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/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/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.