Child Labor and our electric cars

Us ownership despite the exteme rage by locals is more likely to be done in a more environmentally friendly way than some places I can name.

If we own the mine, we could also own the problems and solutions to them.

The trouble is holding ourselves accountable versus leaving it up to someone else to figure it out either later or far away.

unless we want horse and buggy there will always be mines and environmental issues.


The mine in question has been in planning since 2007 and the area has been surveyed for minerals various times since the 1930’s
so another red herring .

there are already portable golf cart sized (L16) deep cycle flow batteries already for sale, 100% passive, no active moving parts with a better energy density than FLA.

If they could get the cost down, availability up (and a more common size like t105)

I would buy a set since you can safely fully discharge the battery

 

To look like the oil patches of Texas and Oklahoma where I grew up: Today's Earthquakes in Oklahoma, United States

Oklahoma, United States has had: (M1.5 or greater)

• 2 earthquakes in the past 24 hours
• 9 earthquakes in the past 7 days
• 61 earthquakes in the past 30 days
• 1,031 earthquakes in the past 365 days

The largest earthquake in Oklahoma, United States:today:

• today: 1.9 in Okarche, Oklahoma, United States
• this week: 2.1 in Quinton, Oklahoma, United States
• this month: 4.3 in Trinidad, Colorado, United States
• this year: 4.3 in Trinidad, Colorado, United States

​

The opposition to EV mineral extraction are the oil and fossil fuel extracting companies.

Bob Wilson

 

That is the main long term problem with even formerly “safe” deep mining and even oil and water extraction.

Sometimes entire cities have to move due to a semi adjacent mines causing the ground to shift and settle.

Sinkholes in Florida are many times inter-related to excessive groundwater use.

Excessive oil use also makes the ground unstable leading potentially to larger earthquakes. (Especially when fracking is involved near a salt formation )

Evennthe safest mines (salt dome) can become big problems if done incorrectly or even done correctly years down the road if the dome becomes permeated with water.


Our past sins (and current) coming to roost.
The trouble here is that shipping risks to others where law is more lax is just exporting our problems to someone else.

This is why seawater extraction of many key minerals becomes more attractive even if more expensive, perfect that and there are 79 minerals in the sea (common and uncommon) at the ready .

If we were to learn from our mistakes…

But yeah maybe a bridge too far to expect us to develop safe ways of mining the oceans / seas for brine.


One has to wonder what we are missing with desalination, all processes on earth that take energy from the environment are reversible.
Dissolving salt uses heat energy, on a small scale salt can be recrystalized from solution using strong electromagnetic fields. One would hope the energy to dissolve would be similar to recrystalize and extract without the heavy lifting of of reverse osmosis or distillation which both attack the water not the salt. We must be missing something fundamental that we haven’t figured out a less energy intensive method of extraction.
Ah well pipe dreams.

 

Why don’t we read about sink holes anymore?

 

Sometimes I question my buying decissions. Maybe I should just not own anything that's of questionable reputation. Then again, that could mean a huge drop in level of comfort and convenience.

I don't think beasts of burden are the alternative. Most everyone I know has feet. I could, and often do, walk to work and to the store and to visit family and friends and to find my way to places of fun and recreation. I guess my feet and legs work pretty well still.

 

Yeah, no, not going to solve the puzzle

 

There are recent studies (circa 2022)

I guess they happen so often they have become unimpressive and not worth reporting on?

 

As someone living in a seismically active zone, I've had a difficult time understanding why non-seismologists would be at all concerned about quakes as small as those tiny Oklahoma (not Colorado) events. It seems the normal threshold for being felt by humans is typically about M2.5. Wind gusts, thunder, and trucks passing on the street cause greater home shaking. Minimal local home damage doesn't start until the M4s, in homes not built to any sort of codes.

If I'm extending this chart down to lower numbers correctly, an M1.5 quake has less energy than a pint of gasoline. (By the archaic Richter scale, it would be barely over a half-cup.) Or an 80,000 pound truck hitting a bridge abutment at just under 60mph. A full gallon of gasoline would be about M2.2. A refinery explosion is far more energetic.

Earth crust stresses built up, movement happens. Are the oil-country drilling-associated tiny quakes causing any meaningful problem? Or are they mostly lubricating early release of pent-up natural energy in small manageable amounts that would otherwise build up to something larger and potentially damaging to humans?

 

The fracking wells are adding pressure to the system.

 

But are they adding any slip?

Or just (or mostly) lubricating natural slip? Slip that is someday going to release with or without our actions.

 

Just looking at the record of earthquakes in Oklahoma, fracking and waste water wells appear to be adding slip.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Oklahoma
First reported earthquake by the US was in 1885. First recorded, with measurements, was in 1952. Then there was one in 1974, and another in 1997. In 2011, the activity picks up. There was a couple stretches of 1 to 3 years between quakes, but most years had multiple quakes.

The list is just of quakes of 4.5 or greater. All the smaller ones are releasing slip, but that slip was likely added by the shoving of tons of waste water and mud into the system. The annual median water used for fracking is 4 to 5 million gallons per well. That is a lot of mass being added. Water Used for Hydraulic Fracturing Varies Widely Across United States | U.S. Geological Survey

Trends and modeling is pointing to that added mass increasing the frequency of larger earthquakes. The supposition is that it is reactivating previously settled faults. Those faults would eventually be activated naturally, but that is in a time frame measured in decades, centuries, and longer, not in years and months.
Database of earthquakes triggered by human ac | EurekAlert!
Scientists Can Now Tell the Difference Between Natural and Man-Made Earthquakes | The Science Explorer

 

This is a year old and I don't recall if it has come up before. But the Salton Sea may be developed for lithium extraction:

https://bigthink.com/the-future/salton-sea-lithium/

 

Cobalt production is not without issues and in part goes into EVs. Lithium production is not without issues and in part goes into EVs. Comprehensive examinations of both would be good things.

FUD about either, motivated to damage a sensible EV transition would not be a good thing. SuperBob and I have both been here long enough to remember Sudbury nickel.

 

some things are less bad than others, that's about the best we can do.

fud is a serious problem that will never go away, too many wealthy and powerful people rely on it to maintain the status quo

 

Yep brine extraction, the right way to mine as in the case of the Salton you are extracting hydrothermal energy and redepositing the water back in a cleaner state than when it was first pumped up.

If this takes off a sea pipe or channel should be sent to the Salton to stop the dust pollution and to replenish the minerals used from the dying sea bed.

The Dead Sea is an example of what happens if you mine a natural body of water without an ocean pipe to replenish the minerals removed