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Why are lithium prices collapsing?

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Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#411

Post by vel0city »

FpUser wrote: post #395
vel0city wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the one thing that will solve 99.99% of climate change issues?

>"What's the one thing that will solve 99.99% of climate change issues?" 99.99% is a figure of speech. The idea is to start with big items. Cooking using gas is far below other "offenders". Go for those first as even if partially it will still be way more effective.

It's an ineffective one, because there isn't any single category that is even 90% or 80% of the issue. Everything is just a small drop in the bucket, it's just that there are lots of drops.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#412

Post by osigurdson »

notjes wrote: post #384
nickpinkston wrote: post #376

The quote from the article below [1] demonstrates why the doomers, degrowers, Neo-Malthusians, etc. keep getting resource scarcity wrong. They keep quoting the "proven reserves" numbers [2] that only count what is extractable with current tech at current prices, factoring out new technologies / techniques, as well as reserves not discovered yet or discovered but not yet "proven". [1] "But while demand for lithium has…

Yes, resources are infinite. That is why the carrying capacity of the earth is also infinite. Because the ingenuity of humans is infinite.

Anti-human nihilist much?

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#413

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Reason077 wrote: post #294
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's insurance What’s the person on the other side of the trade up to? This debate reminds me of the lead up to the Onion Futures Act, where moral outrage over speculation led to a ban and subsequent lack of insurance (and higher price volatility) for onion farmers. To the point that the son of the farmer who first lobbied for the ban returned to Congress to ask for its repeal. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/O…

> "What’s the person on the other side of the trade up to?" The same thing: hedging/insuring against price changes. The supplier (ultimately, a farmer, steel mill, gold miner, electricity generator, etc) is getting a guaranteed price for the commodity they're selling, reducing risk.

Virtually no hedging happens between natural buyers and sellers precisely because they approach the market at different times, and don’t have the in-house pricing expertise to discern good and bad bids and offers ex ante. This is why, absent financial participants, the natural participants get hosed. (And why they use financial markets versus direct purchases and sales.)

Again, these aren’t theoretical considerations, we’ve always had naïve Puritanical elements seeking to ban speculation, and in some assets and jurisdictions they have succeeded. Reducing market participation has never worked.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#415

Post by alex_duf »

mharig wrote: post #183

What the article does not mention: in June a new chinese emission standard for vehicles, that can hardly be met by combustion engines, will hit. That may drive up the Lithium demand. And in 23Q4 or 24Q1 CATL will sell its 500 Wh/kg batteries. Although I couldn't find much about the chemistry of the new cells, that may cut the Lithium demand in half. But not very fast, I guess. (All dates/statements IIRC.)

Assuming the denser batteries have the same amount of lithium per kg, I don't see how we'll see a halving of lithium demand. That would only be possible under the incorrect assumption that battery demand is static.

That's already not true with current technology as EVs are gaining market shares rapidly, but also the new technology will be opening new usages, so it will opening new markets, further driving the demand.

But I also have no idea about its chemistry!

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#416

Post by SoftTalker »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #408
SoftTalker wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a gas stove, you probably don't have a circuit or wiring or receptacle to plug in an electric stove. So you'll need to get a 240V circuit installed, which for most people will require hiring an electrician. Same as putting in a heat pump.

So what? You already have electricity. If you don't have a gas line to your house, you aren't going to get one for a gas stove. Again, gas stoves are secondary to having gas in the first place, focusing on them is nonsense whether someone wants gas or not.

You said "gas stoves are easiest to replace" when in fact if that is what you have, replacing it with anything but another gas stove is difficut (or at least, more expensive)

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#417

Post by tomp »

vel0city wrote: post #410
tomp wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transportation emissions are caused by fossil fuels. As for agriculture, check the rest of the page. Besides CO2, there's also methane and NO2 emissions, both of which are part of a cycle, so they have no long-term impact. The entirety of long-term impact of agriculture is, again, fossil fuels, which is literally digging extra C from the ground and adding that extra CO2 into the atmosphere (technically, TBH, it's als…

You're right, methane breaks down in the atmosphere. What does it break down into again? > The point is if we invest much more in nuclear, it will become too cheap to meter So if we ignore the financial costs (invest today) it'll become too cheap to meter. If nuclear plants can generate with costs If nuclear is cheaper than all other energy sources (too cheap to even meter in costs) why is there any energy kind of en…

Methane breaks down into CO2, which is a part of the Carbon Cycle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle

    CH4 -> CO2 -> grass -> cow -> CH4
                            |
                           \/
                           steak -> human -> CO2
and so on...

