#Lithium Reserves

[xtruss]

Zimbabwe’s ‘White Gold’! Critical Minerals Law Favors China

Harare has Africa’s largest lithium reserves and Beijing is poised to benefit, despite an export ban.

— By Nosmot Gbadamosi | Foreign Policy | August 16th, 2023

A foreman looks on as an earth mover works on the slippery road at Arcadia Mine on Jan. 11, 2022 in Goromonzi, Zimbabwe. ​Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty Images

The world’s clean-energy transition will be impossible without African minerals—and a degree of resource nationalism from African countries is benefiting China, which has for decades invested in the African Green-Energy Market and accounts for 59 percent of the world’s lithium refining. Chinese companies run the majority of Zimbabwe’s mines and are better positioned to expand domestic processing there.

Lithium, often referred to as “White Gold,” is essential to producing Solar Panels and the Rechargeable Batteries that power electric vehicles; and in 2022, demand pushed prices up by more than 100 percent. Africa could supply a fifth of the world’s lithium needs by 2030, but to best serve citizens, African leaders are demanding that miners go beyond extraction and add value by locally processing the raw mineral.

Last December, Zimbabwe 🇿🇼, which has Africa’s Largest Lithium Reserves, imposed a ban on raw lithium ore exports, requiring companies to set up plants in the country and process ore into concentrates before export in order to boost local jobs and revenue. Those seeking to export and not process domestically would need to provide proof of exceptional circumstances and receive written permission to export raw lithium ore.

Zimbabwe’s ban, called the Base Minerals Export Control Act, will stop the country losing billions in mineral proceeds to foreign companies, officials said. Namibia 🇳🇦 has followed suit; and in 2020 around 42 percent of African nations, excluding those in North Africa, had implemented restrictions on raw exports, including the Democratic Republic of Congo 🇨🇩, Ghana 🇬🇭, and Nigeria 🇳🇬.

Traditionally, “mining companies after extraction enjoy all the benefits [while] leaving communities in their catchment areas to bear the brunt of life-threatening dangers associated with their operations,” Edmond Kombat, research and finance director of Ghana’s 🇬🇭 Institute for Energy Security, told ESI Africa. “It is time to stop that practice.”

However, China, which controls the world’s critical minerals supply chain, is ideally placed to reap benefits in these situations, because several Chinese owned companies have recently completed processing plants in the country. Chinese-owned Companies have Spent more than $1 Billion acquiring and developing lithium projects in Zimbabwe, which in contrast has seen Very Little Western investment.

Last month, Chinese minerals giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt opened a $300 million lithium processing plant at its Arcadia Mine in Zimbabwe, which it bought last year from Australia-based Prospect Resources for $422 million. The plant currently has the capacity to process around 450,000 metric tons of lithium concentrate annually. Under Zimbabwean law the refined lithium can then be exported for further processing into battery-grade lithium outside Zimbabwe.

In May, another Chinese company, Chengxin Lithium Group, commissioned a lithium concentrator to produce 300,000 metric tons per year at the Sabi Star mine in eastern Zimbabwe. And China’s Sinomine Resource Group said last month it had completed a $300 million lithium plant, after it bought Bikita Minerals, one of Africa’s oldest lithium mines, for $180 million.

Zimbabwe hopes to satisfy 20 percent of the world’s total lithium demand when it fully exploits its known lithium resources. “If we continue exporting raw lithium we will go nowhere,” Deputy Mines Minister Polite Kambamura told Bloomberg last year. “We want to see lithium batteries being developed in the country.”

New rules stipulate that a 5 percent royalty rate will be payable on lithium exported, due half in cash and half in processed final products so that the country can build cash reserves it could use for government-backed borrowing.

U.S. sanctions on Zimbabwe 🇿🇼, imposed since 2001, have impacted the country’s access to borrowing and investment, leaving few options but China. Last year, Zimbabwean Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube claimed the country has lost more than $42 billion in revenue as a result of Western sanctions. The Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency reportedly received 160 lithium investment applications from investors based in China in the first half of 2023 compared to just five from the United States.

