Why are lithium prices collapsing?
internationalbanker.com
internationalbanker.com
Over 85% of lithium is produced by just 2 international corporations with large scale mines complying with multiple international regulation requirements.
That's a convenient way to dismiss ruthless exploitation of 3rd world populations, nations, and the natural environment.
And if you don't consider the police violence against the indigenous populations of Bolivia following their democratic elections then what are your qualifications exactly? "Lithium mining" is not the problem, of course, but the political interventions of Lithium interests has robbed millions of people of freedom.
This is a false choice really. It’s not lithium that’s causing this but the broken political system. I’m half Brazilian and just the other day I heard a mining dam break that led to a mass cancer in surrounding populations. This was Vale one of the largest companies in Brazil.
It doesn’t matter what’s being used, virtually everything that comes from developing countries causes gigantic crimes that are unimaginable to first world.
You’re selecting one specific product but it’s not logical to do so. They all cause this. And what’s the other option? Not buying products from developing countries?
Sure, international corporations violate human rights, but unless you provide proof these lithium corporations are, then we can just assume they aren't.
Minerals and Resources rules for exchange listing are pretty tight with respect filing third party independant reports that assess mineral volumes and estimates, economic feasibility, environmental impact, and human rights etc.
While it's possible that some things are covered up in these relatively modern capital projects (eg: like conditions mining copper in PNG in days of yore leaving substantial impacts today) it's unlikely due to modern communications and the known fact that everything gets out and doesn't remain hidden - more so today than back when PNG was literally and figuratively obscured by clouds.
Austrlia is keeping clean, and you can knock yourself out looking into
and report anything you find to the TSX.
Given the history of Canadian mining companies, I wouldn't trust any Canadian mining company listed on the TSX to give to shits about human rights.
Giving a shit about the environment, child exploitation, etc. by larger investment funds has increased in recent decades , there's been a rise in "ethical investment".
Ergo TSX companies care more when third party reports about bad practices are filed at the exchange.
Because it's absurd to think otherwise?
I mean, using OPs logic of "Because we all know international corporations never violate human rights?" you could say that about anything.
If you're a teacher you're probably a child molester because "Because we all know teachers never molest children, right?"
Apparently the law is “absurd”
Based on your comment, the legal presumptions of innocence is "absurd".
Codified systems are mutually exclusive with any amount of "agency". Agency is required for beliefs to exist.
Ipso facto blah blah blah you're just gonna keep believing some self-serving bullshit so whatever.
Sounds like you can't defend the point.
TBH you write like a bot trained on debatebro teenagers.
You don't even have to look overseas. PG&E has caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage due to wildfires caused by cost cutting; they don't want to do the maintenance they're legally required to do. Entire communities are left homeless and people are killed. And the company gets a tiny fine and the executives get bonuses.
It's actually amazing to me that corporations don't do it more often. It pays to be a piece of shit company.
When the big ones do they are very careful about it, so they can claim to be in a grey area. Tire companies know there is child labor, but they are buying from the parents, and they make sure outside of harvest those kids get a great education (when the kids grow up their either leave, or work the plantation as medical or management staff and not labor). You can still say they are in the wrong, but they have made a place where you can understand the grey
How is that meant to be re-assuring?
As far as I know Chevron hasn't yet paid the money it is due to pay to the Ecuador state for past environmental damages inflicted on the ecosystem there, I'm positive they were branding their work to their stakeholders back-home as respecting "international regulation requirements".
Really? Please cite which regs apply in North Korea.
I am an actual miner. We have State and national regulators who visit and have authority to stop work. I have neither seen nor heard of international regulators.
I don't believe this is inherently true. Theoretical designs exist that solve a lot of nuclear power's problems: this issue is that it got caught in a death spiral due to Chernobyl. That ended investment and R&D, so nuclear power plants didn't improve while other sources of energy did, so they got even less investment and R&D.
Nuclear (fission) power's unprofitability predates Chernobyl to the very first reactors and continuing up to this day. The Shippingport Atomic Power Station was the first commercial reactor to come online, and it was a small reactor, cost $78M to construct in 1958. Decommissioning and cleanup 30 years later cost about $100M. Considering the plant and the resulting mess were small, I really don't think it broke even, but I can't find any economic analysis that includes all the things.
A study in 2019 found that nuclear power has not been profitable anywhere in the world.[1] The study also found nuclear power has never been financially viable, that most plants have been built while heavily subsidised by governments, often motivated by military purposes, and that nuclear power is not a good approach to tackling climate change. It found, after reviewing trends in nuclear power plant construction since 1951, that the average 1,000MW nuclear power plant would incur an average economic loss of about $8B.
And R&D in fission is complete. We know pretty much all there is to know regarding it, and reducing cost simply is not viable through more investment in R&D. We've been working on this in earnest since the late 1940's, so it's no surprise we have figured everything out other than how to do it cheaply enough to achieve economic viability. There are some nuclear power applications where economic viability don't matter, such as nuclear subs and aircraft carriers, and I expect we won't stop building those, but commercial nuclear power just can't work because of the money, and nothing else is needed to say "no," and if it was economically viable, no other objections, such as environmental, would stop it.
[1] https://www.mr-sustainability.com/stories/2020/nuclear-power...
It would take a huge capital investment to get a program like this off the ground, so it's too risky for the market. The invisible hand's rejection is not the same as impossibility.
This is a bizarre comparison. The US invested about $1.5T total in developing nuclear power. Almost nothing was invested in developing PV. If only 1% of the money wasted on developing nuclear power had instead been invested in PV, nuclear power would have been dead by 1970. A recently passed bill earmarks $6B to keep nuclear plants open. Compare to recent DoE announcement to spend $82M on PV manufacturing. Even with this nearly two orders of magnitude imbalance of spending, PV is going to beat the pants off nuclear by making tons of money compared to nuclear power losing mind-boggling amounts of it.
R&D can not make nuclear energy cheaper. It is simply commercially unviable. If you can figure out a way to make it profitable, you can have all the nuclear energy you want, but a lot of smart and capable people spanning 4 generations have already tried and failed.
They also like to post a photo of an open pit gold mine in Australia and claim that it is a lithium mine while complaining about the massive environmental impact. they never respond when I post a link with proper attribution showing that it is not a lithium mine.
the problem is the brine. which is cleanable with a lot of energy.
If I search google for this string, your post is the only one that comes up. How did you arrive at this figure?
In the history of industry, when has it ever been a positive indication that only two players control the majority of the supply?
Do these companies directly own the mines or are there partnerships and subsidiaries involved? What countries are they operating in? How long is the supply chain from the mine to the product?
How are water rights being managed? Is there correct oversight? Are any governments trading long term environmental damage for short term profits? What happens when the mines are depleted?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Over+85%25+of+lithium+is+produced+...
It wouldn't surprise me if there are no sources that you respect.
Albermarle - a Aussie company does about 1/3 of the worlds lithium mining.
SQM - a company out of Chile.
China - does the rest.
Each is responsible for ~ 1/3 of the worlds lithium production. Although SQM is on the downfall due to the referendum recently. And China is on the rise as companies like BYD are trying to really take over much of the larger lithium battery market, especially with EV cars but even laptops etc.
Most of this came from my own research for investment reasons.
Albemarle Corporation is an American specialty chemicals manufacturing company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. It operates 3 divisions: lithium (68.4% of 2022 revenues), bromine specialties (19.3% of 2022 revenues) and catalysts (12.3% of 2022 revenues).
It holds significant part ownership of Australian located Lithium mines (and mines in Chile):
> Talison Minerals Pty Ltd was a mining company based in Australia. It was split into Talison Lithium (as of 2020 a 51:49 jv between Tianqi Lithium and Albemarle Corporation)
and:
> Tianqi Lithium Corp is a Chinese mining and manufacturing company based in Sichuan.
