141–150 of 311 posts
Hmm so 300 million cars with 50 kg lithium in each. That's about four years worth of global car production. Would make a dent in oil usage certainly!
An EV doesn't have 50 kg of lithium. The 70 kWh battery in my Tesla S has about 12 kg of lithium.
https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/breakdown-raw-materials-tesla...
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-key-minerals-in-an...
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What? These are denominated in tons, not dollars.
The point is that reserves are only economically viable at a given price. At $0 there are 0 reserves because no one is willing to give you lithium. At $1 mil per kg, there is basically infinite reverses because you can do things like dig up the entire earth's crust and filter all the lithium out of it.
YC Summer 24?
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When you look at elements' abundance in Earth's crust lithium is about 50% more common than lead, but we mine 268 times more lead every year. We just weren't looking very hard to find lithium compared to lead till very recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
Lithium is a pretty volatile chemical though. Does the 50% more common take into account the fact that some lithium blows up?
It's very hard to find anything volatile in nature, pretty much by definition. Exceptions are things that are continually generated, eg you can find reactive oxygen in nature because plants keep making more. That or things that are only volatile once you purify or transform them in some way.
If Thailand has it, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia probably do too. Edit: After checking on a map, probably Myanmar/Malaysia.
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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.
See [1], that xkcd is picking a really biased starting point by using the last ice age as a baseline. Ice ages themselves being extreme abnormalities from the general historic trend.
1. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-Temperature-and-C...
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US oil production did, in fact, peak in 1970 and declined for decades afterward. Production only started to increase again about 15 years ago with the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... EDIT: To be clear, I am responding to a specific, narrow idea implied by the parent comment: that there was a prediction of peak oil in 1970, and that that predictio…
Production is not the same as existence
But some get pedantic and ask "But isnt number of Oil molecules in earth finite?"
Such pedantism can be easily blowm away by responding with pedantism. Oil molecules on "earth" might be finite but in universe they are infinite. Even if the molecules are finite atoms of Carbon and Hydrogen are vastly infinite in universe. We already know how to merge these atoms to form hydrocarbons.
These arguments then get into the saner territory of "but isnt it too expensive to bring water from Jupiter and turn it into Oil on moon and then ship it to earth?", yes it is compared to fracking but fracking was considered too expensive compared to drilling which was considered too expensive compared to using mined coal etc.
Ignore existence and focus on "production". As far as production is concerned we are not going to run out of oil ever. Unless we stop "needing" it.
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I think that true global reserves are much higher than what we know now. Before, Lithium was important, but not nearly in the quantities needed for EV's. Now that EV's have picked up, more people will be looking for Lithium, and that will make all the difference.
When you look at elements' abundance in Earth's crust lithium is about 50% more common than lead, but we mine 268 times more lead every year. We just weren't looking very hard to find lithium compared to lead till very recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
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It’s very likely to go the way of oil. EV demand has slowed down recently (honestly I don’t believe the world is ready for mass adoption and EVs themselves are not ready also), so we’ll keep finding more and more and always beyond the consumption.
I think that is an odd opinion to have. The data shows otherwise: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/electric-vehicles/chart...
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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.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Bolivian_general_electi...
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Arce
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/17/bolivia-govern...