[cocoggu]

"It has since waned as people spend less time staring at their screens: as demand for consumer electronics fell, so did that for cobalt."

Stop me if I'm wrong, but the article totally missed the fact that new car battery technologies are mostly cobalt free. I feel it better explains the lack of demand than the article explanation.

[zaroth]

Ok…

> Even a boom in electric vehicles has not been sufficient to counteract this, since manufacturers have done their best to reduce use of the formerly super-expensive metal.

[joak]

When a resource is scarce we can either dig for more or replace by something equivalent.

It was a time when there wasn't enough whales to light everyone. We killed (almost) all the whales before coming up with something else (oil)

[pfdietz]

Biological resources like that are exceptionally vulnerable because harvesting them reduces the rate of creation of replacement whales, in a vicious cycle.

[BlueTemplar]

Somewhat fascinatinagly, being renewable doesn't actually change the dynamics :

https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/05/peak-oil-thermo...

(With the exception that whales, if left alone, might eventually bounce back.)

[adrianN]

Most nonbiological resources don't get any replacement at all.

[pfdietz]

But they have enormous stockpiles, compared to the biological resources. The upper 1 kilometer of the Earth's continental crust contains about 10^19 tonnes of cobalt. There is no similar stockpile of whales.

[fwungy]

The abiotic oil theory says that oil is produced as an intrinsic result of deep earth geothermal processes.

Peak oil theory may have been right about the peak, but wrong about the steepness of the right tail.

Russia has had success with drilling for oil based on the abiotic theory.

[pfdietz]

The abiotic theory of oil is also bullshit. I wonder why people keep talking about it.

[cocoggu]

Oops indeed not totally awake yet

[photochemsyn]

Yes, was going to say just this. E.g.

https://borates.today/lifepo4-batteries-vehicles/

>"These days, LiFePO4 batteries are found everywhere and have various applications, including use in boats, solar systems, and vehicles. LiFePO4 batteries are cobalt-free and less expensive than most alternatives. It is non-toxic and has a longer shelf life."

[erikpukinskis]

Right, and cobalt is a conflict mineral, which is partly why battery designers and researchers have been designing it out of batteries.