Ero: mining of concentrates is carried on Australian (and Chilean) soil and subject to Australian mining regulations (some of the highest in the world ATM) with the refinment of concentrates being carried in Malaysia (high standards), Australia (high standards), some in China (various standards).
The point being that mineral resource ownership and regulation is a complicated layered business and your inference is sketchy at best.
If you're interested in learning more you can either study more on your own or subscribe to a mineral intelligence database, eg:
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...
Some have more regulations than others.
Chile has been looking to socialize its mining ops. So the international interests in their sources has waned a bit.
China does it cheaper but with far less concern about safety, environmental friendliness etc.
Overall these companies account for the lions share of raw lithium materials in the world. But what specific percentage and who is buying from who are totally different topics. For example why would a company like BYD look outside of China for lithium for its batteries?
BYD is a big supplier of batteries for companies like Dell, Lenovo and others. And they make car batteries for EVs in China and SE Asia.
I added 2022 Revenue for the top three:
1. Albemarle Corporation - Australia (USD $7.32 Billion)
2. Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium - China ( USD $5.8 Billion )
3. Tianqi Lithium - China - ( USD $3.8 Billion )
4. Mineral Resources Limited - USA
5. Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. - Chile
6. Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group - China
7. Livent Corporation - USA
8. Lithium Americas Corp - USA
9. Pilbara Minerals - Australia
10. Allkem - Australia
11. Baconara Lithium - Mexico
12. Savannah Resources - UK
13. Piedmont Lithium Inc - USA
14. Grupo Mota - Portugal
We only know what people tell us or show us (unless you are fortunate to be able to boots on the ground investigation yourself). Companies and profitting parties in the lithium supply chain want us to believe that mining is ecologically sound and not abusing people. The first hand accounts and investigations of numerous investigators tell a different story in many areas of world.
If you read up on what lithium mining actually entails (in many areas it is not really mining per se)... you'll realize it is an ecological disaster. Big mining operations are big ecological disasters and small operations are small disasters. The same can be said for oil sands and other resource gathering endeavors, so I'm not trying to paint lithium mining as particularly bad. But it is not good.
The EV and battery industries are very interested in white-washing the lithium supply chain... but it is very, very dirty. I'm not an ecologist but from what I've read it appears to me that is much worse than fracking in many operations around the world.
If the Salton Sea, California, lithium mining operation really gets underway... we'll get a chance to see what "best practice" lithium recovery looks like, which will probably have much lower ecological damage per unit lithium. The Salton Sea area is already pretty messed up, anyhow.
is that taking co2 into account?
also doesn't fracking cause earth quakes?
the movement reflects the expected future supply and demand at the time.
The speculation is something that financial engineers use to offload the risks of such commodities from one party to another (such as from producers to consumers of said commodities).
You will also see margins themselves widen until the system falls in on itself.
We dont have a financial margin tracker.
Also increasing interest rates in a highly indebted economy increases inflation; short term by widening of margins and long term by offputting energy extraction.
Lithium will explode soonish.
Margins amplify volatility.
"demand and supply"
OPEC is a cartel constraining supply to increase prices, it's not a free market but an example of "demand and supply" in it's most brutal form. OPEC prices are not about "gambling".
They need to make continual bets on the health of transports, changes in energy mix etc in order to move or keep the price in a favorable band for them. Misstep and the price of oil falls, cutting into their profits or push it too high and face demand destruction and shale extraction coming online because it's profitable at those higher prices, increasing competition and stifling volumes simultaneously.
But the OP is confused about their comment about commodities in general. They are largely based on supply and demand, but most companies need to predict supply and demand months and years in advance because converting raw material into a sale to the end user is a multi month to multi year process, so a natural result is that the prices are based on speculation of supply and demand, months to years in advance.
There’s also an element of speculation on speculation driving short term trends.
But that practically means they are based on speculation about possible future supply and demand, and we are more or less taking it on faith that that speculation is correlated to actual supply and demand.
This statement almost seems tautological. Of course prices are based on speculation about possible supply and demand, nobody has a crystal ball that can tell them “actual” supply and demand.
In a competitive and liquid market, you expect prices to rapidly approach “optimal”, because otherwise there’s an opportunity there for someone make money out of the market inefficiency, buy correctly predicting when supply is high, and buying, then selling when supply is low. Which is exactly what future etc do, except without the need to actually move the physical commodity around.
Exactly, no one has such a crystal ball. And this actually generally applies not just to future supply and demand, but even to the past: it's actually impossible to measure supply and demand across any significant industry, to check whether prices matched it or not.
And yet, economists and economical theory enthusiasts talk about the "law of supply and demand" as if it's some scientific observation, and not just a simplistic model that seems intuitive.
> In a competitive and liquid market, you expect prices to rapidly approach “optimal”, because otherwise there’s an opportunity there for someone make money out of the market inefficiency
You might expect that if you believe in the law of supply and demand, but as we were discussing, that is not how prices are actually formed, and anyone betting based on observed supply and demand (to the extent that it is actually possible to observe them) will be beat in general by others who are betting based on current speculation, which is how prices are actually formed.
For example, if you are betting that gain prices will increase in the winter because that's what you think they did every year, and ignore some prominent pundit predicting that they will decrease this year, you may well lose the bet if everyone else believes the pundit. And that will be true regardless of whether grain will be in low supply or not.
Can you give a real life example of when a pundit giving a predict against the actual supply that had everyone buy-in? Says, oil price goes down even when demand is hot?
Also, this type of pundit influence is common with the price of stocks. It also happened with the price of natural gas in Europe last year, when it increased based on lack of confidence in reserves that turned out to be misplaced, and never really recovered.
In any case, as the investors buy the product they eventually have to sell it, meaning over the long run demand and supply are good measures of "actual" usage and production. You know this because there's never a bubble that doesn't collapse and return to equilibrium.
That's not necessarily true. It depends on the product and industry, but it's absolutely possible to horde products for long periods of time (see diamonds and gold) or to choose to destroy products rather than sell them at a price you don't like (see public transportation in many US cities in the 50s, or fancy food items).
But we do see prices approach optimal. Your argument is predicated on the idea that the law of supply and demand is only a useful model if the actual price always follows observed supply and demand. But for that to ever be true, it would require speculators to have a crystal ball, otherwise there’s no reason to believe the speculated price will always match the “optimal” when the point in time being speculated about actually occurs.
The law of supply and demand tells what market systems will trend towards. But like complex control system, having a governing idea about long term trends doesn’t mean momentary perturbations don’t occur, it just helps you understand what the system will do after the perturbation.
To claim that the law of supply and demand is useless, is like claiming that Hooks Law is useless for understanding how suspension systems in cars work, because perfect springs don’t exist, and cars don’t remain stationary.
Perfect markets don’t exist, perfect information doesn’t exist, so why would anyone expect real markets to perfectly follow the law supply and demand? And clearly markets do follow the law of supply demand at the macro level, when long periods of time are considered, otherwise commodity pricing would be entirely arbitrary and wouldn’t in anyway reflect the value of the commodity to society at large.
Where do you see that? What does it even mean, how can you objectively tell what is the optimal price for a good or service, so that you can later say that the market converged to it?
For example, is 1000$ the optimal price for an iPhone? Or is it simply the price Apple chose? If they sold it for 500$, would they make more or less money? How do you know?
> And clearly markets do follow the law of supply demand at the macro level, when long periods of time are considered, otherwise commodity pricing would be entirely arbitrary and wouldn’t in anyway reflect the value of the commodity to society at large.
