[HN Gopher] Why Are Lithium Prices Collapsing?
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Why Are Lithium Prices Collapsing?
Author : xbmcuser
Score : 178 points
Date : 2023-04-30 06:16 UTC (16 hours ago)
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| xbmcuser wrote:
| The more I read about prices of different commodities the more I
| realise the biggest movement in prices is not because of demand
| and supply but rather because of speculation and gambling. And
| how most of the news is manipulated. For example they are
| equating lithium price fall with stagnating car sales. Where as
| car sales might be stagnating but electric car sales are taking a
| larger portion of total car sales ie electric car sales/lithium
| use is still increasing.
| nurettin wrote:
| Price increase is governed by how much a buyer is willing to
| pay and how long a seller is willing to hold. That is supply
| and demand. Their reason to supply or demand is 100% due to
| speculation or gambling or whatever you want to call it. There
| is no intrinsic value for anything. Supply and demand is not a
| magic spell that saves people from guessing what prices should
| be.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > is not because of demand and supply but rather because of
| speculation and gambling
|
| That's what a zero interest rate policy buys you.
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| nprateem wrote:
| > speculation and gambling
|
| Of course. The net present value of a stock or asset can only
| be calculated based on its expected future price and earnings.
| Since there's no way to know this with 100% certainty, stock
| prices are inherently speculative. Even value investors must
| struggle to accurately value a company's intangible assets.
| danaris wrote:
| But there's a material difference between "attempting, in
| good faith, to determine what the demand for a commodity will
| be in the future, and buying based on that" and "attempting
| to determine what the _price of a commodity on the futures
| market will be_ and buying based on that ".
|
| When people say that a commodity's price is being driven by
| speculation and gambling, they mean that it has shifted from
| the former to the latter. This means that the price is
| _disconnected_ from the actual, physical use of the
| commodity, and is instead being driven by the inconstant
| passions of the commodities market itself.
| kortilla wrote:
| People who say that don't understand what's going on. Those
| futures eventually resolve to delivery so this is the real
| price that producers are selling and and consumers of
| commodity buy at.
|
| All of the speculation is entirely based on how the news
| might impact the physical product.
|
| Oil prices went negative precisely because storage was full
| and people didn't want the obligation to take delivery of
| the oil when nobody was using it.
| achates wrote:
| The price should be disconnected from the actual, physical
| use. If we have a surplus of a substance now but there is
| reason to believe that we'll need a lot more of it later
| then the sensible thing to do is to hoard most of it until
| it is needed and to start producing more of it. Speculators
| help do that by driving up the price which is a signal to
| both producers and consumers.
|
| The market thought that China was going to need a lot of
| lithium for EVs, so the price went up which incentivized
| higher production and lower use. That's a good thing
| because it made it more likely that China would meet their
| demand. Now the market has better information that China is
| going to need less lithium than previously thought so the
| price drops which makes it viable for previously marginal
| users.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >But there's a material difference between "attempting, in
| good faith, to determine what the demand for a commodity
| will be in the future, and buying based on that" and
| "attempting to determine what the price of a commodity on
| the futures market will be and buying based on that".
|
| These are indistinguishable. Unless you want to restrict
| markets to being only between suppliers and consumers,
| there will always be middlemen attempting to predict the
| price, and since they need to eat, they will be attempting
| to profit from changes in price.
|
| Which is fine because suppliers and consumers are many
| times willing to let others handle the risks of price
| changes (volatility), hence the market for futures.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Unless you want to restrict markets to being only
| between suppliers and consumers
|
| That is what I would like to do, yes.
| parmenidean wrote:
| Read up on the onion futures markets; due to a (rather
| fascinating) historical decision, they are one of the few
| commodities without speculative futures. As a result,
| price volatility in the market is massive, with far worse
| swings compared to the efficient markets where
| speculators operate.
| kortilla wrote:
| I challenge you to write out what scenarios you think
| reducing market participants will solve. Historically it
| has 100% so far been highly illiquid markets with huge
| price spreads, which is terrible for both sellers and
| buyers.
|
| What you're suggesting means a farmer selling wheat
| futures for delivery a year from now needs to be at the
| market at the same time a bread maker is looking to buy
| wheat a year from now. That basically doesn't happen
| because the bread maker doesn't need that level of
| forward looking price stability.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is how they were in the beginning. I recommend
| reading about the development of markets and futures
| trading to see what benefits they provide, as they are a
| component of any developed economy around the world.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Of course there's a difference. It's based on information
| asymmetry, i.e. the 'greater fool' theory. When the
| information asymmetry is deliberately created, that's
| being done in bad faith, and is the sort of thing we call
| fraud when done on an individual level. It often feels
| like a great deal of our corporate and financial
| machinery are designed around diffusing actions that
| would be criminal, or reprehensible if done person to
| person, in order to allow them to be done at scale
| without consequence.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > When the information asymmetry is deliberately created,
| that's being done in bad faith, and is the sort of thing
| we call fraud when done on an individual level.
|
| What information asymmetry? The previous comments
| referred to speculators betting on price movements.
|
| Deliberately creating fraudulent information asymmetry
| would be altering data in industry reports and publishing
| false manufacture/consumption data. Which, I assume, is
| illegal.
| zamnos wrote:
| What _is_ illegal is financial advising without a
| license. Which recommending a stock falls under. Altering
| some one else 's report and claiming your rendition is
| the real one is forgery or something, but writing your
| own report and making up numbers is totally fine.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| By, for example, deliberately delaying delivery while
| owning a significant segment of the available commodity,
| such as Goldman Sachs did with aluminum a decade ago.
| [1], while simultaneously selling derivatives based on
| the very commodities they were manipulating. To the best
| of my knowledge, there were no consequences - if anyone
| knows of a financial penalty or change to law or
| regulations, please share!
|
| 1. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-
| intelligence/2...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I agree that there is concern of malfeasance in that
| scenario, but I was under the impression the context of
| the discussion was solely around the purchase and sale of
| contracts for the commodities (i.e. betting on the future
| price of a commodity), not manipulation of the actual
| supply and demand.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| When the same legal entities are in a position to do both
| (participate in the futures market _and_ manipulate
| supply and demand) I do not see how or why you would try
| to make such a distinction.
|
| It feels like you're trying to say, "this market would
| work fine if it weren't for those meddling bad actors" as
| a response to "the problem is the bad actors".
| bookofjoe wrote:
| True. Even the master of value investing, Warren Buffett,
| sometimes suffers huge losses and write-offs.
| broast wrote:
| You're definitely right that the news loves to write headlines
| after any daily price fluctuations and pretend they know the
| reason, when in reality it usually explains nothing and becomes
| irrelevant by tomorrow.
| chii wrote:
| > the biggest movement in prices is not because of demand and
| supply but rather because of speculation and gambling
|
| the movement reflects the expected future supply and demand at
| the time.
|
| The speculation is something that financial engineers use to
| offload the risks of such commodities from one party to another
| (such as from producers to consumers of said commodities).
| xbmcuser wrote:
| With the way derivatives are used these days to
| speculate/gamble they do not help rather result in the boom
| bust cycles we see in more and more industries these days.
| sigstoat wrote:
| and when exactly do you think that changed? if "these days"
| are in some sense bad, when were the good ones?
| bullen wrote:
| Markets in a high energy cost environement make their margin
| more on volatility and speculation.
|
| You will also see margins themselves widen until the system
| falls in on itself.
|
| We dont have a financial margin tracker.
|
| Also increasing interest rates in a highly indebted economy
| increases inflation; short term by widening of margins and long
| term by offputting energy extraction.
|
| Lithium will explode soonish.
|
| Margins amplify volatility.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how most of the news is manipulated. For example they are
| equating lithium price fall with stagnating car sales_
|
| Mass media is mostly crap at price-move stories. It's less
| manipulation than false correlation. (The writers are
| incentivised to write, not to write a particular story.) There
| is a lot of thought that goes into lithium pricing. Current
| price moves are mostly speculation about supply, given near-
| term demand can be pretty precisely measured given battery
| production in operation and breaking ground. (Battery supply
| limits EV production, which itself outstrips demand, so
| volatility in consumer demand is tamped at the extraction
| layer.) Recent debate is about potential supply from brine in
| China.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Monopoly and cartels has the most impact on prices. and the
| market can not work if there are few partisipants. also
| gatekeepers, those that stand in between producers and
| consumers can screw up the market if they have a large potion
| of the market.
| bboygravity wrote:
| It's interesting to see that people still believe there is some
| type of fair price discovery when things like dark pools,
| market maker exemptions, naked shorting, tokenized securities,
| trillions in derrivative bets (hello 2008), spoofing (JP Morgan
| getting fined 1 billion after making 10 billion in profit in
| gold price spoofing) and so on and so forth exist.
|
| Speculation and gambling about what future prices will be are
| not the big issues here, the markets themselves are completely
| broken (by design).
| danaris wrote:
| It's _not_ by design, though.
|
| No one _designed_ this system. It grew, organically. People
| started recognizing parts of it they could take advantage of,
| and pushing to have those parts become more prominent,
| largely individually (as opposed to in one grand conspiracy
| of collusion).
|
| It may be true that some of those people believe it is in
| their best interests that the markets be "broken", and so
| have pushed that far intentionally, but there is no one
| overriding will and no single hand on the rudder to even be
| able to do that on purpose. It's all just greedy people
| trying to get their own interests put before everyone else's.
| Rufbdbskrufb473 wrote:
| You just listed a bunch scary sounding financial buzz words,
| but I doubt that a thorough analysis of them would support
| your conclusion.
|
| In fact, many have the opposite effect and result in more
| efficient price discovery. Take naked shorting for example.
| Without shorting, it would be far more difficult for an
| equity research firm to be incentivized to look into
| fraudulent stocks, as was widespread with Chinese companies a
| few years ago. Without their efforts, stock prices would have
| remained inflated for longer.
| quote wrote:
| Isn't that argument somewhat strange or dishonest? To
| paraphrase you: I'd rather have naked shorting and the
| associated manipulation and problems with it than better
| price discovery for stockholders. In your example, the
| stockholder isn't protected either, only an equity firm
| derives profit from this information. In a more ideal world
| the stockholders themselves would do this due diligence,
| which is something that already happens. Also there's
| differences between shorting and naked shorting. I could
| well imagine allowing fully hedged shorting and outlawing
| naked shorting. Especially considering the issue of fail to
| deliver, that's just absurd with our technology.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _could well imagine allowing fully hedged shorting and
| outlawing naked shorting_
|
| Many markets ( _e.g._ Australia and Switzerland) do this.
| We have the comparative data to show it doesn't do
| anything good while increasing volatility.
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| You referenced due diligence as naked shorting but they are
| different.
|
| You listed a bunch of financial buzz words and didn't
| disprove OP.
|
| Please show how naked shorting incentivized good due
| diligence.
|
| You could have just pointed to the massive new supply that
| was announced, it's the logical reason why the price
| dropped.
|
| Geopolitics are the primary mover of markets currently.
| machina_ex_deus wrote:
| You don't understand what naked shorting is. Naked shorting
| is shorting without first borrowing from someone. Normal
| shorting is limited by the availability of stock to borrow
| (by the way, if stock holders wish, they can request from
| their broker that their stock won't be available for
| borrowing, potentially causing short squeeze), by the
| interest rates on borrowing the stock.
|
| Naked shorting skips it all. Some market makers are
| privileged and can sell stock they don't own and didn't
| borrow. So they have a privilege of printing stocks in the
| short term, and that's quite broken, and many of them
| abused this position to manipulate markets. Normal
| participants in the market can't naked short.
|
| Naked shorting means that the market maker who supposedly
| sold you a stock, can now fail to find the stock he sold
| you, leading to "fail to deliver".
|
| The excuse given is that naked shorting allows for more
| liquidity, but given the other problems, I think it's bad.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _excuse given is that naked shorting allows for more
| liquidity, but given the other problems, I think it 's
| bad_
|
| I assume you have a counterpoint to the decades of data
| the NYSE, SEC, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and
| others around the world have collected that show naked
| shorting improves liquidity without FTDs negatively
| impacting price discovery while tamping volatility,
| evidence made particularly robust by the fact that naked
| shorting is permanently banned, and has been temporarily
| banned, in many markets, such as Australia, Switzerland
| and, for some stocks post crisis, in the United States?
| (See _Wikipedia_ for a summary.) The whole affair reminds
| me of the lead up to the Onion Futures Act [1].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
| RandomLensman wrote:
| What is the issue with a dark pool, for example? They are
| generally not designed for price discovery anyway.
| quote wrote:
| But wouldn't it be better if the volume at least is shown
| on open exchanges?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _wouldn't it be better if the volume at least is shown
| on open exchanges?_
|
| Empirically, no. Large blocks of stock don't have a
| liquid market. Forcing them into the open means chopping
| it into tiny pieces while using derivatives to hedge, for
| the sophisticated, and getting hosed, for the
| unsophisticated.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "The secret of success in business is to know something no
| one else knows." --Aristotle Onassis
|
| How do you spell "insider trading?"
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| My plumber/electrician/doctor is insider trading?
| layer8 wrote:
| What does your plumber/electrician/doctor know that other
| plumbers/electricians/doctors don't know and that is the
| secret of their success?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Forgot about the "no one else" knows part, but the point
| is being good at something (or knowing something others
| do not) is not a bad thing, as implied by "insider
| trading".
|
| For example, if you figure out a cheaper alternative to
| lithium, and want to bet that lithium prices will fall as
| a result of reduced demand, then those are your spoils
| for figuring that out.
| [deleted]
| pfdietz wrote:
| Insider trading involves trading that violates a fiduciary
| responsibility. That is: you work for a company owned by
| shareholders, and you trade based on information you have
| as a consequence of that employment, harming the
| shareholders.
|
| Without that fiduciary responsibility, it's not insider
| trading, it's just trading. If you overhear someone with
| inside information talking about some inside knowledge,
| then trade based on that, you're in the clear (as long as
| you didn't collude with the leaker.)
| barrysteve wrote:
| How do you spell "research and development".
|
| We aren't rushing to make nuclear fusion because we have
| insufficient electricity... and you can't replace what the
| scientists know with another coal plant.
|
| Global survelliance, inifinte database records and instant
| comms has really destroyed the potential to keep and
| develop real secrets. It's going to hurt (badly) in the
| long run.
|
| So insider trading for as long as GCHQ/CIA/NSA refuses to
| rat people out....
| 226_ebro_treaty wrote:
| Wait until you learn about OPEC and oil prices :-)
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Because they will change their mind?
|
| "demand and supply"
|
| OPEC is a cartel constraining supply to increase prices, it's
| not a free market but an example of "demand and supply" in
| it's most brutal form. OPEC prices are not about "gambling".
| jimbob45 wrote:
| OPEC has gambled several times in the last decade on future
| oil prices (and not always won).