Even among Zimbabwe’s regional peers, U.S. companies have been left on the backfoot. Nigeria Rejected Elon Musk’s Tesla in favor of Beijing-based Ming Xin Mineral Separation to build Nigeria’s first lithium processing plant in Kaduna State, in the country’s northwest region. Nigerian officials reportedly rejected Tesla’s proposal because it did not align with the country’s new policies. “Our new mining policy demands that you add some value to raw mineral ores, including lithium, before you export,” Ayodeji Adeyemi, special assistant to Nigeria’s mines and steel development minister, told Rest of World.

For decades, African economists complained that foreign companies extracted minerals without benefit to citizens. In 2015, Zimbabwean researchers estimated the country had lost $12 billion due to illegal trade involving multinational companies in China 🇨🇳, Canada 🇨🇦, the United States 🇺🇸, and the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 —enough money to pay off Zimbabwe’s foreign debt.

Africa holds more than 40 Percent of Global Reserves of Key Minerals for batteries and hydrogen technologies. Yet it’s predicted that, by 2030, more than 80 percent of the world’s poor will live in Africa, and about 75 percent of them in resource-rich countries.

It makes sense for African Nations to step up efforts to increase quality jobs. “The United States and Europe must ensure that the partnerships they are building in Africa are mutually beneficial and non-extractive,” Theophile Pouget-Abadie and Rachel Rizzo recently wrote in Foreign Policy. “Otherwise, they will run headlong into the walls erected by an increasingly dominant Beijing.”

Washington in January signed a memorandum of understanding to help the Democratic Republic of Congo 🇨🇩 and Zambia 🇿🇲 develop an electric battery supply chain. But China is going beyond this in terms of thinking about what African nations need. Beijing, for example, with support from the United Nations 🇺🇳 Development Program, is facilitating a joint research center in Ethiopia 🇪🇹 to fast-track access to renewable energy in the country.

Experts warn that more African countries banning critical raw minerals exports will impede global decarbonization. Zimbabwe’s ban is perceived as unrealistic because the country lacks skilled workers. Some countries (Kenya 🇰🇪, Tanzania 🇹🇿, and Zambia 🇿🇲) have implemented policies requiring mining companies to train locals, according to a recent World Bank report. The report suggests national export bans alone can make countries worse off because investors simply move their business elsewhere, but that training requirements could ensure retention of investment and the creation of a skilled workforce.

[klimanaturali]

TOP 20 PAÍSES COM AS MAIORES RESERVAS DE LÍTIO DO MUNDO

[nepalenergyforum]

Flowing Forward: Nepal's Hydroelectric Future Enhanced by Innovative Energy Storage

Australia’s Hornsdale Power Reserve, a powerhouse in energy storage, boasts one of the country’s largest units, capable of reserving up to 150 MW in its advanced lithium-ion batteries. On the other side of the globe, the Bath County Pumped Storage Station in Virginia, USA, stands as a venerable giant in pumped hydro storage, operating since 1985. This monumental project strategically utilizes two…

[reasonsforhope]

"A 1-megawatt sand battery that can store up to 100 megawatt hours of thermal energy will be 10 times larger than a prototype already in use.

The new sand battery will eliminate the need for oil-based energy consumption for the entire town of town of Pornainen, Finland.

Sand gets charged with clean electricity and stored for use within a local grid.

Finland is doing sand batteries big. Polar Night Energy already showed off an early commercialized version of a sand battery in Kankaanpää in 2022, but a new sand battery 10 times that size is about to fully rid the town of Pornainen, Finland of its need for oil-based energy.

In cooperation with the local Finnish district heating company Loviisan Lämpö, Polar Night Energy will develop a 1-megawatt sand battery capable of storing up to 100 megawatt hours of thermal energy.

