Posted on 08/10/2022 10:56:42 AM PDT by rktman
HUMBOLDT COUNTY, Nevada—Deep below the tangled roots of the old-growth sagebrush of Thacker Pass, in an extinct super-volcano, lies one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium—a key element for the transition to clean energy. But above ground, a cluster of tents has risen in the Northern Nevada desert where, for eight months, environmental and tribal activists are protesting plans to mine it for “green” technologies.
“We are not leaving until this project is canceled,” said Max Wilbert, of the Protect Thacker Pass campaign. “If need be, this will come down to direct action. We mean to put ourselves in between the machines and this place.”
Plans to dig for the element known as “white gold” have encountered a surge of resistance from tribes, ranchers, residents and activists who say they believe the repercussions of the mine will outweigh the lithium’s contributions to the nation’s transition to less-polluting energy sources than fossil fuels.
(Excerpt) Read more at insideclimatenews.org ...
I’m thinking this mining for battery materials is a good deal for Caterpillar, Komatsu, etc. Investment opp?
I do not understand the chemistry of the Lithium ion batteries - when the battery is depleted/kaput after 10 years, is the lithium recoverable from the battery, or has it been consumed/reduced in form so that it cannot be harvested and re-used?
There isn’t enough Lithium on three Earth’s to do what they want to do. It’s a gigantic boondoggle.
Coal powered cars with batteries dug from mines that will do actual permanent environmental damage to the Earth.
It is literally the stupidest idea in the last 100 years, and the Globalists went with it because of its ironic absurdity.
Can’t the folks from chii-nuh just get it from off-gone-uh-stahn?
Umm, why sign up with treehuggers? They are almost always wrong.
Chasing “clean energy” is stupid. I give yah that. Nothing is clean.
But, this is a mine for materials otherwise only available in China. Whatever we can do to hurt the CCP should be pursued — just on general principles if nothing else.
If on Indian land (yeah, INDIAN. >300 tribes were interviewed years back and that is the term they preferred) do a contract with them and give them the ammo to shoot trespassers. It is Nv desert, fer crissakes!
I’m amazed the Chinese didn’t buy up that land and bring in slave Uighur labor along with Chinese or trafficked child labor and mine like they do in China. At least with the Uighurs we’d have access to more human organs for transplant. See how humane and nice the Green New Deal has become?
Environmentalists are snobs and have no trouble destroying poor countries’ landscapes.
These are the same people who opposed wind turbines off the coast of Nantucket.
There is no such thing as “old growth sagebrush”.
Another fabrication by the uneducated environmentalists.
But It’s to fight climate change, and, besides, what’s a strip mine or two among friends? Wonder if the next inflation reduction act will include payoffs to these environmentalists to back off?
That happens when their minds have been polluted with climate change drivel. Zero science. Zero logic. Zero critical thinking.
How many of them came in driving wheezy, smoke producing, ancient VW microbuses?
The lithium in Nevada is sourced from clay and is a complex process. Its production will not be less than the cost of lithium from Chili’s brine lakes which contain more than 1/2 of the earth’s known lithium deposits.
“It is Nv desert, fer crissakes!”
Enviro-creepos are like cockroaches—they will almost certainly survive a nuclear war.
;-)
Lol. Right. Ask them what plants grew before the giant redwoods took over. The stoopid is painful.
Actually, 49% of the power for my EV has come from my home solar system (that's how much of my overall home electricity use came from solar since I bought the EV almost 2 months ago, with me having to pull the other 51% of my power needs from the grid). I predict that will increase to 85%-90% when I'm done upgrading my solar this month.
That's because some of us solar users and EV owners think differently from the Dims. For us it's not about virtue signaling or actually believing we're stopping cow fart warmageddon. For us it's about shifting some of our families' needs away from things the Dims control way too much -- like energy sources.
They’re fine with the current mining, which involves massive child and Chinese slave labor throughout the parts of the world that have lithium.
It’s all cool, don’t worry.
Lithium metal is lithium zero. Since Li is on the left side of the periodic chart, it transports electrons to form Li+1 quite easily, hence its application in batteries. Recharging the battery means using electricity to restore the energy rich lithium metal. There is no natural source of lithium metal. The ore is Li+1 that can be refined into lithium metal and the battery.
At the end of the life cycle, the spent battery would have to be re-refined into a new battery, but in theory it could be done. The big advantage to lithium over other stuff on the left side of the periodic chart is that it is the lightest of these easily reduced metals (upper left of the periodic chart). A sodium battery would be much heavier for the same electrical load.
Aw c’mon! Let’s all just cut to the chase and go back to living in caves, hunting dinosaurs and cooking the meat over wood fires. WHAT? Can’t cook meat over wood fires? What the?!? Oh damn! We’re cooked! Soylent green anybody?
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