From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
There’s nothing new here, but it acts as a good reminder of just bad lithium mining is for the environment:
Electric vehicles are promoted as the solution for combating “climate change.” Governments are currently incentivizing the production of electric vehicles, while punishing the fossil fuel industry. However, lithium mining for electric vehicles is incredibly destructive to the environment, and is about as far from “green” as one could imagine. Not to mention, most of the lithium-ion batteries produced today come from China and require water-intensive mining operations that ravage natural environments throughout Australia, Argentina and Chile. The process depletes ground water, and leaves behind toxic wastewater that contaminates fields and harms wildlife. The mining process is not carbon dioxide free, either. The mining process releases 15,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions for every ton of lithium that is extracted.
There are serious environmental risks to extracting lithium for the production of lithium-ion batteries
When lithium is extracted from salt mines, the miners must drill into the salt flats and pump out a salty, mineral-rich brine. The brine is placed in large pools, so the water can evaporate out. When the brine evaporates, it leaves behind a sludge of potassium, manganese, borax and lithium salts that must be filtered out further. The process pollutes nearby aquifers and lowers the water table, interfering with water sources in the local environment.
The lithium extraction process takes several months, displaces valuable water resources, and leaves behind a toxic trail of wastewater in the local environment. It takes approximately 500,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of lithium. When mining companies head into countries like Chile, they use up a majority of the region’s water, unjustly affecting small communities.
According to the Institute of Energy Research, Chile’s Salar de Atacama is one of the driest places on Earth, yet the mining companies are allowed to use up 65% of the region’s water. After the brine is removed from the salt flats, the water table automatically falls, disrupting the natural flow of water that is needed for wells and agriculture. These large-scale disruptions can always be blamed on “climate change” as the lithium mining industry plunges ahead, with no regard for the environmental damage wrought in its wake.
Water quality, wildlife populations, and crops all adversely affected by lithium mining
The toxic chemicals that are used to extract the brine are ultimately discarded into the local environment, where they contaminate streams, crops, wildlife and local ecosystems. The toxic chemicals, which include hydrochloric acid, leak from the evaporation pools and pollute the nearby water supply. Additionally, the large open pit mines displace arsenic into the nearby streams and rivers, where it will eventually deposit into agricultural land and be taken up by the crops. This downstream pollution is dangerous to wildlife, too. For example, in May of 2016, the Liqi River was polluted by the Gangizhou Rongda Lithium mine. The river turned up with dead fish, yak and cows.
The lithium mining operation in Salar de Atacama displaces more than 1,700 liters of lithium-rich brine every second of operation. This causes the lakes to shrink, killing off local flamingo populations that depend on the basin to eat and breed. In Argentina, lithium mining caused noticeable contamination of nearby streams that were used to feed livestock and irrigate crops. The residents of Salar de Hombre Muerto noticed that the groundwater flow had changed, causing water resources to disappear. They also noticed that that freshwater was contaminated with salty brine, destabilizing the local ecosystems and negatively affecting bird migration and llama populations — which the indigenous communities depend upon for economic survival.
“Like any mining process, it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells,” said Guillermo Gonzales, who spoke about the issues with lithium from the University of Chile back in 2009. “This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a solution at all.”
It is one of the great mysteries why the green movement in general is not actively campaigning against this.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’ll bet the steam plumes such as those shown here are not photographed with filters as rising dark masses like coal power plant steam or tailpipe emissions for propaganda positioning.
It’s not a photograph.
It’s not a photo of a lithium production operation? Then why is it used to illustrate an article about the environmental ravages of lithium production?
It’s an AI generated image of Lithium mining and environmental devastation.
I guess I accidentally lept over the uncanny valley.
Fixed. Everybody happy now?
Not entirely… if you choose a picture to illustrate your piece that may reasonably be considered to be ‘made up’, no matter how splendid your AI is, it reduces the impact of veracity of the rest of it.
it’s not like it’s the surface of planet Z in the Orion belt and there’s not plenty of actual photographs you might have used… even then, it would be credited as an artist’s impression.