“With the sand battery,” Mikko Paajanen, CEO of Loviisan Lämpö, said in a statement, “we can significantly reduce energy produced by combustion and completely eliminate the use of oil.”

Polar Night Energy introduced the first commercial sand battery in 2022, with local energy utility Vatajankoski. “Its main purpose is to work as a high-power and high-capacity reservoir for excess wind and solar energy,” Markku Ylönen, Polar Nigh Energy’s co-founder and CTO, said in a statement at the time. “The energy is stored as heat, which can be used to heat homes, or to provide hot steam and high temperature process heat to industries that are often fossil-fuel dependent.” ...

Sand—a high-density, low-cost material that the construction industry discards [Note: 6/13/24: Turns out that's not true! See note at the bottom for more info.] —is a solid material that can heat to well above the boiling point of water and can store several times the amount of energy of a water tank. While sand doesn’t store electricity, it stores energy in the form of heat. To mine the heat, cool air blows through pipes, heating up as it passes through the unit. It can then be used to convert water into steam or heat water in an air-to-water heat exchanger. The heat can also be converted back to electricity, albeit with electricity losses, through the use of a turbine.

In Pornainen, Paajanen believes that—just by switching to a sand battery—the town can achieve a nearly 70 percent reduction in emissions from the district heating network and keep about 160 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere annually. In addition to eliminating the usage of oil, they expect to decrease woodchip combustion by about 60 percent.

The sand battery will arrive ready for use, about 42 feet tall and 49 feet wide. The new project’s thermal storage medium is largely comprised of soapstone, a byproduct of Tulikivi’s production of heat-retaining fireplaces. It should take about 13 months to get the new project online, but once it’s up and running, the Pornainen battery will provide thermal energy storage capacity capable of meeting almost one month of summer heat demand and one week of winter heat demand without recharging.

“We want to enable the growth of renewable energy,” Paajanen said. “The sand battery is designed to participate in all Fingrid’s reserve and balancing power markets. It helps to keep the electricity grid balanced as the share of wind and solar energy in the grid increases.”"

-via Popular Mechanics, March 13, 2024

--

Note: I've been keeping an eye on sand batteries for a while, and this is really exciting to see. We need alternatives to lithium batteries ASAP, due to the grave human rights abuses and environmental damage caused by lithium mining, and sand batteries look like a really good solution for grid-scale energy storage.

--

Note 6/13/24: Unfortunately, turns out there are substantial issues with sand batteries as well, due to sand scarcity. More details from a lovely asker here, sources on sand scarcity being a thing at the links: x, x, x, x, x

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #12

March 29-April 5 2024

President Biden united with Senator Bernie Sanders at the White House to review Democratic efforts to bring down drug prices. President Biden touted his Administration’s capping the price of insulin for seniors at $35 a month and capping the price of  prescription drugs for seniors at $2,000 a year. Biden hopes to expand both to all Americans through legislation next year with a Democratic congress. The President also praised Senator Sanders' efforts as chair of the Senate Health Committee which has lead to major drug manufacturers capping the price of inhalers at $35 a month. “Bernie, you and I have been fighting this for 25 years,” Biden said “Finally, finally we beat Big Pharma. Finally.”

The White House gave an update on its actions around the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster. The federal government working with state and local governments hope to have enough of the remains of the bridge cleared to partially reopen the Port of Baltimore by the end of the month and have the port working normally by May. The Administration has already released $60 million in emergency money toward rebuilding and promises the federal government will cover the cost. The Department of Labor has released $3.5 million for Dislocated Worker Grants and plans up to $25 million to cover lost wages. The Small Business Administration is offering $2 million in emergency loans to affected small businesses. The Administration is working with business and labor unions to keep workers at work and cover lost wages.

