Climate change and fossil fuels

[exchemist]

How does the war in Ukraine effect our gas prices so much to keep the price rising but the wars in Afganistan and Iraq didnt?

Iraq did, actually. Afghanistan didn’t , because it produces no oil.

But read the papers for goodness sake. There’s an embargo on Russian oil and oil products, e.g. diesel fuel, and a partial one on Russian gas. And the Saudis are not agreeing to produce more to compensate. Reductions in supply - and expected future reductions - put prices up. This is not rocket science.

 

[Truth in love]

'Lithium itself is not scarce. A June report by BNEF2 estimated that the current reserves of the metal — 21 million tonnes, according to the US Geological Survey — are enough to carry the conversion to EVs through to the mid-century.'1


'The world has proven reserves equivalent to 52.3 times its annual consumption. This means it has about 52 years of gas left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).' 2
But I take it that your reference to natural gas is implicit admission that other fossil fuels are not viable alternatives.


I think we are going to need gas usage in other areas and electric vehicles. Whilst gas is not without it's environmental side effects (especially fracking), it is used in housing, and increasing demand from the automotive industry would logically cause the cost of gas (already high due to war in ukraine) to be even higher for houses.

I would suggest you cite your sources that Lithium has slave labor being used. As far as I know it is not Lithium but cobalt which involves child labour because of the issues associated with 2/3rds of it's supply coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is an issue which needs to be addressed, however it is worth noting that;

'Manthiram is among the researchers who have solved that problem — at least in the lab — by showing that cobalt can be eliminated from cathodes without compromising performance4. “The cobalt-free material we reported has the same crystal structure as lithium cobalt oxide, and therefore the same energy density,” or even better, says Manthiram. His team did this by fine-tuning the way in which cathodes are produced and adding small quantities of other metals — while retaining the cathode’s cobalt-oxide crystal structure. Manthiram says it should be straightforward to adopt this process in existing factories, and has founded a start-up firm called TexPower to try to bring it to market within the next two years. Other labs around the world are working on cobalt-free batteries: in particular, the pioneering EV maker Tesla, based in Palo Alto, California, has said it plans to eliminate the metal from its batteries in the next few years.' 3


1, 3 Electric cars and batteries: how will the world produce enough?
2 World Natural Gas Statistics - Worldometer).

In my opinion

Ha yes so we just happens to find 10x the lithium while losing most of our natural gas. Yeah going to take that to the bank. NOT.

 

[exchemist]

Here are the trucks used to mine lithium. They burn 1800 to 2000 gallons of fuel per day. They more lithium we need, the more of these that will have to run. That pretty green

View attachment 63679

That’s a pretty silly argument. Sure they are diesel today but they don’t have to be tomorrow and, much more importantly, the fuel they consume is tiny compared to the electric mileage that each truckload enables.

 

[Twilight Hue]

New technology often calls for new taxes. Fossils fuels have a limited lifetime now matter what we do. Eventually we will have to find another way to tax for road usage. I would think that a tax made by multiplying vehicular weight times miles travelled would be a fair tax. If one drove a heavier vehicle it will do more damage than a lighter one. If one drives more miles one does more damage than someone that drives almost none. Combine the two and we should be able to keep the roads funded.

I'd never go for that. Taxing by mile/km is essentially what dictatorial regimes would do to prevent people from going place to place because it can be used as a control.

I'm more privy to taxing per charge via a kilowatt meter like rv parks and the like do already when you hook up.

Not that the government would ever allow people a break and let something be cheaper for a change so folks can have more money in their pockets for once.

 

[danieldemol]

Ha yes so we just happens to find 10x the lithium while losing most of our natural gas. Yeah going to take that to the bank. NOT.

Hand waving away geological expertise is not very convincing.

In my opinion.

 

[Truth in love]

Hand waving away geological expertise is not very convincing.

In my opinion.

Well it’s funny that your sites numbers are miles away from others.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well it’s funny that your sites numbers are miles away from others.

Are they? I have found a range of values myself when surfing the net. My first source indicates that we have 14 million tons of reserves. I do not remember what your value was.




Lithium mining: What you should know about the contentious issue.

And then looking further I found an article stating that the worries about supply are overblown:

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4745

 

[danieldemol]

Well it’s funny that your sites numbers are miles away from others.

They are June 2021 figures.
The 2022 report states,
'There are over 39 million tons of lithium resources worldwide. Of this resource, the USGS estimates there to be approximately 13 million tons of current economically recoverable lithium reserves' Source: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2014/3035/pdf/fs2014-3035.pdf

I don't know whether the BNEF report has considered only the total reserves, or whether they have estimated 21 million tonnes based on what they expect will be economically recoverable in the future.

It is an interesting question. I will try to find out why they got 21million instead of 13 million. But it will take time and anyhow it is only under double what others are saying, not "10x the lithium" as you have suggested.

In my opinion.

 

[exchemist]

Well it’s funny that your sites numbers are miles away from others.

What numbers do you have and from what sources?

 

[Truth in love]

Are they? I have found a range of values myself when surfing the net. My first source indicates that we have 14 million tons of reserves. I do not remember what your value was.




Lithium mining: What you should know about the contentious issue.

