[SinParadise]

Based on his calculations from a video a year ago. He projects that we would need 940M tons of lithium, while 2022 reported reserves is 95M tons.[0]

Are we going realistically find enough undiscovered lithium reserves that is the same size as our known reserves as of 2022, even assuming that he is off by a factor of 4?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc&t=2604s

[burkaman]

95M tons is nickel, he says there's 22M tons of lithium. That's actually the 2021 number, 2022 is 26M tons, which is double the known reserves in 2010: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1253739/lithium-reserves.... Of course this can't go on forever, but there's no reason to think growth will suddenly stop in the next few years. The very recent explosion in demand for lithium incentivizes search for more reserves. If we really can't find any more, then billions or trillions of dollars will be redirected to bring lithium extraction from seawater to commercial scale.

[SinParadise]

>If we really can't find any more, then billions or trillions of dollars will be redirected to bring lithium extraction from seawater to commercial scale.

And we are probably going to burn fossil fuel to obtain the energy for this?

[burkaman]

No probably not, since solar is already the cheapest option for new generation and lithium extraction is an ideal application for intermittent power, I would expect these operations to be primarily powered by renewables. That's just thinking about the economics, but obviously there will also be very strong cultural and legal pressure to minimize emissions as well.

You can look at recently-proposed remote green hydrogen facilities as inspiration. Similar to hydrogen, since you don't need to worry about connecting to the grid, you can build solar and wind generators pretty much anywhere that has a ton of sun and wind, extract the lithium onsite, and then ship it to where it's needed.

[beefield]

I was referring his claims about electrification of glo al car fleet. Now that you mention, he had also some claims about lithium needs for replacing all fossil production with lithium batteries, baut also there the assumptions were not so realistic if I recall correctly. If you want to quote him, I would recommend going through his assumptions very carefully.

[beefield]

Oh yeah, and even then:

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/news/kaust-spinout-wil...

We have not run out of any mineral ever and I don't believe we ever will.

[SinParadise]

> We have not run out of any mineral ever and I don't believe we ever will.

Is mineral not a finite resource? I don't understand your source of optimism here.

[beefield]

We very rarely need specific minerals. We need energy, nutrition, conducting materials etc. Most of these needs we can fulfil with many different minerals. And the amlunt of all [1] minerals in earths crust is staggering compared to any foreseeable futre, so we are just going to flip to whatever is easiest/cheapest to dig. None will "run out" as in there is no more available, only that the remaining ones are too expensive to extract at the moment.

[1] Helium may be one of the exceptions here, but I would guess even that is produceable with some future nucleaf technology given enough money.

[SinParadise]

> We very rarely need specific minerals.

Because historically we do not have technology complex enough to need specific minerals. Now we do.

> Most of these needs we can fulfill with many different minerals. And the amount of all [1] minerals in earths crust is staggering compared to any foreseeable futre, so we are just going to flip to whatever is easiest/cheapest to dig.

There is another factor at play though: energy required to extract the minerals. Ones deeper in the earth's crust are likely more energy intensive to extract and perhaps even purify. At some point it won't be worth it.

[walleeee]

> None will "run out" as in there is no more available, only that the remaining ones are too expensive to extract at the moment.

Right, the issue is cost of extraction (in materials, energy, and externalities, the only real currencies), not exhaustion of the reserves. I think Simon would argue 1) that the degree to which the current economy depends on fossil resources (e.g. for metal-working; how do we reach the required temperatures without melting an electrically-powered heating element?) has not been grasped by policy-makers or the public, and 2) that we are already in energy decline, exacerbated by ongoing failure of ecosystem services. In other words, he thinks we have bled too much momentum and triggered too many blowbacks to "level off" at current living standards, if that were even a viable path forward (given the rate at which we are destroying the biological basis for human life, it is not).