally however so I suppose this discussion has reached its endpoint.
Nobody else is worried about this, for reasons. The much bigger problem is continued massive government subsidy of this mining, which thereby suppresses energy prices and sabotages access to capital to build out that equipment, and the factories to produce it, diverts cash flow to those mining and refining the materials, and accelerates climate disaster.