[HN Gopher] USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium pot...
___________________________________________________________________
USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in
Arkansas
Author : antidnan
Score : 187 points
Date : 2024-10-22 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.usgs.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.usgs.gov)
| chromatin wrote:
| Serious question:
|
| Given the mood alerting properties of lithium, are people living
| here chiller than would be expected (controlling for instance for
| poverty / SES) ?
| no_wizard wrote:
| I am not a health researcher or anyting, but a quick googling
| seems to suggest its possible that it lowers risks of
| suicide[0] and other affective disorders, which by extension it
| would lower the rates of issues that can contribute to these
| issues I'd think.
|
| That said, I honestly am unsure. It also is a requisite that it
| must be in the water in sufficient but low amounts
|
| [0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32716281/
| kranke155 wrote:
| It also shrinks your white matter I think, and has other
| gigantic bad effects.
|
| Source: am bipolar and take 600mg daily.
| astrange wrote:
| It also causes obesity and may be the cause of American
| obesity in the South.
|
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/08/02/a-chemical-
| hunger-p...
| pfdietz wrote:
| The formation is 7000 feet below the surface, if I understand
| correctly, so I don't think there would be any communication of
| its brine with potable groundwater.
| mbreese wrote:
| I would like to think that if there were any interaction
| between theses putative deposits to the groundwater that we
| wouldn't have needed an ML model to find these deposits in
| the first place!
| renewiltord wrote:
| Only when Mercury is in retrograde
| coldbrewed wrote:
| My guess is that the presence of lithium in the groundwater is
| in trace amounts if at all, while the dosing of lithium is in
| the domain of ~300mg. A casual search for the quantity of
| lithium in brine from a mine shows a max of 1400ppm for a rich
| mine in Chile[1] so drinking straight brine wouldn't get you
| anywhere near the therapeutic dose. Good question!
|
| [1]:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01691...
| dmurray wrote:
| 1400 ppm is one part in 700, so you'd get your dose from one
| cup (250 ml) of that brine.
|
| I agree it's not likely you'd get a measurable effect from
| the local groundwater.
| janice1999 wrote:
| Potentially. See "Lithium in drinking water linked with lower
| suicide rates" [1].
|
| [1] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/lithium-in-drinking-water-
| linked-...
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I would assume any positive effects are balanced out by
| living in Arkansas.
| hinkley wrote:
| My only experience with Arkansas was waking up to a
| speeding ticket at 3 in the morning. Who puts out a speed
| trap at 3 in the fucking morning?
|
| But if it's anything like Oklahoma...
| elpakal wrote:
| Um, why were you waking up while driving at 3 in the
| morning?
| hinkley wrote:
| Some cars have seats for up to seven people, including
| the driver.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Happened to me on Ambien.
| hinkley wrote:
| Hah! No I did my turn behind the wheel from 10-1 so
| nobody died on my watch. I was in the back.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I would have guessed better results in the 1am to 2am
| time slot, but 3am is not totally out of line. I bet the
| fraction of drivers at 3am that are drunk is _much_
| higher than at, say, 3pm.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Towns that make a living by ticketing people passing
| through.
|
| The worst place in the world for this is Italy. Every
| time I go there they find some esoteric rule to ticket me
| for. This time in Padova, apparently I drove in an area
| where only locals are allowed to drive. Bunch of
| swindlers.
| thinkindie wrote:
| Indeed in Italy there are area (mostly historical
| centres) where cities limit the influx of cars to keep it
| liveable and walkable, therefore only residents are
| allowed to bring their car in.
| tomrod wrote:
| Both areas can be great.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| People downvoted you to the point that your comment is
| grayed out and about to be hidden but there is hardly
| metric by which Arkansas is not in the bottom ten on a list
| of states.
|
| Infant mortality rate? 3rd most deadly for babies.
|
| Poverty rate? 7th poorest.
|
| Homicide rate? 7th most dangerous.
|
| Obesity rate? 3rd fattest.
|
| Practically any map of any measurable statistic where
| states are colored red for "bad" and green for "good"
| Arkansas will be a deep, blood, red.
|
| But it is rude to point that out.
