Live data from Hacker News

Why are lithium prices collapsing?

internationalbanker.com

271–280 of 524 posts

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#271
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I bet some of it also like, ok you’re banning gas stoves that I like cooking on but everybody owning a Ford F-850 and private jets are still cool (from an environmental perspective)? Seems like a spending a few bucks to save a few pennys kind of scenario. The health argument is fair but seems like it shouldn’t be a mandatory requirement so much as a safety warning (based on my current understanding). The fact that we…

> everybody owning a Ford F-850 and private jets are still cool (from an environmental perspective)?

Who is saying this? This seems like a straw man.

Faceless “politicians” are an easy scapegoat, but most politicians aren’t flying on private jets. And the few that do generally are not environmentalists, or if they claim to be, aren’t representative of the entire environmental movement.

Those that are banning gas in new construction are universally politicians at the state and local level, who generally earn fairly modest salaries, and at their highest are at the level of the professional class of society.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#272
post #111

The space is saturated with anti-EV FUD.

> A legacy of the Pinochet era in Chile is the privatisation of minerals and water, which gives companies ownership of those resources in an area. While mining operations squeeze this already dry region even drier, communities lose their access to potable water, leaving them relying on tankers to deliver it. “We used to have a river before that now doesn’t exist. There isn’t a drop of water,” says Rivera. “And not on…

And now they’re nationalizing it. Happy? Or will the goalposts move to some other totally out of proportion fake scandal?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/21/chile-lithium-reserves-...

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#273
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straight from Wikipedia, which is an objective source for such a general topic. Religious morality is a sub-category, not all of morality itself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

What I'm after is that much of the ethics by which our legal system operates, e.g. a BAC limit for legal driving, is divorced from moral questions such as: "Is drinking beer a sinful act?"

I think you’re gravely misguided. BAC has nothing to do with sin, it’s connected to the morality and ethics of putting your fellow citizens at risk of your impaired driving.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#274
post #229
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas stoves need to go away because getting rid of gas infrastructure in the long term will be a huge win, but the gas industry spends heavily on propaganda to convince people otherwise: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hX2aZUav-54

Much more money is spent on climate change propaganda than there is on gas propaganda. I see climate change propaganda almost every day, but pro fossil propaganda extremely rarely. I think that this is because fossil fuels are extremely useful in practice, and so the users don’t need to be convinced of their benefits.

> climate change propaganda almost every day, but pro fossil propaganda

Most people would understand those two phrases to mean the same thing.

Is there any other kind of propaganda?

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ban of gas connections and by extension gas water heaters, gas furnaces and gas stoves is being reframed to be just gas stoves. So yes, if you cherry-pick the lowest impact item out of the list of gas appliances, the impact is low.

Exactly this. Gas stoves are the flashpoint, because at the end of the day, people generally don’t think about what type of energy their heating comes from. The gas stove is the deciding factor that determines whether or not a gas line gets hooked up to a home or not.

I think stoves are close to a loss leader to get gas lines for gas furnaces.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#276
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lithium is not the only cause of aquifer depletion in Chile, avocado farms have also been responsible for depleting the wells of residents [1]. These outcomes, as the article alludes to, are due to the privatization of resource rights, which is a consequence of Pinochet government going all in on the policies Milton Friedman promoted [2]. Citizens of Chile are more victims of neoliberalism than they are of any partic…

What about drainage of Aral Sea for short term gain, were Soviet citizens also victims of Soviet neoliberalism?

Environmental destruction doesn’t have a single exclusive cause.

There is the horseshoe theory that says that either extremes have more in common with each other then they have with the center [1].

If I we’re to connect neoliberalism with Soviet communism, I’d say that both ideologies are examples of high modernism, which is the idea that leaders can optimize on a metric and ignore all other factors that contribute to their countries success. This never has positive outcomes for the people living in those countries.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ perceived as holding them in contempt”? They have been told explicitly in prime time TV that they are held in contempt. It’s not an issue of perception on this front.

They understand that the contempt is merited. It only makes them more angry.

Thank you for proving my point.

The contempt is real, not perceived.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#278
post #120
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's sublimated class resentment. People resent things that are perceived as coming down upon them from a coastal rich Ivy League educated elite that is perceived as holding them in contempt. It all just sounds like rich people in private jets flying around telling them to use less energy to save the planet. There is of course too much inequality, but it's not because of EVs or phasing out gas stoves.

That’s ironic because gas stoves are actually only the majority in California and places around New York, ie literally the coastal elite.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#279

Fundamentally because it is as ubiquitous as copper and zinc in the earth crust and even more so in sea water.

Earth's crust: not quite the same as Cu/Zn but way more than I expected:

https://periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.an.htm...

Lithium: 0.0017% Copper: 0.0068% Zinc: 0.0078%

Seawater: https://sciencenotes.org/abundance-of-elements-in-earths-oce...

Lithium: 0.18 mg/L

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#280
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mines complying with multiple international regulation requirements Really? Please cite which regs apply in North Korea. I am an actual miner. We have State and national regulators who visit and have authority to stop work. I have neither seen nor heard of international regulators.

Why North Korea?

Escapee stories of unsafe coal mining. Or try Iran or Ukraine or USA.
Post reply on HN