Investing

[Screwball]

32 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Big EV fan.  Love Tesla, drove a few.  I just had the F150 Lightning for 3 days of test driving.  I am all in on the EV future.

But I have questions.

What kind of environmental damage are these mines going to do?  Are these mines in third world countries?  Are we creating another bad actor like the Saudis?

But my biggest question is our electrical grid.  Hot days see rolling brownouts in California and Texas.  How many electric cars can our grid support?

They will work it out I am sure.  

Not intending on starting a huge pissing match, knowing the audience here, but I will say this;  I am all for alternative energy in whatever forms it can be used/created.  But, we really need an adult conversation on how to transition in that direction.

I have had many conversations with my mechanic buddies, fellow civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers, and we end up with more questions than answers.

We (humanity) don't have one (a transition plan), and best I can tell, we aren't going to.  There are so many questions, problems, hurdles.  It all starts with EROEI - energy returned on energy invested.  The conversation HAS to start with that.  Anything else is bullshit.  Subsidizing energy is a fools gold, and doesn't solve the problem.

I expect an entire industry of bullshit, and another industry of gaslighting from the pukes trying to score points one way or another, while not having any real workable plan.  This country cannot tackle this issue as it stands - we are completely dishonest, uninformed, and inept.

I'm old and will be dead soon.  I'm glad.  You young people are going to have to live with, deal with, and try to fix these issues.  Good fucking luck!

Right now, the pukes pulling the strings couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the bottom, which should be obvious to anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass.

[1984Echoes]

2 hours ago, Screwball said:

Becoming an Enlisted Soldier or Army Officer

Knock yourself out

I already did that. 1982.

[1984Echoes]

2 hours ago, Deleterious said:

... What kind of environmental damage are these mines going to do?  Are these mines in third world countries?  Are we creating another bad actor like the Saudis?

But my biggest question is our electrical grid.  Hot days see rolling brownouts in California and Texas.  How many electric cars can our grid support?

They will work it out I am sure.  

 

Australia is a huge actor in the mining aspect, China is even bigger. We could be just as big... if we wanted to. We've already shown to have the natural resources but... yeah, the environment. I'm of the mind of: avoid strip mining; in any mining area replace the environment back to its pre-mining condition; require miners (and this is also true of oil and gas industry) to pay for either (A) Insurance, or a sinking fund, or a Surety type of Bond that is in place to guarantee coverage of any environmental damage; (B) A sinking fund or surety bond is repayable to the mining company or oil and gas company once an area has been left and any environmental damage repaired and paid for... they get it all back if no damage, or... in the case of the insurance, it is a sunk cost. But low cost with a good environmental record, high or uninsurable if a bad record. (C) this prevents the public from being forced to pay for private company damages. Puts a mechanism in place to cover environmental damages and incentives to not commit the damage in the first place...

On the brownouts... The biggest issue with green power is its intermittent availability. So huge battery storage systems are already being built, in Australia that I know of... I'm guessing after California's brown outs that they are moving as fast as they can towards the same solution... I have no idea how that will all work out in the future nor how many EV's that may actually support, but...

We'll see. Pretty soon I'm sure...

 

 

 

[gehringer_2]

It looks confusing now because which solutions are best are not yet obvious. But if you look at the growth of renewables generating capacity on the grid, things are already moving faster than people appreciate. There are a lot ways things can shake out - more solar generation and local overnight battery storage - (BTW - an ideal use for that car battery that is no longer giving you 300 mile range but still has lots of cycles left) or maybe the storage stays on the grid, or maybe we get past the politics on nukes and it supplies the night time base load, and of course wind still blows some at night. In any case, all these things are already possible, the but economics of the choices can't shake out until people start trying them out at larger scale.

[1984Echoes]

I think things have already gotten to a big enough scale.

The issue, and to Del's point, is how to "mesh" all of these new green power systems, backup storage, availability, etc...

Into a cohesive, DEPENDABLE electrical grid system, and also to understand what the new green system's CAPACITY will be, in relation to future DEMANDS.

I think those are the three key words/ issues that we are looking at.

[Screwball]

The US has 3.6% of the worlds lithium reserves.  Not much help.

[1984Echoes]

Australia is the biggest supplier as of today I believe... We better be nice to them. Low population, lots of reserves... good for the US if that works out...

Also, is that "proven" reserves? I'm taking that to mean that the geological surveys have been done (they use ground-penetrating radar for that...?) not necessarily mines dug to "prove" the lithium.

Because what that also means from a US perspective is if we aren't looking for the stuff in the US (because of the environment/ politics/ etc...); we may have more lithium to be found but just nothing "proven" at this point. Or very little.

Also... should we start capturing and mining asteroids? We have the technology. Just a thought... I think it's time to start...

[1984Echoes]

PS: Chile has the biggest reserves, Australia has the second most reserves but the largest current production of lithium... in case I didn't word that correctly...

[Screwball]

Also... should we start capturing and mining asteroids? We have the technology. Just a thought

 

What's the EROEI on that?

Maybe we can have battery powered rockets and excavators.  This is why there needs to be adult conversions, not pie in the sky bullshit.

[1984Echoes]

Or someone needs to have the intelligence to have that conversation, which you seem to be struggling with.

This has already been discussed by the US Government. In fact, this has been under discussion the past 6 years. We are already capable of doing that. And the first step does not have to include ROI, it simply has to prove out the technology.

But you're too close to your deathbed to be worrying about pie in the sky BS, amirite?

[1984Echoes]

PS: Weren't EV's pie in the sky 10 years ago?

Grow the fuck up.

[Screwball]

So give us some links proving this is feasible, and even better, a solution to our energy issues.  Better yet, since this is an investing thread, how about some ticker symbols?