Still, it’s your article… carry on!
You thought that was an actual photograph?
Yes, because it’s soooo easy in a limited amount of time to find COPYRIGHT CLEARED or public domain photo that illustrates one’s exact point. This is not a social media post. There are thousands out there looking to sue us.
I’m curious how you made that.
It’s that easy huh? A PHOTOGRAPH contradicts your climate zealotry, and you just say, “It’s not a photograph”. Whatever lets you sleep at night I guess.
I think you’re confused. I created the image, so I believe I have to authority to state it is not a photograph.
Your looking at the “artistic rendition” above the lede, not the photo in the Natural News article below.
You’re late to the party and have no idea of the subject of this conversation.
https://climatechangenews.com/2022/01/07/race-lithium-sparking-fears-water-shortages-northern-argentina/
https://images.app.goo.gl/MH3X1bVhduTMas6g8
Here’s what it really looks like, actually worse than the AI pic I think.
It is like Bird groups not protesting wind turbines.
Time for this one again:
A Flying Tiger!
Cool.
I am going to have to object … I don’t believe that you used a real photograph to depict your opinion 🙂
Otherwise known as bird and bat Cuisinarts.
Net zero is a very stupid idea and anyone who believes it should stop exhaling CO2, right now!
As to why no protests from the Green movement, that’s easy.
Because it’s not Green.
It’s all about making us accept their form of government.
They the local leaders all think that they will be the new Bose’s.
So go back to 1917 in Russia.
By the 1930 tees most of the original leaders were dead or in the Gulag.
That is the future of our ” Save the Planet” types.
Michael VK5ELL
The future of most of the ‘woke’ crowd. Most of them are mere delusional tools but their leaders are in for a BIG surprise if they succeed in overthrowing the current system.
In “Animal Farm, wasn’t the project used to keep the serfs in line building a windmill?
😥 Yes.
It boggles the mind! That’s the front end of the EV/lithium battery life cycle. I wonder what the tail (disposal) end looks like. Never mind the middle of the life cycle.
The tail end:
… why the green movement in general is not actively campaigning against this.
They all joined the CO2 Cult.
To save the planet *cough* *COUGH*.
You will find in their holy book at II Mindful 1:22 the following:
Do all you can to promote solar, wind, electric vehicles, and the like, for The Universe will remember this when you pass into the Great Mind and your reward will be great.
(or something like that…… I’m only quoting from memory and that from only a very brief glimpse over the shoulder of the furrow-browed, slightly uptight, bookstore patron I passed on my way to check out — the accompanying photo of then-Prince Charles (they put lots of slick photos in their holy book) made me wonder if it was the book about his mother that I was interested in buying — ha! far from it!)
Invoking royalty is never a good idea. Royalty gets constant attention and all of their whims instantly fulfilled.
Reality is not a royalty strength.
It does remind me of long ago youth.
Back then, Dungeons & Dragons were popular games. Before commercial D&D dungeons were available, people dreamed up their own dungeons, occupants and dangers.
One of the best that I played was my brother’s dungeon.
A lot of people, somehow believe that cursing shows them as something more than they are; cool, street smart, macho, virile, anything but the intolerant weaklings they really are. A practice that is worse today,
My brother invested his dungeon with gods and demigods based upon our family members.
Curse, and he’d roll his dice to see if you would get a response. If yes, he’d roll to see which family member god/demigod would respond.
Getting a friendly cooperative sane family member as the answering god was almost impossible.
Getting an arrogant willful capricious irritating egocentric family member in response to general curses was almost guaranteed.
Cursing during play evaporated quickly with our family and friends.
Invoking royalty is just a type of cursing, certain to unpredictably disrupt whatever you are trying to accomplish. Calling Queen Elizabeth II would be wonderful, though she knew better than to respond. It is much more likely that ‘not bonny’ King Charles would be the one to respond.