I would argue that it often is, at least for many non-essential products. The price of many non-essential goods is much much higher than the price of essentials, even when those non-essential goods are cheap and easy to manufacture (say, softdrinks or many cosmetics). The price of most energy resources is largely controlled by non-market forces, even on the face of it.
Also, why restrict this discussion to commodities? If we switch to investments, the price of stocks is quite obviously arbitrary as well, with "market makers" often controlling the allowed prices (or at least, price volatility) for stock. The price of real-estate is often determined to a large extent by the price of borrowing, and that is quite explicitly set by banks and the central bank based on nothing related to supply and demand. Services are even more complex, with huge variations in price based on entirely subjective factors.
Because they’re generally pretty fungible, and have a larger number of sellers and buyers involved in the market, hence their markets are more likely to behave like an ideal market. The same does not apply to housing, or services.
> Where do you see that? What does it even mean, how can you objectively tell what is the optimal price for a good or service, so that you can later say that the market converged to it?
For commodities, I would point to the reasonable price stability that exists. As evidenced by the fact that basic goods don’t frequently suffer from repeated shortages or gluts of supply. Strongly indicating that the price is both high enough to incentivise production, and stable/low enough to allow for relatively low risk long term investment in production, because continuous long term demand is expected.
> For example, is 1000$ the optimal price for an iPhone? Or is it simply the price Apple chose? If they sold it for 500$, would they make more or less money? How do you know?
These is nothing about the iPhone market that suggests it’s anything close to an ideal market (for one Apple have a monopoly on iPhone sales), so I don’t know why you would expect it to behave like an ideal market.
> The price of real-estate is often determined to a large extent by the price of borrowing, and that is quite explicitly set by banks and the central bank based on nothing related to supply and demand. Services are even more complex, with huge variations in price based on entirely subjective factors.
What’s your point? Of course a law describing how ideal markets work doesn’t correctly describe markets well know for being extremely distorted and non-ideal. Next you’re going to tell me Newtons laws of motions are all useless because they can’t help you model the behaviour of objects travelling at relativistic speeds.
You seem to be struggling with the idea that a model doesn’t need to be perfect, or applicable to every real world scenario, to be useful. All models have their limits, that no surprise to anyone. That doesn’t make them useless, it just means you need to be aware of limitations, and adjust expectations appropriately.
However, there is copious cause/effect data showing that non-sobriety is expensive in terms of health- and societal repercussions.
> Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper.
Morality seems more of a subjective call, e.g. "Thou shalt marry heterosexually ahead of procreation", than a stochastic analysis, e.g. "X percent of fatal car crashes involve blood alcohol above Y concentration."
My argument is that we can declutter discussion by treating all "moral compass" arguments as orthogonal to an "ethical plane".
If our subjective judgements are treated as internal (booze==sin), and de-conflicted from the external, legal arguments, we'd be in better shape.
But too many are invested in the status quo to tidy up the model like that.
It’s entirely reasonable for law to take the moral stance that people should broadly pay for the benefits as participating in organised society, so to ensure the long term upkeep and maintenance of that organisation they derive benefits from.
At which point consumption taxes have nothing to any moral judgement about the consumption of various products, but simple calculus that the voluntary consuming those products increases the cost of running our society, and so you should pay a bit more for engaging in these activities.
But none of that is judgement on the morality of activity. I personally couldn’t give a shit what drugs you or anyone else consumes. But I don’t particularly like the idea of having pick up the bill later for an activity I didn’t participate in. So if you pay some extra taxes to cover to cost of additional healthcare, then feel free to consume whatever the hell you want.
The repeated grouping of morality/ethics into purely religion/judgement throughout this thread really bothers me. IMHO your argument is an argument of moral propriety of making people pay for others choices. You’re semantically choosing to not call it that is all.
But my point is there’s a difference between moral basis for having laws and taxes, and their specific implementation. Consumption taxes are just one approach for implementing a social system build on the basis “fair contribution/usage”, or whatever we want to call it (my views on “moral” behaviour are too nuanced and confused to fit into an internet comment, so let’s just work with something simple). But the taxes themselves aren’t a direct expression of moral judgment themselves, but rather an implementation detail of a broader governing moral system that provides legitimacy to laws and the states rights to enforce them.
It might be a distinction without a difference. But if someone is going to call out consumption taxes as somehow more inherently driven by moral judgments than any other part of a system of law, then I think making the distinction is reasonable.
Unless you lock in all commodity costs, how is long term planning even possible without speculation? If you plan to open a distribution center somewhere, the optimal location depends on e.g. fuel costs. You can’t do anything but speculate about the costs of those commodities. So I don’t even see the need to track down sources. Do you not see that you just need to guess at the (future) cost of certain things?
You are just making a bunch of claims with no support but “people I trust say so so the claims are true”. Now I really will bow out.
Of course it is "speculating" trying to estimate fuel prices, but this is not meant, when people condemn "gambling" on the stock market. What they mean is people with lots money investing wherever short term profits are possible and often gaming the market while doing so. So creating unexpected price changes for the actual industries needing those supplies and they obviously don't like that. But I couldn't draw a clear line between "necessary gambling" and "unnecessary gambling".
Followed by
> But I couldn't draw a clear line between "necessary gambling" and "unnecessary gambling".
What? you literally just drew a very crisp line.
Basically, I couldn't define this clear line in a law. And I am not sure, anyone can.
The existence of the futures market does not prevent a copper provider from entering into an exclusive sales contract to sell 12 months from now to a specific consumer. However, unless they match the current 12 month contract price, one of them is taking a bad deal with what they can get on a much more liquid market. Additionally, their counter party risk is now much more significant because they are tied to one other party.
Maybe you could actually offer something specific about how “the speculation market is more of a hindrance than a help”?
So far whenever I see this, it’s people who don’t like that the price changes on them but their solution is to remove participants from the market to a point where it is so illiquid the lack of trading looks like the price isn’t moving.
Let me try to answer this though: one example out of many is how Kodak speculated that the transition to digital cameras would lead them to lose profit over the long run, so they chose not to pursue the route. This was a long term plan that lead them to bankruptcy. (of course, they changed course once they realized that digital cameras were competitive options, but the original long term goal was to continue the film camera route, shown by their unwillingness to even try to produce digital cameras as an possible option)
You can also do "bad" things on first order by hoarding the items themselves.
More narrowly, the ability to forward sell or buy things allows financing of production but in turn it needs people willing to take the other side. Derivatives money is a thing.
You need to manufacture a widget and it must cost no more than $5. You have a few inputs to your widget, some made with steel and some with plastic. If steel and plastic prices increase, your inputs cost more than $5 and you’re making a loss on every widget you sell.
So you go to the futures market and take a bet that the input prices will increase. If you’re right, you win $, which makes your widget manufacturing profitable and you’re still in business. If prices fall you lose the bet, your profits are lower. But hey, at least you’re still in business.
A responsible, well run manufacturing business benefits from the existence of such a market because it allows them to de-risk.
What’s the person on the other side of the trade up to?
This debate reminds me of the lead up to the Onion Futures Act, where moral outrage over speculation led to a ban and subsequent lack of insurance (and higher price volatility) for onion farmers. To the point that the son of the farmer who first lobbied for the ban returned to Congress to ask for its repeal.
The same thing: hedging/insuring against price changes. The supplier (ultimately, a farmer, steel mill, gold miner, electricity generator, etc) is getting a guaranteed price for the commodity they're selling, reducing risk.
Again, these aren’t theoretical considerations, we’ve always had naïve Puritanical elements seeking to ban speculation, and in some assets and jurisdictions they have succeeded. Reducing market participation has never worked.
This isn't remotely how manufacturing works. Manufacturers are focused on making the widget, for them the most important thing is that material is available, not a paper contract.