| nativeit wrote:
| People vote in good faith, I presume. Sometimes a
| comment's factual basis matters less than its overall
| contribution to a productive and open discussion.
| Downvotes in this case are an example of HN's
| surprisingly effective system for self-moderation working
| as it should. It isn't vile enough to censor, but it also
| isn't what a lot of readers come here for. It didn't
| personally offend me (I didn't vote either way), but I
| take occasional downvoting that I don't fully agree with
| in stride, as the overall system seems to work better
| than most.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > But it is rude to point that out.
|
| No, that is not rude at all. Making a flippant derogatory
| remark gets downvotes, people like to see numbers. Like
| the ones you just gave...
| silisili wrote:
| Here's another list -
|
| Highest poverty rate?
|
| Lowest literacy rate?
|
| Last in opportunity?
|
| 8th worst in public safety?
|
| If you guessed California, you'd be right.
|
| Sweeping generalities and handpicked metrics do not tell
| an entire story.
| EB66 wrote:
| You are citing the US News "best states" ranking. In that
| ranking, California is ranked #37 overall and Arkansas is
| ranked #47 overall. Even your own hand picked data source
| supports the OP...
| silisili wrote:
| 37th/50 isn't good. But people never clamor on about how
| awful California is every time it's mentioned(well,
| rarely). This same ranking puts states like South Dakota
| and Indiana ahead, which I'm sure many would object to
| all the same.
|
| This is the second day in a row I've watched threads
| about Arkansas of all places devolve into these nasty
| generalities(yesterday's was about WalMart and
| Bentonville). I don't live in Arkansas or anything, but I
| think we as a community can do better than devolve into
| it over and over, unless the topic at hand was the
| problems of a state.
| EB66 wrote:
| I'm not saying that 37 out of 50 is good. I'm saying that
| 47 out of 50 is bad. Your data source doesn't refute the
| OPs argument that Arkansas is not a great place to live
| -- it actually supports the OP.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| A large portion of the USA sees California as a place to
| avoid- so those sweeping generalities and those
| particular metrics might be accurate. California is only
| a nice place to live if you're rich, and most people are
| not.
| Agree2468 wrote:
| I think in terms of natural beauty, it's definitely in
| the upper half. Specifically Ouachita National Forest in
| my opinion.
| stevage wrote:
| Wow, that is super interesting.
|
| I think I heard that long term usage of lithium has nasty
| side effects like damaging kidneys, but perhaps not at these
| very low concentrations.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It may surprise you to learn that lithium is actually a toxic
| substance. No human being has ever suffered from a lithium
| deficiency. Lithium is not a natural or healthy component of
| anyone's diet.
|
| So, the so-called therapeutic dose of lithium is merely a sub-
| toxic level, and must be monitored by frequent blood tests.
|
| There are horrific side effects from using lithium in the long
| term, including convulsions, hair loss, diarrhea, suicidal and
| homicidal ideations, and extreme thirst (polydipsia).
|
| So personally, I would rather not be tapping into lithium
| reserves for my health.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Love to see a project that uses bog standard ML techniques and
| doesn't call them AI. Respect.
| bloopernova wrote:
| It's the new Hacking vs Cracking. Or calling any computer a PC.
| gowld wrote:
| In this case it's Fracking
| driggs wrote:
| Quoth the article: The USGS predictive model
| provides the first estimate of total lithium present in
| Smackover Formation brines in southern Arkansas, using machine
| learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I was disappointed in that line. They could've mentioned it
| used a random forest, which is much more informative. "ML is
| a type of AI" isn't even a cocktail party understanding of
| the topic.
| textlapse wrote:
| For a layperson, this is an accessible and directionally
| correct definition.
|
| For the HN audience, of course this is 'technically
| incorrect'.
|
| The article was written for the (larger) general public.
|
| I am also glad they didn't squeeze in a word salad of LLMs
| and quantum technology and instead stuck to 'it's just
| standard ML'.
| gowld wrote:
| The only informational dividable from the statement is
| "we used a computer to analyze data".
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Nothing bog standard about contemporary ML. If anything calling
| it AI is underselling it.
|
| This is what it was called back in the day.