Theo.
It was just a joke….
I used Charles in my little story because he could plausibly be one of the “saints” a CO2 Cult holy book would include an illumination of….. and I had to have a plausible reason for my attention being drawn to the cult member’s holy book ……. I certainly wouldn’t be reading their stupid book just to read it.
Theo, Royalty hasn’t had its whims granted since about 1650 in the UK. Do try and keep up
Ermm, what about royalty scrutinising proposed laws to see if they impacted on their own revenues. That little gem slipped out a few years ago
Oh, once fossil fuels, and then biofuels are shut down, the Greens will be all concerned about rare earth metal mining.
And once the WEF tyrant wannabes succeed in their efforts, all green concerns will be forgotten.
Hydrocarbons will not be banned, just reserved for the rulers and their armies.
I thought the armies were going all electric.
Only the losing armies.
Won’t be much of a concern given that if fossil fuels are shut down, there won’t be any machinery available to do the mining.
I did some fact checking when this first posted at Paul’s. The article is overwrought, and a lot of it’s ‘facts’ aren’t. Plus, it ignores the alternative significant lithium source, hard rock spodumene. Plus the minor one (shown in the illustration), lithium enriched clays.
The real lithium issues are:
Thanks for boiling it down.
The alarmists have set themselves an impossible task.
I see the ENSO meter has made a little move.
Three replies.
I was hoping maybe that would mean Oklahoma can get some rain.
We do ourselves no favors when posting stuff that favors us but isn’t basically true even if directionally correct.
Hiding facts and data is what the alarmists do.
Well said, Rud, it’s important we stick to facts and data
Thank God there is blowback on this ugly hit on the mining industry. Always pilloried, at least in Anglo countries and around the world courtesy of Anglo-invented and financed NGOs. I’m one of the brave people of the extractive sector who suffer, bad weather, danger, thanklessness providing essential minerals without which we would perish in misery. Or learn how to be a Hotentot.
I once faced protesters coming out of a mining show in Vancouver, BC who had arrived on expensive bicycles FFS.
We named the steps in human progress the Stone Age, Neolithic Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age FFS. It’s what kept homo sapiens viable. Anyway, I wrote my reply last night below.
Well said Rud, pretty sure the tianqi lithium mine/refinery here in WA would not be able to operate outside mining environmental laws/regs. Alcoa jumps thru hoops just mining/refining bauxite.
Concerning point 3 …. would you recommend consulting a civil litigation lawyer before purchasing an EV?
Rud, you are correct to call a foul on this one, as it is “overwrought”. As a geologist who has worked on and around the Salar de Hombre Muerto, in northern Argentina, I can assure everyone that no nearby streams were polluted, because the Salar is an enclosed salt flat, water ends up there and there is no exit. Locals around the Salar de Hombre Muerto? No more than a few, and they stay the hell off the Salar as it is a stinky mess.
I don’t know the reality of this as many things are very over hyped but it could make a rather large shift in use of electric vehicles.
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/13/smaller-faster-charging-batteries-from-penn-state-will-turbocharge-ev-revolution/
I saw that somewhere else, it’s garbage.
They’re claiming a 3 minute recharge time because they use an extra (Nickel) electrode that ‘manages the temperature’ of the cell while its charging.
=Bafflegab even before we ask where all the Nickel is coming from
They then go on to claim ‘longer vehicle range’ and thus able to use small (50kWh) batteries AND longer life.
(where I saw the story, Cleantechnica has completely different figures)
Cleantech quote:”Here we combine a material agnostic approach based on asymmetric temperature modulation with a thermally stable dual salt electrolyte to achieve charging of a 265 Wh kg battery to 75% (or 70%) state of charge in 12 (or 11) minutes for more than 900 (or 2,000) cycles.
I think I detect another Retro-Encabulator there.
Then, let’s all calculate the power flow of charging a 50kWh battery in 3 minutes – I get a number of circa 1 MegaWatt.