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| In which way has OPEC gambled on future oil prices that
| moved prices? To my limited understanding this would
| involve buying oil futures.
| [deleted]
| jpgvm wrote:
| You don't need to use derivatives to gamble, they control
| the supply but that control is a lagging control. Any
| decision they make is essentially a bet about where the
| oil market is going to move in several months. They are
| usually big enough that any move they make is going to
| set the tone but that isn't always the case.
|
| They need to make continual bets on the health of
| transports, changes in energy mix etc in order to move or
| keep the price in a favorable band for them. Misstep and
| the price of oil falls, cutting into their profits or
| push it too high and face demand destruction and shale
| extraction coming online because it's profitable at those
| higher prices, increasing competition and stifling
| volumes simultaneously.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| I mean, that's a straight up cartel. There's nothing
| surprising about that.
|
| But the OP is confused about their comment about commodities
| in general. They are largely based on supply and demand, but
| most companies need to predict supply and demand months and
| years in advance because converting raw material into a sale
| to the end user is a multi month to multi year process, so a
| natural result is that the prices are based on speculation of
| supply and demand, months to years in advance.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > the prices are based on speculation of supply and demand,
| months to years in advance.
|
| There's also an element of speculation on speculation
| driving short term trends.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > They are largely based on supply and demand, but most
| companies need to predict supply and demand months and
| years in advance because converting raw material into a
| sale to the end user is a multi month to multi year
| process, so a natural result is that the prices are based
| on speculation of supply and demand, months to years in
| advance.
|
| But that practically means they are based on speculation
| about possible future supply and demand, and we are more or
| less taking it on faith that that speculation is correlated
| to actual supply and demand.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > But that practically means they are based on
| speculation about possible future supply and demand, and
| we are more or less taking it on faith that that
| speculation is correlated to actual supply and demand.
|
| This statement almost seems tautological. Of course
| prices are based on speculation about possible supply and
| demand, nobody has a crystal ball that can tell them
| "actual" supply and demand.
|
| In a competitive and liquid market, you expect prices to
| rapidly approach "optimal", because otherwise there's an
| opportunity there for someone make money out of the
| market inefficiency, buy correctly predicting when supply
| is high, and buying, then selling when supply is low.
| Which is exactly what future etc do, except without the
| need to actually move the physical commodity around.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Of course prices are based on speculation about
| possible supply and demand, nobody has a crystal ball
| that can tell them "actual" supply and demand.
|
| Exactly, no one has such a crystal ball. And this
| actually generally applies not just to future supply and
| demand, but even to the past: it's actually impossible to
| measure supply and demand across any significant
| industry, to check whether prices matched it or not.
|
| And yet, economists and economical theory enthusiasts
| talk about the "law of supply and demand" as if it's some
| scientific observation, and not just a simplistic model
| that seems intuitive.
|
| > In a competitive and liquid market, you expect prices
| to rapidly approach "optimal", because otherwise there's
| an opportunity there for someone make money out of the
| market inefficiency
|
| You might expect that if you believe in the law of supply
| and demand, but as we were discussing, that is not how
| prices are actually formed, and anyone betting based on
| observed supply and demand (to the extent that it is
| actually possible to observe them) will be beat in
| general by others who are betting based on current
| speculation, which is how prices are actually formed.
|
| For example, if you are betting that gain prices will
| increase in the winter because that's what you think they
| did every year, and ignore some prominent pundit
| predicting that they will decrease this year, you may
| well lose the bet if everyone else believes the pundit.
| And that will be true regardless of whether grain will be
| in low supply or not.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > You might expect that if you believe in the law of
| supply and demand, but as we were discussing, that is not
| how prices are actually formed, and anyone betting based
| on observed supply and demand (to the extent that it is
| actually possible to observe them) will be beat in
| general by others who are betting based on current
| speculation, which is how prices are actually formed.
|
| But we do see prices approach optimal. Your argument is
| predicated on the idea that the law of supply and demand
| is only a useful model if the actual price _always_
| follows observed supply and demand. But for that to ever
| be true, it would require speculators to have a crystal
| ball, otherwise there's no reason to believe the
| speculated price will always match the "optimal" when the
| point in time being speculated about actually occurs.
|
| The law of supply and demand tells what market systems
| will trend towards. But like complex control system,
| having a governing idea about long term trends doesn't
| mean momentary perturbations don't occur, it just helps
| you understand what the system will do after the
| perturbation.
|
| To claim that the law of supply and demand is useless, is
| like claiming that Hooks Law is useless for understanding
| how suspension systems in cars work, because perfect
| springs don't exist, and cars don't remain stationary.
|
| Perfect markets don't exist, perfect information doesn't
| exist, so why would anyone expect real markets to
| perfectly follow the law supply and demand? And clearly
| markets do follow the law of supply demand at the macro
| level, when long periods of time are considered,
| otherwise commodity pricing would be entirely arbitrary
| and wouldn't in anyway reflect the value of the commodity
| to society at large.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > But we do see prices approach optimal.
|
| Where do you see that? What does it even mean, how can
| you objectively tell what is the optimal price for a good
| or service, so that you can later say that the market
| converged to it?
|
| For example, is 1000$ the optimal price for an iPhone? Or
| is it simply the price Apple chose? If they sold it for
| 500$, would they make more or less money? How do you
| know?
|
| > And clearly markets do follow the law of supply demand
| at the macro level, when long periods of time are
| considered, otherwise commodity pricing would be entirely
| arbitrary and wouldn't in anyway reflect the value of the
| commodity to society at large.
|
| I would argue that it often is, at least for many non-
| essential products. The price of many non-essential goods
| is much much higher than the price of essentials, even
| when those non-essential goods are cheap and easy to
| manufacture (say, softdrinks or many cosmetics). The
| price of most energy resources is largely controlled by
| non-market forces, even on the face of it.
|
| Also, why restrict this discussion to commodities? If we
| switch to investments, the price of stocks is quite
| obviously arbitrary as well, with "market makers" often
| controlling the allowed prices (or at least, price
| volatility) for stock. The price of real-estate is often
| determined to a large extent by the price of borrowing,
| and that is quite explicitly set by banks and the central
| bank based on nothing related to supply and demand.
| Services are even more complex, with huge variations in
| price based on entirely subjective factors.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > Also, why restrict this discussion to commodities?
|
| Because they're generally pretty fungible, and have a
| larger number of sellers and buyers involved in the
| market, hence their markets are more likely to behave
| like an ideal market. The same does not apply to housing,
| or services.
|
| > Where do you see that? What does it even mean, how can
| you objectively tell what is the optimal price for a good
| or service, so that you can later say that the market
| converged to it?
|
| For commodities, I would point to the reasonable price
| stability that exists. As evidenced by the fact that
| basic goods don't frequently suffer from repeated
| shortages or gluts of supply. Strongly indicating that
| the price is both high enough to incentivise production,
| and stable/low enough to allow for relatively low risk
| long term investment in production, because continuous
| long term demand is expected.
|
| > For example, is 1000$ the optimal price for an iPhone?
| Or is it simply the price Apple chose? If they sold it
| for 500$, would they make more or less money? How do you
| know?
|
| These is nothing about the iPhone market that suggests
| it's anything close to an ideal market (for one Apple
| have a monopoly on iPhone sales), so I don't know why you
| would expect it to behave like an ideal market.
|
| > The price of real-estate is often determined to a large
| extent by the price of borrowing, and that is quite
| explicitly set by banks and the central bank based on
| nothing related to supply and demand. Services are even
| more complex, with huge variations in price based on
| entirely subjective factors.
|
| What's your point? Of course a law describing how ideal
| markets work doesn't correctly describe markets well know
| for being extremely distorted and non-ideal. Next you're
| going to tell me Newtons laws of motions are all useless
| because they can't help you model the behaviour of
| objects travelling at relativistic speeds.
|
| You seem to be struggling with the idea that a model
| doesn't need to be perfect, or applicable to every real
| world scenario, to be useful. All _models_ have their
| limits, that no surprise to anyone. That doesn't make
| them useless, it just means you need to be aware of
| limitations, and adjust expectations appropriately.
| signatoremo wrote:
| > you may well lose the bet if everyone else believes the
| pundit
|
| Can you give a real life example of when a pundit giving
| a predict against the actual supply that had everyone
| buy-in? Says, oil price goes down even when demand is
| hot?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The price of oil is a particularly bad example, since it
| is heavily controlled everywhere in the world, as is
| supply. The international price of oil is largely set by
| OPEC or the USA or a few other countries (depending on
| geographical region).
|
| Also, this type of pundit influence is common with the
| price of stocks. It also happened with the price of
| natural gas in Europe last year, when it increased based
| on lack of confidence in reserves that turned out to be
| misplaced, and never really recovered.
| PinkRidingHood wrote:
| An inverse example would be any bubble, for example the
| housing bubble that happened over a decade ago.
| Prediction of house prices going up eventually reached a
| point where house prices were going up, despite low
| "actual demand" (of course, if you count "demand for
| investment", then prices are absolutely a measure of
| that).
| PinkRidingHood wrote:
| The pundit's claims are part of the speculation. If you
| speculated that the pundit's words would matter, you'd
| short or sell out grain, making the pundit's words
| matter. Supply and demand are only sometimes good
| measures of people actually using or producing these
| products (and when they fail bubbles occur), but are
| always good measures of the spending of both people
| actually using the product, and the investors buying it
| in wanting to sell it.
|
| In any case, as the investors buy the product they
| eventually have to sell it, meaning over the long run
| demand and supply are good measures of "actual" usage and
| production. You know this because there's never a bubble
| that doesn't collapse and return to equilibrium.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > In any case, as the investors buy the product they
| eventually have to sell it, meaning over the long run
| demand and supply are good measures of "actual" usage and
| production.
|
| That's not necessarily true. It depends on the product
| and industry, but it's absolutely possible to horde
| products for long periods of time (see diamonds and gold)
| or to choose to destroy products rather than sell them at
| a price you don't like (see public transportation in many
| US cities in the 50s, or fancy food items).
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Are they any different than the Isp and telcos in the states
| or Walmart, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft or payment
| service providers like mastercard and visa all of them work
| as cartels or monopolies. All these companies cost Americans
| more than when OPEC manipulate oil prices I think
| mmiliauskas wrote:
| I personally have an impression, that commodity prices are a
| function of shocks. Gas prices in Europe, uranium prices in mid
| 2000s, lithium due to sudden EV demand, etc. World then
| adjusts, and prices "collapse" or rather stabilize. Basically,
| don't buy commodities when the price is high.
| taneq wrote:
| That always bugs me when these things are reported. Something
| goes up 30% in a year due to speculation and/or supply chain
| shocks, and then drops by 5% and it's "prices crash!" No it's
| still up ~25% year on year.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Which is why one should stick to obtaining their data from
| the source and ignore clickbait articles.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| For lithium, it was ~300% up in a year and back to original
| price in a few months.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| You are looking at different horizons. It might be up year
| over year but month over month if it trends down that
| information is more accurate as to where the future price
| will grow.
| mmiliauskas wrote:
| If media made well adjusted statements, it wouldn't be the
| media then wouldn't it :D
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Speculating/gambling is a huge factor in anything that can be
| traded. But commodities also rely on physical deliveries which
| have influenced prices directly on various occasions. Of course
| for commodities also the selling side has direct influence on
| prices. That can go so far that for oil deliveries the tab is
| opened/closed on convenient times. So understanding prices is
| significantly more difficult than e.g. for stocks. Also
| speaking about the news part, a lot of data on commodities
| isn't freely available so you need to buy it. Trading itself on
| those is highly restricted - and speculative - anyway.
|
| > Where as car sales might be stagnating but electric car sales
| are taking a larger portion of total car sales ie electric car
| sales/lithium use is still increasing.
|
| I'm quite surprised the article doesn't mention sodium
| batteries. Li-Ion batteries are notorious for thermal runaways,
| so CATL and Tesla already shifted to LiFePO batteries quite
| some time ago. I think everybody would be more than happy to
| ditch Lithium based batteries altogether.
| bawolff wrote:
| Speculation & gambaling is just second order supply & demand.
| newswasboring wrote:
| No it's not. Finance bros like to tell themselves that, so
| that they can justify their place in morality.
| puppymaster wrote:
| commodities suppliers (miners, farmers, distributors) use
| futures market to hedge against their inventory everyday.
| Trade exchanges serve a very important function in this
| ecosystem.
| akira2501 wrote:
| If the commodities market can't set prices through
| discovery, then the government has to by fiat.
|
| Neither are great, but one is definitely preferred.
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| Bros treat it like a law of nature.
|
| "nah brah it's just rational actors rationally acting with
| rationality"
|
| Supply and demand is a thing the same way the convention of
| shaking hands upon meeting is a thing.
| diroussel wrote:
| There are alternatives to shaking hands; no greeting,
| bowing, classes hands, high five, fist bump etc.
|
| If supply and demand is just a convention, they what are
| the alternatives?
|
| I guess I'm ignorant, but central planning is the only
| one I can think of.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I don't think supply and demand has much to do with
| morality.
| yunohn wrote:
| Counterpoint - consumption/sin taxes.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Not sure what they have to do with morality either.
| yunohn wrote:
| I'm not a huge fan of taxes, but they are absolutely
| about morality. Society as a whole deciding to discourage
| consumption of harmful/unhealthy things like sugar, soda,
| cigarettes, alcohol, etc.
| smitty1e wrote:
| A moral argument can be offered, sure.
|
| However, there is copious cause/effect data showing that
| non-sobriety is expensive in terms of health- and
| societal repercussions.
| yunohn wrote:
| What do you think morals are?
|
| > Morality is the differentiation of intentions,
| decisions and actions between those that are
| distinguished as proper and those that are improper.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
| avianlyric wrote:
| It's not a requirement for consumption taxes to driven my
| morality as a first order effect.
|
| It's entirely reasonable for law to take the moral stance
| that people should broadly pay for the benefits as
| participating in organised society, so to ensure the long
| term upkeep and maintenance of that organisation they
| derive benefits from.
|
| At which point consumption taxes have nothing to any
| moral judgement about the consumption of various
| products, but simple calculus that the _voluntary_
| consuming those products increases the cost of running
| our society, and so you should pay a bit more for
| engaging in these activities.
|
| But none of that is judgement on the morality of
| activity. I personally couldn't give a shit what drugs
| you or anyone else consumes. But I don't particularly
| like the idea of having pick up the bill later for an
| activity I didn't participate in. So if you pay some
| extra taxes to cover to cost of additional healthcare,
| then feel free to consume whatever the hell you want.
| yunohn wrote:
| > But I don't particularly like the idea of having pick
| up the bill later for an activity I didn't participate
| in.
|
| The repeated grouping of morality/ethics into purely
| religion/judgement throughout this thread really bothers
| me. IMHO your argument is an argument of moral propriety
| of making people pay for others choices. You're
| semantically choosing to not call it that is all.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Nah I'm more than happy to agree that I'm making an
| argument of moral propriety. There has to be some
| consistent basis for forming laws, and some sort of
| coherent social order.
|
| But my point is there's a difference between moral basis
| for having laws and taxes, and their specific
| implementation. Consumption taxes are just one approach
| for implementing a social system build on the basis "fair
| contribution/usage", or whatever we want to call it (my
| views on "moral" behaviour are too nuanced and confused
| to fit into an internet comment, so let's just work with
| something simple). But the taxes themselves aren't a
| direct expression of moral judgment themselves, but
| rather an implementation detail of a broader governing
| moral system that provides legitimacy to laws and the
| states rights to enforce them.
|
| It might be a distinction without a difference. But if
| someone is going to call out consumption taxes as somehow
| more inherently driven by moral judgments than any other
| part of a system of law, then I think making the
| distinction is reasonable.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Source?
|
| Morality seems more of a subjective call, e.g. "Thou
| shalt marry heterosexually ahead of procreation", than a
| stochastic analysis, e.g. "X percent of fatal car crashes
| involve blood alcohol above Y concentration."
| yunohn wrote:
| Straight from Wikipedia, which is an objective source for
| such a general topic. Religious morality is a sub-
| category, not all of morality itself.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
| smitty1e wrote:
| What I'm after is that much of the ethics by which our
| legal system operates, e.g. a BAC limit for legal
| driving, is divorced from moral questions such as: "Is
| drinking beer a sinful act?"
| yunohn wrote:
| I think you're gravely misguided. BAC has nothing to do
| with sin, it's connected to the morality and ethics of
| putting your fellow citizens at risk of your impaired
| driving.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Indeed, this is the point I'm after. Glad we could get
| there.
| yunohn wrote:
| My repeated point has been that morality != religious
| sin, rather the latter is a subset. I don't necessarily
| agree with laws/taxes in this regard, but it's important
| to understand where they come from.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Supply demand doesn't, but this rampant gambling is
| morally detrimental as it has unnecessary negative
| externality in society. They don't want to accept that
| their jobs are just a leech on society and has no other
| benefit than to fill their own pockets.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I certainly agree there are many morally degenerate
| speculators whose presence is an overall net negative,
| but I think speculating on a commodity's price is pretty
| much required to make any sort of long term plans
| involving that commodity. It all depends on the specific
| circumstance really.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I work in manufacturing, in the high end of the tech. Our
| products have perhaps the most complex supply chain. I
| have talked to the industry best about this. I have never
| once heard an expert cite speculation as helpful for
| there 5 year or 20 year plan. But I don't want to make an
| argument from personal incredulity, can you cite a source
| on how speculation helps long term planning? Not pop sci
| stuff, something concrete like a trade article a
| manufacturing trade or something written by a supply
| chain engineer?
