4 ms·

I hear people complain about this, but they never place it in context with the damage from, say, iron or copper mining. I've done lots of web searches, read lo

I hear people complain about this, but they never place it in context with the damage from, say, iron or copper mining. I've done lots of web searches, read lots of articles, and there's never definitive measures of harm or comparisons to what current mining does. In a standard f150, how much damage is done from mining? How much damage comes from oil extraction compared to the one-time cost to extract lithium?

_heimdall 3y ago
Oh for sure, I have no idea how similar comparisons would shake out. I can say, though, that such comparisons pretty easily lead to tragedy of the commons problems. If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. Chasing the next miracle cure, in this case lithium batteries for energy storage, we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing only to find that there are new problems and we're not much better off, we simply have different problems and a similar level if environmental damage as if had we stayed on the original path. Now that doesn't mean I don't have hope for alternative energies or think we should decrease dependence on nonrenewable sources. I do like the promise of wind, solar, nuclear. etc and also think we should be killing off non-renewables as quickly as possible. I just hope we don't attempt to treat environmental impact as a zero sum game, signing off on more damage based on not exceeding the damage caused by current systems. I also hope we don't stick to a consistent growth of 2-3% in annual energy consumption, its no coincidence that number matches GDP targets and its unsustainable.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war. > Chasing the next miracle cure Nobody is claiming any miracles. > we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing only to find that there are new problems and we're not much better off, we simply have different problems and a similar level if environmental damage as if had we stayed on the original path. Sure, but we can also do basic research on the subject. Then make reasonable choices about that. And that's what happened. Lithium mining is not nearly the problem some of the propaganda suggest. At worsts its like other mining. Mostly its better. The total lithium amount needed is tiny even if you think all cars are going to be lithium batteries. Lithium mining is a drop in the bucked compared to iron and friends. > I also hope we don't stick to a consistent growth of 2-3% in annual energy consumption, its no coincidence that number matches GDP targets and its unsustainable. Its not unsustainable actually. What you are really arguing actually is 'why should people in India and China be rich, it would be much better if they were poor'. Are you gone determine what is 'rich enough' and when people should stop? Is Europe to rich already? Are you gone tell poor Americans 'sorry, you can't use more energy'. Energy poverty isn't the solution to anything.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    > That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war. Who said anything about austerity? Its only austerity of an authority forced reduced consumption on the people, I'm arguing that we should make that choice individually because it'd the right thing to do. > Nobody is claiming any miracles. Anyone claiming that wind and solar can replace fossil fuel use at the current rate of power consumption is claiming a miracle cure. Most models and targets aim for storage capacity as little as 8 hours, well below even the 3 day target that is often recommended in residential applications. A large-scale grid can't depend on a single night's worth of reserve capacity. > Lithium mining is not nearly the problem some of the propaganda suggest. At worsts its like other mining. Mostly its better. The total lithium amount needed is tiny even if you think all cars are going to be lithium batteries. If its similar to or only a bit better than current mining, isn't that a problem? As far as I'm aware we aren't only causing environmental damage via our use of consumable fuels, mining practices today also cause serious issues and destroy plenty of ecosystems. If you think that isn't actually a problem worth solving I'd be interested to hear more. > What you are really arguing actually is 'why should people in India and China be rich, it would be much better if they were poor'. > Are you gone determine what is 'rich enough' and when people should stop? Is Europe to rich already? You seem to be responding to something I never said. I never said anything about relative wealth, only about growth targets for gross domestic product. Your GDP can grow 2% whether you are starting out poor or rich. My argument is that we continue to use more energy at a similar rate to GDP growth. Natural resources are limited and our impact on the environment cannot follow limitless growth. Are you proposing that we can continue to use 2-3% more energy forever in perpetuity without consequence? If so please share more about how that would work. If not, then I guess we agree it isn't sustainable and can't go on forever.
  - defrost 3y ago
