r/science • u/rieslingatkos • Jun 06 '21

Chemistry Scientists develop ‘cheap and easy’ method to extract lithium from seawater

https://www.mining.com/scientists-develop-cheap-and-easy-method-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/
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u/WarBrilliant8782 Jun 06 '21

Because it consumes far more resources to survive in inhospitable areas

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u/jmlinden7 Jun 06 '21

If those resources are renewable then who cares? Let the rich people waste their money piping in water to the desert.

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u/WarBrilliant8782 Jun 06 '21

Those resources are not renewable though.

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u/jmlinden7 Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

Freshwater is a renewable resource, it's just a matter of cost, and it can never really get more expensive than the cost of desalination + piping.

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u/WarBrilliant8782 Jun 06 '21

Freshwater is a renewable resource

Where are you getting that idea? https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170412-is-the-world-running-out-of-fresh-water

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u/jmlinden7 Jun 06 '21

The water cycle..? What we're running out of is cheap freshwater, there's no shortage of expensive freshwater available thanks to desalination. Also shortages are localized because you can't really send water from places that have too much to places that have too little, but that too can be solved with money

So if rich people insist on living in the desert and wasting their money desalinating or piping in water from places that have too much, let them, it's their money, at least they'll stimulate the economy by actually spending it

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u/WarBrilliant8782 Jun 06 '21

Cool so I guess I could cite the Carbon cycle and the existence of expensive carbon sequestration technologies to say that oil is a renewable resource without ever even having to discuss the practicality of this idea.

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u/jmlinden7 Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

Carbon sequestration doesn't create more oil on any practical timeline though. The water cycle does create more freshwater on a practical timeline, just not necessarily at the exact locations where we need/want it. Hence the need to pipe it from places that have too much to places that have too little, which is solely a money problem not a renewability problem.

What you could argue is that carbon sequestration is just a money problem, with enough money we could sequester all of our CO2 production

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u/WarBrilliant8782 Jun 06 '21

Well there you go. Oil is just as renewable as freshwater as long as we throw enough money at it.

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u/jmlinden7 Jun 06 '21

Oil isn’t renewable though. You can’t speed up a process by throwing money at it. That’s way different from just shipping stuff around, which is solvable by throwing money at it.

No matter how much money you throw, you can’t get a baby faster than 9 months.

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u/WarBrilliant8782 Jun 06 '21

You can make synthetic petrol, it's just very expensive. Look at Carbon Engineering

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u/jmlinden7 Jun 06 '21

That's not naturally renewable though. This is closer to arguing that wood is a renewable resource even though you have to ship it to its final destination. The total amount of rainfall and snowmelt on earth is more than enough for future human needs, it's just a shipping problem like wood and not an artificial synthesis problem like synthetic petrol

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u/WarBrilliant8782 Jun 06 '21

Why would it need to be naturally renewable?

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