OT - lithium mining

I would have thought that nickel and cobalt would be bigger problems...

Hopefully where Tesla lead on the cobalt-free battery development front others will follow.

But presumably you remember the late 1960's predictions that oil was going to run out in the '80's?

And the 70s predictions that it would run out in the 90s? And so on and so on and so on...

Bill

There's a lot of lithium in Cornwall. Two companies, Cornish Lithium and British Lithium, are doing exploratory work to find the best deposits.

Indeed, google conflict mining as another consideration... Specifically places like teh DR Congo. (Ditton for Conflict Diamonds.)

The Frank Dodds act in the USA was designed to prevent trade in conflict minerals.

There are well established mining operations for the transition metals.

Mining lithium in bulk is a relatively new thing. The main thing it was used for is Li6 fuel in H-bombs so it is an element where you cannot rely on it having natural abundance in a chemical lab reagent.

Obtaining lithium is doing a lot of damage to sensitive ecosystems elsewhere too. It looks like we will do substantial damage to their environment to "save" ours. It is much more nearly a zero sum game than it looks at first glance. A bit like offshoring our dirty industries.

Half a million tonnes *has* ...?

Illiterates.

Half a million tonnes *have*....

....the collision between ideology and reality is never pretty.

Oh dear. We are talking about lithium

Oh dear, reading problems.

Was what I was responding to.

Tim

The subject is "million" which is singular. Thus "has" is correct.

This is because each of the tonnes is identical. "Tonnes" simply describes what this particular half a million consists of. As there can be half millions of all sorts of things

If it were half a million people, where each person was a separate individual, then "have" would be correct.

That's because the subject in that case is "people" which are plural; while the "half million" in that case decribes how many peopole there are.

Indeed not.

michael adams

...

Ah, sorry. the second cup of coffee is in front of me...

Are they saying we should ditch our mobile phones and laptops, etc?

Or is the lithium used for those somehow not a problem?

Accessible drinking water will run out for huge numbers of people before oil runs out.