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > can you cite a source on how speculation helps long
| term planning
|
| Unless you lock in all commodity costs, how is long term
| planning even possible without speculation? If you plan
| to open a distribution center somewhere, the optimal
| location depends on e.g. fuel costs. You can't do
| anything but speculate about the costs of those
| commodities. So I don't even see the need to track down
| sources. Do you not see that you just need to guess at
| the (future) cost of certain things?
| newswasboring wrote:
| I see you didnt reciprocate the courtesy of not making an
| argument from personal incredulity. These things are
| complex af. When the people who optimize supply chains
| all day every day tell me that speculation market is more
| of an hindrance than help, I'm not going to take your
| random argument to be worth anything.
| kortilla wrote:
| The futures market is the only thing that allows you to
| lock in a price to buy something 12 months from now at a
| reasonably consistent price. How is that a hindrance?
|
| The existence of the futures market does not prevent a
| copper provider from entering into an exclusive sales
| contract to sell 12 months from now to a specific
| consumer. However, unless they match the current 12 month
| contract price, one of them is taking a bad deal with
| what they can get on a much more liquid market.
| Additionally, their counter party risk is now much more
| significant because they are tied to one other party.
|
| Maybe you could actually offer something specific about
| how "the speculation market is more of a hindrance than a
| help"?
|
| So far whenever I see this, it's people who don't like
| that the price changes on them but their solution is to
| remove participants from the market to a point where it
| is so illiquid the lack of trading looks like the price
| isn't moving.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| All your arguments are anecdote and opinion.
| newswasboring wrote:
| What do you expect, you are one making a positive claim.
| That the speculation market is helpful.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I see. Your claim that it it is entirely negative is fine
| to make without any support whereas my claim that there
| are some situations that could be positive (only one
| suffices) is not okay even when support has been given
| (any mine that is opened or distribution center that is
| opened employs speculation).
|
| You are just making a bunch of claims with no support but
| "people I trust say so so the claims are true". Now I
| really will bow out.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I am taking the null position here. That the speculation
| market doesn't help. If something isn't helping and is
| extracting value from the market its by definition
| detrimental. The onus is on you to provide the proof for
| positive positions, that the speculation market does
| help.
| kortilla wrote:
| Nobody is forced to use the futures markets. The onus is
| on you to explain why it's negative despite all of the
| sellers and buyers choosing to participate there.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| To me it seems, you both are rather debating semantics.
|
| Of course it is "speculating" trying to estimate fuel
| prices, but this is not meant, when people condemn
| "gambling" on the stock market. What they mean is people
| with lots money investing wherever short term profits are
| possible and often gaming the market while doing so. So
| creating unexpected price changes for the actual
| industries needing those supplies and they obviously
| don't like that. But I couldn't draw a clear line between
| "necessary gambling" and "unnecessary gambling".
| newswasboring wrote:
| > So creating unexpected price changes for the actual
| industries needing those supplies and they obviously
| don't like that.
|
| Followed by
|
| > But I couldn't draw a clear line between "necessary
| gambling" and "unnecessary gambling".
|
| What? you literally just drew a very crisp line.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I merely brought 2 examples and I can surely bring more,
| but this is not the same as in general being able to draw
| a clear line on the topic.
|
| Basically, I couldn't define this clear line in a law.
| And I am not sure, anyone can.
| PinkRidingHood wrote:
| To ask for an expert quote on a thread on hackernews
| sounds like a little bit overkill for me, and for me (and
| probably parent), it does feel a little obvious.
|
| Let me try to answer this though: one example out of many
| is how Kodak speculated that the transition to digital
| cameras would lead them to lose profit over the long run,
| so they chose not to pursue the route. This was a long
| term plan that lead them to bankruptcy. (of course, they
| changed course once they realized that digital cameras
| were competitive options, but the original long term goal
| was to continue the film camera route, shown by their
| unwillingness to even try to produce digital cameras as
| an possible option)
| vasco wrote:
| It's nothing to do with morality or any justification, it's
| just what it is. Since there's an instrument to gauge
| supply and demand, that instrument can also be wanted, so
| there can be supply and demand of the thing that measures
| supply and demand.
|
| You can also do "bad" things on first order by hoarding the
| items themselves.
| newswasboring wrote:
| There is more to economics than supply and demand. This
| unnecessary gambling has too many negative externality
| and IMO no positive effects other than making some people
| some money with no work.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| How do you measure the amount of unnecessary vs necessary
| gambling?
| newswasboring wrote:
| Necessary gambling is what helps the market figure out
| the real long term availability of something. I have not
| seen any necessary gambling in my years in manufacturing.
| So in my view all speculation on commodities seem
| unnecessary.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Opening a new mine is nothing but speculation, for
| example, and price signals from markets play a role in
| such decisions.
|
| More narrowly, the ability to forward sell or buy things
| allows financing of production but in turn it needs
| people willing to take the other side. Derivatives money
| is a thing.
| nindalf wrote:
| > I have not seen any necessary gambling in my years in
| manufacturing.
|
| You need to manufacture a widget and it must cost no more
| than $5. You have a few inputs to your widget, some made
| with steel and some with plastic. If steel and plastic
| prices increase, your inputs cost more than $5 and you're
| making a loss on every widget you sell.
|
| So you go to the futures market and take a bet that the
| input prices will increase. If you're right, you win $,
| which makes your widget manufacturing profitable and
| you're still in business. If prices fall you lose the
| bet, your profits are lower. But hey, at least you're
| still in business.
|
| A responsible, well run manufacturing business benefits
| from the existence of such a market because it allows
| them to de-risk.
| Reason077 wrote:
| In this example, the use of futures contracts isn't
| really gambling. Quite the opposite: it's insurance!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's insurance_
|
| What's the person on the other side of the trade up to?
|
| This debate reminds me of the lead up to the Onion
| Futures Act, where moral outrage over speculation led to
| a ban and subsequent lack of insurance (and higher price
| volatility) for onion farmers. To the point that the son
| of the farmer who first lobbied for the ban returned to
| Congress to ask for its repeal.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" What's the person on the other side of the trade up
| to?"_
|
| The same thing: hedging/insuring against price changes.
| The supplier (ultimately, a farmer, steel mill, gold
| miner, electricity generator, etc) is getting a
| guaranteed price for the commodity they're selling,
| reducing risk.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Virtually no hedging happens between natural buyers and
| sellers precisely because they approach the market at
| different times, and don't have the in-house pricing
| expertise to discern good and bad bids and offers _ex
| ante_. This is why, absent financial participants, the
| natural participants get hosed. (And why they use
| financial markets versus direct purchases and sales.)
|
| Again, these aren't theoretical considerations, we've
| always had naive Puritanical elements seeking to ban
| speculation, and in some assets and jurisdictions they
| have succeeded. Reducing market participation has never
| worked.
| uoaei wrote:
| You can try to play word games all you want but they are
| faulty in a very transparent way. No one is falling for
| it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Faulty how?
| quote wrote:
| I'd assume that hedging buy prices or long term buy
| contracts are not the same as gambling.
| newswasboring wrote:
| > So you go to the futures market and take a bet that the
| input prices will increase. If you're right, you win $,
| which makes your widget manufacturing profitable and
| you're still in business.
|
| This isn't remotely how manufacturing works.
| Manufacturers are focused on making the widget, for them
| the most important thing is that material is available,
| not a paper contract.
| kortilla wrote:
| Futures offer physical delivery. At least try to
| understand how the market works before you claim it's
| pointless.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Yes, but finance bros are not buying it for physical
| delivery. We are talking about speculation here after
| all.
| bawolff wrote:
| That's kind of begging the question.
|
| Essentially you are saying 100% of bad things are bad.
| Which is true, but also meaningless statement. Since it
| would still be true in a utopia with no bad things.
| refurb wrote:
| I can give you a great example of the positive aspect of
| speculation.
|
| Look at the futures market. Speculators are a big part of
| the liquidity of the futures market.
|
| Price of wheat is $60/bushel. Farmer won't harvest for
| another 6 months and is worried prices will drop. They can
| secure a future and lock in the price now.
|
| Wheat purchasers aren't on the other side of that trade,
| because why would they lock in a higher price? A lower
| price benefits them.
|
| Speculators come in and bet on the price of wheat, creating
| a deep pool of futures that can be bought and sold.
| agumonkey wrote:
| "speculation" was a bit improper, but prices are
| intertwined.. demand in one sector will affect demand in
| other, so forecasts cause price fluctuation that reaches
| afar.
| Joeri wrote:
| And betting at the horse race track is just second order
| horse riding?
| benj111 wrote:
| No because market 'gambling' actually impacts the outcome.
|
| You can paint it as a bad thing but there are useful things
| that come out of this.
|
| If someone wants to 'gamble' that grain prices will be
| higher in the future, they can buy futures. Where do these
| futures come from? Farmers today who want a fixed price for
| their future harvest.
|
| And what about the 'gamblers' who bet that the demand for
| lithium is going to increase, and therefore invest in
| building a lithium mine?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| yunohn wrote:
| If you have massive buy/sell orders between finance bro
| speculators - how does that equate to real supply/demand for
| the underlying commodity?
| jpgvm wrote:
| There is a finite supply of the underlying, each sold
| future equates to agreed upon future deliveries. So in
| reality the number of contracts sold (not traded) does
| equate 1:1 with demand for the underlying.
|
| When that doesn't hold true you will end up with Failure To
| Deliver (FTD) which causes Very Bad Things(tm).
|
| Generally speaking though commodities markets aren't rigged
| in the way that people complain about in some other markets
| but they are subject to pretty violent volatility in the
| face of uncertainty.
|
| This is largely due to pretty fixed supply with highly
| variable demand. i.e I can't just shut off all the oil
| wells right now and return ships currently on-route to
| energy exchanges and even if I could I wouldn't have the
| storage. Storage is also an interesting one because storage
| costs money and was pretty much why oil contracts went
| negative for a short period.
| yunohn wrote:
| All of what you say could be true - I just find it hard
| to believe given IRL finance bros are constantly trading
| and profiting off of futures/commodities trading without
| a single worry of the underlying commodity.
| hhmc wrote:
| If your claim is that 'finance bros' (perhaps let's call
| them commodity traders) don't consider anything about the
| fundamentals of the underlying, then you simply have no
| meaningful understand of trading.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Most future positions are closed out or rolled before
| delivery - so open interest can easily exceed demand for
| the underlying.
| barrysteve wrote:
| Speculation and gambling is just complicated casting lots.
|
| Predatory gambling where the participant can only win good
| feelings and lose money, is the immoral, addictive nightmare
| nobody wants. When talking about regular joes anyway. Be
| honest enough to sell good feelings straight.
|
| I can't comment on the select finance bros who have
| manipulated the rules towards a specified outcome. Not really
| casting lots anymore at that point.
|
| If it gets too corrupt all bets will be off, and that will
| hurt everyone who needs short term liquidity and to take
| speculative moon shots.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Your two premises don't necessarily relate to each other. I
| believe both:
|
| - journalists attribute price changes to whatever story they
| can find. Sort of like how every day there's a story of why the
| Dow moved by a fraction of a percent.
|
| - price moves are almost entirely supply and demand. Sure,
| speculation can change price in the near term, but considering
| the size of these commodity markets, you'd have to believe an
| absolutely enormous amount of capital is at play in
| speculation.
| metalspot wrote:
| there are two factors that control market prices: supply
| elasticity and demand elasticity.
|
| commodities with inelastic supply and inelastic demand are
| prone to very wide price swings.
|
| inelastic supply means that increasing prices don't increase
| supply. in the case of lithium, it take time to bring new
| production capacity online, so supply is very inelastic in the
| short term.
|
| inelastic demand means that increasing prices do not decrease
| demand. in the case of lithium, batteries are a very valuable
| product, and the raw cost of lithium is a small percentage of
| their total value, so increasing prices for lithium do very
| little to reduce demand.
|
| the price movement here is totally predictable and exactly what
| you would expect based on standard economic formulas taking
| into account supply/demand elasticity. it is not speculation or
| gambling.
|
| demand went up, supply lagged, the price spiked, supply
| increased, the price went back down.
|
| electric car sales may still be growing but growing at a lower
| rate, and projected demand growth is probably decreasing
| relative to projected supply, so the price is falling.
| puppymaster wrote:
| car manufacturers seeing the same sales data would then secure
| lithium supply 12 months ahead for an expected 12x growth,
| which then turns out to be only 5x. From macro data pov, the
| graph is still trending up. This is why guidance is important
| and also why lithium miners hedge against their inventory using
| future market. Supply and demand still applies, just that its
| effect is being amplified by overleveraged commodities trading
| market.
| rsecora wrote:
| Batteries has a long supply chain, and in this case the market
| is forecasting a drop in demand. Due to more sources and
| increase output in the early stages of the chain, the offer has
| increased.
|
| Note also the article refer explicit to EV in different
| paragraphs .
|
| it's described in the article.
|
| > with the expiry of a more than decade-long programme of
| subsidies for EV purchases.
|
| > the expanding supply outlook for the metal is mainly what is
| pushing prices lower this year
|
| > Supply is coming on stream faster than you can say 'boo'. >
| first-ever lithium deposit to be discovered in Iran's
| mountainous western province of Hamedan. At an estimated 8.5
| million tonnes,
|
| > China is also expanding its lithium-supply capacity from
| lepidolite, which, while considered the most abundant lithium-
| bearing mineral,
| canadiantim wrote:
| A loooot of supply coming down the pipe, basically
| nickpinkston wrote:
| The quote from the article below [1] demonstrates why the
| doomers, degrowers, Neo-Malthusians, etc. keep getting resource
| scarcity wrong. They keep quoting the "proven reserves" numbers
| [2] that only count what is extractable with current tech at
| current prices, factoring out new technologies / techniques, as
| well as reserves not discovered yet or discovered but not yet
| "proven".
|
| [1] "But while demand for lithium has been subdued, many believe
| the expanding supply outlook for the metal is mainly what is
| pushing prices lower this year, with a wave of fresh supply
| expected to come online from facilities in China, Australia and
| Chile. Five analyst forecasts, including ones from Bank of
| America (BofA), JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley that were
| reviewed by Bloomberg in mid-January, for instance, anticipated
| production increases of between 22 percent and 42 percent in 2023
| alone. "Supply is coming on stream faster than you can say 'boo'.
| Demand remains strong, but prices have been unsustainable for
| some time now," analyst Dylan Kelly of Ord Minnett recently told
| Mining.com."
