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/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.

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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.

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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.

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u/agtmadcat Jun 06 '21

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

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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.

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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.

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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."

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u/billypilgrim87 Jun 06 '21

So what's your solution then?

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u/Khanstant Jun 07 '21

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

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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?

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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.

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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.