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02478259
| janalsncm wrote:
| When the tide goes out on the AI hype there's going to be a lot
| of companies currently using expensive API calls for simple
| classification tasks that will be quietly revamped to use a
| simple CNN.
|
| ML is a toolbox of methods. Not every problem needs a
| transformer.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| > Not every problem needs a transformer.
|
| They do if they want to get the intention of a Venture
| Capitalist!
| Tagbert wrote:
| ML is one particular field in the overall area of AI.
| nativeit wrote:
| Isn't it a critical component of everything currently
| sporting anything remotely close to a legit "AI" label? I
| wouldn't call cows "one part of a broader beef ecosystem" for
| example. They're fundamental to it.
| strbean wrote:
| Are we getting to the critical point where we declassify a
| bunch of stuff as AI? Used to be expert systems were considered
| AI. Now anything-not-an-LLM is going to stop being AI?
| lovich wrote:
| That treadmills been going on for a long time. Didn't OCR
| used to be classified as AI?
| jpk wrote:
| Yep, back when programming language syntax started trending
| toward more natural language, compiler development was
| considered AI research. Which makes sense, because in an
| era of assembly on punch cards, computers that could
| translate higher-level instructions that read more like
| English into machine code you used to have to write (or
| punch) by hand probably felt pretty intelligent.
| folli wrote:
| From the paper's method section, a bit more about which type of
| ML algo was used:
|
| An RF machine-learning model was developed to predict lithium
| concentrations in Smackover Formation brines throughout southern
| Arkansas. The model was developed by (i) assigning explanatory
| variables to brine samples collected at wells, (ii) tuning the RF
| model to make predictions at wells and assess model performance,
| (iii) mapping spatially continuous predictions of lithium
| concentrations across the Reynolds oolite unit of the Smackover
| Formation in southern Arkansas, and (iv) inspecting the model for
| explanatory variable importance and influence. Initial model
| tuning used the tidymodels framework (52) in R (53) to test
| XGBoost, K-nearest neighbors, and RF algorithms; RF models
| consistently had higher accuracy and lower bias, so they were
| used to train the final model and predict lithium.
|
| Explanatory variables used to tune the RF model included
| geologic, geochemical, and temperature information for Jurassic
| and Cretaceous units. The geologic framework of the model domain
| is expected to influence brine chemistry both spatially and with
| depth. Explanatory variables used to train the RF model must be
| mapped across the model domain to create spatially continuous
| predictions of lithium. Thus, spatially continuous subsurface
| geologic information is key, although these digital resources are
| often difficult to acquire.
|
| Interesting to me that RF performed better the XGBoost, would
| have expected at least a similar outcome if tuned correctly.
| jandrese wrote:
| Did they actually verify the predictions? In my reading of the
| article I didn't see any core samples being made to verify the
| model is correct.
| tomrod wrote:
| RF is a heavy hitter when it comes to tabular data. XGBoost is
| good as well, but more often than not needs and autotuner to
| really unlock it (e.g pycaret).
| lordgrenville wrote:
| So it turns out that there's no theoretical reason that
| gradient boosting will always outperform RF (which would
| violate the "no free lunch" theorem). But it does usually seem
| to be the case in practice, even with small and noisy data.
|
| I would hazard a guess that with better tuning, XGBoost would
| still have won. (The paper notes that the authors chose a
| suboptimal set of hyperparameters out of fear of overfitting -
| maybe the same logic justifies choosing a suboptimal model
| type...)
| levocardia wrote:
| That's been my experience. RF tends to do quite well out of
| the box, and is very fast to fit. It's less of a pain to
| cross-validate too, with fewer tuning parameters. XGBoost has
| a huge number of knobs to tune, and its performance varies
| from god-awful with bad hyperparameters to somewhat better
| than RF with good ones. Giant PITA with nested cross-
| validation, etc. though.
|
| I haven't read in detail what their validation strategy is
| but this seems like the kind of problem where it's not so
| easy as you'd think -- you need to be very careful about how
| you stratify your train, dev, and test sets. A random
| 80/10/10 split would be way too optimistic: your model would
| just learn to interpolate between geographically proximate
| locations. You'd probably need to cross-validate across
| different geographic areas.