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proven_reserves
| tim333 wrote:
| Even with no changes in tech the 'proven reserves' are way less
| than the amount of minable stuff out there as turning an area
| of land with say gold in into proven reserves involves drilling
| a load of holes in it and sending the drill cores off to be
| analyzed which is expensive and so only done on the bit you are
| about to mine.
| notjes wrote:
| Yes, resources are infinite. That is why the carrying capacity
| of the earth is also infinite. Because the ingenuity of humans
| is infinite.
| thephyber wrote:
| Straw man fallacy. Your parent comment didn't make that
| argument, only that resources are relatively more plentiful
| than the assumptions that many people make. I would argue the
| GP is correct.
|
| Technological advances in the 1970s in agriculture (incl.
| genetic engineering of more nutritious yellow rice,
| artificial fertilizer from petrol products, improved planting
| density) allowed us to increase food staple yields. These
| improvements have expanded world food yields to double the
| amount of population that can be sustained by the current
| number of farm operations.
|
| Fracking and horizontal drilling have made US oil/gas
| drilling (not just pumping of existing wells) profitable
| again. The explosion of cheap oil in the 2010s (and the
| cratering of oil prices in Trump's term) was created by this
| technology. Fracking isn't as cheap as the cheapest pumping
| in the world (probably Saudi light oil), so assumptions must
| be made about prices and when this technology can add to the
| world supply. But re-pressurizing existing wells (which is
| what fracking is) had been tried for 50+ years and only
| around 2005+/- did the technology work to make it become
| profitable.
|
| Both of these are examples of modern technology that has bent
| the supply curve by breaking the simple, fixed assumptions of
| some economists. And no, no one thinks the supply curve bends
| infinitely.
| sanderjd wrote:
| See, this is it right here, you're doing it! You're resorting
| to extremist hyperbole, when what matters are actual details.
|
| Resources are not infinite, but that is not relevant. What is
| relevant is the (finite) amount and the rate at which they
| are used.
|
| To go hyperbolic in the other direction, if there are a
| trillion accessible grams of something and humanity uses a
| kilogram a year, then we won't run out for a billion years.
|
| But both your hyperbole and mine are pointless. The question
| can't be answered without the actual details. Your argument
| is just "resources aren't infinite so we shouldn't use any of
| them!" That's not a good argument.
|
| Another thing people often seem to miss when comparing
| lithium for batteries to oil for combustion, is that lithium
| is not a fuel in a battery, it's a vessel. It doesn't get
| burned up. Whether we can recycle it efficiently enough is a
| big open question, but it's not _gone_ the way fossil fuels
| are.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Anti-human nihilist much?
| cpufry wrote:
| maybe has something to do with the military leadership advising
| the senate recently about lithium deposits "in our backyard" aka
| south america
| rmm wrote:
| I work in hard rock mining.
|
| Lithium is opaque market. It's opening up.
|
| Contracts get fixed. Supply costs shoot up. Miners open more
| mines. Prices collapse. Bigger miners eat smaller miners. Rinse
| and repeat
| blitzar wrote:
| This is the way.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| More significant supply discovered..
| [deleted]
| quags wrote:
| Has there been a commodity that has spiked in price due to true
| lack of supply and non new supplies were found? From peak oil, to
| copper , lithium and rare earth minerals predictions of we will
| run out during a price shock always seem to turn into a price
| collapse.
| mech765 wrote:
| Wooly mammoth prices were pretty expensive for a few years.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Ethereum after it switched to proof of stake, but it just
| started.
|
| https://ultrasound.money/
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| > [..] and non new supplies were found
|
| What do you mean by "non new supplies" being found (or is that
| a typo)?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Helium maybe?
| mharig wrote:
| Tritium, too.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Available-global-
| tritium...
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Why does this website scroll differently than every other
| website? Do not want.
| elif wrote:
| Because I see so much "conflict metals" discussion when lithium
| is discussed, I would like to contribute that less than 3% of
| global lithium production takes place on small artisanal mines,
| in which place human rights abuse may occur.
|
| Over 85% of lithium is produced by just 2 international
| corporations with large scale mines complying with multiple
| international regulation requirements.
| landemva wrote:
| > mines complying with multiple international regulation
| requirements
|
| Really? Please cite which regs apply in North Korea.
|
| I am an actual miner. We have State and national regulators who
| visit and have authority to stop work. I have neither seen nor
| heard of international regulators.
| oblio wrote:
| Why North Korea?
| landemva wrote:
| Escapee stories of unsafe coal mining. Or try Iran or
| Ukraine or USA.
| paganel wrote:
| > with multiple international regulation requirements.
|
| How is that meant to be re-assuring?
|
| As far as I know Chevron hasn't yet paid the money it is due to
| pay to the Ecuador state for past environmental damages
| inflicted on the ecosystem there, I'm positive they were
| branding their work to their stakeholders back-home as
| respecting "international regulation requirements".
| influxmoment wrote:
| Wow the replies to this are nuts. All sorts of mental
| contortions to make lithium sound controversial when it's way
| down the list of controversial industries
| api wrote:
| The space is saturated with anti-EV FUD.
| olivermarks wrote:
| >The space is saturated with anti-EV FUD.
|
| It's crazy out there right now - massive political pressure
| with tax breaks, climate anxiety marketing for EVs, mass
| confusion about energy supply chains and pollution whether
| oil or electric, a lack of clarity about battery ingredients
| and lifecycles from extraction to disposal.
| [deleted]
| aintgonnatakeit wrote:
| Same thing happens with the gas stove threads. I can't
| believe that actual people are that invested in burning
| hydrocarbons.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| They put out less BTUs (9k vs 15k-25k from a high end gas
| burner) and you can't cook certain types of cuisines like a
| stir fry, getting a good sear on steaks, etc. As someone
| who went from Gas to Electric it really is a massive
| downgrade.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > As someone who went from Gas to Electric it really is a
| massive downgrade.
|
| Resistive or induction?
| comte7092 wrote:
| > They put out less BTUs (9k vs 15k-25k from a high end
| gas burner)
|
| How much of that makes it into the pan, and how much is
| waste heat?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The reason gas is superior is due to heat recovery time.
| Recovery time is the time it takes to reach temperature
| after adding food to a pan. Gas is superior to all forms
| of electric in recovery time. There simply is /more
| energy/ in a cubic foot of gas compared to what a home
| electric circuit can deliver in the same time frame. It's
| science, plain and simple.
|
| The practical effect is food spends less time steaming,
| so for example, a stir fry doesn't come out soggy and
| unappetizing.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Induction kicks the crap out of gas for energy delivered
| to pan. It's not even close.
| vel0city wrote:
| A gas stove might be able to create more BTUs/min but if
| half of that heat misses the pan because it's rapidly
| rising and being vented out of the kitchen it's not
| really helping me much.
|
| Meanwhile most of the energy from my electric stove
| actually makes it into my pan instead of out a vent or
| into my kitchen.
| comte7092 wrote:
| I have an induction wok, it cost a couple hundred dollars
| on Amazon, heats up instantly and goes up to very high
| temps.
|
| I do not have the problem you are describing.
|
| > Gas is superior to all forms of electric in recovery
| time.
|
| This is really going to be dependent on which stoves we
| are comparing, along with the type of pan being used.
|
| > There simply is /more energy/ in a cubic foot of gas
| compared to what a home electric circuit can deliver in
| the same time frame. It's science, plain and simple.
|
| _Science_ as I alluded to in my previous comment, would
| account for waste heat. Which is where a significant
| amount of the energy of a gas stove goes.
| vel0city wrote:
| I have an electric stove and can assure you it's entirely
| possible to stir fry and have a good sear on a steak. I
| do it pretty often.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I'm not hugely invested but I do prefer cooking on gas.
| I've had element stoves, they suck. I then had gas, it's
| great. I stayed in an Airbnb for a month and a friend's
| condo for a week with induction, it was better than radiant
| but worse than gas to me.
|
| Also the power goes out at my house about 2x a year when we
| have windstorms. The stove still works, induction doesn't.
| So I can still cook and make coffee. My other option would
| be to use my grill in that situation. I like having
| backups.
|
| It's not some conspiracy with me, I just didn't like it as
| much. There are dozens of us.
|
| I also ran an experiment a few years back with some
| particulate sensors. I noticed when measuring during wild
| fire smoke the particulates went way up when I cooked
| bacon. So I did it again on a hot plate not gas. Same
| thing. The bacon grease and cooking itself was giving off a
| ton of particulates. To me the lesson was maybe cook
| outdoors. Or figure out how to plumb a vent through an
| upstairs living space attic and roof to vent outside.
|
| I've also been hesitant on electric cars. My friend has an
| original roadster that I've driven several times. It's
| great even tho I can't even get out of it because of my
| size. However I go out to ski and road trip a lot. I
| constantly am evaluating if an ev is ready for that use,
| it's getting closer but not yet. The ski hills I go to are
| near range for a EV and the charging spots are all taken as
| are all the spots so that's a risk. Camping and backpacking
| is more iffy. There was charging at Yellowstone in a few
| spots but I doubt they ran it to mowich lake yet.
|
| But the kicker is I just have several old cars (08) that
| are in great shape and I hate all the shit on new cars when
| I rent them. There's a few features that are great like the
| anti-tbone feature, and some backup cameras. But he'll they
| used to beep whenever someone was near you, or they freak
| out when your 5 feet from a hedge when parking moving .2
| mph and slam on the brakes, or the infotainment system is
| slow, crashes, and has no buttons. So I'll just hold while
| those bugs are worked out. I think these cars may all get
| to 20 years easily.
| eric-hu wrote:
| That's really interesting that the particulates were
| comparable from induction and gas cooking. If you did any
| more comparisons and recorded them anywhere, I'd be
| curious to read more about them.
|
| I'm guessing this might be a temperature dependent issue.
| I enjoy using a cast iron to brown meats, but I really
| dial it back in homes without true range hoods (e.g. they
| vent back indoors). If I go for maybe 25% browning, I can
| massively reduce the smoke. It feels a shame to not do a
| steak to perfection, but when I'll prefer that to venting
| the whole place for an hour.
| grogenaut wrote:
| The sensor I used was one of these
| (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NSGY7B3) attached
| to a ESP32 sending data to my grafana/prom setup on my
| nas. If you have done those it's like 2 hours of work and
| about $40 per sensor/esp pair. I couldn't leave the house
| without a respirator when our aqi got up to 650 for 2
| days.
|
| Anyway it's pretty easy to play around with. I didn't
| save the data anywhere unfortunately.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Gas stoves and plastic straws are distractions, they don't
| matter either way.
| kibwen wrote:
| Gas stoves need to go away because getting rid of gas
| infrastructure in the long term will be a huge win, but
| the gas industry spends heavily on propaganda to convince
| people otherwise: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hX2aZUav-54
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| If gas infrastructure is the problem, why focus on gas
| stoves and not gas water heaters and furnaces?
| ororroro wrote:
| You may have confused the debate with the legislation. In
| NYC all gas is out under Local Law 154 of 2021.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| No one is banning gas stoves. They're banning gas hookups
| which will indeed remove gas water heaters and furnaces.
|
| The fact that NY's decision to ban gas hookups in new
| buildings is being framed as banning gas stoves is in
| itself the result of gas industry propaganda. In fact,
| Gas stoves are the one thing that can easily be continued
| because people can use gas cylinders.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Why not all three? Just stop using gas altogether. I pass
| enough of it myself, thanks.
|
| Edit: why am I being downvoted? Is it not a legitimate
| question to ask why not go all the way with converting to
| electric when appliances exist for all three use cases?
| Do my farts stink too bad?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Because gas stoves are the easiest to replace. If someone
| doesn't have gas lines in their house, they'll just use
| an electric stove. Replacing a water heater or furnace
| either needs heat pumps or resistive heat and it becomes
| potentially much more expensive.
|
| Stoves don't matter in the big picture here, they are
| secondary to whatever people are already doing for heat.
| [deleted]
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If you have a gas stove, you probably don't have a
| circuit or wiring or receptacle to plug in an electric
| stove. So you'll need to get a 240V circuit installed,
| which for most people will require hiring an electrician.
| Same as putting in a heat pump.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| So what? You already have electricity. If you don't have
| a gas line to your house, you aren't going to get one for
| a gas stove. Again, gas stoves are secondary to having
| gas in the first place, focusing on them is nonsense
| whether someone wants gas or not.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You said "gas stoves are easiest to replace" when in fact
| if that is what you have, replacing it with anything but
| another gas stove is difficut (or at least, more
| expensive)
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Replacing a gas stove with an electric stove is much
| easier and less expensive in the long run than replacing
| water heaters and furnaces with electric versions.
|
| Also this isn't about replacing a working stove in an
| existing building it's about substituting electric
| versions for gas versions if there are no gas lines, so I
| think you missed the entire context of the thread.
| brewdad wrote:
| I sure do and my house was very much a basic median
| market build but built by a smaller builder who only does
| 2-6 homes a year. An electric oven is far superior to a
| gas oven but I do enjoy my gas cooktop. It's all in one
| like a standard range but is listed as a dual-fuel model.
| As an easy first step, we need to mandate the 220v hookup
| in all new kitchens and then phase out the gas. A simple
| building code adjustment would do the trick and putting
| the receptacle in at the time of construction is cheap
| compared to a retrofit.
| paganel wrote:
| > in the long term will be a huge win
|
| Huge win for whom?
|
| > but the gas industry spends heavily on propaganda to
| convince people otherwise:
|
| Propaganda goes both ways.
| rnk wrote:
| Obviously getting rid of gas stoves is good for the
| environment. In the US, the only conceivable use I see
| for them longer term is camping stoves and extremely
| remote houses that don't have electricity.
|
| I'm guessing you have some other view from your comment,
| please explain.
| oblio wrote:
| > Huge win for whom?
|
| Us. We can make electricity from lots of things and turns
| out in about 10 years a lot of it will be made from
| renewables in most countries, and the trend is only going
| one way.
|
| There's a reason there is a push to electrify everything.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Much more money is spent on climate change propaganda
| than there is on gas propaganda. I see climate change
| propaganda almost every day, but pro fossil propaganda
| extremely rarely. I think that this is because fossil
| fuels are extremely useful in practice, and so the users
| don't need to be convinced of their benefits.
| oblio wrote:
| > I see climate change propaganda almost every day, but
| pro fossil propaganda extremely rarely.
|
| Ever heard of "the status quo"?
|
| If my stuff is dominant, I either say nothing or make it
| so that any other proposal looks like it's new and risky
| or crazy. You know, FUD.
|
| Propaganda has a lifecycle. Not every kind of propaganda
| is the same or as obvious.
|
| And you're falling for the fossil fuel one, good job!
| xorcist wrote:
| > climate change propaganda almost every day, but pro
| fossil propaganda
|
| Most people would understand those two phrases to mean
| the same thing.
|
| Is there any _other_ kind of propaganda?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| [flagged]
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Gas stoves matter as far as indoor air quality and giving
| people asthma/allergies goes.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Do you have a source for gas stoves giving people
| allergies?
| simoncion wrote:
| > I can't believe that actual people are that invested in
| burning hydrocarbons.
|
| Yeah, it's weird, right? Why _are_ people so invested in
| burning natgas and coal and other hydrocarbons for large-
| scale power generation when a plethora of proven near-zero-
| emissions alternatives exist?
|
| From a climate-change perspective, banning natgas
| cookstoves is a few pennies saved on like a thousand dollar
| expenditure. It's similar to the performative "charging for
| plastic takeaway bags" and "not bringing out table water"
| nonsense that California likes to do from time to time...
| it's _way_ easier than making a _real_ dent in the
| underlying problem, it inconveniences a _ton_ of people (so
| they _know_ you 're doing _something_ ), and because
| "something" has been done, enough of those people don't
| bother finding out about and loudly and continually
| agitating for making a _real_ dent in the underlying
| problem.
| kibwen wrote:
| Forget burning, even pumping gas to residences is itself
| a big source of emissions, because of how leaky the pipes
| are. Between two to seven percent of all gas put into the
| system is lost directly to the atmosphere, and it's a
| very potent greenhouse gas.
|
| One way or the other, it needs to go away. It's not
| performative, it's necessary for achieving long-term
| emissions goals, and it's low-hanging fruit.
| simoncion wrote:
| > One way or the other, it needs to go away.
|
| Sure, agreed.
|
| > It's not performative...
|
| Right _now_ it very much is because, as you say:
|
| > ...it's low-hanging fruit.
|
| As I said:
|
| > ...banning natgas cookstoves is a few pennies saved on
| like a thousand dollar expenditure.
|
| and
|
| > [Low-impact, high-visibility stuff like that is done
| because] it's way easier than making a _real_ dent in the
| underlying problem
|
| If you'll pardon the mixed metaphors: When it comes to
| environmental stuff, a _lot_ of the time, the low-hanging
| fruit isn 't worth picking because the high-hanging fruit
| is the thing that's the immediate wildfire hazard.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Setting aside the validity of your claim that it's just a
| "few Pennie's on a thousand dollar expenditure (which I
| strongly disagree with...banning natural gas hookups
| would be worth it even if climate change wasn't a
| problem).