It takes about 5 tons lithium carbonate to yield one ton of lithium.  How much will it cost to fetch, mine, and transport 5 tons of that from some fucking asteroid back to earth, then process that into batteries?

Pardon me if I think you have your head planted so far up your ass you couldn't blow your nose.  When you are done with that little assignment, you can kindly fuck off.

[Tiger337]

The eternal optimist versus the cynical pessimist!  Fun times.  😄

[1984Echoes]

I don't do assignments for fucking deuchebags.

Oh, you wanted to talk about the immediate resolutions to the lithium problems? Not interested in today's AND tomorrow's resolutions? You could have said that. But this is about the 4th time you've followed one of my comments by being an asshole. GFY.

I already gave you several immediate resolutions which you decided to ignore; and instead decided to deuchebag it.

How close are you to your deathbed screw? I need to set my watch.

[gehringer_2]

Ok - let's do the math. A 100 kWhr car battery would contain  - very roughly 10 kg of lithium.  If you want to build 200 million batteries,  that's 2 million tonnes of lithium. Known deposits per USGS are 21 million tonnes, and no-one has really started looking for it seriously until recently so I would expect reserves to ultimately increase by an order of magnitude (as does USGS). Just for a scale, the ocean contain 230 billion tonnes of dissolved Li.

 

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithium.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#cite_note-uslit-49

Edited August 8, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Screwball]

2 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

I don't do assignments for fucking deuchebags.

Oh, you wanted to talk about the immediate resolutions to the lithium problems? Not interested in today's AND tomorrow's resolutions? You could have said that. But this is about the 4th time you've followed one of my comments by being an asshole. GFY.

I already gave you several immediate resolutions which you decided to ignore; and instead decided to deuchebag it.

How close are you to your deathbed screw? I need to set my watch.

I think the whole EROEI thing flew right over your head - and you didn't even duck.

When you get a clue about that, move on to exponents.

[Screwball]

42 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Ok - let's do the math. A 100 kWhr car battery would contain  - very roughly 10 kg of lithium.  If you want to build 200 million batteries,  that's 2 million tonnes of lithium. Known deposits per USGS are 21 million tonnes, and no-one has really started looking for it seriously until recently so I would expect reserves to ultimately increase by an order of magnitude (as does USGS). Just for a scale, the ocean contain 230 billion tonnes of dissolved Li.

 

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-lithium.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#cite_note-uslit-49

Just stop

[gehringer_2]

25 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Just stop

🙊🙉🙈

[1984Echoes]

11 hours ago, Screwball said:

I think the whole EROEI thing flew right over your head - and you didn't even duck.

When you get a clue about that, move on to exponents.

Why would anyone be concerned about EROEI at this point when the very first task to complete is the efficacy of asteroid capture. EROEI comes later. Similar to landing a man on the moon. They weren't concerned about any return on investment, simply accomplishing the task. Same thing with the tipping rewards NASA keeps giving to private space companies... there's no ROI on that. It is simply to advance/ develop the technology.... that may become the leading companies/ technologies of tomorrow.

So I get it, you're not interested in the "tomorrow" potential solutions (disregarding EROEI just for the moment); you're looking for the real time, today solutions, in order to solve immediate needs... And in that world EROEI is the only (well, not the only...) thing that matters.

How about we all get back to that discussion as I apparently threw a wrench into the gears with my "asteroid capture" (and hey G2... are you trying to do the same thing with your Ocean stats on lithium...?!?! HAH!!!)

[gehringer_2]

48 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

(and hey G2... are you trying to do the same thing with your Ocean stats on lithium...?!?! HAH!!!)

no, just putting out there that concerns about lithium are overblown. Yes, there will be a lift to increase production. But Lithium is about as common in the earth's crust as Cu, Zn or Cr. You don't get a dozen or so large multinational manufacturers going full tilt for a set of technologies based on a non-existent resource base. Lithium suppliers are committing to battery manufactures based on their projections of how much they've determined they can expand production and it seems to be enough for the anticipated market. 

I think a good counter example would be hydrogen. For years we have heard talk about the hydrogen economy being just around the corner, but of course we never see it, and the reason is that because even though every water molecule contains two hydrogen atoms, there actually is no source of large scale molecular hydrogen (the form needed to 'burn') available currently or in the foreseeable future. Thus while you hear 'people' carry on about it constantly - touting its supposed availability, you don't see any actual commercialization attempts anywhere, and it's because when industrial people  look at commercializing a hydrogen application for a real world application they quickly learn there isn't any. OTOH, 'people' carry on a lot about Li, but you don't see the talk bothering the people already adopting it commercially. They've done the due diligence and aren't too worried about it.

Edited August 8, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Deleterious]

 

[Screwball]

Hey! Come on, this is Krugman.  Give him credit, he's been consistent over the years. Some might say he's been consistently full of shit, which is true, backed up by spewing some of the most incredibly silly things ever heard by mankind, but somehow, has bullshitted enough people to even buy his books.

I read one. It was a gift. I still feel bad about that.

 

[Deleterious]

So Congress just passed a $7,500 EV credit.  Guess what Ford did today? Raised the price of the Lightning between $6,000 and $8,500 depending on the model.

[Hongbit]

18 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

So Congress just passed a $7,500 EV credit.  Guess what Ford did today? Raised the price of the Lightning between $6,000 and $8,500 depending on the model.

My gut tells me they don’t have enough batteries to meet demand so they are  purposely stepping on the price to slow down the pace of orders.  

[oblong]

Ford announced that hike 8 days ago and only applies to anyone who has yet to place an order or reservation.   Tesla increased their prices a few months ago.