Essentially you are saying 100% of bad things are bad. Which is true, but also meaningless statement. Since it would still be true in a utopia with no bad things.
"nah brah it's just rational actors rationally acting with rationality"
Supply and demand is a thing the same way the convention of shaking hands upon meeting is a thing.
If supply and demand is just a convention, they what are the alternatives?
I guess I’m ignorant, but central planning is the only one I can think of.
Look at the futures market. Speculators are a big part of the liquidity of the futures market.
Price of wheat is $60/bushel. Farmer won't harvest for another 6 months and is worried prices will drop. They can secure a future and lock in the price now.
Wheat purchasers aren't on the other side of that trade, because why would they lock in a higher price? A lower price benefits them.
Speculators come in and bet on the price of wheat, creating a deep pool of futures that can be bought and sold.
Neither are great, but one is definitely preferred.
You can paint it as a bad thing but there are useful things that come out of this.
If someone wants to 'gamble' that grain prices will be higher in the future, they can buy futures. Where do these futures come from? Farmers today who want a fixed price for their future harvest.
And what about the 'gamblers' who bet that the demand for lithium is going to increase, and therefore invest in building a lithium mine?
When that doesn't hold true you will end up with Failure To Deliver (FTD) which causes Very Bad Things™.
Generally speaking though commodities markets aren't rigged in the way that people complain about in some other markets but they are subject to pretty violent volatility in the face of uncertainty.
This is largely due to pretty fixed supply with highly variable demand. i.e I can't just shut off all the oil wells right now and return ships currently on-route to energy exchanges and even if I could I wouldn't have the storage. Storage is also an interesting one because storage costs money and was pretty much why oil contracts went negative for a short period.
Predatory gambling where the participant can only win good feelings and lose money, is the immoral, addictive nightmare nobody wants. When talking about regular joes anyway. Be honest enough to sell good feelings straight.
I can't comment on the select finance bros who have manipulated the rules towards a specified outcome. Not really casting lots anymore at that point.
If it gets too corrupt all bets will be off, and that will hurt everyone who needs short term liquidity and to take speculative moon shots.
Of course. The net present value of a stock or asset can only be calculated based on its expected future price and earnings. Since there's no way to know this with 100% certainty, stock prices are inherently speculative. Even value investors must struggle to accurately value a company's intangible assets.
When people say that a commodity's price is being driven by speculation and gambling, they mean that it has shifted from the former to the latter. This means that the price is disconnected from the actual, physical use of the commodity, and is instead being driven by the inconstant passions of the commodities market itself.
These are indistinguishable. Unless you want to restrict markets to being only between suppliers and consumers, there will always be middlemen attempting to predict the price, and since they need to eat, they will be attempting to profit from changes in price.
Which is fine because suppliers and consumers are many times willing to let others handle the risks of price changes (volatility), hence the market for futures.
What information asymmetry? The previous comments referred to speculators betting on price movements.
Deliberately creating fraudulent information asymmetry would be altering data in industry reports and publishing false manufacture/consumption data. Which, I assume, is illegal.
1. https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2...
It feels like you're trying to say, "this market would work fine if it weren't for those meddling bad actors" as a response to "the problem is the bad actors".
That is what I would like to do, yes.
What you’re suggesting means a farmer selling wheat futures for delivery a year from now needs to be at the market at the same time a bread maker is looking to buy wheat a year from now. That basically doesn’t happen because the bread maker doesn’t need that level of forward looking price stability.
The market thought that China was going to need a lot of lithium for EVs, so the price went up which incentivized higher production and lower use. That's a good thing because it made it more likely that China would meet their demand. Now the market has better information that China is going to need less lithium than previously thought so the price drops which makes it viable for previously marginal users.
All of the speculation is entirely based on how the news might impact the physical product.
Oil prices went negative precisely because storage was full and people didn’t want the obligation to take delivery of the oil when nobody was using it.
Speculation and gambling about what future prices will be are not the big issues here, the markets themselves are completely broken (by design).
Empirically, no. Large blocks of stock don’t have a liquid market. Forcing them into the open means chopping it into tiny pieces while using derivatives to hedge, for the sophisticated, and getting hosed, for the unsophisticated.
In fact, many have the opposite effect and result in more efficient price discovery. Take naked shorting for example. Without shorting, it would be far more difficult for an equity research firm to be incentivized to look into fraudulent stocks, as was widespread with Chinese companies a few years ago. Without their efforts, stock prices would have remained inflated for longer.
Many markets (e.g. Australia and Switzerland) do this. We have the comparative data to show it doesn’t do anything good while increasing volatility.
You listed a bunch of financial buzz words and didn't disprove OP.
Please show how naked shorting incentivized good due diligence.
You could have just pointed to the massive new supply that was announced, it's the logical reason why the price dropped.
Geopolitics are the primary mover of markets currently.
Naked shorting skips it all. Some market makers are privileged and can sell stock they don't own and didn't borrow. So they have a privilege of printing stocks in the short term, and that's quite broken, and many of them abused this position to manipulate markets. Normal participants in the market can't naked short.
Naked shorting means that the market maker who supposedly sold you a stock, can now fail to find the stock he sold you, leading to "fail to deliver".
The excuse given is that naked shorting allows for more liquidity, but given the other problems, I think it's bad.
I assume you have a counterpoint to the decades of data the NYSE, SEC, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and others around the world have collected that show naked shorting improves liquidity without FTDs negatively impacting price discovery while tamping volatility, evidence made particularly robust by the fact that naked shorting is permanently banned, and has been temporarily banned, in many markets, such as Australia, Switzerland and, for some stocks post crisis, in the United States? (See Wikipedia for a summary.) The whole affair reminds me of the lead up to the Onion Futures Act [1].
No one designed this system. It grew, organically. People started recognizing parts of it they could take advantage of, and pushing to have those parts become more prominent, largely individually (as opposed to in one grand conspiracy of collusion).
It may be true that some of those people believe it is in their best interests that the markets be "broken", and so have pushed that far intentionally, but there is no one overriding will and no single hand on the rudder to even be able to do that on purpose. It's all just greedy people trying to get their own interests put before everyone else's.
How do you spell "insider trading?"
For example, if you figure out a cheaper alternative to lithium, and want to bet that lithium prices will fall as a result of reduced demand, then those are your spoils for figuring that out.
Without that fiduciary responsibility, it's not insider trading, it's just trading. If you overhear someone with inside information talking about some inside knowledge, then trade based on that, you're in the clear (as long as you didn't collude with the leaker.)
We aren't rushing to make nuclear fusion because we have insufficient electricity... and you can't replace what the scientists know with another coal plant.
Global survelliance, inifinte database records and instant comms has really destroyed the potential to keep and develop real secrets. It's going to hurt (badly) in the long run.
So insider trading for as long as GCHQ/CIA/NSA refuses to rat people out....
> Where as car sales might be stagnating but electric car sales are taking a larger portion of total car sales ie electric car sales/lithium use is still increasing.
I'm quite surprised the article doesn't mention sodium batteries. Li-Ion batteries are notorious for thermal runaways, so CATL and Tesla already shifted to LiFePO batteries quite some time ago. I think everybody would be more than happy to ditch Lithium based batteries altogether.
Mass media is mostly crap at price-move stories. It’s less manipulation than false correlation. (The writers are incentivised to write, not to write a particular story.) There is a lot of thought that goes into lithium pricing. Current price moves are mostly speculation about supply, given near-term demand can be pretty precisely measured given battery production in operation and breaking ground. (Battery supply limits EV production, which itself outstrips demand, so volatility in consumer demand is tamped at the extraction layer.) Recent debate is about potential supply from brine in China.