|
| Your argument basically boils down to "I'm in debt and
| need to start spending thousands of dollars less. Cutting
| out this completely unnecessary expenditure will only
| save me a few dollars so I shouldn't cut out this
| completely unnecessary expense because it won't save me
| all the thousands I need to save".
| Scalestein wrote:
| I'd say a more accurate metaphor would be "I'm in debt
| and decided to ignore my biggest high interest loan in
| order to fully pay off my smallest low interest loan so I
| feel good about something"
|
| Sure it's good you have less debt but while you were
| resolving the small loan you were racking up massive
| interest on the big one
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| If I ordered the non-avocado toast at my weekly brunch,
| I'd be able to afford a house.
| cma wrote:
| > and it's a very potent greenhouse gas.
|
| It is still good to fix if it contributes to a
| significant amount of warming, but it isn't cumulative
| like CO2: it eventually degrades in the atmosphere.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > it eventually degrades in the atmosphere.
|
| ...into CO2
| jwilk wrote:
| It degrades to CO2.
| cma wrote:
| A much less potent greenhouse gas, same thing as if it
| had been burned and not leaked.
| vostok wrote:
| I don't have any statistics on this, but I feel like I
| see far fewer plastic bags littering the streets these
| days. That alone is a win for me personally.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Give it time and you'll be seeing plenty of the reusable
| bags littering instead
|
| In theory they are supposed to be reusable but in
| practice I think they are going to wind up being single-
| use for most people. Maybe we'll start using them as
| garbage bags as they accumulate around the house.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Not what I see in Stockholm where this has been a thing
| for quite awhile already. We just don't throw that much
| stuff on the ground at all anymore.
| kbelder wrote:
| Yeah, my bag use hasn't changed at all, except instead of
| getting 3 to 6 lightweight plastic bags on each trip, I
| spend an extra quarter, and get 3-6 heavy plastic bags on
| each trip. Very much a net loss, as they have to use at
| least five times the material.
|
| (When paper bags aren't available. I've always preferred
| paper.)
|
| Product packaging probably generates 1-2 orders of
| magnitude more waste than the bags holding the product.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I live in an area that's banned plastic bags. Given
| enough experience, grabbing a reusable bag out of the car
| before going into the store became an unconscious
| programmed action.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Unless you empty your groceries in your car to leave the
| bags there, at some point bags need to make it from your
| house to your car, so that you have some to take into the
| store.
|
| That's the part I struggle with.
|
| Also, if you order groceries for delivery, they bring
| your order in reusable bags. Which you then keep.
|
| My point is these re-usable bags have a tendency to
| accumulate over time. Maybe not at the same rate as
| plastic bags would otherwise, but once you have dozens of
| these bags at home it starts to be tempting to just use
| them as bin liners and toss them, just like we did with
| plastic bags
|
| Which sort of defeats the whole purpose, right? The ideal
| is people would buy as many as they need and use them for
| years.
|
| But that isn't going to happen any time soon imo. If
| ever.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| There will be no "real dent". You have to make small
| changes along with big changes.
|
| And banning natural gas piped infrastructure is an easy
| win.
|
| 1. No one is banning natural gas stoves. You can still
| use a natural gas stove. You just need to bring your own
| cylinder like most of the world and half the food
| YouTubers already do.
|
| 2. Natural gas stoves have significant indoor pollution
| impact. It's a huge benefit even outside the climate
| change side.
|
| 3. Natural gas infrastructure is expensive, dangerous and
| unnecessary. Cities will benefit from the removal of all
| those pipes from under their streets even if climate
| change wasn't a thing.
|
| Banning gas hookups is such an obvious win (again, for
| those who want, gas stoves are still available with a
| cylinder), it's remarkable to see the level of status quo
| bias that exists.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > Natural gas infrastructure is expensive, dangerous and
| unnecessary.
|
| It's been used and operated safely for hundreds of years
| in cities on the East Coast. The idea that it's dangerous
| is simply FUD to scare people into spending $1000 on a
| future piece of e-waste to cook their food.
| oblio wrote:
| Do you mean induction stoves are e-waste? Why? They
| should be perfectly durable, no moving parts, simple
| operating principle. They aren't even super expensive and
| their price is going down.
| theK wrote:
| That would be a good way to actually make a difference
| because it not only makes using gas for cooking less
| attractive but it also makes gas heating and gas powered
| industry significantly more inconvenient!
|
| EDIT: would probably be a political nightmare to
| implement though...
| mistercheph wrote:
| I don't think anyone that cooks for themselves genuinely
| thinks this. E-stovetops are literally a joke, designed
| by and for adult-infants that eat microwaved soup from
| Trader Joe's, not for real people that make real,
| delicious food.
| oblio wrote:
| Are "e-stovetops" induction?
| mistercheph wrote:
| Induction tops are orders of magnitude superior to coil-
| based stovetops, and are viable and possibly superior
| replacements for gas tops despite the cookware
| limitations and other issues; when their control schemes
| mature (no capacitive touch) and prices come down to the
| point of attainability for the unwashed masses they will
| be welcomed.
|
| But, coil-based electric tops are an embarassment for
| anyone that sells them, installs them, and "uses" them.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The gas stove bans are idiotic and petty to defend based on
| environmentalist principles. The amount of gas burned by
| those stoves makes roughly zero impact compared with all
| the other hydrocarbons we burn.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| I'm not defending the ban on gas stoves, but a much
| better reason to ban them is their impact on indoor air
| quality. Burning natural gas indoors emits all kinds of
| nasty stuff like carbon monoxide, nitric oxides,
| formaldehyde...stuff linked to all kinds of diseases from
| asthma to cancer.
| megaman821 wrote:
| The ban of gas connections and by extension gas water
| heaters, gas furnaces and gas stoves is being reframed to
| be just gas stoves. So yes, if you cherry-pick the lowest
| impact item out of the list of gas appliances, the impact
| is low.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Exactly this. Gas stoves are the flashpoint, because at
| the end of the day, people generally don't think about
| what type of energy their heating comes from. The gas
| stove is the deciding factor that determines whether or
| not a gas line gets hooked up to a home or not.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Most people decide on a heating source based on price,
| not on the stove they want. In the US, in most areas, gas
| is cheaper to heat a house than electricity is. The may
| shift as heat pumps become more popular, but historically
| it has been the case.
| oblio wrote:
| I think stoves are close to a loss leader to get gas
| lines for gas furnaces.
| shlant wrote:
| it seems to have become a personality trait to be really
| attached to things that people say are bad or you shouldn't
| do. Rebellious teenagers without a cause.
| api wrote:
| It's sublimated class resentment. People resent things
| that are perceived as coming down upon them from a
| coastal rich Ivy League educated elite that is perceived
| as holding them in contempt.
|
| It all just sounds like rich people in private jets
| flying around telling them to use less energy to save the
| planet.
|
| There is of course too much inequality, but it's not
| because of EVs or phasing out gas stoves.
| jtbayly wrote:
| " _perceived_ as holding them in contempt"?
|
| They have been told explicitly in prime time TV that they
| are held in contempt. It's not an issue of perception on
| this front.
| rnk wrote:
| If you want to, you can find coastal elites that dislike
| anything, even say electric stoves. So what, why do
| people have all these grievances because of a sense that
| someone somewhere doesn't like their choices? I'm from
| the south, I'm positive people there don't like some of
| my my life choices, I don't go around feeling mad about
| it. Blaming coastal elites just seems like an excuse to
| ignore evidence of problematic choices - yet that view
| also probably doesn't help.
| sangnoir wrote:
| It's a persecution complex. That's how how get members of
| a majority religion absurdly claiming they are "being
| persecuted" when reminded that other religions exist.
| sangnoir wrote:
| "We can't even say 'Merry Christmas ' anymore" is _not_
| persecution.
|
| Especially when it's other Christians who popularized
| "Happy Holidays" as they felt Christmas was being overly
| commercialized.
| pfdietz wrote:
| They understand that the contempt is merited. It only
| makes them more angry.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Thank you for proving my point.
|
| The contempt is real, not perceived.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This contempt is the flip side of the freedoms granted by
| the constitution. The government is not allowed to
| enforce certain behaviors. That social control is left to
| the public itself.
|
| The bizarrely irrational behavior from the red states
| doesn't even make sense in its own terms. If this doesn't
| merit contempt, nothing does.
| gdy wrote:
| Civil war any time soon?
| praxulus wrote:
| Most Americans already have electric stoves, and its
| disproportionately higher income people who still cook
| with gas.
|
| I know this is all based more on vibes than facts though.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That's ironic because gas stoves are actually only the
| majority in California and places around New York, ie
| literally the coastal elite.
| devonkim wrote:
| Know of someone that paid money to have his seatbelt
| systems become non-functional basically. Basically yes -
| they hate being told what to do and will rebel harder. So
| maybe for these folks we should have a campaign to use
| even more fossil fuels because there's so many of them
| and they disproportionately cause social issues to begin
| with (the man is directly responsible for many, many
| ruined lives with his toxic personality, including his
| own children).
| ericmay wrote:
| I bet some of it also like, ok you're banning gas stoves
| that I like cooking on but everybody owning a Ford F-850
| and private jets are still cool (from an environmental
| perspective)? Seems like a spending a few bucks to save a
| few pennys kind of scenario.
|
| The health argument is fair but seems like it shouldn't
| be a mandatory requirement so much as a safety warning
| (based on my current understanding).
|
| The fact that we are even talking about it I guess served
| the original goal which was to distract from other,
| larger problems and discussions.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > The fact that we are even talking about it I guess
| served the original goal which was to distract from
| other, larger problems and discussions.
|
| The bans that may actually go into effect (e.g. NY) are
| bans on nat gas in new construction, not gas stoves. Gas
| stoves may be a drop in the bucket but nat gas heating is
| not. the reason we are talking about gas _stoves_ is to
| distract from the actual issue of transforming our
| residential energy infrastructure.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| This could be interpreted as saying unless you fix
| everything at once, any incremental change should be seen
| as disingenuous and merely a distraction. Would you like
| to rephrase?
| kortilla wrote:
| Increments so small they set the expected completion time
| to 1000 years from now are worthless.
|
| There is only so much time people have to create, debate,
| modify, and enforce policies. Every time you waste our
| collective time to change on something so irrelevant, you
| starve out real topics.
|
| Incremental change is fine, but the increments need to be
| large enough to actually put us on the needed "increments
| per year" path to get somewhere.
|
| Something like 6 years ago California banned water being
| given out by restaurants by default. It did nothing to
| move the needle on the drought and had people debating
| water usage in people's day to day lives for months. It
| was the tiniest increment and California was only saved
| by a massive winter precipitation event this winter.
|
| We won't have a massive winter to stop climate change.
| Stop fucking around with incremental shit and tax all
| hydrocarbons heavily.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I'm not the OP but I share this attitude. The argument is
| that it is hypocritical to heat your 50-room house using
| hydrocarbons and fly around in a private jet while
| telling other people to cut their CO2 usage. If _you_
| aren 't willing to sacrifice for _your_ cause, why should
| other people sacrifice anything for it?
| [deleted]
| uoaei wrote:
| This is actually a well-studied effect in psychology.
| It's called social loafing: if someone sees another
| person violating some rule, they are much less likely to
| feel obligated to follow that same rule. Rules can be
| unspoken or written down, the effect is basically the
| same.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Are you saying everyone who thinks we need to sacrifice
| for climate change owns a 50 room house and flies around
| in a private jet?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Not at all, but I am saying that a large fraction of the
| most visible people who are very publicly evangelizing
| for it do. If the movement can't convince its evangelists
| to make the significant lifestyle changes they are
| demanding of everyone, why would you expect others to
| adopt them first?
|
| I am half convinced that Greta Thunberg was given a lot
| of media attention because they finally found someone
| evangelizing for the cause (with enough political
| connections, etc) who was actually willing to lead by
| example.
| sroussey wrote:
| The idealist in me agrees, but the pragmatist in me does
| not.
|
| The idealist in me believes that everyone do their part
| and lead by example. I'm not a vegetarian, so I've
| already failed that test (spouse is though, so I'm
| reducitarian by default). But I do walk a lot, and have
| only driven 65k miles in the last 19 years (same car--
| best environmental thing you can do is not even buy new
| cars). Pragmatically, my impact is minimal.
|
| Celebrity X hopping around on a private jet speaking for
| and convincing people to make environmental decisions on
| a national or planetary scale probably has more impact
| than me, even if they themselves are worse. And I
| begrudgingly admit that.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| IMHO there is a fault in this way of reasoning, please
| let me explain.
|
| People who are very visible, tend to:
|
| - Have more impact about what they say, because they
| reach a big population group and some people identify
| with their reasoning. (lets call it the elon effect)
|
| - Have a lot more money than average.
|
| Following your reasoning, what these wealthy people say
| would be almost always be the wrong thing to do, since
| those people have more money and hence spend more, and
| hence consume directly or indirectly more energy. Hence
| they pollute a lot more than average, at least indirectly
| by buying expensive things that create pollution by their
| manufacturing.
|
| If those people would say the right thing (e.g. poluting
| less is better), you wouldn't take them serious. And your
| conclusion would be polluting less is not better or at
| least we should not take that advice for granted, because
| of who said it.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I'm not saying that they lose their right to an opinion
| because they are not paragons of virtue. I'm saying that
| these wealthy people _make no attempt at all_ to mitigate
| their environmental impact while telling you to
| essentially pay off their carbon bill. Elon Musk is not
| alone in taking his private jet on 10-30 minute flights
| for trips that could easily have been done in a car. Bill
| Gates has a gigantic unmitigated environmental footprint,
| for example.
|
| Generally, you would expect people with more wealth and
| status to be focused on preserving that status. Part of
| that project is (ostensibly) preserving the world. If
| Bill Gates does not think that mitigating his own carbon
| footprint is important for the preservation of his
| fortune (including several seaside mansions, apparently),
| I doubt it's important for any of us in the preservation
| of our futures, despite what Bill Gates is saying about
| it. This is an example of the phenomenon of revealed
| preference
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference) - you
| can learn a lot about what Bill Gates _actually_ thinks
| by looking at what he _does_ rather than what he says.
|
| For the record though, I do think that what these wealthy
| people say _is_ almost always the wrong thing to do in
| general. Wealthy people are known for giving bad advice
| on how to get wealthy, for example. Because some of them
| run their mouths a lot, they are also generally known for
| not being smarter than the average person outside of
| their area of expertise. Because I 'm picking on Bill
| Gates, go ask anyone at the WHO or the CDC about their
| opinion of Gates' level of expertise on vaccines and
| disease prevention - it's not high.
|
| Also, wealth and publicity are kind of correlated, but
| not that significantly. Bernard Arnault famously rarely
| says a word in public. Larry Ellison is very private. You
| probably haven't heard a word from Steve Ballmer, the
| Bettencourt family, or Larry/Sergei. The people who speak
| a lot about social causes are the ones who are trying to
| build a brand around those causes. You get a lot of
| famous actors worth single-digit millions (thanks to
| reckless spending habits) speaking about climate change,
| for example, while also not opting to adopt any green
| habits themselves. I'm picking on them too.
|
| EDIT: I'm picking on rich people too much. You see the
| same behavior in politicians, too. They are completely
| unwilling to risk their political careers to make
| meaningful carbon impacts, and instead do inane things
| like banning plastic straws. That suggests to me that
| their level of concern is about at the level where
| someone would ban plastic straws: they want to do visible
| and silly things to placate the activists, but don't
| really think the issue is serious.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying how you see it. I'm thinking about
| the documentary 'an inconvenient truth' of last century.
| If people/politicians would have listened and gave it a
| serious thought and started to act upon that, in stead of
| saying 'you consume a lot of energy, so don't tell us
| what to do', I think we would be better off, the greener
| technology would have taken off say, 30 years earlier.
| ericmay wrote:
| No, I would not like to rephrase.