|
| This also seems like an application that would benefit from
| "active learning". given that drilling and testing is
| expensive, you'd want to choose where to collect new data
| based on where it would best update your model's accuracty. A
| similar-ish ML story comes from Flint, MI [1] though the
| ending is not so happy
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/ho
| w-m...
| jofer wrote:
| Put another way, this is pretty similar to the interpolation
| approaches that would normally be used for datasets like this
| in the world of mineral exploration. Kriging/co-kriging (i.e.
| gaussian processes) is the more commonly used approach in this
| particular field due to both the long history and the available
| hyperparameters for things like spatial aniostropy.
|
| However, kriging is really quite difficult to use with non-
| continuous inputs. RF is a lot more forgiving there. You don't
| need to develop a covariance model for discrete values (or a
| covariance model for how the different inputs relate, either).
| bilsbie wrote:
| Me thinks we might switch batteries to sodium in just a few
| years.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think there will be markets for many different chemistries
| and there's unlikely to be some total winner in the near
| future. Each chemistry has its own tradeoffs and use cases.
| Some will fade and die over time like Ni-Cad, but even that
| takes longer than you would expect.
|
| It would be amazing for some low weight, low volume, high
| energy density, high discharge rate, high charge rate, cheaply
| manufactured from abundant materials, low thermal sensitivity,
| high thermal tolerance, low passive loss, non-explosive, high
| cycle count, low memory, shelf stable battery chemistry to
| appear, but thus far every one fails in several of the
| categories.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Say Lithium becomes essentially free because we find so much of
| it...would that drastically lower battery costs? Is our current
| supply of lithium limiting production?
| astrange wrote:
| No, lithium is not rare and we have enough of it. It's
| available from friendly countries like Australia too.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| The major limiting factor of lithium is not really availability
| so much as the cost of extraction. China is the leader in this
| field, not so much because of abundance or stellar technology,
| but out of a willingness to completely ignore environmental
| externalities (including those of the power generation involved
| in the whole process). As a result the price of Chinese lithium
| is low enough that it would be essentially impossible to
| compete with them unless a country had similar...
| "advantages"... or some new and impressive technology.
|
| In the US environmental regulations, the cost of producing
| power, labor costs, would all drive up the price of the end
| product in a way that makes it totally noncompetitive. That's
| also why the US and some other countries are investing in other
| ways to find lithium (among other things) on seabeds, where
| it's hoped that extraction would be less expensive. Of course
| the threat to the seabed environment is a concern, which in
| turn might drive up prices by imposing regulation, etc etc etc.
| p00dles wrote:
| What an informative comment, thank you
| engineer_22 wrote:
| > the price of Chinese lithium is low enough that it would be
| essentially impossible to compete with them...
|
| In an export model, yes. However, given their negative
| externalities (including geo-political factors), importing
| countries may place tariffs on Chinese lithium in order to
| make use of other sources.
|
| If the total embodied value of lithium in any particular
| product is small compared to the overall value of the
| product, the tariff might not represent a significant drag on
| the indigenous industry.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Keyword there is _may_. Putting aside whether the sentiment
| is justified, it is currently extremely unpopular to impose
| Chinese tariffs.
|
| It's also worth noting that Chinese prices are so low that
| certain tariffs can reach the stratosphere (eg: American
| 100% tariff on Chinese EVs), further making them unpopular
| with the commons.
| jandrese wrote:
| This goes double if your refining and battery production is
| still in China as well. If you are using the material
| domestically then the situation could be made more fair with
| tariffs, but if you're exporting that obviously won't work.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Is sand essentially free because we have beaches and deserts
| full of it? It can be used to make concrete, a valuable
| material? (Don't forget the shipping, storage, and refining
| costs)
| Retric wrote:
| Logistics depends on where you are not the inherent price of
| the commodity. Plenty of things like air and are freely
| available but you still need ventilation systems in caves and
| whatnot. Moving free dirt around when building roads can be
| extremely expensive due even if it's just being moved a few
| miles volume adds up.
|
| So yea desert sand is essentially free, even if you pay for
| shipping.