That's what a zero interest rate policy buys you.
Note also the article refer explicit to EV in different paragraphs .
it's described in the article.
> with the expiry of a more than decade-long programme of subsidies for EV purchases.
> the expanding supply outlook for the metal is mainly what is pushing prices lower this year
> Supply is coming on stream faster than you can say ‘boo’. > first-ever lithium deposit to be discovered in Iran’s mountainous western province of Hamedan. At an estimated 8.5 million tonnes,
> China is also expanding its lithium-supply capacity from lepidolite, which, while considered the most abundant lithium-bearing mineral,
- journalists attribute price changes to whatever story they can find. Sort of like how every day there’s a story of why the Dow moved by a fraction of a percent.
- price moves are almost entirely supply and demand. Sure, speculation can change price in the near term, but considering the size of these commodity markets, you’d have to believe an absolutely enormous amount of capital is at play in speculation.
commodities with inelastic supply and inelastic demand are prone to very wide price swings.
inelastic supply means that increasing prices don't increase supply. in the case of lithium, it take time to bring new production capacity online, so supply is very inelastic in the short term.
inelastic demand means that increasing prices do not decrease demand. in the case of lithium, batteries are a very valuable product, and the raw cost of lithium is a small percentage of their total value, so increasing prices for lithium do very little to reduce demand.
the price movement here is totally predictable and exactly what you would expect based on standard economic formulas taking into account supply/demand elasticity. it is not speculation or gambling.
demand went up, supply lagged, the price spiked, supply increased, the price went back down.
electric car sales may still be growing but growing at a lower rate, and projected demand growth is probably decreasing relative to projected supply, so the price is falling.
Buyers and sellers could trade directly among themselves if they wished, and if the commodity markets were divorced from reality (either unable to deliver on futures contracts or having futures settled at different prices than their contracts stipulate) nobody would use them. Because speculators don’t take delivery, how they react to news and other events is only assisting in price discovery between the time a future is issued and settled, because at settlement time there is no immediate uncertainty regarding supply and demand in the spot market.
I think you might be making a common mistake in your comment of equating news for popular consumption with actual news that traders, buyers, and sellers care about (usually very quantitative and well guarded data with nuances that an article for public consumption will never account for). Articles for popular consumption are not moving markets very much, especially in commodities where public involvement is low (vs stocks) and consequently public sentiment has little effect.
[1] "But while demand for lithium has been subdued, many believe the expanding supply outlook for the metal is mainly what is pushing prices lower this year, with a wave of fresh supply expected to come online from facilities in China, Australia and Chile. Five analyst forecasts, including ones from Bank of America (BofA), JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley that were reviewed by Bloomberg in mid-January, for instance, anticipated production increases of between 22 percent and 42 percent in 2023 alone. “Supply is coming on stream faster than you can say ‘boo’. Demand remains strong, but prices have been unsustainable for some time now,” analyst Dylan Kelly of Ord Minnett recently told Mining.com."
Resources are not infinite, but that is not relevant. What is relevant is the (finite) amount and the rate at which they are used.
To go hyperbolic in the other direction, if there are a trillion accessible grams of something and humanity uses a kilogram a year, then we won't run out for a billion years.
But both your hyperbole and mine are pointless. The question can't be answered without the actual details. Your argument is just "resources aren't infinite so we shouldn't use any of them!" That's not a good argument.
Another thing people often seem to miss when comparing lithium for batteries to oil for combustion, is that lithium is not a fuel in a battery, it's a vessel. It doesn't get burned up. Whether we can recycle it efficiently enough is a big open question, but it's not gone the way fossil fuels are.
Technological advances in the 1970s in agriculture (incl. genetic engineering of more nutritious yellow rice, artificial fertilizer from petrol products, improved planting density) allowed us to increase food staple yields. These improvements have expanded world food yields to double the amount of population that can be sustained by the current number of farm operations.
Fracking and horizontal drilling have made US oil/gas drilling (not just pumping of existing wells) profitable again. The explosion of cheap oil in the 2010s (and the cratering of oil prices in Trump’s term) was created by this technology. Fracking isn’t as cheap as the cheapest pumping in the world (probably Saudi light oil), so assumptions must be made about prices and when this technology can add to the world supply. But re-pressurizing existing wells (which is what fracking is) had been tried for 50+ years and only around 2005+/- did the technology work to make it become profitable.
Both of these are examples of modern technology that has bent the supply curve by breaking the simple, fixed assumptions of some economists. And no, no one thinks the supply curve bends infinitely.
Then circa 2002 I got a job at an oil well services company, and learned a lot of complexities about oil drilling. A key insight is that not all oil is equally economic to extract, and therefore the amount of oil available to extract is only fixed for a given price and set of technologies. As prices go up, the amount of available oil goes up too; as technology invariably marches forward, the amount of available oil goes up.
This behaves nicely with the control system we call the free market. As oil gets used up, prices will go up, which will unlock more available oil acting as negative feedback. At the higher price, some oil users will find a different solution to their problem, while other oil users will grumble and pay up, acting as a second source of negative feedback. This process repeats as the available oil at the new price point is exhausted.
This same pattern exists for essentially all mined resources. We're not going to one day run out of cobalt or lithium or whatever. As mines that are economic at current prices shut down, its price will go up, and some users will find an alternative, while others will grumble and pay. The higher prices will enable mines that weren't viable at the lower prices.
Or is it really actually "dig deep enough and we find stuff" has almost always been true, making this distinction without a difference?
Just can't help thinking about lakes and acquifers drying up. Even in a more "renewable" scenario, at one point there is a bottom. I just wonder if we have a good feeling for where that is .
We don't sit around fretting about the limited supply of palladium or something, because there's never been as much of it that was easy to extract as we wanted. We do worry about lithium, because right now it's economic to extract it in very large quantities and we know that won't last forever. But my point is that we won't transition from the current abundance to "every last atom of mineable lithium has been extracted and if you want more you have to dig up a landfill and pull it out of discarded CR2032 batteries" overnight. When we've dug up all the lithium available at the current price, there will still be plenty more at a slightly higher price, and when that's used up, there will be more at a price slightly higher still, and so on. Yeah, there's a limit, but long before we hit the limit, the gradual price increases will have push society to find a way to go on without copious amounts of newly mined lithium.
So there probably always be oil remaining in the ground that costs too much energy to extract.
Lithium is opaque market. It’s opening up.
Contracts get fixed. Supply costs shoot up. Miners open more mines. Prices collapse. Bigger miners eat smaller miners. Rinse and repeat
The area is thought to hold around 54% of the world's lithium reserves."
Well, not any more maybe. A large lithium deposit has been dis-covered in Iran as the internationalbanker article notes. (Unusal hyphenation of discovered intentional: it was uncovered, made more widely known, rather than found for the first time ever.) Now that it's in demand, no doubt there are many more deposits of lithium waiting for the limelight.
Wikipedia continues: "By one estimate Argentina could displace Chile as the second largest lithium producer by 2027.[3] Similarly, there are estimates the posits [sic] Argentina producing 16% of the World's lithium by 2030, instead of 6% as in 2021.[3] Low royalty payments when compared to Chile are cited by The Economist as a particular advantage.[3]"
Also that lithium triangle is still a historic artefact of lithiums previous life as a really good lubricant and anti depressant. Given lithiums importance these days, more and more hard rock deposits will be found.
For the xth time in yth year There is no lithium shortage. Up until a decade ago we weren’t even looking for it. Now that there is money to be had we will find it.
[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2023/04/20/why-crashing-l...
Not a great article (from a minerals and resources perspective).
Two specific factors; recent mine expansion at sites that dig in the dirt and produce concentrates _and_ recent and near future expansion of processing locations that take concentrates and refine to ship usable lithium.
