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I always think it’s weird to believe in either of those things (that we can’t make enough electricity, which can be made in like a dozen different ways whether

I always think it’s weird to believe in either of those things (that we can’t make enough electricity, which can be made in like a dozen different ways whether coal, oil, gas, biomass, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, etc, and that there won’t be enough lithium, even tho lithium isnt burned up, is extremely plentiful from conventional sources plus can be practically extracted from the ocean not to mention recycled indefinitely) and then be like “therefore, since we’ll have unlimited fossil fuels, let’s make more fossil fuel cars.”

ComputerGuru 3y ago
I kind of get it. A) improving the eMPG (or is it MPGe?) of more cars on the road to reduce their fossil fuel consumption is better than giving a few cars zero-emission powertrains, courtesy of the 80-20 rule. (Hence the riddle about you having two cars you use equally and someone offering to magically take one from 40mpg to 1000mpg or the other from 10mpg to 40mpg - you are better off financially with taking the latter option.) B) The infrastructure for fossil fuel mining is here but scaling up lithium mining is going to add new horrors to the environment and the developing world.
- megaman821 3y ago
  If you look at the amount of oil and gas that is extracted vs the amount of lithium that would we need to mine; it is like comparing the size of the Sun to Pluto. Mining lithium has downsides but there is just no way it could be as bad as oil and gas due to the orders of magnitude difference in quantities needed.
  - Detrytus 3y ago
    Are you talking about pure lithium quantities? Those are small indeed, but... the concentration of lithium in the ore mined is low (some mines work with 0.2% ore), so you need to move 500kg of rocks to mine 1kg of lithium.
    - mikeyouse 3y ago
      Most “mined” lithium doesn’t come from ore but rather from brine.

ComputerGuru 3y ago

I kind of get it. A) improving the eMPG (or is it MPGe?) of more cars on the road to reduce their fossil fuel consumption is better than giving a few cars zero-emission powertrains, courtesy of the 80-20 rule. (Hence the riddle about you having two cars you use equally and someone offering to magically take one from 40mpg to 1000mpg or the other from 10mpg to 40mpg - you are better off financially with taking the latter option.) B) The infrastructure for fossil fuel mining is here but scaling up lithium mining is going to add new horrors to the environment and the developing world.

megaman821 3y ago
If you look at the amount of oil and gas that is extracted vs the amount of lithium that would we need to mine; it is like comparing the size of the Sun to Pluto. Mining lithium has downsides but there is just no way it could be as bad as oil and gas due to the orders of magnitude difference in quantities needed.
- Detrytus 3y ago
  Are you talking about pure lithium quantities? Those are small indeed, but... the concentration of lithium in the ore mined is low (some mines work with 0.2% ore), so you need to move 500kg of rocks to mine 1kg of lithium.
  - mikeyouse 3y ago
    Most “mined” lithium doesn’t come from ore but rather from brine.