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This is correct. Here is the USGS mineral commodity summary for lithium in 2010: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium/production/minera

This is correct. Here is the USGS mineral commodity summary for lithium in 2010: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/lithium/mcs-2010-lithi.pdf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium... Here is the same report for 2021: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithium.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithium.pd... World lithium reserves went up from 9.9 million tons in 2010 to 21 million tons in 2021 even as extraction accelerated. Companies have been putting more effort into discovery which has increased known reserves much faster than increasing extraction is drawing them down.

epistasis 6y ago
And most of our lithium doesn't come from proper "reserves" but from what is categorized as "resources," which is several times the quantity of "reserves." I don't know how much lithium is out there but we've barely even begun looking and there's never been demand for much in the past.
- oblio 6y ago
  > At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust,[45] lithium is the 25th most abundant element. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium I'm too lazy to do the math, but that's probably enough lithium to plate the entire planet with it if we want to :-)