Eg: Minesite in Western Australia currently ships concentrates to Malaysia and will soon ship also Texas.
What's shipped out usually needs more processing. What's left behind is usually the big environmental headache with mining.
Generally digging hole -> concentrate (in this case (Lithium) the concentrate is Spodumene) is a largely mechanical process - crushing, grinding, screening, centrifuge, seperation, etc and what's left behind is overburden and not of interest tailings - this is "regular mining problems" and these are not huge in todays regulated environment, post mining rehab is required and ideally pre mine eco systems come back.
Refinement of concentrates, particulalry of Rare Earths is generally where nasty chemicals come into play which requires tight processing and strong oversight to keep "clean" .. acids at end of re-re-re-use need to be nuetralised and processing areas need strong under-pan barriers to prevent spills leaching down to groundwater, tailings dams need to be strong, monitored, and regularly dealt with.
These are all things which are "all right" in theory and good practice .. but do require strong oversight and an educated third party invested public keep a close eye on transparent operations.
Bad things can happen otherwise.
Nice to contextualise some of what that’s been talking about with recent events.
The latter is not necessary an indication of a less demand for batteries. There were a lot of progress recently in increase of the energy density in mass-produced batteries, and that may contributed to lessening of the demand.
What do you mean by “non new supplies” being found (or is that a typo)?
In the U.S. I think this would be quite illegal. I realize China is different, but it's still interesting to see this kind of thing out in the open as if it's normal. (The closest situation I can think of is when Intel was sued by AMD by offering discounts on CPUs to manufacturers that didn't use AMD products[1]. Intel settled with AMD for 1.25 billion dollars.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....
And in 23Q4 or 24Q1 CATL will sell its 500 Wh/kg batteries. Although I couldn't find much about the chemistry of the new cells, that may cut the Lithium demand in half. But not very fast, I guess.
(All dates/statements IIRC.)
That's already not true with current technology as EVs are gaining market shares rapidly, but also the new technology will be opening new usages, so it will opening new markets, further driving the demand.
But I also have no idea about its chemistry!
Let's assume the data is correct and only three countries produce 119 thousand tons of lithium per year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_lithium_p...
Let's assume "from the internet" estimate is at least somewhat correct, and the average EV battery contains 10kg of lithium (this is rounding up the more common 8kg estimate to make it easier to count).
The collapse in lithium prices could mean that the electric car market has been overvalued and that the actual production of electric cars is much lower than 12 million, because lithium batteries are not only used in cars.
Nothing, over time, prices will still begin to rise. Even though the technology and business of recycling lithium from used batteries will somehow develop.
And for sure, this decline will not affect the price of batteries in any way.
https://electrek.co/2021/06/04/scientists-have-cost-effectiv...
Someone can set up some extractors up in the great eastern garbage patch, and filter plastics ,microplastics, chemicals, etc, whilst extracting lithium.
Copper is another decarbonisation-related element that is predicted to have large shortfalls in supply compared to demand in the future.
https://periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.an.htm...
Lithium: 0.0017% Copper: 0.0068% Zinc: 0.0078%
Seawater: https://sciencenotes.org/abundance-of-elements-in-earths-oce...
Lithium: 0.18 mg/L
Eurasia based cartel had cornered the market on lithium vital for new energy. US based interests bent the ear of the Chilean government to break this monopoly by nationalizing these privately owned mines and rediverting the supply. Speculators got wrecked. Does anyone know if a Credit Suisse customer had dealings in Chile?
I've seen them stuck at $1-3/cell for what feels like two years
If new capacity comes online and it's not greeted by increased demand (unlikely) then prices could fall. Wouldn't hold my breath though, the targets China has for EVs is going to provide strong support for demand even if the rest of the world goes into recession.
Much of that should come online in 2025 - 28, if not canceled first.
Edit 2: there are several steps in the production chain beyond mining and initial refining. There is material production for anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, separators, and lithium; there is cell assembly, there is pack assembly, and there is production of electronics associated with cells and packs (charge controllers, pack management). Each of these has its own issues. It's not as "simple" as refining oil.
1. Chart 1: Lithium-Ion Battery Capacity Expected to Surge, FRB Dallas: https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/1011
2. https://battery-news.de/index.php/2022/01/21/battery-project...
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Zeihan Zeihan Zeihan Zeihan? Zeihan Zeihan.
Or does that simplistic answer only apply when prices go up.
1) Wok cooking, can’t use a round bottomed wok easily or create “wok hei”. Though you can also do it with a blowtorch: https://www.seriouseats.com/hei-now-youre-a-wok-star-a-fiery...
2) Causing childhood asthma. Gotta employ all those healthcare workers somehow…
Previous Serious Eats articles about it even cited the lack of performance from gas stoves and recommended modifying one with a Wok Mon, but even then the results weren't perfect.
Edit: For some reason I feel the need to clarify that this isn't a comment in support of, or against, gas stoves. I just like cooking and am aware of how hard it is to achieve quality wok hei at home.
Tabletop induction burners that use standard outlets are way more cost effective than induction ranges, too. That thing is $200, which didn’t even pay the electrician bill to put in the 240V 50A outlet and circuit for my range.
The Bosch one probably would have worked fine but for whatever reason it wasn't the look the spouse wanted.
Even though I was fully onboard I could see the specific pan thing annoying some dedicated gas people.
I’m back to gas and no longer have people boiling water so I can boil water.
Once you've tried induction, going back to gas feels absolutely primitive.
Induction is amazing for some things, but for some other things I prefer gas.
Given the choice, I'd have some kind of combination of gas and induction. Maybe half and half?
If I had a choice I wouldn’t use gas for a few reasons. Air quality, the amount of water that gets released and fire hazard. Seen too many buildings explode on tv lol.
Induction only works when the pan is on it by definition.
But they do not work well (or at all) when a pad is moved around a lot, or it has a rounded bottom like a Wok or Karahi. At least the ones ive used don't. You are also reliant on the designers to give enough heat levels to actually cook properly and to provide a generally usable device that is fit for purpose. None of these things are an issue with even the cheapest gas stoves.
Having a both would be perfect. Just one or two gas burners for frying would be fine.
Most of the world does that.
Of course, what actually serious chefs find is that once the subsidy for gas is removed (by removing legislation requiring utilities and buildings to provide piped natural gas), not only are induction stoves much more effective, cook faster, etc., they also keep their kitchens incredibly cool and make them much better work environments than having a bunch of gas burners around.
For the restaurants that need woks they can use a gas stove and have a gas cylinder shipped in every morning.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10473289.1992.10...
Edit: why am I being downvoted? Is it not a legitimate question to ask why not go all the way with converting to electric when appliances exist for all three use cases? Do my farts stink too bad?
Stoves don't matter in the big picture here, they are secondary to whatever people are already doing for heat.
Also this isn't about replacing a working stove in an existing building it's about substituting electric versions for gas versions if there are no gas lines, so I think you missed the entire context of the thread.
The fact that NY’s decision to ban gas hookups in new buildings is being framed as banning gas stoves is in itself the result of gas industry propaganda. In fact, Gas stoves are the one thing that can easily be continued because people can use gas cylinders.
Huge win for whom?
> but the gas industry spends heavily on propaganda to convince people otherwise:
Propaganda goes both ways.
I'm guessing you have some other view from your comment, please explain.
Us. We can make electricity from lots of things and turns out in about 10 years a lot of it will be made from renewables in most countries, and the trend is only going one way.
There's a reason there is a push to electrify everything.
Most people would understand those two phrases to mean the same thing.
Is there any other kind of propaganda?
Ever heard of "the status quo"?