| fakedang wrote:
| Lithium is too abundant in the world right now (as expected -
| we've just gotten better at discovering it).
|
| To be honest, the energy problem is more or less a solved
| problem with the current technologies we have. We just need to
| accelerate our pace of adoption to hard-reverse on fossil fuels
| (except Germany). We already have large reserves of Uranium, of
| which only a small amount is needed to fuel a power plant. We
| already have lithium battery tech to store the power. We
| already have solar panels being mass produced and adopted to
| fill in the gaps. All we need is connecting the dots and making
| sure these resources play well with each other in symbiosis.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >would that drastically lower battery costs?
|
| I'm skeptical. China is already mass-producing batteries,
| securing as much lithium as possible. Additionally, US
| regulations will significantly increase costs for battery
| manufacturers.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Related
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41910918
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41907144
| flenserboy wrote:
| Interesting, & not necessarily in a good way. This method could
| well presage unprecedented numbers of attempts at eminent domain
| takings or other means of forcing people out of their properties.
| richwater wrote:
| National security (by identifying and processing rare earth
| metals and materials domestically) is vastly more important to
| society than a few dozen homes somewhere.
| ifdefdebug wrote:
| sure. just make sure to pay them what their land is worth...
| with the lithium below.
| jumploops wrote:
| Do most residential land parcels include mining rights?
| chx wrote:
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/who-owns-the-
| mineral...
|
| > Mineral rights are automatically included as a part of
| the land in a property conveyance, unless and until the
| ownership gets separated at some point by an
| owner/seller.
|
| > Since sellers of land can convey only property that
| they own, each sale of the land after the minerals are
| separated automatically includes only the land. Deeds to
| the land made after the first separation of the minerals
| will not refer to the fact that the mineral rights are
| not included.
|
| > in most cases, you cannot determine whether you own the
| rights to the minerals under your land just by looking at
| your deed. Owners are sometimes surprised to find out
| someone else owns the rights to the minerals under their
| land
|
| > U.S. laws regulating mining and mineral rights
| typically prohibit mineral owners from damaging or
| interfering with the use of any homes or other
| improvements on the land when extracting minerals. As a
| result, mineral owners do not typically attempt mineral
| extraction in highly populated areas. This means that if
| you live in a city, or an area with many houses on small
| plots of land, you probably won't need to worry about
| whether or not you own any minerals that might be under
| you
| ct0 wrote:
| Is there case law on how deep land goes? I could imagine
| that there will be in the near future.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Yes, mineral rights are well defined in US real property
| law.
| walleeee wrote:
| Globally price-competitive domestic electric car production
| is a national security concern only if we are willing to
| accept a rather short time horizon and a rather narrow
| definition of security in our analysis.
|
| This kind of article can perhaps be understood as an attempt
| to turn a federal organization's sails into the prevailing
| political winds, so to speak, at a time when funding seems
| insecure. I say this as someone who strongly supports most of
| the survey's mission. It would be ideal if national power
| brokers recognized the value of water science, geology,
| ecology, etc, on their own terms.
| FpUser wrote:
| And of course you would not mind owners of extraction company
| leaving all the profits to people who got kicked out of their
| home. After all they should be happy just fulfilling your
| "national security" goal.
| scottyah wrote:
| Which government agency would use eminent domain to take land
| and start mining? We have historical precedence with the oil
| industry using various scanning methods in a similar manner,
| but it was the oil companies who went to the landowners to
| acquire the rights to extract. Then the government would buy
| the (usable) product from them.
| fullstop wrote:
| Local government condemned a bunch of perfectly fine homes in
| Wisconsin, by declaring them blighted, to make room for a
| Foxconn plant which never really panned out. Where there is
| greed there is a way.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Great, now ask the AI to engineer a fungal genome that'll help us
| purify it more easily: Frack in the substrate and spores, harvest
| fruit bodies on the surface, profit.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| This entire problem will solved without offering human
| employment in a place that would probably welcome it at this
| pace.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
| hello_computer wrote:
| Oh great. Using more taxpayer dollars to spoil nature and prop-up
| one of Elon's businesses. Leave it in the ground.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| ugh i really don't want people to mine in the mobile basin.