|
| This specific incremental change is _at best_ a
| distraction and at worst very harmful. We can do many
| things at once, question is why aren't we tackling any of
| the actual problems?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Changes are incremental in general, because change takes
| time, at least if you want change with not too many
| unwanted side effects.
|
| Suppose you would say, from tomorrow on, it is totally
| forbidden to burn any fuel. Most activities would stall
| and as a result people would starve.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm not sure I was suggesting anywhere that we shouldn't
| pursue incremental change. Moreso we should pursue
| incremental change that the public can get behind
| (private jet emissions charges and such) before pursuing
| incremental change that the public is hesitant to make
| when people suggesting the change are the biggest
| polluters comparatively.
|
| Honestly just think about it. You really think it's
| fruitful to try to start solving this problem by
| convincing someone that they need to no longer use a gas
| stove when "insert billionaire" is flying around on a
| private jet? It's a non-starter. It reeks of injustice
| _even if it's the right thing to do_ and the public will
| instead of cooperate will fight tooth and nail until
| perceived justice is accomplished.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Sorry i guess i misunderstood. Okay the incrementalness
| is not the thing. The thing is more, the injustice, the
| unevenness so to say. Well, I think we should not try to
| solve the injustice problem and the environmental problem
| with the same measures.
|
| For every rule, there will be people that break it, does
| that mean nobody should follow that rule?
|
| Also, for every form or quantity of pollution, there are
| heavier forms. The jet owner will say that the old-
| aeroplane-collector or a war in a neighboring country
| pollutes more.
|
| My point is, following that kind of reasoning, it will be
| almost impossible to take any action.
| FpUser wrote:
| When fixing one gives you 0.01% and fixing the other -
| 99.99% you go for a second one to achieve any sizeable
| gains. Doing it the other way is only good for fooling
| people to gain some points in one's political career.
|
| And you do not even have to fix second one completely to
| see positive results so it is not fixing everything at
| once.
| ericmay wrote:
| Too simplistic. You can't do the "99.99%" thing if you
| violate a population's sense of justice. In fact you will
| almost surely make the problem even worse.
| FpUser wrote:
| My sense of justice is violated just by looking what
| Governments do to their citizens never mind "green area".
| And it is all across the world save for the degree of
| shittiness.
| vel0city wrote:
| What's the one thing that will solve 99.99% of climate
| change issues?
| tomp wrote:
| General non-discriminatory carbon tax. Investing heavily
| in nuclear.
|
| Just 2 obvious ideas that noone is even trying.
| vel0city wrote:
| Investing heavily in nuclear isn't going to remove 99.99%
| the sources of greenhouse gasses. Adding some taxes will
| reduce some of the usage but not 99.99%, unless you price
| the tax so high nobody can realistically afford jet fuel
| or diesel or propane or steak or bacon. Increasing the
| price of concrete might make projects more expensive, but
| they're probably still going to use concrete.
|
| Neither of these are 99.99%. Probably not even 80%.
| tomp wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| Most of climate change is caused by fossil fuels. The
| rest are caused e.g. by factory farming (plant & animal -
| e.g. pesticide rundown), plastic pollution, etc.
|
| If we had boundless nuclear energy, not only would fossil
| fuels become price inefficient, we could devote the extra
| energy we generate into synthetic fossil fuels, carbon
| capture, reducing pollution, etc. Almost all of these are
| energy bound right now.
| vel0city wrote:
| According to the EPA, agriculture accounts for 10% of GHG
| emissions.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-
| emis...
|
| Building a nuclear reactor isn't going to make steak go
| away. So even if you solved.for transportation and
| industrial uses and everything else you're still only at
| 90%, not 99.99%.
|
| > If we had boundless nuclear energy,
|
| More of this "nuclear energy will be too cheap to meter"
| talk. Nuclear energy is more expensive than other
| sources, not cheaper. It won't be cheaper to make
| synthetic fossil fuels, it'll be more expensive.
|
| > Almost all of these are energy bound right now.
|
| They're all _price_ bound right now, because the cost of
| energy is so high in comparison to alternatives. So high
| most would probably just avoid using it entirely.
| Spending trillions building a bunch of reactors isn 't
| making it cheaper you're just committing to spending more
| of it up front.
|
| Either way, making the synthetic fuels isn't the same as
| just building the reactors. We can have synthetic fuels
| _without_ nuclear, we can have nuclear _without_ the
| synthetic fuels, they 're independent. So neither one is
| 99.99% on its own, it's no longer "one thing" like what
| the person I originally replied to stated. They
| supposedly have _one_ thing that will solve _99.99%_ of
| GHG emissions. I 'm not looking for something that will
| even solve 80% or 90%, why waste time with that when
| there's _one_ thing to solve it 99.99%.
|
| So once again I ask, what is _one thing_ that will solve
| _99.99%_ of GHG emissions?
| tomp wrote:
| Transportation emissions are caused by fossil fuels.
|
| As for agriculture, check the rest of the page. Besides
| CO2, there's also methane and NO2 emissions, both of
| which are part of a cycle, so they have no long-term
| impact. The entirety of long-term impact of agriculture
| is, again, fossil fuels, which is literally digging
| _extra_ C from the ground and adding that _extra_ CO2
| into the atmosphere (technically, TBH, it 's also part of
| a cycle, but instead of 114 years as with NO2, that cycle
| is millions of years long).
|
| The point is if we invest much more in nuclear, it will
| become too cheap to meter (e.g. we start using modular
| reactors that benefit from economies of scale).
| vel0city wrote:
| You're right, methane breaks down in the atmosphere. What
| does it break down into again?
|
| > The point is if we invest much more in nuclear, it will
| become too cheap to meter
|
| So if we ignore the financial costs (invest today) it'll
| become too cheap to meter.
|
| If nuclear plants can generate with costs <1C//kWh, why
| don't they?
|
| If nuclear is cheaper than all other energy sources (too
| cheap to even meter in costs) why is there any energy
| kind of energy usage and why would it need massive
| investment to make it happen? If your costs are
| practically zero, isn't your profit margin essentially
| 100%? Shouldn't all nuclear power plants be making money
| hand over fist competing against expensive nonrenewable
| resources?
|
| And yet it's often one of the more expensive sources of
| electricity today.
|
| Don't get me wrong I'm a fan of nuclear and wouldn't mind
| seeing more of it but not if my electricity bill is
| 30C//kWh+. That's not moving towards too cheap to meter.
| tomp wrote:
| Methane breaks down into CO2, which is a part of the
| Carbon Cycle.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
| CH4 -> CO2 -> grass -> cow -> CH4
| | \/
| steak -> human -> CO2
|
| and so on...
|
| > If nuclear plants can generate with costs <1C//kWh, why
| don't they?
|
| Because they're too expensive to build, because of
| regulation and lack of economies of scale. Similar to why
| rockets were expensive, before SpaceX. If we invested
| more, both in research and in building more of them, in
| factories, we could build plenty, much more cheaply. The
| technology for modular reactors obviously exists (e.g.
| nuclear submarines), it just needs to be commercialized.
|
| > If your costs are practically zero, isn't your profit
| margin essentially 100%?
|
| You're mixing up or conflating total cost vs marginal
| cost. The marginal cost of making computer chips is
| almost 0, but the upfront investment is huge. Same with
| reactors and nuclear power. If we make more of them,
| streamline the construction, simplify regulation, etc.
| the _marginal_ costs will drop massively (as will upfront
| costs, but they will still be non-zero).
| vel0city wrote:
| > Methane breaks down into CO2, which is a part of the
| Carbon Cycle.
|
| So it's pretty disingenuous to act as if methane
| emissions are unrelated to CO2 emissions, isn't it? That
| methane released in agriculture eventually _does_ turn in
| to CO2 emissions. You even drew a graph showing my point.
| Thanks!
|
| > You're mixing up or conflating total cost vs marginal
| cost
|
| I'm going by total cost, because ultimately that's what
| society will pay. We can't just act like building a
| nuclear power plant costs $0.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"What's the one thing that will solve 99.99% of climate
| change issues?"
|
| 99.99% is a figure of speech. The idea is to start with
| big items. Cooking using gas is far below other
| "offenders". Go for those first as even if partially it
| will still be way more effective.
| vel0city wrote:
| It's an ineffective one, because there isn't any single
| category that is even 90% or 80% of the issue. Everything
| is just a small drop in the bucket, it's just that there
| are lots of drops.
| comte7092 wrote:
| > everybody owning a Ford F-850 and private jets are
| still cool (from an environmental perspective)?
|
| Who is saying this? This seems like a straw man.
|
| Faceless "politicians" are an easy scapegoat, but _most_
| politicians aren't flying on private jets. And the few
| that do _generally_ are not environmentalists, or if they
| claim to be, aren't representative of the entire
| environmental movement.
|
| Those that are banning gas in new construction are
| universally politicians at the state and local level, who
| generally earn fairly modest salaries, and at their
| highest are at the level of the professional class of
| society.
| [deleted]
| kibwen wrote:
| If it's a "distraction", it's because reactionaries are
| making it one. I don't have a private jet _or_ an
| F-10,000 (I don 't even own a car), and I can see that
| the pro-gas crowd hasn't considered how good induction
| cooktops and heat pumps have gotten, and how rapidly
| they're still improving. The writing is on the wall,
| there's no future for piping gas to residences, so if
| you're a government you might as well prepare to stop
| investing in gas infrastructure now.
| ericmay wrote:
| The problem here is that you are falling prey to the
| "it's easier to destroy things than build them"
| phenomena.
|
| You have to convince voters that they should support
| banning gas stoves and such. (Build things)
|
| I don't have to convince anyone that while the government
| is "taking away their stoves" so-called billionaires fly
| around in private jets and own dozens of cars. (Destroy
| things)
|
| It's just not effective. I want to see effective
| solutions, not ideological ones. Especially ideological
| ones that push people away from stated goals.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| hyperbovine wrote:
| For serious chefs, gas ranges remain far superior to their
| electric counterparts. I'll be the first in line to buy an
| induction cooktop that performs as well as a high end gas
| range, but we're not there yet.
| kibwen wrote:
| My serious chef friends (one professional, one amateur)
| swear by their induction stoves. Their expensive high-end
| gas ranges are gathering dust.
|
| Once you've tried induction, going back to gas feels
| absolutely primitive.
| phatfish wrote:
| Induction is great for instances where you can just leave
| a flat bottomed pan to do its thing. It is also nice in
| smaller kitchens where the efficiency keeps the heat
| going to the pan rather than the air.
|
| But they do not work well (or at all) when a pad is moved
| around a lot, or it has a rounded bottom like a Wok or
| Karahi. At least the ones ive used don't. You are also
| reliant on the designers to give enough heat levels to
| actually cook properly and to provide a generally usable
| device that is fit for purpose. None of these things are
| an issue with even the cheapest gas stoves.
|
| Having a both would be perfect. Just one or two gas
| burners for frying would be fine.
| bbarn wrote:
| I've had three in different places I've lived, and while
| they are fantastic temperature-wise, the software and
| interface is always what infuriates me. They are almost
| all touch interfaces to keep the flat glass aesthetic,
| which is absurd because spills happen on stoves and touch
| interfaces don't work wet. Additionally, most of them
| automatically detect pans being removed and turn off. An
| annoying feature for an experienced cook who tosses food
| around in a pan with one hand.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Additionally, most of them automatically detect pans
| being removed and turn off
|
| Induction only works when the pan is on it by definition.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| I've had pretty much all kinds in various apartments in
| the last while, currently back on "hot plate" resistive
| electric (renting currently), which sucks and is
| inefficient.
|
| Induction is amazing for some things, but for some other
| things I prefer gas.
|
| Given the choice, I'd have some kind of combination of
| gas and induction. Maybe half and half?
| roamerz wrote:
| So not a chef by any stretch but i've been cooking on
| resistive stoves for a long time. I find it works great
| for me to use good pans. My favorite is one with low
| thermal mass but a good heat distribution layer - and it
| seems to be stable as far as keeping the cooking surface
| nice and flat.
|
| If I had a choice I wouldn't use gas for a few reasons.
| Air quality, the amount of water that gets released and
| fire hazard. Seen too many buildings explode on tv lol.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| what aspect of performance are they missing?
| wffurr wrote:
| Two big use cases:
|
| 1) Wok cooking, can't use a round bottomed wok easily or
| create "wok hei". Though you can also do it with a
| blowtorch: https://www.seriouseats.com/hei-now-youre-a-
| wok-star-a-fiery...
|
| 2) Causing childhood asthma. Gotta employ all those
| healthcare workers somehow...
| Spunkie wrote:
| Rounded induction cooktops exist for woks anyways so it
| feels like its basically all FUD in that other thread.
| jjulius wrote:
| You cited wok hei as an aspect of performance that
| induction stoves don't have, but it's hardly an argument
| in favor of gas stoves. The article you link is basically
| about a tool that makes up for what common home gas
| stoves can't even provide.
|
| Previous Serious Eats articles about it even cited the
| lack of performance from gas stoves and recommended
| modifying one with a Wok Mon, but even then the results
| weren't perfect.
|
| Edit: For some reason I feel the need to clarify that
| this isn't a comment in support of, or against, gas
| stoves. I just like cooking and am aware of how hard it
| is to achieve quality wok hei at home.
| kibwen wrote:
| China is the world's largest adopter of induction
| cooktops. Wok cooking isn't a problem. You can even buy
| induction cooktops specifically shaped for woks. Can we
| please retire this silly talking point now?
| traverseda wrote:
| Their wiring supports more than twice the watts of a
| standard North American power outlet. Better electric
| kettles, better induction cookers, etc.
| simondotau wrote:
| This is true of standard wall outlets which are 110V but
| not for integrated appliances like ovens and induction
| cooktops which can pull 200+ volts from your breaker
| panel. The problem in the USA isn't your power, it's your
| weird habit of buying combination stove-and-oven units.
| Stop it.
| bbarn wrote:
| It really is silly, as wall mounted ovens are so much
| nicer to use in practice, and moreover occupy real estate
| nothing else is usually using at that level.
| swexbe wrote:
| Stoves are often 400v here in Europe at least.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Induction Wok systems do exist...
| https://www.nuwavenow.com/shop/mosaic
| wffurr wrote:
| That's pretty cool!
|
| Tabletop induction burners that use standard outlets are
| way more cost effective than induction ranges, too. That
| thing is $200, which didn't even pay the electrician bill
| to put in the 240V 50A outlet and circuit for my range.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Serious chef is such a condescending fallacy (no true
| scottsman, argument of authority). Please instead state
| why induction does not perform according to you.
| [deleted]
| HPsquared wrote:
| For home use, induction is far superior. More intense
| heat, less heating the room, no fumes, much easier to
| clean, etc etc etc
| bliteben wrote:
| I had a ge one loved it when it worked. The board died
| twice in 6 months.
|
| The Bosch one probably would have worked fine but for
| whatever reason it wasn't the look the spouse wanted.
|
| Even though I was fully onboard I could see the specific
| pan thing annoying some dedicated gas people.
|
| I'm back to gas and no longer have people boiling water
| so I can boil water.
| theK wrote:
| Yeah, we are living through that horror as well, turns
| out roughly half of the people we know that have an
| induction stove ended up having either multiple
| replacements or live with the peculiarities of their
| unit. It's not cheap stuff as well, one couple have a
| high end Miele one that goes completely haywire if
| anything drops on its surface and that is after getting
| one replacement and one "upgrade"...
| rnk wrote:
| I used an induction stove and it turned me into a Newt.
| But I got better.
| theK wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. Any advice for other readers that
| find themselves in that predicament?
| rnk wrote:
| I recommend repeated viewing of Monty Python's Quest for
| the Holy Grail. And avoiding llamas.
| [deleted]
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| They can continue using gas stoves with cylinders.
|
| Most of the world does that.
|
| Of course, what actually serious chefs find is that once
| the subsidy for gas is removed (by removing legislation
| requiring utilities and buildings to provide piped
| natural gas), not only are induction stoves much more
| effective, cook faster, etc., they also keep their
| kitchens incredibly cool and make them much better work
| environments than having a bunch of gas burners around.
|
| For the restaurants that need woks they can use a gas
| stove and have a gas cylinder shipped in every morning.
| botanical wrote:
| > A legacy of the Pinochet era in Chile is the privatisation
| of minerals and water, which gives companies ownership of
| those resources in an area. While mining operations squeeze
| this already dry region even drier, communities lose their
| access to potable water, leaving them relying on tankers to
| deliver it.
|
| "We used to have a river before that now doesn't exist. There
| isn't a drop of water," says Rivera. "And not only here in
| Copiapo but in all of Chile, there are rivers and lakes that
| have disappeared--all because a company has a lot more right
| to water than we do as human beings or citizens of Chile."
|
| https://www.nrdc.org/stories/lithium-mining-leaving-
| chiles-i...
|
| And this is in Chile, the second largest producer of lithium.
| Just because it goes against your views it being anti-EV,
| doesn't make it FUD. People have other types of grievances
| like the human cost of lithium mining, even for the amazing
| storage capability of lithium batteries.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Your article is pretending that the water access issues are
| caused by lithium mining. This is a specious argument that
| only makes sense because they omitted the obviously
| pertinent fact that Chile is in the grip of a decade-long
| drought.
|
| That's FUD, my dude.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "That's FUD, my dude."
|
| Only if you explain it the way you just did.
|
| The fact is, instead of restricting water usage related
| to lithium mining, they'd rather let the river run dry.
| While the drough is a major factor, so too is how the
| regulations allow the continued abuse of the limited
| resource.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| If lithium mining brings in money to buy water and other
| things as well, then it's not great, but it's probably
| the better choice.
| giantg2 wrote:
| True, but are they actually offsetting the negarive costs
| by doing things like that, or are the companies
| protecting their profits?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's speculation at this point. Just depends on whether
| people think the water cost of lithium mining is more
| than the sale price of the lithium. Either that or the
| government isn't doing its job.
| djbusby wrote:
| Why don't the mining company buy+ship the water then and
| leave the river alone?