    You're correct that lithium mining is digging holes in the dirt, much like iron ore. That is not the problem. The issue is concentrate processing, to get useful elements from the "dirt of interest". That concentrate processing involves large quantities of sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, and other fun agents and also requires long term storage of waste waters (with aforementioned acids) and storage of low-level radioactive waste. This is the reason that Lynas was asked to leave Malaysia and why they are seeking other locations. > Lithium mining is a drop in the bucked compared to iron and friends. Apples, oranges, and a clear sign you're not familiar with the details of both. FWiW I worked decades as an exploration geophysical surveyor, contributed to the seeting up, running, and sale of the world's largest commercial mineral intelligence database, visited many mining and processing operations aboout the globe. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-22/malaysians-divided-on-radioactive-waste-from-aussie-miner-lynas/11434122 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-22/malaysians-divided-on... An Australian mining company has been told to "get lost" and "go back to Australia" amid an ongoing row over hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste piling up in Malaysia. https://www.australianmining.com.au/a-big-win-for-lynas-in-malaysia/ https://www.australianmining.com.au/a-big-win-for-lynas-in-m... https://www.australianresourcesandinvestment.com.au/2023/02/20/solution-emerges-for-lynas/ https://www.australianresourcesandinvestment.com.au/2023/02/...
_heimdall 3y ago
I got a but ranty there. To get back on topic, lithium isn't a one-time cost. Batteries wear out and have to be replaced. If we assume the batteries would outlive the average vehicle, we're committing to vehicles having an expected life of say 10 years. Meaning every 10 years it has to be destroyed, recycled, and replaced. I have a 1988 pickup that still runs great. I don't drive it regularly as my hybrid is much better on fuel, but the damage done from producing that truck was paid for decades ago and I'd be shocked if the cost of a tank or two of gas per month comes anywhere near the ecological impact of a producing a new, electric F-150 that is marginally useful for towing or hauling (my only reason for needing a pickup).
- hinkley 3y ago
  Depends on if we can separate the lithium like we do for lead acid batteries. I wonder if there are any processes left to discover or if this is it.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Man, so many things wrong here. First of all, many batteries run for longer then 10 years. It depends on many things but most of them will last far longer then 10 years. The most common LFP battery will last far, far longer. Second, end of life means 80% capacity. But in reality that doesn't mean you have to stop using them. You can continue to use it just fine for much longer then that. And even after that most car batteries find other uses as well. If there really is no use anymore, it can be recycled. Just as we do with metal and other materials in cars. Also, car engines didn't start so reliable, your 1988 pickup is 80+ years after cars were invented. We already have batteries that will survived for much longer and in 80 years it will be far, far longer then now. Yes, old cars are better then new cars. But new electric cars are better then new gas cars. And you are not gone get people to not buy new cars (threw that should be done as well). Yes. Electric F-150 are dumb. That's because pickup trucks are dumb not because batteries are dumb.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    Oh I'm well aware of the expected life of lithium cells. I have around 75kWh of lithium batteries storing capacity from solar and running my house. The batteries are a few years old as best I could tell, salvaged vehicle cells. I wouldn't recommend expecting more than 10 years out of cells if they're used regularly. Manufacturers will happily lay out math that points to 15-20 years of regular use, or even more, with 80% capacity. Take a look at what they're willing to warranty and its usually in the range of 5-10 years. I do expect that we can find a storage solution that would allow us to make a huge dent in fossil fuel use, though I also expect we're decades off. We likely need a different battery chemistry all together, and even if it is lithium we will spend decades trying to mine enough lithium for replacement and by then the original batteries will have aged out. Solar has a similar problem unfortunately, the materials we use today aren't mined at a rate anywhere near what would be needed to replace existing power plants and by the time we can mine materials and manufacture panels the we'll be starting over replacing the earlier panels we installed. > And you are not gone get people to not buy new cars This right here is the fundamental problem. We'll never see people at large give up convenience or shiny object syndrome in favor of the environmental concerns they may feel so passionate about. Reducing energy use isn't that hard, we just have to be willing to sacrifice.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Or fossil fuels. We do a lot of damage to our planet to extract coal, gas, and oil. And that's before you consider the damage we then do by burning it. Most of that becomes redundant if we scale renewable energy production enough. The impact of Lithium mining is absolutely tiny in comparison to all that. And it kind of is really important as a resource to complete that transition. The good news is that lithium is really common. The bad news is it's mostly not found in high concentrations. For example, ocean water contains about 180 billion tonnes of lithium. But in a concentration of 0.2 parts per million, you'd need to process about five million tonnes of ocean water to get 1 tonne of lithium. Extracting lithium and other minerals from sea water is something we can do nevertheless. It's just not very economical to do it. But the good news is that we are aware of quite a few natural deposits with much higher concentrations of lithium in either brines or different kinds of mineral deposits. That's nature taking its course over billions of years concentrating the lithium for us. And we've barely scratched the surface (quite literally) looking for that stuff as the interest in large scale lithium mining did not exist until about 10-20 years ago. In short, we're not going to run out of lithium. There's plenty of it. Extracting it is indeed costly and depending on how it's done can be a bit nasty. But the good news is that the damage is typically highly localized. And we have ways to mitigate that. And once extracted we can use the lithium over and over again. It's not destroyed by using it. Unlike fossil fuels.