| that's one of the most diverse ecosystems in north america.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j9coyJeB4Q
| mmaunder wrote:
| Extracting lithium from brine is cleaner than e.g. extraction
| from spodumene ore. Also direct lithium extraction from brine
| is faster, cleaner, smaller footprint, lower energy
| consumption.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| It seems backwards, but pretty much the only fuel that protects
| ecosystems on a large scale are fossil fuels and nuclear.
|
| Global reforestation is almost entirely the result of
| households switching from wood to coal in the 20th century.
| bagels wrote:
| Uranium is extracted by mining the surface. I don't know ore
| concentrations though, so maybe not much land area is needed
| since it is a dense energy source?
| wbl wrote:
| Depends on the kind of deposit. Some they leech in situ.
| waveBidder wrote:
| > It seems backwards, but pretty much the only fuel that
| protects ecosystems on a large scale are fossil fuels and
| nuclear.
|
| This is ludicrously off-base for fossil fuels, even if we're
| only talking about local pollutants from the plants
| themselves, nevermind things like Exxon Valdez or the
| pipelines or the act of mining. Nuclear seems likely, though
| as the other commenter noted it's not a magic bullet either.
|
| > Global reforestation is almost entirely the result of
| households switching from wood to coal in the 20th century.
|
| This is a European phenomena mostly, and is a result of
| urbanization mostly.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| What do you think the people in cities burn for fuel to
| keep themselves warm?
| ianeigorndua wrote:
| Trash, mostly.
| luckylion wrote:
| Not really. I live close to Hamburg, Germany. _Very_
| eager to be eco-friendly and sustainable.
|
| Currently: 64% coal, lots of nat gas, ~20 renewables.
|
| The future plan is to use a lot more industrial waste
| heat. Burning garbage is done and planned, but nowhere
| near a major factor. Not to mention that the garbage
| would also need to come from something: plastics from
| oil, wood from trees etc.
| gottorf wrote:
| > This is ludicrously off-base for fossil fuels, even if
| we're only talking about local pollutants from the plants
| themselves, nevermind things like Exxon Valdez or the
| pipelines or the act of mining.
|
| The energy density of fossil fuels means that those side-
| effects would be worse with other sources of energy.
|
| > is a result of urbanization mostly
|
| Urbanization, made possible by the economical source of
| energy that is fossil fuels.
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| > The energy density of fossil fuels means that those
| side-effects would be worse with other sources of energy.
|
| Can you expand on this? How does the density of fossil
| fuel make them a better source of energy than say wind?
| krunck wrote:
| There is always sodium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-
| ion_battery
| Dalewyn wrote:
| A significant reason the real holders of power in the world
| today are Saudi Arabia and China is because we've refused to
| gather and use our resources while they have theirs.
|
| It's high time we realize that Pax Americana is our era to
| lose, (re)start mining and (re)start development.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| the mobile bay already has a lot of oil mining: https://www.g
| oogle.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=oil+rig...
|
| we don't need it happening upstream.
|
| and watch as the nations destroy themselves (ecosystems)
| jerf wrote:
| I read the article carefully, twice. Doesn't have a link to any
| original paper, of course. And I can't find the answer to my
| question... did they, you know, _validate_ the model? Did they
| actually take some samples at new locations and compare it to
| what the model says?
|
| Or are they literally just announcing that "Hey, we told the
| computer to tell us something, so it told us something"? Yes,
| that is how it works. The computer will always tell you something
| if you make it tell you something. That isn't the hard part. The
| hard part is getting it to tell you things that correspond to
| reality.
|
| In the absence of validation, this means very little, especially
| in an environment where the USGS is fairly incentivized to loudly
| announce to the world that we've totes got plenty of lithium, my
| fellow countries, any effort to keep lithium away from us is just
| a waste of time, look at us just rolling in lithium over here.
|
| Or, maybe they did do the validation, and it's just the reporting
| that doesn't consider that an important aspect of the story.
| _Somewhere_ between funding and press release someone 's lost the
| trail but I don't know who exactly.