And then looking further I found an article stating that the worries about supply are overblown:

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4745

I think this is the site I pulled from.

Lithium reserves worldwide top countries 2021 | Statista


Concerning but if we don't even have reliable estimations as to what we can mine how do we make a decision for future generations on a almost blind guess?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think this is the site I pulled from.

Lithium reserves worldwide top countries 2021 | Statista


Concerning but if we don't even have reliable estimations as to what we can mine how do we make a decision for future generations on a almost blind guess?

Sorry, but there is a paywall there.

Your question is not properly asked. You need to drop the unsupported assumptions.

 

[Truth in love]

They are June 2021 figures.
The 2022 report states,
'There are over 39 million tons of lithium resources worldwide. Of this resource, the USGS estimates there to be approximately 13 million tons of current economically recoverable lithium reserves' Source: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2014/3035/pdf/fs2014-3035.pdf

I don't know whether the BNEF report has considered only the total reserves, or whether they have estimated 21 million tonnes based on what they expect will be economically recoverable in the future.

It is an interesting question. I will try to find out why they got 21million instead of 13 million. But it will take time and anyhow it is only under double what others are saying, not "10x the lithium" as you have suggested.

In my opinion.

If we don't have reliable estimates. we cold be setting the world on a crash course. If the power system fails people will start burning anything to keep warm even coal looks clean compared to tires.

 

[Truth in love]

What numbers do you have and from what sources?

I think I pulled data from Lithium reserves worldwide top countries 2021 | Statista but I often hit 20+ web sites looking for data, so not really sure.

 

[exchemist]

I think this is the site I pulled from.

Lithium reserves worldwide top countries 2021 | Statista


Concerning but if we don't even have reliable estimations as to what we can mine how do we make a decision for future generations on a almost blind guess?

Having a range of estimates is by no means the same thing as a “blind guess”.

Furthermore, nobody is making a decision “for future generations” here. Li batteries happen to have good energy density but they are not the only battery technology. Nor are electric vehicles the only alternative to fossil-fuelled ones.

The only decision that has been made for future generations is to wean ourselves off burning fossil fuels. There is no alternative there, so it will happen.

 

[exchemist]

If we don't have reliable estimates. we cold be setting the world on a crash course. If the power system fails people will start burning anything to keep warm even coal looks clean compared to tires.

This is hysterical.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Having a range of estimates is by no means the same thing as a “blind guess”.

Furthermore, nobody is making a decision “for future generations” here. Li batteries happen to have good energy density but they are not the only battery technology. Nor are electric vehicles the only alternative to fossil-fuelled ones.

The only decision that has been made for future generations is to wean ourselves off burning fossil fuels. There is no alternative there, so it will happen.

Personally I prefer the Directly Downwind Faster Than The Wind vehicle. Now if we could only find a way to make sure that the wind is always at our back

 

[exchemist]

I think I pulled data from Lithium reserves worldwide top countries 2021 | Statista but I often hit 20+ web sites looking for data, so not really sure.

I don’t believe you. You need to pay a subscription to access the data on that site, and I do not think you know enough about this subject to have paid for access, Mr “Truth in Love”.

But, in case I’m wrong, what is the total reserve according to their data?

 

[danieldemol]

If we don't have reliable estimates. we cold be setting the world on a crash course.
If the power system fails people will start burning anything to keep warm even coal looks clean compared to tires.

Electric cars really have nothing to do with power failures so far as I can tell.

Since you are allegedly so opposed to burning tyres why don't you lobby the racetracks to be shut down. Those big petrol powered v8s are where the real rubber burning action is occurring after all.

In my opinion.

 

[Truth in love]

I don’t believe you. You need to pay a subscription to access the data on that site, and I do not think you know enough about this subject to have paid for access, Mr “Truth in Love”.

But, in case I’m wrong, what is the total reserve according to their data?

More detailed reports are behind the pay wall, snap shots and summaries come up all the time in my search.

They estimate reserves of
19,725,000,000 kg
at 12 kg per Tesla we can make, 1,643,750,000 functioning cars. Lithium ion batteries often only last 5 years (some people are reporting that a Tesla battery will last for 10).

At about 1.446 billion cars around the world to replace https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/) ( and a rate of 95% recovery in recycling of batteries) we won't have enough lithium within 30 years of everyone driving a electric car. And this assumes that we stop making mobile devices and any other non car use of lithium and that no more people want cars that we are just replacing what we have. (I think both those assumptions are unsafe).

I actually like electronic cars (I feel in love with the concept watching Mr Rodgers years back.) But unless we find a lot more lithium or have some other massive leap in tech the math says we are setting ourselves up for a major problem.
Sure we can make a a few million cars that's not a problem, but billions. We would need to find a massive new reserve.

 

[Truth in love]

Electric cars really have nothing to do with power failures so far as I can tell.

Since you are allegedly so opposed to burning tyres why don't you lobby the racetracks to be shut down. Those big petrol powered v8s are where the real rubber burning action is occurring after all.

In my opinion.

Really if the power grid fails electrical cars will charge themselves via what osmosis?

I don't think I have the right to shut down someones business unless they are engaging in criminal acts. I simply opt to not fund them.