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Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

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Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#111

Post by spacebanana7 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #86
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Think people have impression we are energy independent and Scot-free because of fracking. Really, fracking was a second chance. A reprieve. We'll just be behind 8-ball again if we don't take this reprieve and grow some other energy source.

I do not really understand why we are obsessed with energy independence. It only matters if we were to ban exports which is an absurd thing to do.

Export bans of politically sensitive commodities are not that uncommon.

For example, India banned onion exports this year [1] & the US has restricted oil exports before. [2]

Moreover, without officially banning exports a similar result can be achieved by mixing exports taxes with consumption subsidies.

If international oil prices got too high, like over $200, the political pressure for an oil export ban / restriction than made domestic prices $50-$100 would be hard for congress to tolerate.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/asia-feels-sting-...

[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Crude_oil_export_ban#:~:text=The%20c....

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#112

Post by ethbr1 »

markerz wrote: post #102
whimsicalism wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not really understand why we are obsessed with energy independence. It only matters if we were to ban exports which is an absurd thing to do.

Isn’t energy independence more about other countries exports? From the perspective of Germany, their reliance on Russian oil caused a high spike in cost of energy during the current Ukraine invasion. For the US, we don’t really want to be at the whim of OPEC. The 1973 Oil Crisis is a historical example of OPEC taking a religious and political stance and using their oil exports to coerce the US against Israel. Another…

Exactly. Large parts of the economy require oil as feedstock or energy.

Parts that cannot be down for more than a week, or bad things happen, and which by virtual of volume have limited storage capacity (at normal consumption rates).

Consequently, US energy independence is about creating a credible detachment of the US from global market oil prices, such that countries thinking of using an oil embargo to pressure the US... don't.

In reality, oil embargos obviously impose immediate and intermediate term costs on the exporters as well, so doing a painful thing that the US might be able to blunt anyway becomes less attractive.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#114

Post by m00x »

stouset wrote: post #77
dwighttk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Production is not the same as existence

Every year global we discover fewer additional oil reserves than what we are currently burning. Not that it matters. If we burn what we’ve already discovered, we’ll already be completely fucked from a greenhouse gas perspective.

We were heading into an ice age, which would be just as bad for humans. The issue is that we built a bunch of things that depend on the current climate, but the climate has been changing for a long time and will keep changing. We need to adapt to it or find a way to adapt it.

The holocene is an incredibly small period compared to the age of the Earth. Nature doesn't gaf, it'll cycle in and out and we'll have to adapt.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#115

Post by m00x »

_aaed wrote: post #113
latchkey wrote: post #3

If Thailand has it, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia probably do too. Edit: After checking on a map, probably Myanmar/Malaysia.

Can't wait for the next genocide in the region, all in the name of freedom

Because there's not currently a genocide happening in the region?

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

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#116

Post by m00x »

NERD_ALERT wrote: post #38
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deposits appear sufficiently distributed to not cause geopolitical conflicts [1]. This is not oil. Lithium is relatively abundant, and a mineral to be reused, not energy to be consumed once through. To keep it conflict free, we must continue to discover reserves and drive down the value of the commodity. No one goes to war over say, salt, in the 21st century (at least not yet!). [1] https://lithiumfuture.org/map.html

The 2019 Bolivian political crisis [1] came right off the heels of Evo Morales negotiating lithium trade with Russia and China. Bolivia happens to have the largest lithium reserves of any nation. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bolivian_political_cris...

Good context, but not a geopolitical crisis, it was an internal civil conflict.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#117

Post by rectang »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #106
rectang wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong US domestic energy production disempowers petro-state dictatorships such as Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia etc. whose interests and values are not aligned with ours.

Burning and bombing their countries down to the ground works pretty well too.

The sharp ramp up of US oil production happened under the "all of the above" energy policy of Obama, who famously opposed that burning and bombing.

Energy independence is vastly preferable to waging war, and may be worth making some environmental tradeoffs for — even if we would like to see cleaner alternatives to fracking in the long run.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#118

Post by mrinterweb »

maliker wrote: post #17

Looks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find. [0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pd...

There was a very large (20-40M tons) deposit recently discovered on the border of Oregon and Nevada. https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/09/22/report-of-giant-lit...

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#119

Post by flir »

m00x wrote: post #114
stouset wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year global we discover fewer additional oil reserves than what we are currently burning. Not that it matters. If we burn what we’ve already discovered, we’ll already be completely fucked from a greenhouse gas perspective.

We were heading into an ice age, which would be just as bad for humans. The issue is that we built a bunch of things that depend on the current climate, but the climate has been changing for a long time and will keep changing. We need to adapt to it or find a way to adapt it. The holocene is an incredibly small period compared to the age of the Earth. Nature doesn't gaf, it'll cycle in and out and we'll have to adapt…

It's not the direction, it's the velocity.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#120

Post by sheepdestroyer »

m00x wrote: post #114
stouset wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year global we discover fewer additional oil reserves than what we are currently burning. Not that it matters. If we burn what we’ve already discovered, we’ll already be completely fucked from a greenhouse gas perspective.

We were heading into an ice age, which would be just as bad for humans. The issue is that we built a bunch of things that depend on the current climate, but the climate has been changing for a long time and will keep changing. We need to adapt to it or find a way to adapt it. The holocene is an incredibly small period compared to the age of the Earth. Nature doesn't gaf, it'll cycle in and out and we'll have to adapt…

Not taking the extreme and unprecedented rate of temperature change into account is either ignorance or disingenuity.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

It's probable that very few species will be able to adapt to such an abrupt change.

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