Are you gonna connect a circuit carrying that many Amps and Volts – in the wind, rain and dark?
Even if you were a Hercules Superman and could manhandle the cable itself?
Are these people dumb, stupid, crazy or insane?
Or all those things
Rud: “And fast ‘supercharging’ kills battery life; doing it often voids the Tesla battery warranty (always read the fine print).”
–
–
Hmmm… so Tesla sells you the car, then sells you a ‘supercharger’ or puts them in high demand areas and charges a premium for the electricity. But you shouldn’t use the rapid chargers. If you do, Tesla is off the hook for battery replacement.
No wonder Musk is so stinkin’ rich.
I read somewhere (I wish I could find it) that Tesla monitors your charges so they slow them down after the first few fast charges so you don’t destroy your battery.
Therefore, it wouldn’t make sense for emergency vehicles or transit buses to have lithium batteries
Very well said Rud. Facts should be what defines we rational sceptics. Without them we’re just another deluded group or worse a cult.
I’ve seen a huge open pit mine for other materials. I’ve read about the damage caused therein.
Query: Emotion aside need lithium mining be any more damaging than any other material?
it is no ‘mystery’…
“It is one of the great mysteries why the green movement in general is not actively campaigning against this.”
Actually not – Greens have never been about the environment; Only about left wing politics, which the green movement is a convenient “Trojan Horse” for.
Single/central/monopolistic solutions with and without borders.
I’m sure there are methods of extracting the lithium that are not this polluting. We have multiple facilities in Michigan which extract products from deep brine and salt formations without scarring the landscape or polluting the lakes.
They probably make the raw materials cost too high for a break-even number of units sold — even with OPM heavily subsidizing the costs of production.
I wonder what quandaries they are in over the potential to use geothermal fracked wells to produce lithium in Cornwall. It all seems to have gone rather quiet.
Another good reminder of the upstream and downstream consequences of anything we do. As the population of Earth approaches 8 Billion we need to reflect that the technology supporting that many human lives is dependent on fossil fuels. Removing fossil fuels from the economy by 2035 or whenever the Greens set their goal will result in the death of billions, who will go disregarded by them as they congratulate themselves.(Unless the Greens are actually the philosophical heirs of the Club of Rome, but we don’t need to go down that conspiratorial rabbit hole.) Battery power is nice as it reduces local pollution. But it pollutes mightily in all the upstream processes that bring those batteries into existence. It is worth it from time to time to revisit Leonard E. Read’s excellent essay, “I, Pencil.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3W2v7LN-88
There are plenty of energy technologies we could be using to reduce fossil fuel use (not eliminate, but reduce) that do not require exotic/rare materials. But we can’t use them because they are politically unattractive. However, technologically, we have made them safer, cheaper to build (assuming the ‘anti’ forces don’t create costly delays that serve no purpose other than to make it cost more), and we know they work.
What are they?
Nuclear, of course.
Lithium is a brine deposit and is mined from the same brine ore as borax. Lithium’s ratio to boron in the deposits worldwide is roughly 1:25. It takes >25,000 lbs. of brine to extract 25 pounds of lithium. US Borax (Rio Tinto) in Boron California is mining lithium from the ninety years’ worth of tailings at their mine.
I wouldn’t over-buy the environmental disaster schtick in brine mines, but it obviously takes a lot of water to create the brines needed to extract the quantities needed to fulfill the fever swamp fantasies of the EV fanatics. I have a simple solution; mine seawater. At 28.9 mol per kg it will take a lot of seawater, but you can theoretically get it anywhere there is seawater. It just costs money. Money is no object when it comes to EVs and the environment so require the lithium to be directly extracted from seawater.
Nothing that the Greens concern.
Maybe they aren’t backing down because that is all they have! Or all that matters is they sell the EVs. What ever the reason they are not working in the interests of society.