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| If Chile is undergoing a drought, are there not ethical
| considerations for prioritizing water for the benefit of
| the public rather than for manufacturing?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| As a former citizen of the USSR, I have to object to
| linking environmental issues to private property. The
| Soviets did all kinds of tremendously bad things ranking,
| from geo-transformation to placing the heavy industry in
| the middle of cities. From what I read about North Korea,
| the entire country is ruined by various extraction and
| industrial projects.
| armenarmen wrote:
| Tragedy of the commons at scale.
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| The important part is the "complete ownership of those
| rights". In the Soviet Union, a community had no rights
| and little power by ways of representative government to
| defend themselves. It's little different in the case of
| Chile. Do the nuances of state/corporate ownership of
| resources mean anything when they are both large, far off
| organizations exploiting my land with little of my own
| say?
| 13of40 wrote:
| Not saying you're wrong, but I'd like to share my own
| take, which is that one of the clearest, bluest skies
| I've ever seen was over North Korea. Because they sucked
| at doing "industry" compared to the South Koreans. In the
| 90s in South Korea, the rivers ran black and every corner
| you turned had its own putrid chemical smell from
| whatever fly-by-night entrepraneur had found a way to
| make a buck there. But that's an anecdote and I haven't
| been back to see what it's like now.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Right, but in NK you starved to death at the governments
| whim as they had little to no ability to feed themselves.
|
| These conversations are barely worth having unless you're
| willing to go into long chains of explaining the
| complexity behind the situations.
| 13of40 wrote:
| Sure, but if you stay on topic I'm just saying there
| isn't a clean 1:1 correlation between political ideology
| and environmental harm.
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Do blue skies matter when you are blind from
| malnutrition?
| underbluewaters wrote:
| Yes. For many folks there is an intrinsic value to
| protecting the environment.
|
| I find more and more that even within the NGO and
| environmentalist community people only care about how
| natural resources impact people in a utilitarian sense. I
| can respect that philosophical position, but it makes me
| equal parts angry and sad that it's taken as a given. I
| don't believe life on earth exists just to serve human
| needs.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and:
|
| One view is private vs public capitalism. USSR vs USA,
| respectively. Extreme wealth concentration at the expense
| of everyone else.
|
| Both are anti-democratic.
| ratboy666 wrote:
| The USSR did call itself democratic. In a sense, since it
| was central control for all. The USA did NOT call itself
| democratic -- the preferred term up to the '70s was
| "constitutional republic". To avoid the flattening that
| "democracy" was perceived to produce. The argument is
| that democracy ALWAYS leads to tyranny and collapse.
|
| To quote "Both are anti-democratic". Which I don't
| understand. Is your claim that both systems (as practiced
| in the USSR and USA) led to extreme wealth concentration?
| Did the economy increase during this concentration? If
| so, do you still consider this "anti-democratic".
| greedo wrote:
| Democracy is inherent and implicit in a republic. And I
| think you're mistaken about "constitutional republic."
| That term really wasn't used much, though representative
| democracy and "democratic republic" were terms that were
| used more frequently.
|
| The entire argument about the US not having a democracy
| but a republic really stems (in modern times) from the
| John Birch Society.
| ratboy666 wrote:
| You could well be right (I am not American). I do recall
| discussing the GDR with some USA people... a "democratic
| republic". Was told, back then, that the term had been
| co-opted. But then, I don't know much about the John
| Birch Society.
| Natsu wrote:
| I think the USSR would object to being called capitalist,
| since they were one of the major Communist revolutions
| until their economic collapse.
|
| And in this vein, we shouldn't forget Mao's "four pests
| campaign" in China under Mao which caused mass starvation
| by killing sparrows which had been eating insects,
| leaving them with a literal plague of locusts.
|
| Mao would probably have murdered anyone who called him a
| capitalist:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_roader
| mejutoco wrote:
| It is irrelevant if the object of the calling agrees or
| not on the name. Otherwise nobody would ever be called
| anything bad.
| Natsu wrote:
| That only works if you have some way to justify it to
| begin with and is rather transphobic to make other people
| the sole arbiters of one's identity.
| thephyber wrote:
| Your parent didn't call the USSR "capitalism", they
| called it "private capitalism". I've never heard that
| term before so I'm guessing it was ad hoc.
|
| I'm guessing the public capitalism / private capitalism
| has to do with where the ownership of property,
| concentration of human capital is, and there the market
| making prices are found. In that sense, the
| public/private dichotomy mostly works. Sure, Communists
| argue there is more virtue to their system than simply
| market making and state owned property, but those are
| effectively downstream / derived qualities.
|
| And Mao murdered tons of people (both directly and the
| way a mob boss would have) for many different reasons. He
| probably was the kind of person who might murder someone
| because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I don't
| think that matters much in this discussion and I don't
| think we should self-censor our thoughts because the
| ghost of a terrible person might hear us.
| Natsu wrote:
| That formulation erases any distinction between
| capitalism and anything else, leaving it as just an empty
| synonym for badness. I'm calling out the intellectual
| emptiness of that use as an epithet here.
| SamPatt wrote:
| Don't forget Chernobyl too.
| theK wrote:
| I don't want to disagree with you because I agree on
| principle with what you are saying but this case you
| describe has nothing to do with EVs and everything to do
| with neoliberalism.
| theK wrote:
| Interesting, I never thought that I'd get downvoted for
| stating a fact here
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| Lithium is not the only cause of aquifer depletion in
| Chile, avocado farms have also been responsible for
| depleting the wells of residents [1].
|
| These outcomes, as the article alludes to, are due to the
| privatization of resource rights, which is a consequence of
| Pinochet government going all in on the policies Milton
| Friedman promoted [2].
|
| Citizens of Chile are more victims of neoliberalism than
| they are of any particular industry.
|
| [1] https://www.lifegate.com/avocado-chile-water
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile
| rmujica wrote:
| Lithium mines and avocado plantations are like 1,000 km
| apart from each other.
| jdkoeck wrote:
| From wikipedia: << In 2010, Chile was the first nation in
| South America to win membership in the Organization of
| Economic Cooperation and Development, an organization
| restricted to the world's richest countries >>
|
| Victims of neoliberalism you say?
| meristohm wrote:
| I would say the USA (where I grew up and still live,
| which doesn't make me a expert, mind- these are mostly
| just feelings) is also a victim of neoliberalism[0], and
| that people who revere President Reagan (USA) and Prime
| Minister Thatcher (UK) are generally selfish and
| inconsiderate of (what I see as) the importance of other
| life on earth whether or not we can directly benefit from
| it.
|
| [0] https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
| comte7092 wrote:
| Chile has a GDP per capita not all that different from
| peer South American countries of Argentina and Uruguay
| [0]. It is a stretch to characterize "winning" membership
| to the OECD as some sort of objective, non ideological
| measure of economic progress.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GD
| P_(PPP)...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| GDP per capita is a very narrow indicator that does not
| come close to telling enough about the economic condition
| of a country.
|
| Argentina seems to be going bankrupt and drown in
| enormous inflation every couple of years. That isn't the
| case with Chile. Based on this factor alone, Chile and
| Argentina aren't peers.
|
| I don't know enough about Uruguay to judge.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Those were simply easy examples, there are plenty of non
| oecd countries that have higher levels of wealth than
| Chile.
|
| > GDP per capita is a very narrow indicator that does not
| come close to telling enough about the economic condition
| of a country.
|
| In what was us GDP per capita deficient, and what
| criteria would you propose exactly?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I won't propose any exact criteria, given that this is HN
| and I am in no mood for nitpicking games, which usually
| follow after a demand for something exact.
|
| However, if I were considering investment from my own
| pocket, political and economic stability would play a
| much higher role for my decision making than GDP per
| capita. And Argentina would therefore be a big no-no,
| while Chile might make the cut.
|
| Would you make a different choice?
| comte7092 wrote:
| > I won't propose any exact criteria, given that this is
| HN and I am in no mood for nitpicking games, which
| usually follow after a demand for something exact.
|
| I understand that, you were the one who dismissed GDP per
| capita as an objective measurement of economic
| development.
|
| The point I was making that the OECD exists to espouse a
| particular model of global economic organization and
| development, which is politically informed.
|
| As to your question about investment, what might be
| beneficial to me as an investor isn't necessarily the
| same as what is beneficial to a citizen of a particular
| country.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Economic situation of a country is a fairly complex
| picture that cannot be measured by a single scalar value.
| GDP per capita is not useless, but just one value among
| many. Same as you wouldn't try to measure an individual's
| overall health by their BMI alone. It tells you
| _something_ , especially on the extreme ends of the
| distribution, but in the middle, not that much.
|
| Yeah, OECD is very political. No disagreement about that.
|
| But I would say that the correlation of "being attractive
| for FDI" and "having good standards of living among the
| general population" is rather high and given that FDI
| tends to predate said growth of standards of living,
| there actually may be causality.
|
| Excluding resource-rich countries that grew fat on
| something that comes out of the earth, pretty much every
| country whose standards of living soared since, say,
| 1950, attracted a lot of FDI beforehand.
|
| After all, the same things that attract investors
| (stability, low crime, high educational attainment,
| reliable electricity supply, rule of law) tend to be good
| for the citizens as well.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Quoting a right wing economics friendly source:
|
| "Pinochet's economic policy is vastly overrated"
|
| > Mining a bunch of copper, helping your cronies get
| rich, and pumping up land prices is not a "miracle".
|
| https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/pinochets-economic-policy-
| is-v...
|
| > In the U.S., Pinochet is often a talking point in
| economics debates. He was a brutal dictator, who killed
| thousands and who tortured, imprisoned, and/or exiled
| tens of thousands more. It's very understandable that
| Chileans would want to expunge any portion of his legacy.
| But in the U.S., it's his economic policy that continues
| to be debated decades later. Some libertarians believe
| that despite the brutality of his regime, he implemented
| economic policies that were wildly successful in raising
| Chilean living standards.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| What about drainage of Aral Sea for short term gain, were
| Soviet citizens also victims of Soviet neoliberalism?
| gdy wrote:
| It wasn't drained and the gain wasn't short term -- the
| water from the rivers that used to flow to the Aral See
| is used for irrigation.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| Environmental destruction doesn't have a single exclusive
| cause.
|
| There is the horseshoe theory that says that either
| extremes have more in common with each other then they
| have with the center [1].
|
| If I we're to connect neoliberalism with Soviet
| communism, I'd say that both ideologies are examples of
| _high modernism_ , which is the idea that leaders can
| optimize on a metric and ignore all other factors that
| contribute to their countries success. This never has
| positive outcomes for the people living in those
| countries.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
| chaostheory wrote:
| > We used to have a river before that now doesn't exist.
| There isn't a drop of water," says Rivera. "And not only
| here in Copiapo but in all of Chile, there are rivers and
| lakes that have disappeared
|
| It's more likely that climate change was responsible for
| this problem.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| And now they're nationalizing it. Happy? Or will the
| goalposts move to some other totally out of proportion fake
| scandal?
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/21/chile-lithium-
| reserves-...
| kranke155 wrote:
| Chile has just nationalised lithium I believe
| rmujica wrote:
| Wrong. Lithium in Chile was nationalized in the 1980s by
| Pinochet. Lithium extraction and processing has been
| granted to privates in long term contracts that will
| continue to be valid but will not be renewed, and new
| mines will be owned directly by the state.
| longemen3000 wrote:
| "Fun" fact about that, it was nationalized because it is
| a material for use in atomic bombs, in the 70 and 80
| there wasn't another use for large scale lithium mining,
| except for that
| defrost wrote:
| They've announced _plans_ to do so and those plans have
| issues and wil take time:
|
| > While Chile's plan to take control of its lithium
| industry has caused global shockwaves, state-led
| production of the metal used to make electric vehicle
| batteries is seen by analysts as likely years away given
| technical and political challenges.
|
| ~ Reuters
| kortilla wrote:
| What you just described is a failure of government to setup
| appropriate water rights. It has nothing to do with mining.
| The same exact thing happens with agriculture.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| What space is that? The only place I see anti EV fud is right
| wing nut sites like fox news.
| macawfish wrote:
| Lithium could be considered a conflict metal on a larger scale
| though, in that it has likely been a large factor in
| geopolitical decision making over the last decades:
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/24/as-us-exits-afghani...
| misssocrates wrote:
| Are people confusing lithium with cobalt? Where 70% of it comes
| from the Congo.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes. And I guess some people insist on the confusion on
| purpose. It doesn't matter how many times people point it
| out, the confusion keeps happening.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| I agree that it's deliberate, and I extend that to any sort
| of mining - after all it comes from the stance of
| misinformed "environmentalists" not being able to tell the
| difference because any of that type of action is bad
| Tagbert wrote:
| There are certainly people reposting comments that mix up
| lithium and cobalt and keep asserting that all EV
| batteries use cobalt and how terrible that is. They are
| not all environmentalists. A lot of them are just using
| those talking points as a way to oppose the move to EVs.
|
| They also like to post a photo of an open pit gold mine
| in Australia and claim that it is a lithium mine while
| complaining about the massive environmental impact. they
| never respond when I post a link with proper attribution
| showing that it is not a lithium mine.
| pas wrote:
| not to mention that there is no fundamental problem with
| open pit mining with recultivation.
|
| the problem is the brine. which is cleanable with a lot
| of energy.
| retinaros wrote:
| just like people against nuclear. we can see that live in
| germany
| snek_case wrote:
| Also worth pointing out that much of EVs and grid storage are
| shifting to cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate batteries.
| Many people aren't aware of that.
| whitemary wrote:
| > _Human rights abuse_
|
| That's a convenient way to dismiss ruthless exploitation of 3rd
| world populations, nations, and the natural environment.
|
| And if you don't consider the police violence against the
| indigenous populations of Bolivia following their democratic
| elections then what are your qualifications exactly? "Lithium
| mining" is not the problem, of course, but the political
| interventions of Lithium interests has robbed millions of
| people of freedom.
| kranke155 wrote:
| All large scale economic activity in developing countries
| like this is often accompanied with human rights and
| democracy violations.
|
| This is a false choice really. It's not lithium that's
| causing this but the broken political system. I'm half
| Brazilian and just the other day I heard a mining dam break
| that led to a mass cancer in surrounding populations. This
| was Vale one of the largest companies in Brazil.
|
| It doesn't matter what's being used, virtually everything
| that comes from developing countries causes gigantic crimes
| that are unimaginable to first world.
|
| You're selecting one specific product but it's not logical to
| do so. They all cause this. And what's the other option? Not
| buying products from developing countries?