If my stuff is dominant, I either say nothing or make it so that any other proposal looks like it's new and risky or crazy. You know, FUD.
Propaganda has a lifecycle. Not every kind of propaganda is the same or as obvious.
And you're falling for the fossil fuel one, good job!
Yeah, it's weird, right? Why _are_ people so invested in burning natgas and coal and other hydrocarbons for large-scale power generation when a plethora of proven near-zero-emissions alternatives exist?
From a climate-change perspective, banning natgas cookstoves is a few pennies saved on like a thousand dollar expenditure. It's similar to the performative "charging for plastic takeaway bags" and "not bringing out table water" nonsense that California likes to do from time to time... it's way easier than making a real dent in the underlying problem, it inconveniences a ton of people (so they know you're doing something), and because "something" has been done, enough of those people don't bother finding out about and loudly and continually agitating for making a real dent in the underlying problem.
One way or the other, it needs to go away. It's not performative, it's necessary for achieving long-term emissions goals, and it's low-hanging fruit.
Sure, agreed.
> It's not performative...
Right now it very much is because, as you say:
> ...it's low-hanging fruit.
As I said:
> ...banning natgas cookstoves is a few pennies saved on like a thousand dollar expenditure.
and
> [Low-impact, high-visibility stuff like that is done because] it's way easier than making a real dent in the underlying problem
If you'll pardon the mixed metaphors: When it comes to environmental stuff, a lot of the time, the low-hanging fruit isn't worth picking because the high-hanging fruit is the thing that's the immediate wildfire hazard.
Your argument basically boils down to “I’m in debt and need to start spending thousands of dollars less. Cutting out this completely unnecessary expenditure will only save me a few dollars so I shouldn’t cut out this completely unnecessary expense because it won’t save me all the thousands I need to save”.
Sure it's good you have less debt but while you were resolving the small loan you were racking up massive interest on the big one
Precluding new residential infrastructure is high-hanging fruit. It precludes leaky infrastructure.
It is still good to fix if it contributes to a significant amount of warming, but it isn't cumulative like CO2: it eventually degrades in the atmosphere.
...into CO2
In theory they are supposed to be reusable but in practice I think they are going to wind up being single-use for most people. Maybe we'll start using them as garbage bags as they accumulate around the house.
That's the part I struggle with.
Also, if you order groceries for delivery, they bring your order in reusable bags. Which you then keep.
My point is these re-usable bags have a tendency to accumulate over time. Maybe not at the same rate as plastic bags would otherwise, but once you have dozens of these bags at home it starts to be tempting to just use them as bin liners and toss them, just like we did with plastic bags
Which sort of defeats the whole purpose, right? The ideal is people would buy as many as they need and use them for years.
But that isn't going to happen any time soon imo. If ever.
My biggest problem is feeling awkward when I take a bag from store X into store Y.
(When paper bags aren't available. I've always preferred paper.)
Product packaging probably generates 1-2 orders of magnitude more waste than the bags holding the product.
And banning natural gas piped infrastructure is an easy win.
1. No one is banning natural gas stoves. You can still use a natural gas stove. You just need to bring your own cylinder like most of the world and half the food YouTubers already do.
2. Natural gas stoves have significant indoor pollution impact. It’s a huge benefit even outside the climate change side.
3. Natural gas infrastructure is expensive, dangerous and unnecessary. Cities will benefit from the removal of all those pipes from under their streets even if climate change wasn’t a thing.
Banning gas hookups is such an obvious win (again, for those who want, gas stoves are still available with a cylinder), it’s remarkable to see the level of status quo bias that exists.
EDIT: would probably be a political nightmare to implement though…
It’s been used and operated safely for hundreds of years in cities on the East Coast. The idea that it’s dangerous is simply FUD to scare people into spending $1000 on a future piece of e-waste to cook their food.
Although the right to repair movement seems to be making some headway recently, so maybe all is not lost. Touch screens (with no alternative), and subscription service shoehorns need the same treatment, ban them.
But, coil-based electric tops are an embarassment for anyone that sells them, installs them, and "uses" them.
I expect natural gas for heating will be the long pole of greenhouse gas emissions. Eventually we'll have to disassemble what we already have. For some areas, it may make sense to do that soon.
Boston, for example, has old and leaky natural gas pipes that have been found to be leaking tons of methane into the atmosphere and causing occasional explosions. The city will probably have to invest billions of dollars into repairing its natural gas distribution pipes in the next 10-20 years, which would remain in use for 50-60 years more.
Or, they could spend a bit more money, convert everyone to induction cooktops and heat pumps, and get rid of the natural gas altogether.
Resistive or induction?
How much of that makes it into the pan, and how much is waste heat?
The practical effect is food spends less time steaming, so for example, a stir fry doesn’t come out soggy and unappetizing.
I do not have the problem you are describing.
> Gas is superior to all forms of electric in recovery time.
This is really going to be dependent on which stoves we are comparing, along with the type of pan being used.
> There simply is /more energy/ in a cubic foot of gas compared to what a home electric circuit can deliver in the same time frame. It’s science, plain and simple.
Science as I alluded to in my previous comment, would account for waste heat. Which is where a significant amount of the energy of a gas stove goes.
We’re talking about appliances here, OP was comparing a high end gas stove’s output to electric. My point is that my couple hundred dollar unit can replicate many of the things OP was claiming you’d need to buy a $5,000-$10,000 gas stove for (though I am in no way suggesting that these are equivalent in functionality to each other).
But the thing about a cheap gas stove is that it performs as well as a high end one, at least for a one person household like mine. If I'd invest in induction it would all get much more expensive to get the same performance.
Edit: Look, I don’t mean to come across as though I have an issue with your budget or choices, but you’re derailing a conversation that was in response to someone claiming that electric was inferior specifically in comparison to high end gas stoves. Your $300 range isn’t going to put out the 15-25k Btus that OP was talking about, which was why I made the comparison to a relatively less expensive induction device. I personally use that device for a significant amount of my cooking as I rent a unit that only has an underpowered 2 burned stove.
Meanwhile most of the energy from my electric stove actually makes it into my pan instead of out a vent or into my kitchen.
Also the power goes out at my house about 2x a year when we have windstorms. The stove still works, induction doesn't. So I can still cook and make coffee. My other option would be to use my grill in that situation. I like having backups.
It's not some conspiracy with me, I just didn't like it as much. There are dozens of us.
I also ran an experiment a few years back with some particulate sensors. I noticed when measuring during wild fire smoke the particulates went way up when I cooked bacon. So I did it again on a hot plate not gas. Same thing. The bacon grease and cooking itself was giving off a ton of particulates. To me the lesson was maybe cook outdoors. Or figure out how to plumb a vent through an upstairs living space attic and roof to vent outside.
I've also been hesitant on electric cars. My friend has an original roadster that I've driven several times. It's great even tho I can't even get out of it because of my size. However I go out to ski and road trip a lot. I constantly am evaluating if an ev is ready for that use, it's getting closer but not yet. The ski hills I go to are near range for a EV and the charging spots are all taken as are all the spots so that's a risk. Camping and backpacking is more iffy. There was charging at Yellowstone in a few spots but I doubt they ran it to mowich lake yet.
But the kicker is I just have several old cars (08) that are in great shape and I hate all the shit on new cars when I rent them. There's a few features that are great like the anti-tbone feature, and some backup cameras. But he'll they used to beep whenever someone was near you, or they freak out when your 5 feet from a hedge when parking moving .2 mph and slam on the brakes, or the infotainment system is slow, crashes, and has no buttons. So I'll just hold while those bugs are worked out. I think these cars may all get to 20 years easily.