First, they decide what things to promote. Once they have decided on Lithium, they invest in Lithium operations and campaign ferociously in favour of Lithium and against all competition (eg. fossil fuels). At some point, they take their profit and decide on new things to promote, and at this point they will polish their environmental halos by campaigning ferociously against Lithium.
No, no, the greens would never do something like that, would they? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7287659/Former-Greens-leader-Bob-Browns-opposition-wind-farms-described-height-hypocrisy.html
Do not forget the huge amount of grid scale batteries needed to make renewables reliabie as reliable fossil fuel generation is phased out. The expensive competition between grid and EVs will be enormous. A lot of the EV juice will have to go through two sets of batteries.
How funny that the toxic chemical hating greens have now opted for a world run via chemical energy! Clearly environmentalism has lost its way.
David, use lead acid for storage. No don’t need to worry about weight for stationary installations. There is already 25 million tons a year available, especially if the Climate Clowns ban ICE transportation.
Environmentalists haven’t lost their way, the rest of us merely found out which way they were going.
WTB reports with Actual Data!
I can see where this process could be devastating to the environment, but has anyone actually measured anything- or is this another case of “Cows drink lots of water so Cows Bad”?
Once the Greens blob is finished with the planet, all that will be left is a MadMax waste land, enjoy your clean energy future kids, Bwahaha.
“It is one of the great mysteries why the green movement in general is not actively campaigning against this.”
Because it was always about destroying capitalism and liberty. Because the greens (and also most politicians) hate people with a hatred that you cannot imagine, and so they hate anything that makes people happy, such as meat and freedom. It was never about saving the environment, it was always about enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
All those problems are in South America or outback Australia. What has it got to do with the greens inhabiting affluent inner city suburbs?
Why do you need to use freshwater- there is lots of sea water.
They can’t make me feel bad with that photo of the glorious machinery in an open pit mine; some of us take great satisfaction in having obtained the expertise to contribute to such enterprises of man. Any one who has honestly studied earth sciences of any kind knows the insignificance of man’s surface-scratching (or drilling) of a 100 km thick crust.
This has nothing to do with ‘climate change’; that climate changes all by itself, and why, is free for anyone to learn. This has to do with societal change, and imposing control by a few and loss of freedom for the many it seems that younger people relish just for the lack of personal incentive it allows. They are hoodwinked and robbed of human spirit–the kind that leads to pride in having acquired the knowledge of how to run a mine–but will have to learn it by themselves.
‘…slowly and one at a time’.
Salute!
I am beginning to see too many posts here blaming some “star chamber”, back room cabal plotting to rule the world.
I honestly feel that most of the greenies and warmists are simply ignorant about how complex systems work. I forgive their ignorance.
No doubt that the gravy train of grants from both government and big foundations has helped the warmist movement for many years. But as long as we realists have the means to publish and vote, all is not lost.
Gums sends…
Just watch, everything “green” stands on FF as a base, always was, always will be.
Harm is done when authors like this embellish their writing with beliefs and present little to no real data.
There is a current trend to badmouth all mining. The silly articles that set out to do this often reflect that the authors know little about mining.
If they were writing about surgery on the human body it would read like “Surgery is immensely damaging to the human body. It creates bad-smelling gases and rivers of blood that find their way, laden with toxins harmful to others, into the wider environment.” And so on.
Modern mining involves a tiny footprint onto the earth surface and a small distance under. Mines are so rare that you can fly for hours without seeing one out of the aircraft window. At the end of their mining lives, typically 30 years or so, rehabilitation is so good that the effort is usually absorbed into the landscape in similar time. Sure, there are some exceptions, but these do not tell the wider story of excellence. It help to be old enough to see these proofs and educated enough to know what you see.
The miners I have known are ordinary family folk with the same wants and needs of society overall and devoid of wickedness that authors invent for them. Overall, they are rather more practical and intelligent as befits the responsibility they earn by doing excellent work to provide society with the goods it demands. Give them thanks, not ignorant vitriol. Geoff S
A) Fake delusional edited photos harm any point you are trying to make.
