• NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        It’s only greater than the supply because the demand for more wasn’t there.

        There’s so much Lithium out there, it’s not scarce at all. It just means we gotta put resources into looking for good deposits and then extracting it.

        We might run into a brief shortage in the short term while things scale, or we might not. TBD.

        If we can find something that works as well and it’s as or more environmentally friendly to obtain, then that’s great too.

      • AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        Yes do look into it. There are MANY ways to harvest lithium and most are better than what the oil and gas companies does when fracking or drilling on land.

        • Pirasp@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Being better than one of the most destructive industries ever is not a high bar. But the most effective way to harvest lithium remains an open pit mine, which are arguably worse than literally anything else.

          • AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca
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            10 months ago

            which are arguably worse than literally anything else.

            Going to argue it isn’t as bad as shale / oil sands projects. Also the battery is mostly aluminum, copper and nickel in the anode and cathode, all that has to be mined as well.

            The products of the Oil industry are also consumed and can’t be recycled, something like 90% of a battery can be recycled and reused.

          • AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca
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            10 months ago

            Making an improvement for something that can be recycled and thus should REDUCE over time is a a MASSIVE improvement over doing nothing and bitching about it.

    • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      No matter what, it’s always good to use less of a resource, if you can get the same outcome. It’s efficiency basically.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Less of one doesn’t meant less overall.

        Lithium is incredibly abundant, we just need to scale up production if we’re going to use so much.

        LFP batteries are great because iron and phosphorus are also plentiful and cheap.

        But if this other chemistry is less Lithium but requires platinum, well maybe thats not good.

        • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Batteries are also very recyclable, so we need a system in place for this, and then we’ll go far in terms of earth’s resources.

          Because both resources, even though they are plentiful, are still finite.