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> The next dozen years will drain less than 1 percent of the reserves in the ground That's actually an extremely large portion for such a short length of time
by tomxor 9y ago
> The next dozen years will drain less than 1 percent of the reserves in the ground
That's actually an extremely large portion for such a short length of time (this is the entire planet we are talking about). That projection doesn't paint a very sustainable future compared to oil (yes I hate oil), I hope it's efficiently recycled or replaced with better tech.
- thecabinet 9y agoAssuming lithium reserves work anything like oil reserves, the quantity of reserves depends on market process. When oil sells for $20/bb, oil that costs more than that to extract doesn't count towards the reserves. As the price goes up, the reserves increase, because you can extract oil from more challenging circumstances. This is why we've had 20-30 years of oil reserves for the last 50 years.
- monort 9y agoOil alarmism existed as early as 1919: http://papers.sae.org/190011/ http://papers.sae.org/190011/
- sgift 9y agoSo, it took almost 100 years until the mainstream understood what should have been blatantly obvious to anyone who thinks about it: Oh right. Oil is limited. I mean, sure, if we search long and hard enough we will probably almost always be able to find/produce something, but I don't think asking 1 million per liter of gas would be such a great idea. Hoping that there will always be a scientific breakthrough just "right in time" to solve our resource problems is great. I love optimism. It's also extremely irresponsible to depend on it.
- coldtea 9y agoYou mean "oil cautionism" based on the very well established fact that reserves are limited (and it took the billions of years to be created)?
- Roboprog 9y agoOr perhaps “only” 200 million years or so But yah, a one time thing for us.
- tomxor 9y agoThat is a big assumption but yes, I understand that "reserves" != "all", and you rightly describe the interrelationship between price and what is considered "extractable". Even so, as an initial "world reserves" estimate, it's absolutely puny. Take into consideration that past the first "dozen years" demand will increase massively, at full adoption lithium will likely be short lived as a primary material to base batteries on. We don't know the extraction potential for whatever the "remaining" and "unknown" reserves are but thankfully EVs aren't intrinsically tied to lithium like ICE is to oil, so if lithium becomes overmined we are more likely to switch to other materials than go to extremes to extract more of it.
- srtjstjsj 9y agoThat means that "oil reserves" is a short-term financial concept that has no bearing on long-term planning discussions.
- keymone 9y agoIs any lithium actually lost in the lifecycle of battery? It’s not like oil that we burn and it’s gone.
- disnsj 9y agoTrue but it depends how expensive it is to recycle, a question o haven’t seen a clear answer to. I mean, technically, oil can be recycled too! Just cut some trees (I.e. sequester CO2) and make syngas.
- neolefty 9y agoLithium ore is often < 1%. I'm no miner, but I'd bet an old battery beats that!
- disnsj 9y agoConcentration isn’t the whole story though. Plastic is 100% plastic, but it’s still hard and expensive to recycle. Lithium batteries need to be removed from their device. Then removed from their casing. Both these steps are for things made tamper proof to some degree. Add transportation, labor and environmental [1] costs. In general recycling of mtls used in electronic devices is dirty and expensive. Now a car with a big battery will change a lot of these numbers. But the problem remains: we look for tech solution (i.e. e-cars) to our social problems (bad cities, “weak” ppl [2]) [1] the Chinese are increasingly reluctant to import the worlds trash. [2] as a kid my wife used newspaper for toilet paper at an outhouse, no one owned cars and her grandparents village was a three hour walk (no roads). That’s strong. My mom drove me to school. That’s weak
- hackeraccount 9y ago[2] That's nothing. When I was kid I walked 5 miles each way to school. Needless to say - uphill both ways.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mtgx 9y agoUnlike oil, lithium can be recycled in extremely high percentage. By the time this will be a problem in 100 years, we'll have long moved to something else, like graphene or whatever. I don't know why people are freaking out about it so much. My guess is it has to do something with oil propaganda. After all, the best myths are those that have a "seed of truth" in them. So once the oil industry started its anti-lithium propaganda, a lot of people must be thinking "well, it does ring kind of true, doesn't it?", even though their "facts" are 99% misleading.
- oreo81 9y ago>By the time this will be a problem in 100 years, we'll have long moved to something else, like graphene or whatever. That is a big assumption, and honestly irresponsible.
- wetpaws 9y agoWhy is it irresponsible? Stone age did not end because of the stone shortage.
- oreo81 9y agoBecause you're blindly assuming we'll have a break through in battery technology in the next 100 years. Shrugging off a shortage of lithium as a non issue because we'll just come up with something better is irresponsible.
- wetpaws 9y agoIn the history of humanity was never a case when technological advancement was doomed by a lack of a resource. Aluminium was extremely limited and valuable and no one was givinf damn and for a good reason - it does barely cost anything due to the massive technological paradigm shift. In fact, if people think about it more then five seconds, then pretty much every particle on this planet is limited and can be a potential bottleneck. Breaking news, let's all just die to protect our previous mother Earth. I don't care about doomsday scenarios, because I kept hearing them every day, if there is anything more irresponsible then it's blind alarmism.
- api 9y agoReserves means currently known. There has been little serious exploration until recently. Lithium is more common in the crust than lead, and we currently mine more lead. I'm not concerned. I'm totally blown away by how much oil and gas we have found and those are not recyclable.
- thomasahle 9y ago1 percent for a dozen years, that's 120 years left. That's more than double of oil: https://www.seeker.com/how-much-oil-is-left-on-earth-1792718444.html https://www.seeker.com/how-much-oil-is-left-on-earth-1792718...
- monkeypizza 9y agoNumbers like 0.5% or 0.01% qualify as "Less than 1%", so this thread is invalid.
- tomxor 9y agoWith a stat like "less than 1%" the order of magnitude is at least 1/10 of 1% otherwise it's an invalid format for a statistic, it's also most likely >= 0.5 because of rounding... 0 is also less than 1 so with your logic the statistic is meaningless.
- monkeypizza 9y agoYes, all "X is less than Y" statistics are meaningless unless there the convention you mention is strongly held by journalists when they interpret studies - which is unlikely. i.e. it'd be very easy for a study to say "we have shown that it's likely that the effect size is less than 1%" and then a journalist to interpret that as <1%, and then for a reader to incorrectly think "they wouldn't have said this if it were actually 0.1% or lower".