B) The second photo looks more like a mine operation, no pollution in evidence. A picture taken in any gravel pit in America looks the same.
C) Contradictions destroy any points you are allegedly trying to make:
e.g.,
a) Law governing mining lay down the rules mines must abide. If any part of this is true, that is government corruption in action, not the case for all mines!
b) It is standard practice to pump out brines for evaporation on a impenetrable ‘pad’. Whether synthetic or clay there is a liquid holding pad there.
Otherwise, the water will leach down into the water table with all of it’s toxic load and deny the lithium company dissolved lithium salts. Bad fiscal practice.
c) Deep salt flats and thick brines do not play well with aquifers by themselves! Mining the lithium removes toxic salts where undisturbed the salt flats will pollute the aquifer.
Modern salt, dissolved solids separation equipment are widely available. Table sugar, sodium bicarbonate and many other household compounds/chemicals are recovered in this manner. This practice recovers a much greater amount of dissolved solids with greater efficiency than plain evaporation.
e) I note that the ScienceDirect article you link to claims repeatedly that using bad lithium practices are the fault of colonialism…
Wrong! Bad mining practices are the result of government corruption and bad regulations. In this case, Chile is at fault!
The same thing occurs in Western Civilization!. Shopping malls, golf courses, hotel complexes, factories all seek well permits when they build. To them, it is much too expensive to use urban/suburban treated water.
Local residents immediately notice their wells going dry as the large consumer of potable water drains the water table much lower. Some residents have a well driller deepen their well, others are forced to tie into treated water supplies.
But, there is zero outrage Paul Homewood’s article that businesses drain groundwater globally. Only that Chile allows lithium miners to allegedly use all of the local water. Filtering all of the other doom fantasies in the article leaves the topic wanting.
Though the article makes a complete hash detailing facts with accuracy, so it hard to figure out which is a writer’s moral outrage artistic license versus provable facts.
I fixed it for you. Was never meant to mislead.
ATheoK,
Charles the Moderator usually chooses the images at the top of posts.
Charles is a keen and very competent photographer, as shown by some of his choices like the Death Valley photo on 2022October10. We have emailed each other now and then, privately, about his photography. My interest continues from a younger time when I earned a title of Judge by the Australian Photographic Society, including for international competitions.
In a recent email, I asked Charles about the images suddenly appearing above posts, a new type that went with some of the Francis Menton Manhattan Contrarian articles.
(Example: Home2022October7A Comprehensive Roundup of Official Energy Madness)
Their early theme was surrealistic, low key, near-greyscale creations around strange windmills, smoke, chimneys. There are very well done, an art form in themselves. They are created by Charles.
You are asking if they are appropriate for the theme of the written post below them. IMHO, yes, they are brilliant overall because they can evoke ‘confusion of the mind’, which is one of the major afflictions of people who are targets for typical WUWT sceptics.
If you try to make the connection between chosen image and following essay too close, you will find it hard to even use some media like cartoons. The aim is to draw attention, not to mislead. Charles has quickly and correctly denied intent to mislead.
Go for it, Charles, more please! Geoff S
You may not have seen the original Geoff. It probably looked too photorealistic.
Saw it, no probs. Geoff S
Maybe I misunderstood the article, but to me it highlighted green hypocrisy by using the exact same language and techniques that greens use against the things they don’t like, to describe something that the greens do like. Green hypocrisy is indeed boundless. One example, referenced twice in comments here, is green Bob Brown’s opposition to a wind farm. Bob Brown, Tasmania’s best known and worshipped green by a country mile, has for a long time supported renewable energy and in 2011 was instrumental in creating the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which saw taxpayers hand out more than $10 billion for green power projects. This unspeakable Nimby hypocrite is now opposing a wind farm. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7287659/Former-Greens-leader-Bob-Browns-opposition-wind-farms-described-height-hypocrisy.html