_heimdall 3y ago

Oh for sure, I have no idea how similar comparisons would shake out. I can say, though, that such comparisons pretty easily lead to tragedy of the commons problems. If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. Chasing the next miracle cure, in this case lithium batteries for energy storage, we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing only to find that there are new problems and we're not much better off, we simply have different problems and a similar level if environmental damage as if had we stayed on the original path. Now that doesn't mean I don't have hope for alternative energies or think we should decrease dependence on nonrenewable sources. I do like the promise of wind, solar, nuclear. etc and also think we should be killing off non-renewables as quickly as possible. I just hope we don't attempt to treat environmental impact as a zero sum game, signing off on more damage based on not exceeding the damage caused by current systems. I also hope we don't stick to a consistent growth of 2-3% in annual energy consumption, its no coincidence that number matches GDP targets and its unsustainable.

panick21_ 3y ago
> If we want to decrease our impact on the environment we need to stop using so much energy and so many resources, period. That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war. > Chasing the next miracle cure Nobody is claiming any miracles. > we can easily run down that path picking up all the ecological damage of lithium mining and new manufacturing only to find that there are new problems and we're not much better off, we simply have different problems and a similar level if environmental damage as if had we stayed on the original path. Sure, but we can also do basic research on the subject. Then make reasonable choices about that. And that's what happened. Lithium mining is not nearly the problem some of the propaganda suggest. At worsts its like other mining. Mostly its better. The total lithium amount needed is tiny even if you think all cars are going to be lithium batteries. Lithium mining is a drop in the bucked compared to iron and friends. > I also hope we don't stick to a consistent growth of 2-3% in annual energy consumption, its no coincidence that number matches GDP targets and its unsustainable. Its not unsustainable actually. What you are really arguing actually is 'why should people in India and China be rich, it would be much better if they were poor'. Are you gone determine what is 'rich enough' and when people should stop? Is Europe to rich already? Are you gone tell poor Americans 'sorry, you can't use more energy'. Energy poverty isn't the solution to anything.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  > That is fundamentally false. Energy austerity is the road to poverty and more environmental damage. Not to mention war. Who said anything about austerity? Its only austerity of an authority forced reduced consumption on the people, I'm arguing that we should make that choice individually because it'd the right thing to do. > Nobody is claiming any miracles. Anyone claiming that wind and solar can replace fossil fuel use at the current rate of power consumption is claiming a miracle cure. Most models and targets aim for storage capacity as little as 8 hours, well below even the 3 day target that is often recommended in residential applications. A large-scale grid can't depend on a single night's worth of reserve capacity. > Lithium mining is not nearly the problem some of the propaganda suggest. At worsts its like other mining. Mostly its better. The total lithium amount needed is tiny even if you think all cars are going to be lithium batteries. If its similar to or only a bit better than current mining, isn't that a problem? As far as I'm aware we aren't only causing environmental damage via our use of consumable fuels, mining practices today also cause serious issues and destroy plenty of ecosystems. If you think that isn't actually a problem worth solving I'd be interested to hear more. > What you are really arguing actually is 'why should people in India and China be rich, it would be much better if they were poor'. > Are you gone determine what is 'rich enough' and when people should stop? Is Europe to rich already? You seem to be responding to something I never said. I never said anything about relative wealth, only about growth targets for gross domestic product. Your GDP can grow 2% whether you are starting out poor or rich. My argument is that we continue to use more energy at a similar rate to GDP growth. Natural resources are limited and our impact on the environment cannot follow limitless growth. Are you proposing that we can continue to use 2-3% more energy forever in perpetuity without consequence? If so please share more about how that would work. If not, then I guess we agree it isn't sustainable and can't go on forever.
- defrost 3y ago
  You're correct that lithium mining is digging holes in the dirt, much like iron ore. That is not the problem. The issue is concentrate processing, to get useful elements from the "dirt of interest". That concentrate processing involves large quantities of sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, and other fun agents and also requires long term storage of waste waters (with aforementioned acids) and storage of low-level radioactive waste. This is the reason that Lynas was asked to leave Malaysia and why they are seeking other locations. > Lithium mining is a drop in the bucked compared to iron and friends. Apples, oranges, and a clear sign you're not familiar with the details of both. FWiW I worked decades as an exploration geophysical surveyor, contributed to the seeting up, running, and sale of the world's largest commercial mineral intelligence database, visited many mining and processing operations aboout the globe. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-22/malaysians-divided-on-radioactive-waste-from-aussie-miner-lynas/11434122 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-22/malaysians-divided-on... An Australian mining company has been told to "get lost" and "go back to Australia" amid an ongoing row over hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste piling up in Malaysia. https://www.australianmining.com.au/a-big-win-for-lynas-in-malaysia/ https://www.australianmining.com.au/a-big-win-for-lynas-in-m... https://www.australianresourcesandinvestment.com.au/2023/02/20/solution-emerges-for-lynas/ https://www.australianresourcesandinvestment.com.au/2023/02/...