I’m guessing this might be a temperature dependent issue. I enjoy using a cast iron to brown meats, but I really dial it back in homes without true range hoods (e.g. they vent back indoors). If I go for maybe 25% browning, I can massively reduce the smoke. It feels a shame to not do a steak to perfection, but when I’ll prefer that to venting the whole place for an hour.
Anyway it's pretty easy to play around with. I didn't save the data anywhere unfortunately.
Huh? Why would this be necessary? Just use the range hood that should already be installed and should vent to the outside. Are these not required in your country for some strange reason?
And yes most people here use it for cooking and hot water only. I spend like a tenner on gas each month.
“We used to have a river before that now doesn’t exist. There isn’t a drop of water,” says Rivera. “And not only here in Copiapó but in all of Chile, there are rivers and lakes that have disappeared—all because a company has a lot more right to water than we do as human beings or citizens of Chile.”
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/lithium-mining-leaving-chiles-i...
And this is in Chile, the second largest producer of lithium. Just because it goes against your views it being anti-EV, doesn't make it FUD. People have other types of grievances like the human cost of lithium mining, even for the amazing storage capability of lithium batteries.
> While Chile's plan to take control of its lithium industry has caused global shockwaves, state-led production of the metal used to make electric vehicle batteries is seen by analysts as likely years away given technical and political challenges.
~ Reuters
That's FUD, my dude.
Only if you explain it the way you just did.
The fact is, instead of restricting water usage related to lithium mining, they'd rather let the river run dry. While the drough is a major factor, so too is how the regulations allow the continued abuse of the limited resource.
These conversations are barely worth having unless you're willing to go into long chains of explaining the complexity behind the situations.
I find more and more that even within the NGO and environmentalist community people only care about how natural resources impact people in a utilitarian sense. I can respect that philosophical position, but it makes me equal parts angry and sad that it's taken as a given. I don't believe life on earth exists just to serve human needs.
In that respect, unless you believe over polluting the environment is an absolute necessity to avoid malnutrition, pointing at NK's economic policy issues in this discussion doesn't help us much.
One view is private vs public capitalism. USSR vs USA, respectively. Extreme wealth concentration at the expense of everyone else.
Both are anti-democratic.
And in this vein, we shouldn't forget Mao's "four pests campaign" in China under Mao which caused mass starvation by killing sparrows which had been eating insects, leaving them with a literal plague of locusts.
Mao would probably have murdered anyone who called him a capitalist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_roader
But claiming it fits a bespoke definition of "capitalism" seemingly invented for this particular discussion, despite that being against literally everything they professed, seems a bit much.
They didn't end up with extreme wealth concentration by letting people freely exchange goods and services. That usually happens when people take control of who is able to exchange goods, whether via monopolies or government control.
I’m guessing the public capitalism / private capitalism has to do with where the ownership of property, concentration of human capital is, and there the market making prices are found. In that sense, the public/private dichotomy mostly works. Sure, Communists argue there is more virtue to their system than simply market making and state owned property, but those are effectively downstream / derived qualities.
And Mao murdered tons of people (both directly and the way a mob boss would have) for many different reasons. He probably was the kind of person who might murder someone because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I don’t think that matters much in this discussion and I don’t think we should self-censor our thoughts because the ghost of a terrible person might hear us.
Tragically, I biffed. USSR is public (as in the state is the owner) and USA is private (as in you and me).
I wish I could remember where I heard this taxonomy. James C Scott, Richard Wolfe, other? Sorry.
A quick search suggests "USSR is state capitalism" was one of Trotsky's (many) criticisms of the USSR. Wage labor, exploitation, yadda, yadda.
To quote "Both are anti-democratic". Which I don't understand. Is your claim that both systems (as practiced in the USSR and USA) led to extreme wealth concentration? Did the economy increase during this concentration? If so, do you still consider this "anti-democratic".
The entire argument about the US not having a democracy but a republic really stems (in modern times) from the John Birch Society.
Yes.
> The argument is that democracy ALWAYS leads to tyranny and collapse.
Rather than Plato's mob rule criticism, I'm using the more contemporary capitalism-vs-democracy (winner-takes-all) food fight.
The tension in USA, at least, has always been wealth vs democracy. The "liberal" in the traditional "liberal democracy" was a reference to our economic system of free enterprise. The aspiration was to balance winner-takes-all with will-of-the-people. Basically the formulation of modern Nordic "democratic socialism".
These outcomes, as the article alludes to, are due to the privatization of resource rights, which is a consequence of Pinochet government going all in on the policies Milton Friedman promoted [2].
Citizens of Chile are more victims of neoliberalism than they are of any particular industry.
Victims of neoliberalism you say?
> What we are now doing to the world... is new in the experience of the Earth. It is mankind and his activities that are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways. The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world's climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.
> The environmental challenge that confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out. Those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not.
-The Baroness Thatcher
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
Argentina seems to be going bankrupt and drown in enormous inflation every couple of years. That isn't the case with Chile. Based on this factor alone, Chile and Argentina aren't peers.
I don't know enough about Uruguay to judge.
> GDP per capita is a very narrow indicator that does not come close to telling enough about the economic condition of a country.
In what was us GDP per capita deficient, and what criteria would you propose exactly?
However, if I were considering investment from my own pocket, political and economic stability would play a much higher role for my decision making than GDP per capita. And Argentina would therefore be a big no-no, while Chile might make the cut.
Would you make a different choice?
I understand that, you were the one who dismissed GDP per capita as an objective measurement of economic development.
The point I was making that the OECD exists to espouse a particular model of global economic organization and development, which is politically informed.
As to your question about investment, what might be beneficial to me as an investor isn’t necessarily the same as what is beneficial to a citizen of a particular country.
Yeah, OECD is very political. No disagreement about that.
But I would say that the correlation of "being attractive for FDI" and "having good standards of living among the general population" is rather high and given that FDI tends to predate said growth of standards of living, there actually may be causality.
Excluding resource-rich countries that grew fat on something that comes out of the earth, pretty much every country whose standards of living soared since, say, 1950, attracted a lot of FDI beforehand.
After all, the same things that attract investors (stability, low crime, high educational attainment, reliable electricity supply, rule of law) tend to be good for the citizens as well.
(And they aren't the same. Chile's is a lot higher at the moment.)
"Pinochet's economic policy is vastly overrated"
> Mining a bunch of copper, helping your cronies get rich, and pumping up land prices is not a "miracle".
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/pinochets-economic-policy-is-v...
> In the U.S., Pinochet is often a talking point in economics debates. He was a brutal dictator, who killed thousands and who tortured, imprisoned, and/or exiled tens of thousands more. It’s very understandable that Chileans would want to expunge any portion of his legacy. But in the U.S., it’s his economic policy that continues to be debated decades later. Some libertarians believe that despite the brutality of his regime, he implemented economic policies that were wildly successful in raising Chilean living standards.
There is the horseshoe theory that says that either extremes have more in common with each other then they have with the center [1].
If I we’re to connect neoliberalism with Soviet communism, I’d say that both ideologies are examples of high modernism, which is the idea that leaders can optimize on a metric and ignore all other factors that contribute to their countries success. This never has positive outcomes for the people living in those countries.
It’s more likely that climate change was responsible for this problem.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/21/chile-lithium-reserves-...
It's crazy out there right now - massive political pressure with tax breaks, climate anxiety marketing for EVs, mass confusion about energy supply chains and pollution whether oil or electric, a lack of clarity about battery ingredients and lifecycles from extraction to disposal.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35762026 and marked it off topic.
Incidentally, bogus generalizations about HN are one of the lowest-quality forms of this. Please avoid that.
The community is divided on most topics, especially the divisive ones—this is neither surprising nor interesting, and perceptions about what's "saturated" are driven by people's passions on $topic.