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USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

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Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#181

Post by Tade0 »

idontwantthis wrote: post #40

Say Lithium becomes essentially free because we find so much of it…would that drastically lower battery costs? Is our current supply of lithium limiting production?

Lithium currently accounts for ~10% of the cost of the battery, so no.

As proof of that there are sodium-ion batteries on the market right now, but they're not price-competetive yet[0] despite using largely the same infrastructure.

[0] The potential is there though as they have an important advantage: you can safely discharge a sodium-ion battery to 0V for storage/transportation.

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#182

Post by pfdietz »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #120
Dalewyn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant reason the real holders of power in the world today are Saudi Arabia and China is because we've refused to gather and use our resources while they have theirs. It's high time we realize that Pax Americana is our era to lose, (re)start mining and (re)start development.

The counter view is that it's better to save your natural resources for when you really need them and pay others to exhaust their own, rather than to exhaust yours before you have to.

And a counter to that is that if you don't flex an economic muscle, it withers away. The ability to extract a natural resource depends on extracting it.

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#183

Post by pfdietz »

astrange wrote: post #43
kranke155 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also shrinks your white matter I think, and has other gigantic bad effects. Source: am bipolar and take 600mg daily.

It also causes obesity and may be the cause of American obesity in the South. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/08/02/a-chemical-hunger-p...

I wonder how much lithium leaches out of Corningware (made of lithium aluminum silicate glass ceramic), particularly when cooking acid foods. Probably not a huge amount.

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#184

Post by pfdietz »

jandrese wrote: post #170
tln wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does LFP fail? Today's LFP batteries are getting pretty damn good.

Energy density, weight, cost, and discharge rate.

They're doing pretty well on cost compared to other Li-ion chemistries.

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#185

Post by lobsterthief »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #168
diggernet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your description of the location of this mine doesn't match your Wikipedia link. Searching in Google Maps, Thacker Mine comes up as 40.58448942010599, -117.8912129833345. As you say, that is near I-80 and Mill City, and there is nothing there. But Wikipedia says it's at 41.70850912415866, -118.05475061324945 in the McDermitt Caldera, nowhere near Mill City or I-80. I'm thinking probably don't trust Google on this one…

I don't trust latitudes and longitudes that are precise down to the nanometer. :) 4-5 digits should be enough for any use outside of surveying, that's a precision of 10 meters and 1 meter respectively. Even Wikipedia is making me suspicious by using hundredths of arc seconds, despite linking the document that came from. How do you localize a mining site down to a single foot?

I assume single foot would be what they consider to be the center of the mine? Though I don’t know how Wikipedia would have that information yet; maybe it’s the default output of their map selector or something. An actual survey of the mine would need to be done to know where its center is

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#186

Post by Schiendelman »

pfdietz wrote: post #178
lazide wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, that area in Nevada can be - at best - charitably described as moonscape. Which, for those of us that like moonscape, is a bit sad. But there is a lot of moonscape in that region, and there aren’t a huge number of moonscape fans. At least that are going to try to picket any projects. So overall, meh. That area of Nevada is also pretty economically ‘challenged’, so why not.

Also, at some point you need to tell people "you don't own this land, so you don't get to say what gets done to it." I'm half expecting the future more conservative SCOTUS to shoot down land use regulation as a taking, requiring such regulation to be combined with payment for the value lost instead.

If we get there, it will solve the housing crisis single-handedly. My fingers are crossed.

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#187

Post by jaystraw »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #168
diggernet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your description of the location of this mine doesn't match your Wikipedia link. Searching in Google Maps, Thacker Mine comes up as 40.58448942010599, -117.8912129833345. As you say, that is near I-80 and Mill City, and there is nothing there. But Wikipedia says it's at 41.70850912415866, -118.05475061324945 in the McDermitt Caldera, nowhere near Mill City or I-80. I'm thinking probably don't trust Google on this one…

I don't trust latitudes and longitudes that are precise down to the nanometer. :) 4-5 digits should be enough for any use outside of surveying, that's a precision of 10 meters and 1 meter respectively. Even Wikipedia is making me suspicious by using hundredths of arc seconds, despite linking the document that came from. How do you localize a mining site down to a single foot?

could be artificial precision coming from degs min sec to decimal??

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#188

Post by dyauspitr »

atq2119 wrote: post #157
dyauspitr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Towns that make a living by ticketing people passing through. The worst place in the world for this is Italy. Every time I go there they find some esoteric rule to ticket me for. This time in Padova, apparently I drove in an area where only locals are allowed to drive. Bunch of swindlers.

This is the kind of story that may say more about the story teller than the place it's about. (I have driven in Italy as a foreigner several times without ever receiving a ticket.)

Possibly but having extensively driven all over the rest of Europe without a ticket, I don’t think the fault is entirely mine.

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#189

Post by robocat »

skyfaller wrote: post #153
Animats wrote: post #103

There's also a big lithium deposit in Nevada, and preparations for mining are underway there.[1] General Motors put in $650 million for guaranteed access to the output of this Thacker Mine. It's in a caldera in a mountain that I-80 bypassed to go through Winnemuca, Nevada. Nearest town is Mill City, NV, which is listed as a ghost town, despite being next to I-80 and a main line railroad track. The mine site is about…

Not everyone agrees that this is a good place for a mine: https://www.protectthackerpass.org/ "to shut down the tar sands, we actually have to shut down the tar sands, not just blow up other mountains elsewhere and hope that leads to the end of the tar sands." https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/the-long-shadow-of-the-tar...

  We are in a crisis of climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss. Thacker Pass is critical wildlife habitat for threatened, endangered, and endemic species including the greater sage-grouse, pronghorn, Lahontan cutthroat trout, and golden eagles. Thacker Pass, known as Peehee Mu’huh in Paiute, is sacred to regional Native American tribes.

  It’s too late to prevent Phase 1 of the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, but there are opportunities to help prevent Phase 2. More broadly, we hope to protect the rest of McDermitt Caldera from Southern Oregon down to Thacker Pass from catastrophic lithium mining.

Re: USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

#190

Post by robocat »

shmageggy wrote: post #179
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Actually it looks like their arguments are presented entirely in terms of tradeoffs. They argue that the carbon benefit from electric cars (cited as very far down the list on e.g. https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions ) isn’t worth the cost to biodiversity, water use and pollution, cultural values and history, peacefulness and tranquility, etc. https://www.protectthackerpass.org/mining-lithium-at-thacker.…

Their argument:

  But many analyses actually find that the emissions reductions from switching to electric vehicles are quite minor. 
  Paul Hawken, for example, doesn’t put electric cars in his top 10 climate solutions. In fact, it’s number 24 on his list, with almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants which are powerful greenhouse gases, and behind solutions like tropical rainforest restoration (about 5 times as effective at reducing emissions as is switching to EVs) and peatland protection (more than twice as effective).
  Producing a single electric car releases a lot of greenhouse gas emissions—about 9 tons on average. This is rising, as the size of electric cars is going up substantially. That means that even if operating electric cars reduces emissions overall, it’s not going to reduce them much. One calculation estimates reductions of 6 percent in the United States. That’s not enough to make much of a dent in warming.
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