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Because we all know international corporations never violate
| human rights?
| refurb wrote:
| That's kind of a ridiculous argument.
|
| Sure, international corporations violate human rights, but
| unless you provide proof these lithium corporations are, then
| we can just assume they aren't.
| anamexis wrote:
| Why would that be a reasonable assumption?
| refurb wrote:
| Wait, you're asking why it's reasonable to assume a
| corporation is NOT violating human rights in a situation
| where there is no evidence that they are?
|
| Because it's absurd to think otherwise?
|
| I mean, using OPs logic of "Because we all know
| international corporations never violate human rights?"
| you could say that about anything.
|
| If you're a teacher you're probably a child molester
| because "Because we all know teachers never molest
| children, right?"
| uoaei wrote:
| It's absurd to believe either side of that dichotomy,
| because you have no information on which to base any
| belief.
| refurb wrote:
| Thankfully the laws says innocent until proven guilty.
|
| Apparently the law is "absurd"
| uoaei wrote:
| The legal system doesn't "believe" anything. Unless you
| are a court of law, you aren't bound by the rules
| governing one.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Hitchen's Razor?
| anamexis wrote:
| There's no specific claim being made here. It's just that
| assuming a lithium mining company (which, as an industry,
| has a terrible human rights record) would not commit
| human rights violation because it is a multinational
| company is a strange assumption to make.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Not only strange but also illogical. Corporations make
| more profit when they act illegally. From lobbied
| protectionism to monopoly, exploitation of natural
| resources to pollution, hiring of ex government officials
| to bribery and gift giving and favors, and of course from
| hiring underpaid and abused workers in countries without
| labor protection, to knowingly using slave labor, and
| more, they have billions of reasons to break laws and
| violate human rights. And every time they do it, they pay
| a small fine that is dwarfed by their profits and nobody
| goes to jail.
|
| You don't even have to look overseas. PG&E has caused
| hundreds of billions of dollars in damage due to
| wildfires caused by cost cutting; they don't want to do
| the maintenance they're legally required to do. Entire
| communities are left homeless and people are killed. And
| the company gets a tiny fine and the executives get
| bonuses.
|
| It's actually amazing to me that corporations don't do it
| more often. It pays to be a piece of shit company.
| defrost wrote:
| Largest companies digging in the dirt creating the vast
| bulk of the world's lithium concentrates (prior to
| refining in Chima | Malaysia) are in Chile and Australia
| and all are listed on the Canadian Toronto TSX exchange.
|
| Minerals and Resources rules for exchange listing are
| pretty tight with respect filing third party independant
| reports that assess mineral volumes and estimates,
| economic feasibility, environmental impact, and human
| rights etc.
|
| While it's possible that some things _are_ covered up in
| these relatively modern capital projects (eg: like
| conditions mining copper in PNG in days of yore leaving
| substantial impacts today) it 's unlikely due to modern
| communications and the known fact that everything gets
| out and doesn't remain hidden - more so today than back
| when PNG was literally and figuratively _obscured by
| clouds_.
|
| Austrlia is keeping clean, and you can knock yourself out
| looking into
|
| https://lithiumchile.ca/
|
| and report anything you find to the TSX.
| bluGill wrote:
| Generally not the big ones. They are big enough to have a
| local branch office that can fined if caught. Small and
| medium sized companies are much harder to fine as they just
| don't operate in your country.
|
| When the big ones do they are very careful about it, so they
| can claim to be in a grey area. Tire companies know there is
| child labor, but they are buying from the parents, and they
| make sure outside of harvest those kids get a great education
| (when the kids grow up their either leave, or work the
| plantation as medical or management staff and not labor). You
| can still say they are in the wrong, but they have made a
| place where you can understand the grey
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You should support your claim of 85% with a valid link.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Over 85% of lithium is produced by just 2 international
| corporations
|
| If I search google for this string, your post is the only one
| that comes up. How did you arrive at this figure?
|
| In the history of industry, when has it ever been a positive
| indication that only two players control the majority of the
| supply?
|
| Do these companies directly own the mines or are there
| partnerships and subsidiaries involved? What countries are they
| operating in? How long is the supply chain from the mine to the
| product?
|
| How are water rights being managed? Is there correct oversight?
| Are any governments trading long term environmental damage for
| short term profits? What happens when the mines are depleted?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Having been in some niche commodities sectors myself, Google
| doesn't always have relevant information and the producers
| are more interested in their competitive advantages that
| they'll let people guess their way to completely inaccurate
| realities even at the expense of the industry.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if there are no sources that you
| respect.
| le-mark wrote:
| Google has noticeably deteriorated in recent weeks. Does
| anyone have insight into that? Like more or too much gpt? The
| first link here is an article from 2021:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Over+85%25+of+lithium+is+produced+.
| ..
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| m3drano wrote:
| I see plenty of results from Google about this string, from
| multiple sources and multiple types (video, news and
| classic links). Unclear about that deterioration.
| kristianp wrote:
| This report talks about Chinese demand, but there is demand
| coming online from European auto-makers such as VW which is
| spending billions to electrify its fleet (not to mention US and
| Japanese car makers).
|
| Copper is another decarbonisation-related element that is
| predicted to have large shortfalls in supply compared to demand
| in the future.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Lithium Triangle[1]. "a region of the Andes that is rich in
| lithium reserves, encompassed by the borders of Argentina,
| Bolivia, and Chile.[1] The lithium in the triangle is
| concentrated in various salt pans that exist along the Atacama
| Desert and neighboring arid areas, the largest areas including
| Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, Salar de Atacama in Chile, and Salar
| del Hombre Muerto in Argentina.
|
| The area is thought to hold around 54% of the world's lithium
| reserves."
|
| Well, not any more maybe. A large lithium deposit has been dis-
| covered in Iran as the internationalbanker article notes. (Unusal
| hyphenation of discovered intentional: it was uncovered, made
| more widely known, rather than found for the first time ever.)
| Now that it's in demand, no doubt there are many more deposits of
| lithium waiting for the limelight.
|
| Wikipedia continues: "By one estimate Argentina could displace
| Chile as the second largest lithium producer by 2027.[3]
| Similarly, there are estimates the posits [sic] Argentina
| producing 16% of the World's lithium by 2030, instead of 6% as in
| 2021.[3] Low royalty payments when compared to Chile are cited by
| The Economist as a particular advantage.[3]"
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_Triangle
| rapsey wrote:
| A huge factor is accessibility of reserves. Often new
| discoveries are so remote and inaccessible that they are
| completely unrealistic to be producing within the next 10/20
| years. I think both Iran and Argentina fall into this category.
| odood wrote:
| And Chile government is making moves towards being more
| involved in new deals. Not quite nationalization, but...
| euroderf wrote:
| Purraps a bit like oil ? Reserves depend on prices ?
| rmm wrote:
| Iran is not a reserve it may well be a resource but a long way
| from being a Jorc etc reserve.
|
| Also that lithium triangle is still a historic artefact of
| lithiums previous life as a really good lubricant and anti
| depressant. Given lithiums importance these days, more and more
| hard rock deposits will be found.
|
| For the xth time in yth year There is no lithium shortage. Up
| until a decade ago we weren't even looking for it. Now that
| there is money to be had we will find it.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Nice bit of serendipity there, I'm currently reading a book
| called Volt Rush that talks about the battery supply chain.
|
| Nice to contextualise some of what that's been talking about with
| recent events.
| midasuni wrote:
| Fed printing money leading to Inflation right?
|
| Or does that simplistic answer only apply when prices go up.
| Animats wrote:
| Much better article in the Economist this week.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/business/2023/04/20/why-
| crashing-l...
| defrost wrote:
| aka: https://archive.is/k5Hjd
|
| Not a great article (from a minerals and resources
| perspective).
|
| Two specific factors; recent mine expansion at sites that dig
| in the dirt and produce _concentrates_ _and_ recent and near
| future expansion of _processing_ locations that take
| concentrates and refine to ship usable lithium.
|
| Eg: Minesite in Western Australia currently ships concentrates
| to Malaysia and will soon ship also Texas.
| Animats wrote:
| Shipping concentrates is pretty standard in mining low-grade
| resources. Near the mine, there's usually some kind of plant
| to extract the good stuff and discard the dirt. Otherwise,
| there's a huge amount of wasted effort shipping dirt and
| rocks around, and dumping them someplace.
|
| What's shipped out usually needs more processing. What's left
| behind is usually the big environmental headache with mining.
| Yeahsureok wrote:
| Really? It seems quite inferior to the one posted and lacking a
| lot of substance.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Well, at least it doesn't mess with the scrolling, so I have
| a chance to read it without going completely mad...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| You can get lithium from the sea.
| osigurdson wrote:
| So basically, we can't switch to EVs because people don't have
| enough money. The crowd that thinks poverty is the solution to
| climate change proven wrong once again.
| s0rce wrote:
| We could switch to buses, trains and bicycles though, with even
| greater impact on reducing emissions.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Those are all part of the mix, but the car is an essential
| part of it as well.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Fundamentally because it is as ubiquitous as copper and zinc in
| the earth crust and even more so in sea water.
| tshadley wrote:
| Earth's crust: not quite the same as Cu/Zn but way more than I
| expected:
|
| https://periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.an.htm...
|
| Lithium: 0.0017% Copper: 0.0068% Zinc: 0.0078%
|
| Seawater: https://sciencenotes.org/abundance-of-elements-in-
| earths-oce...
|
| Lithium: 0.18 mg/L
| PinkRidingHood wrote:
| What's with the scrolling? Maybe they optimized it for phones but
| its unnatural on a phone too. And it was a design decision!
| Yeahsureok wrote:
| No mention of CATL releasing sodium based batteries this year?
| Just their dropping of lithium battery prices?
| fpoling wrote:
| Sodium batteries will have any effect only in a few years. So
| this is mostly the case of increased production in anticipation
| of stronger demand that has not realized.
|
| The latter is not necessary an indication of a less demand for
| batteries. There were a lot of progress recently in increase of
| the energy density in mass-produced batteries, and that may
| contributed to lessening of the demand.
| davidw wrote:
| "Lithium prices depressed"
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Maybe with recycling options coming up[0], availability would be
| less of an issue and the market is responding accordingly?
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24316056
| s3p wrote:
| This page hijacks scrolling. Unfortunate
| azubinski wrote:
| Quite possibly, it's all about simple arithmetic which has always
| been a bit of a challenge for the brave marketing.
|
| Let's assume the data is correct and only three countries produce
| 119 thousand tons of lithium per year:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_lithium_p...
|
| Let's assume "from the internet" estimate is at least somewhat
| correct, and the average EV battery contains 10kg of lithium
| (this is rounding up the more common 8kg estimate to make it
| easier to count).
|
| The collapse in lithium prices could mean that the electric car
| market has been overvalued and that the actual production of
| electric cars is much lower than 12 million, because lithium
| batteries are not only used in cars.
|
| Nothing, over time, prices will still begin to rise. Even though
| the technology and business of recycling lithium from used
| batteries will somehow develop.
|
| And for sure, this decline will not affect the price of batteries
| in any way.
| asplake wrote:
| About the yellow flame, another explanation would be sodium from
| the salt. My daughter's saline nebuliser does that to our cooker,
| even from the next room.
| akrymski wrote:
| But lithium only makes up 11% of EV batteries
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1203083/composition-of-l...
| mharig wrote:
| What the article does not mention: in June a new chinese emission
| standard for vehicles, that can hardly be met by combustion
| engines, will hit. That may drive up the Lithium demand.
|
| And in 23Q4 or 24Q1 CATL will sell its 500 Wh/kg batteries.
| Although I couldn't find much about the chemistry of the new
| cells, that may cut the Lithium demand in half. But not very
| fast, I guess.
|
| (All dates/statements IIRC.)
| alex_duf wrote:
| Assuming the denser batteries have the same amount of lithium
| per kg, I don't see how we'll see a halving of lithium demand.
| That would only be possible under the incorrect assumption that
| battery demand is static.
|
| That's already not true with current technology as EVs are
| gaining market shares rapidly, but also the new technology will
| be opening new usages, so it will opening new markets, further
| driving the demand.
|
| But I also have no idea about its chemistry!
| mharig wrote:
| Yes, it may cut the Lithium demand in half, if the demand
| does not change (much), and that is not likely. Sorry for the
| not so well formulated statement. I meant that that may lower
| the inclination of the curve of Lithium demand significantly.
| atoav wrote:
| Wasn't some country planing to nationalize their lithium stock?
| nprateem wrote:
| Chile
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/ebd48bbc-1390-4679-99fe-682975bbd...
| bohadi wrote:
| Here's some wild speculation grounded on a wisp of research:
|
| Eurasia based cartel had cornered the market on lithium vital
| for new energy. US based interests bent the ear of the
| Chilean government to break this monopoly by nationalizing
| these privately owned mines and rediverting the supply.
| Speculators got wrecked. Does anyone know if a Credit Suisse
| customer had dealings in Chile?
| longemen3000 wrote:
| tianqi sold all his shares of SQM (one of Chile lithium
| companies, around 23%) after the announcement. The
| situation of the lithium in Chile is very particular. in
| the Pinochet dictatorship, litium was nationalized, because
| it was a key ingredient of atomic bombs (and not much else
| at that time), and USA didn't want other countries to
| access the resource, so all current mines are in a lease
| contract (Albemarle until 2043, SQM until 2030). the new
| proposition opens new zones for exploitation, in exchange
| of the public-private parnership
| lmpdev wrote:
| Does anyone have any insight into when we're going to see some
| movements in lithium battery prices per cell?
|
| I've seen them stuck at $1-3/cell for what feels like two years
| jpgvm wrote:
| Probably not until significantly more capacity is added. Right
| now all the big battery suppliers (CATL, CALB, EVE, LG Chem,
| Panasonic) are all at capacity meaning they have no incentive
| to lower prices.
|
| If new capacity comes online and it's not greeted by increased
| demand (unlikely) then prices could fall. Wouldn't hold my
| breath though, the targets China has for EVs is going to
| provide strong support for demand even if the rest of the world
| goes into recession.
| tuatoru wrote:
| In 2022-23 several hundred billion USD of investment in new
| battery production capacity in the USA and Europe was
| announced in multiple announcements. (Source: cleantechnica,
| or batteriesnews, or energy-storage.news, or maybe industry
| weekly; I'll try to find it again. In the mean time, there's
| this[1]. Edit: and this: battery-news.de[2].)
|
| Much of that should come online in 2025 - 28, if not canceled
| first.
|
| Edit 2: there are several steps in the production chain
| beyond mining and initial refining. There is material
| production for anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, separators,
| and lithium; there is cell assembly, there is pack assembly,
| and there is production of electronics associated with cells
| and packs (charge controllers, pack management). Each of
| these has its own issues. It's not as "simple" as refining
| oil.
|
| 1. Chart 1: Lithium-Ion Battery Capacity Expected to Surge,
| FRB Dallas:
| https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/1011
|
| 2. https://battery-news.de/index.php/2022/01/21/battery-
| project...
| binkHN wrote:
| TL;DR: China stopped subsiding this and more mines are coming
| online.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| fpoling wrote:
| As Nassim Taleb observed, "Scarity is always followed by glut".
| tuatoru wrote:
| That was a rephrase of the old saw, "the cure for high prices
| is high prices".
| euroderf wrote:
| new saw, for this guy
| tuatoru wrote:
| Congratulations on being one of today's lucky 10000! [1]
|
| 1. https://xkcd.com/1053/
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