| gwern wrote:
| It has a link to the original paper clearly visible right at
| the bottom where they usually are in scientific press releases
| like this?
|
| > The study, which was published in Science Advances, can be
| found at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp8149 .
| nodesocket wrote:
| Time to buy some cheap land in southern Arkansas?
| lovich wrote:
| Oh, is this where the conspiracy theory about the government
| controlling hurricanes to wipe out the south so that they could
| get lithium came from?
|
| If not that's funny timing given that was a few weeks ago
| Animats wrote:
| There's also a big lithium deposit in Nevada, and preparations
| for mining are underway there.[1] General Motors put in $650
| million for guaranteed access to the output of this Thacker Mine.
|
| It's in a caldera in a mountain that I-80 bypassed to go through
| Winnemuca, Nevada. Nearest town is Mill City, NV, which is listed
| as a ghost town, despite being next to I-80 and a main line
| railroad track. The mine site is about 12km from Mill City on a
| dirt road not tracked by Google Street View.
|
| Google Earth shows signs of development near Mill City. Looks
| like a trailer park and a truck stop. The road to the mine looks
| freshly graded. Nothing at the mine site yet.
|
| It's a good place for a mine. There are no neighbors for at least
| 10km, but within 15km, there's good road and rail access.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_lithium_mine
| diggernet wrote:
| Your description of the location of this mine doesn't match
| your Wikipedia link.
|
| Searching in Google Maps, Thacker Mine comes up as
| 40.58448942010599, -117.8912129833345. As you say, that is near
| I-80 and Mill City, and there is nothing there.
|
| But Wikipedia says it's at 41.70850912415866,
| -118.05475061324945 in the McDermitt Caldera, nowhere near Mill
| City or I-80.
|
| I'm thinking probably don't trust Google on this one. :)
| Animats wrote:
| Right. The Nevada Appeal, which actually has people on the
| ground, has far more info.[1] North of Thacker Pass is the
| area to look. The mine is building their own rail yard west
| of Winnemuca. The mine will be an open-pit mine like a coal
| mine. Sawtooth Mining division of North American Coal will do
| the mining. Dig down 350 feet, take out clay with lithium,
| process, put back clay without lithium. The processing plant
| will be at Thacker Pass. Big plant, maybe 1800 people.
| Lithium in clay is a new thing - the usual input is brine.
| Also a sulfuric acid plant, a power plant, housing, etc.
| Project assumes a loan of US$2.3 billion from the U.S.
| Department of Energy.
|
| _" Lithium Americas will contract with a bus company to
| drive workers an hour to the site for 10-hour work shifts, he
| added. An additional two hours will be added for
| transportation time. If you go to work on our project, you
| will have free room and board and free transportation to the
| site every day. You would get three free meals a day."_ If
| you're an unemployed coal miner in West Virginia, that might
| look good.
|
| [1] https://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/2024/oct/12/nevada-
| operati...
| mjrpes wrote:
| Looks like Google got "Thacker Pass Lithium Mine" in the
| McDermitt Caldera confused with an old gold mine called
| "Thacker Placer Mine" that was southeast of Mill City:
| https://westernmininghistory.com/mine-detail/10042614/
| tommykins wrote:
| Ah spatial autocorrelation, my old friend.
|
| Very good work - but typically we don't build prospectivity
| models this way (or rather we don't validate them this way
| anymore). Great to see the USGS starting to dip their toe back in
| this though, they and the GSC were long the leaders in this, but
| have dropped it on the last 5-7 years.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Well I guess this is a good win for short term energy
| infrastructure, though I'm always pretty torn when its at the
| cost of ripping open huge swaths of earth to get at the raw
| material.
|
| It is interesting to see how much of this data could be modelled
| based on wastewater brines from other industries in the area,
| assuming we go on to mine the lithium it will say a lot if the ML
| predictions prove accurate.
|
| One thing I couldn't tell, and its probably just a limitation of
| how much time I could spend reading the source paper, is what
| method would be needed to extract the bulk of the lithium
| expected to be there. If processing brine water is sufficient
| that may be easier to control externalities than if they have to
| strip mine and get all the overburden out of the way first.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-22 23:00 UTC)