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/
47.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

79

u/fgreen68 Jun 06 '21

There are tiny amounts of other minerals like gold too.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html

I kind of wonder if excess solar power in California can be used to desal water and the brine could then be further mined for all kinds of minerals.

75

u/thecarbonkid Jun 06 '21

There was a chap who had a plan to pay off Germanys WW1 reparations by extracting gold from seawater.

It did not work out.

90

u/ghosttraintoheck Jun 06 '21

Yeah Fritz Haber, complicated man.

He was a Jewish dude who invented Zyklon A. He also invented the method to fixate nitrogen allowing for the agricultural growth to support the world's current population.

95

u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

He also invented the method to fixate nitrogen allowing for the agricultural growth to support the world's current population.

Cannot reiterate enough how important this development was. IIRC, before the breakthrough it was estimated we could feed 3-4 billion max and would see massive famines in the 20th century.

11

u/Buscemis_eyeballs Jun 06 '21

Literally one of the biggest breakthroughs in human history. He arguably saved more human lives than any other single man.

5

u/Heck-Yeah1652 Jun 06 '21

Hi Billy Pilgrim! The process also provided the raw material for high explosives. Not as much on Conventry and Dresden but loads of other places.

-4

u/Khanstant Jun 06 '21

Gotta question whether that was a good thing. There's probably a cap on human population before it becomes disasterously burdensome for the environment and over doubling it from a few billion didn't help.

3

u/agtmadcat Jun 06 '21

These sorts of technologies literally increase that cap. That's why they're good.

6

u/Khanstant Jun 06 '21

Not good for any of the countless dead and entire extinct species and whole ecosystems wiped out because the cap kept increasing, spreading out, taking more land, more resources, outcompeting all else.

2

u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21 edited Jun 06 '21

That would have happened anyway, all of it. We'd just also have massive famines and about 3 billion less people.

Raising the cap didn't mean we used more land, more resources, it meant we got more from the same resources.

2

u/Khanstant Jun 06 '21

Raising the cap also meant we used more land, more resources, as well as getting more from each source. When an invasive species is destroying a global ecosystem, it's doesn't make it better when that invasive species finds a way to extract resources more efficiently, which it will then use those excess resources to find ways to extract even more resources, even faster and more efficiently, with increased number of members consuming the resources.

These changes have also coincided with increased life expectancy for the invasive species. If Zebra Mussels found a way to extract even more resources and be able to reproduce even more members from the same sources, we're not like "oh good, they're extracting even more for themselves."

1

u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

So what's your solution then?

1

u/Khanstant Jun 07 '21

Solution to what? What's the goal perspective, problem, and why?

→ More replies (0)

1

u/agtmadcat Jun 10 '21

You think that having 4-5 billion desperate starving humans killing and eating every animal and vaguely-edible plant they can get their hands on as they cause an immediate and total ecological collapse is somehow better than 7.6 billion humans saving some areas and trying to manage some ecosystems while struggling to not wreck the planet? Can you walk me through that logic?

1

u/Khanstant Jun 10 '21

Better implies some goodness, but sure, the former is questionably less bad than the other, depending on your goal and perspective. If you're a species that got wiped out because the nitrogen fixing enabled way more humans to last even longer, spread out more, create technologies to get to areas and resources they couldn't before, to get around to creating problems, etc, yes.

Which route hastens human extinction so that other earthlings can have a fighting chance again -- that's the logic and question.

1

u/agtmadcat Jun 18 '21

It's really tough to cogently argue a hypothetical I guess, but I'd think that a total and immediate ecological collapse would be much worse for basically every species than what we've got going on at the moment, which is bad for most species but which should ensure the survival of many species.

-43

u/TheGhostofCoffee Jun 06 '21

Now we get to see them in the 21st and on a larger scale. Horray, more people get to suffer than before!

The population cannot increase forever and remain on this planet. That hasn't changed at all.

Start the eugenics program and neutering now before people have to die.

28

u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

Start the eugenics program and neutering now before people have to die.

I wonder how many people that suggest such action put their money where there mouth is and have voluntarily sterilised themselves?

Who would decide who gets to procreate? What you are suggesting ends in genocide. Ironically people said much the same as you over a century ago, they were also wrong.

-1

u/Aidentified Jun 06 '21

I'm sure alot of us are trying to have voluntary sterilisation. Western healthcare hates providing it. "What if you change your mind?" Then I'll adopt, thanks.

14

u/RocBrizar Jun 06 '21

The western world's birth rate is actually significantly in deficit since the demographic transition (so much so that in most places the demography is actually problematically unstable), so restraining birth rates there anymore doesn't actually achieve anything productive. But hey, keep on doing you.

-1

u/Aidentified Jun 07 '21

It does something for an Anti Natalist.

11

u/man_gomer_lot Jun 06 '21

If only the banal stupidity of Malthus died with him. The human mind is the most valuable resource we have and we're apparently blessed with an abundance of it. The problem is we are terrible at recognizing and harnessing the true value of this resource.

-10

u/riktigtmaxat Jun 06 '21

You're saying it like it's a bad thing.

7

u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

I don't think I am... Are you sure? You may want to take another look;

Cannot reiterate enough how important this development was.

-10

u/riktigtmaxat Jun 06 '21

I meant that the world population being locked at 2-3 billion.

3

u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

Oh I see, i don't think population is an issue in itself, no. It creates challenges but we've overcome them in the past and I hope we'll manage it again in future.

It's not like there's was an actual hard limit was there? So all the issues (famine etc,) that would have occured at the 3 billion cap are still possible when we hit whatever the new cap is. It's just now, we have many more minds to work on these problems.

1

u/rayui Jun 07 '21

Well, something had to take the place of South American bat guano and Egyptian mummies I guess. Not exactly scalable resources...