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Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

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Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#291

Post by anigbrowl »

localplume wrote: post #225
londons_explore wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large scale protests like this are frequently externally influenced. I really wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years time when top secret documents are released to archives we don't find that these protests are being financially supported or organised by USA/Israel/the west. It wouldn't be the first time [1][2][3] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am…

You frame it like its a bad thing when it very much isn't; the Iranian people deserve to be freed of the current tyranny under which they struggle. A more western-aligned Iran would be best for its people and for the entire Middle East. It also doesn't negate the brave efforts of the people there protesting the regime.

The problem is that the previous regime (which was more or less installed by the US in 1953) was tyrannical in its own way. It's not an endorsement of the current regime to say that the 1979 revolution was founded on a lot of legitimate grievances.

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#292

Post by ars »

seniorivn wrote: post #265
sofixa wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alaska doesn't count because it was part of the US, which was already a developed (for the time) economy. Saudi Arabia, Norway and a few Gulf min-states (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain) are the rare counterexamples that kind of prove the rule. There's a great FT article[1] about the Iraqi man who helped lead Norway's oil revolution in the proper direction, and it was really not obvious. Why Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahra…

norway is the only example of someone who broke the curse. Saudi, gulf monarchies and all other examples that you can come up with(except maybe russia, but it's a very big and not that simple to analyze), either already fucked by the curse, or still in the process(which is pleasant enough, so most people think it's ok), the metric is that other parts of the economy have meaningless growth rate compared to resources e…

Actually Norway did not break the curse.

Their economy is pretty much exclusively oil-based, very few other industries.

If you run the numbers their fund will fund current expenses for only a decade or so if oil stopped completely. Which isn't really enough time to start other industries for their citizens to have jobs.

So they're basically completely dependent on oil, with maybe a short runway for afterwards. They did not break the curse.

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#293

Post by anigbrowl »

nixass wrote: post #12

Hey old buddy old pal, long time no see!

Probably not. The US has huge and readily accessible lithium reserves in the Salton Sea in California, the issues with extracting it are the availability of water and the cost of environmental management around the site. We don't need other countries' lithium, as such.

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#295

Post by MSFT_Edging »

sofixa wrote: post #254
Aardwolf wrote: post #247

Are we simply not looking hard enough in Europe, or is the European soil truly useless for competitive amounts of natural resources?

There is quite a lot of lithium in Europe already, e.g. in Serbia [1]. However lithium mining is extremely environmentally destructive, and those sorts of things usually aren't accepted by Europeans. 1 - https://mondediplo.com/2022/11/10serbia

I was told mass EV adoption was a solution to destroying the earth, rather than re-evaluating our transportation system!

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#296

Post by epistasis »

megaman8 wrote: post #279
npalli wrote: post #166

With India also discovering a very large amount of lithium reserves very recently, lithium might end up being abundant and accelerate the EV transition even faster. [1] https://innovationorigins.com/en/india-discovers-5-5-of-worl...

If you were to electrify all the vehicles in the world today (and the developing world hasn't even got lots of cars yet), it would take 1/2 the world's known supply of lithium. and those batteries only last about 8 to 10 years. Lithium become abundant, no way. Not with the amounts we're using up per capita and the enormous population on this planet. the green revolution is just getting started and there's definitely…

Your numbers prove the exact opposite of your conclusion. If, with the tiny amount of lithium that we have bothered to look for, we can already provide for 2x our current car needs, then we are golden.

Batteries last far longer than 8-10 years, I'm not sure where you are getting that bad number. But even if you were right, our very first attempts at recycling already recover 95% of input metals:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/heres-what-redwood-lear...

And every year we discover massive new amounts of lithium resources, because until the mid 2010s, nobody really bothered to look for lithium.

FUD about amounts of lithium should be abandoned as a stall tactic; they no longer pass basic sniff tests arms are easily shut down hard. Other stall FUD needs to be invented if the energy interchange is to be stopped.

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#297

Post by mywittyname »

epistasis wrote: post #238
npalli wrote: post #166

With India also discovering a very large amount of lithium reserves very recently, lithium might end up being abundant and accelerate the EV transition even faster. [1] https://innovationorigins.com/en/india-discovers-5-5-of-worl...

If I had a nickel mine for every time I've pointed out to someone that the "proven reserves" of lithium on a USGS two page PDF are completely uncorrelated to the amount of lithium that will soon be discovered, I'd be extremely wealthy with cobalt. (Cobalt is a common byproduct of nickel mining.) Even looking at the year-after-year increases in known lithium resources over the past decade shows massive increases. Lith…

Exactly. Lithium scarcity is a similar mindset to what peak oil was in the 90s. It seems like an issue given our current understanding, but there's a huge economic incentive to discover new deposits and make their extraction economically viable.

Some of the the largest oil fields currently known were only discovered in the past decade or two. I wouldn't be surprised if battery materials follow a similar discovery curve.

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#298

Post by epistasis »

sofixa wrote: post #254
Aardwolf wrote: post #247

Are we simply not looking hard enough in Europe, or is the European soil truly useless for competitive amounts of natural resources?

There is quite a lot of lithium in Europe already, e.g. in Serbia [1]. However lithium mining is extremely environmentally destructive, and those sorts of things usually aren't accepted by Europeans. 1 - https://mondediplo.com/2022/11/10serbia

In what sense is lithium mining more destructive than iron, copper, or other mining? And does it have to be that way?

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#299

Post by reducesuffering »

swamp40 wrote: post #219
matthewdgreen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The degree to which we’ve been blessed with resources and opportunity to do the right thing (and have consistently chosen to do the dumb thing) never fails to amaze me. Infinite power from the sky that’s cheaper than fossil fuels; vast reserves of lithium to help oil-producing nations smoothly transition us away from oil; huge and unusually-enriched Uranium deposits we could use to build power (but instead used to bu…

I had always thought the Garden of Eden was mapped to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq.

Accurate or not, there is a "Tree of Knowledge" where the Tigris and Euphrates meet https://goo.gl/maps/GQjs6LcHsmVdxH5k6

Re: Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

#300

Post by jonnycomputer »

arcticfox wrote: post #237
jonnycomputer wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hah ha. but to be fair, calling Iran a desert is like calling the United States a desert. https://www.knowiran.com/iran-landscape

I just cross referenced that against Google Earth and your comment is completely misleading/incorrect. I’m kind of irked by how interesting your claim was compared to how wrong it turned out to be. It is completely dominated by an arid climate with tiny swathes inlaid into it. The climate map shows how it is comparable to the most desert regions of the United States, such as Arizona, New Mexico, or Nevada. https://en…

Apologize if I over-stated its diversity. California might have been a better comparison, but I do not think it is completely misleading and incorrect.
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