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What do you mean by we will not run out of any rare metals powering the "green" revolution? Bihouix agrees that we may not run out of it in a geological sense

What do you mean by we will not run out of any rare metals powering the "green" revolution? Bihouix agrees that we may not run out of it in a geological sense. However he also argues that the extraction will become harder (lower concentrations to deal with) and is one of the fallacies of the "green" revolution

thiago_fm 7y ago
Just go watch a video about pre-salt oil in Brazil and how hard it is to extract it, almost an engineering miracle... and people still do it, as a good field might take some initial investment, but in the end might cost like $15 a barrel to extract with current technology, making it economically/environmentally viable. Even better than fracking. But as with any extracting work, there are downsides. People having been mining/drilling etc for centuries, I doubt people in hacker news can discuss all there is into those topics and the environmental impact. I think now we should look for better alternatives to the current way wreck with the environment, eletric cars are better than the ones moved by oil -- by a wide margin, even taking in account that you need to mine lithium. Just check the environmental implications of fracking, yet -- people still do it. There is always a way. What governments and police makers should care is to understand the environment implications and create a good legal framework and there is law enforcement, so companies do it correctly. We can either let this fear aside and believe humanity will need this step to perhaps takes other and find more efficient ways of creating energy. Or we can die in fear by keeping this dependency in oil, which btw, we will run out soon. Earth itself is a timebomb with 7bi people, with the current way we do things. We should be definitely pushing for changes and figure out what we could do in order to get rid of this problem. Also invest more into fusion energy. Develop new shit, basically. We have had much progress in history because people were bold and tried new things. If nowadays humanity is ruined by fear of doing things and press, earth is going to become nothing and humanity will collapse. Don't get triggered by this fear.
jayalpha 7y ago
Yes. The same is true for oil. We will in fact never run out of oil. The most part of what is left will stay where it is. In the ground.
francisofascii 7y ago
Can't lithium be recycled?

thiago_fm 7y ago

Just go watch a video about pre-salt oil in Brazil and how hard it is to extract it, almost an engineering miracle... and people still do it, as a good field might take some initial investment, but in the end might cost like $15 a barrel to extract with current technology, making it economically/environmentally viable. Even better than fracking. But as with any extracting work, there are downsides. People having been mining/drilling etc for centuries, I doubt people in hacker news can discuss all there is into those topics and the environmental impact. I think now we should look for better alternatives to the current way wreck with the environment, eletric cars are better than the ones moved by oil -- by a wide margin, even taking in account that you need to mine lithium. Just check the environmental implications of fracking, yet -- people still do it. There is always a way. What governments and police makers should care is to understand the environment implications and create a good legal framework and there is law enforcement, so companies do it correctly. We can either let this fear aside and believe humanity will need this step to perhaps takes other and find more efficient ways of creating energy. Or we can die in fear by keeping this dependency in oil, which btw, we will run out soon. Earth itself is a timebomb with 7bi people, with the current way we do things. We should be definitely pushing for changes and figure out what we could do in order to get rid of this problem. Also invest more into fusion energy. Develop new shit, basically. We have had much progress in history because people were bold and tried new things. If nowadays humanity is ruined by fear of doing things and press, earth is going to become nothing and humanity will collapse. Don't get triggered by this fear.

jayalpha 7y ago

Yes. The same is true for oil. We will in fact never run out of oil. The most part of what is left will stay where it is. In the ground.

francisofascii 7y ago

Can't lithium be recycled?