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USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

usgs.gov

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

#71

Post by jerf »

I read the article carefully, twice. Doesn't have a link to any original paper, of course. And I can't find the answer to my question... did they, you know, validate the model? Did they actually take some samples at new locations and compare it to what the model says?

Or are they literally just announcing that "Hey, we told the computer to tell us something, so it told us something"? Yes, that is how it works. The computer will always tell you something if you make it tell you something. That isn't the hard part. The hard part is getting it to tell you things that correspond to reality.

In the absence of validation, this means very little, especially in an environment where the USGS is fairly incentivized to loudly announce to the world that we've totes got plenty of lithium, my fellow countries, any effort to keep lithium away from us is just a waste of time, look at us just rolling in lithium over here.

Or, maybe they did do the validation, and it's just the reporting that doesn't consider that an important aspect of the story. Somewhere between funding and press release someone's lost the trail but I don't know who exactly.

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

#72

Post by walleeee »

richwater wrote: post #52
flenserboy wrote: post #50

Interesting, & not necessarily in a good way. This method could well presage unprecedented numbers of attempts at eminent domain takings or other means of forcing people out of their properties.

National security (by identifying and processing rare earth metals and materials domestically) is vastly more important to society than a few dozen homes somewhere.

Globally price-competitive domestic electric car production is a national security concern only if we are willing to accept a rather short time horizon and a rather narrow definition of security in our analysis.

This kind of article can perhaps be understood as an attempt to turn a federal organization's sails into the prevailing political winds, so to speak, at a time when funding seems insecure. I say this as someone who strongly supports most of the survey's mission. It would be ideal if national power brokers recognized the value of water science, geology, ecology, etc, on their own terms.

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

#73

Post by fakedang »

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 is too abundant in the world right now (as expected - we've just gotten better at discovering it).

To be honest, the energy problem is more or less a solved problem with the current technologies we have. We just need to accelerate our pace of adoption to hard-reverse on fossil fuels (except Germany). We already have large reserves of Uranium, of which only a small amount is needed to fuel a power plant. We already have lithium battery tech to store the power. We already have solar panels being mass produced and adopted to fill in the gaps. All we need is connecting the dots and making sure these resources play well with each other in symbiosis.

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

#74

Post by jandrese »

folli wrote: post #21

From the paper's method section, a bit more about which type of ML algo was used: An RF machine-learning model was developed to predict lithium concentrations in Smackover Formation brines throughout southern Arkansas. The model was developed by (i) assigning explanatory variables to brine samples collected at wells, (ii) tuning the RF model to make predictions at wells and assess model performance, (iii) mapping spa…

Did they actually verify the predictions? In my reading of the article I didn't see any core samples being made to verify the model is correct.

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

#75

Post by scottyah »

flenserboy wrote: post #50

Interesting, & not necessarily in a good way. This method could well presage unprecedented numbers of attempts at eminent domain takings or other means of forcing people out of their properties.

Which government agency would use eminent domain to take land and start mining? We have historical precedence with the oil industry using various scanning methods in a similar manner, but it was the oil companies who went to the landowners to acquire the rights to extract. Then the government would buy the (usable) product from them.

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

#77

Post by jandrese »

EA-3167 wrote: post #45
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?

The major limiting factor of lithium is not really availability so much as the cost of extraction. China is the leader in this field, not so much because of abundance or stellar technology, but out of a willingness to completely ignore environmental externalities (including those of the power generation involved in the whole process). As a result the price of Chinese lithium is low enough that it would be essentially…

This goes double if your refining and battery production is still in China as well. If you are using the material domestically then the situation could be made more fair with tariffs, but if you're exporting that obviously won't work.

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

#78

Post by FpUser »

richwater wrote: post #52
flenserboy wrote: post #50

Interesting, & not necessarily in a good way. This method could well presage unprecedented numbers of attempts at eminent domain takings or other means of forcing people out of their properties.

National security (by identifying and processing rare earth metals and materials domestically) is vastly more important to society than a few dozen homes somewhere.

And of course you would not mind owners of extraction company leaving all the profits to people who got kicked out of their home. After all they should be happy just fulfilling your "national security" goal.

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

#79

Post by gwern »

jerf wrote: post #71

I read the article carefully, twice. Doesn't have a link to any original paper, of course. And I can't find the answer to my question... did they, you know, validate the model? Did they actually take some samples at new locations and compare it to what the model says? Or are they literally just announcing that "Hey, we told the computer to tell us something, so it told us something"? Yes, that is how it works. The co…

It has a link to the original paper clearly visible right at the bottom where they usually are in scientific press releases like this?

> The study, which was published in Science Advances, can be found at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp8149 .

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