_heimdall 3y ago

I got a but ranty there. To get back on topic, lithium isn't a one-time cost. Batteries wear out and have to be replaced. If we assume the batteries would outlive the average vehicle, we're committing to vehicles having an expected life of say 10 years. Meaning every 10 years it has to be destroyed, recycled, and replaced. I have a 1988 pickup that still runs great. I don't drive it regularly as my hybrid is much better on fuel, but the damage done from producing that truck was paid for decades ago and I'd be shocked if the cost of a tank or two of gas per month comes anywhere near the ecological impact of a producing a new, electric F-150 that is marginally useful for towing or hauling (my only reason for needing a pickup).

hinkley 3y ago
Depends on if we can separate the lithium like we do for lead acid batteries. I wonder if there are any processes left to discover or if this is it.
panick21_ 3y ago
Man, so many things wrong here. First of all, many batteries run for longer then 10 years. It depends on many things but most of them will last far longer then 10 years. The most common LFP battery will last far, far longer. Second, end of life means 80% capacity. But in reality that doesn't mean you have to stop using them. You can continue to use it just fine for much longer then that. And even after that most car batteries find other uses as well. If there really is no use anymore, it can be recycled. Just as we do with metal and other materials in cars. Also, car engines didn't start so reliable, your 1988 pickup is 80+ years after cars were invented. We already have batteries that will survived for much longer and in 80 years it will be far, far longer then now. Yes, old cars are better then new cars. But new electric cars are better then new gas cars. And you are not gone get people to not buy new cars (threw that should be done as well). Yes. Electric F-150 are dumb. That's because pickup trucks are dumb not because batteries are dumb.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Oh I'm well aware of the expected life of lithium cells. I have around 75kWh of lithium batteries storing capacity from solar and running my house. The batteries are a few years old as best I could tell, salvaged vehicle cells. I wouldn't recommend expecting more than 10 years out of cells if they're used regularly. Manufacturers will happily lay out math that points to 15-20 years of regular use, or even more, with 80% capacity. Take a look at what they're willing to warranty and its usually in the range of 5-10 years. I do expect that we can find a storage solution that would allow us to make a huge dent in fossil fuel use, though I also expect we're decades off. We likely need a different battery chemistry all together, and even if it is lithium we will spend decades trying to mine enough lithium for replacement and by then the original batteries will have aged out. Solar has a similar problem unfortunately, the materials we use today aren't mined at a rate anywhere near what would be needed to replace existing power plants and by the time we can mine materials and manufacture panels the we'll be starting over replacing the earlier panels we installed. > And you are not gone get people to not buy new cars This right here is the fundamental problem. We'll never see people at large give up convenience or shiny object syndrome in favor of the environmental concerns they may feel so passionate about. Reducing energy use isn't that hard, we just have to be willing to sacrifice.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Or fossil fuels. We do a lot of damage to our planet to extract coal, gas, and oil. And that's before you consider the damage we then do by burning it. Most of that becomes redundant if we scale renewable energy production enough. The impact of Lithium mining is absolutely tiny in comparison to all that. And it kind of is really important as a resource to complete that transition. The good news is that lithium is really common. The bad news is it's mostly not found in high concentrations. For example, ocean water contains about 180 billion tonnes of lithium. But in a concentration of 0.2 parts per million, you'd need to process about five million tonnes of ocean water to get 1 tonne of lithium. Extracting lithium and other minerals from sea water is something we can do nevertheless. It's just not very economical to do it. But the good news is that we are aware of quite a few natural deposits with much higher concentrations of lithium in either brines or different kinds of mineral deposits. That's nature taking its course over billions of years concentrating the lithium for us. And we've barely scratched the surface (quite literally) looking for that stuff as the interest in large scale lithium mining did not exist until about 10-20 years ago. In short, we're not going to run out of lithium. There's plenty of it. Extracting it is indeed costly and depending on how it's done can be a bit nasty. But the good news is that the damage is typically highly localized. And we have ways to mitigate that. And once extracted we can use the lithium over and over again. It's not destroyed by using it. Unlike fossil fuels.