> If nuclear plants can generate with costs Because they're too expensive to build, because of regulation and lack of economies of scale. Similar to why rockets were expensive, before SpaceX. If we invested more, both in research and in building more of them, in factories, we could build plenty, much more cheaply. The technology for modular reactors obviously exists (e.g. nuclear submarines), it just needs to be commercialized.

> If your costs are practically zero, isn't your profit margin essentially 100%?

You're mixing up or conflating total cost vs marginal cost. The marginal cost of making computer chips is almost 0, but the upfront investment is huge. Same with reactors and nuclear power. If we make more of them, streamline the construction, simplify regulation, etc. the marginal costs will drop massively (as will upfront costs, but they will still be non-zero).

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#418

Post by sacrosancty »

underbluewaters wrote: post #388
mensetmanusman wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do blue skies matter when you are blind from malnutrition?

Yes. For many folks there is an intrinsic value to protecting the environment. I find more and more that even within the NGO and environmentalist community people only care about how natural resources impact people in a utilitarian sense. I can respect that philosophical position, but it makes me equal parts angry and sad that it's taken as a given. I don't believe life on earth exists just to serve human needs.

I think there are two kinds of environmentalist - the purist kind you prefer and the practical kind. The practical kind has the arguments that appeal to most people with things like "let's not run out of oil because it's useful" and "lets not cause climate change because it'll lead to problems for people". But the purist kind is really more of a religious belief that you can't persuade people of in practical terms. That doesn't mean it's wrong - it's just that even adherents don't know why it's right, if it is. Just like religion. You see the purist kind extending to things like "lets not colonize the moon or Mars because we'll damage their natural state." Maybe in a million years, they'll turn out to have been right, but nobody knows that today.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#419

Post by avianlyric »

yunohn wrote: post #370
avianlyric wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a requirement for consumption taxes to driven my morality as a first order effect. It’s entirely reasonable for law to take the moral stance that people should broadly pay for the benefits as participating in organised society, so to ensure the long term upkeep and maintenance of that organisation they derive benefits from. At which point consumption taxes have nothing to any moral judgement about the consum…

> But I don’t particularly like the idea of having pick up the bill later for an activity I didn’t participate in. The repeated grouping of morality/ethics into purely religion/judgement throughout this thread really bothers me. IMHO your argument is an argument of moral propriety of making people pay for others choices. You’re semantically choosing to not call it that is all.

Nah I’m more than happy to agree that I’m making an argument of moral propriety. There has to be some consistent basis for forming laws, and some sort of coherent social order.

But my point is there’s a difference between moral basis for having laws and taxes, and their specific implementation. Consumption taxes are just one approach for implementing a social system build on the basis “fair contribution/usage”, or whatever we want to call it (my views on “moral” behaviour are too nuanced and confused to fit into an internet comment, so let’s just work with something simple). But the taxes themselves aren’t a direct expression of moral judgment themselves, but rather an implementation detail of a broader governing moral system that provides legitimacy to laws and the states rights to enforce them.

It might be a distinction without a difference. But if someone is going to call out consumption taxes as somehow more inherently driven by moral judgments than any other part of a system of law, then I think making the distinction is reasonable.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#420

Post by yieldcrv »

akira2501 wrote: post #327
elif wrote: post #109

Because I see so much "conflict metals" discussion when lithium is discussed, I would like to contribute that less than 3% of global lithium production takes place on small artisanal mines, in which place human rights abuse may occur. Over 85% of lithium is produced by just 2 international corporations with large scale mines complying with multiple international regulation requirements.

> Over 85% of lithium is produced by just 2 international corporations If I search google for this string, your post is the only one that comes up. How did you arrive at this figure? In the history of industry, when has it ever been a positive indication that only two players control the majority of the supply? Do these companies directly own the mines or are there partnerships and subsidiaries involved? What countri…

Having been in some niche commodities sectors myself, Google doesn't always have relevant information and the producers are more interested in their competitive advantages that they’ll let people guess their way to completely inaccurate realities even at the expense of the industry.

It wouldn't surprise me if there are no sources that you respect.

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