Vice-President Harris and EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced $20 billion to help finance tens of thousands of climate and clean energy projects across the country. The kinds of projects that will be financed through this project include distributed clean power generation and storage, net-zero retrofits of homes and small businesses, and zero-emission transportation. 70% of the funds, $14 billion, will be invested in low-income and disadvantaged communities. The project is part of a public private partnership so for every 1 dollar of federal money, private companies have promised 7 dollars of investment, bring the total to $150 billion for ongoing financing of climate and clean energy projects for years to come.

The Department of Transportation announced $20.5 billion in investments in public transportation. This represents the largest single investment in public transit by the federal government in history. The money will go to improving and expanding subways, light rail, buses, and ferry systems across America. The DoT hopes to use the funds to in particular expand and improve options for public transport for people with disabilities and seniors.

The Departments of Energy and The Treasury announced $4 billion in tax credits for businesses investing in clean energy, critical materials recycling, and Industrial decarbonization. The credits till go toward 100 projects across 35 states. 67% of the credits ($2.7 billion) will go to clean energy, wind, solar, nuclear, clean hydrogen, as well as updates to grids, better batter storage, and investments in electric vehicles. 20% ($800 million) will go to to recycling things like lithium-ion batteries, and 13% ($500 million) to decarbonization in industries like automotive manufacturing, and iron and steel.

The Department of Agriculture announced $1.5 Billion in investments in climate-smart agriculture. USDA plans to support over 180,000 farms representing 225 million acres in the next 5 years move toward more climate friendly agriculture. 40% of the project is reserved for disadvantaged communities, in line with the Biden Administrations standard for climate investment. $100 million has been reserved for projects in Tribal Communities.

The Department of the Interior approved the New England Wind offshore wind project. To be located off Martha’s Vineyard the New England project represents the 8th such off shore wind project approved by the Biden administration. Taken together these projects will generate 10 gigawatts of totally clean energy that can power 4 million homes. The Administration's climate goals call for 30 gigawatts of off shore wind power by 2030. The New England Wind project itself is expected to generate 2,600 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 900,000 homes in the New England area.

The Department of the Interior announced $320 Million for tribal water infrastructure. Interior also announced $244 million to deal with legacy pollution from mining in the State of Pennsylvania, as well as $25 million to protect wetlands in Arizona and $19 million to put solar panels over irrigation canals in California, Oregon and Utah. While the Department of Energy announced $27 million for 40 projects by state, local and tribal governments to combat climate change

[dailyoverview]

Industrial lithium mining in Salar de Atacama, Chile, began in the mid-1990s and has expanded consistently over the last 30 years. The demand for lithium, a key ingredient in rechargeable batteries, has grown with the ubiquity of smart phones, laptop computers, electric cars and other personal electronics. Salar de Atacama contains the world’s largest and purest active source of lithium, as well as more than one-quarter of the world’s lithium reserves.

-23.528983°, -68.379589°

Source imagery: Google Timelapse / Planet

[reality-detective]

BREAKING NEWS: Congo is currently going through a genocide. Millions of people are being killed so for the benefit from its natural resources.

More than 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves are found in Congo, used in the production of computers and smartphones. The DRC is home to what some believe to be the world's biggest lithium deposit. Which is used for batteries of all sizes including electric cars.

European countries are providing financial military aid to invade regions filled with reserves and in the process millions are getting killed and millions homeless.

Multinational mining companies are enslaving people especially children who never had the chance to enroll in school to mine. With the talks of Ukraine and Palestine, meanwhile the Congo is being ‘cleansed’ 🤔

[zvaigzdelasas]

Zimbabwe’s got itself a brand new iron and steel manufacturing plant, courtesy of the Chinese. This U.S. $1.5 billion Chinese-built plant’s blast furnace recently came online and is already producing pig iron, a crucial ingredient for making steel.

The team over at Dinson Iron and Steel Company (Disco), the Zimbabwean subsidiary of Chinese steel giant Tsingshan Holding Group, announced the production of their very first batch of pig iron on June 13. The Mvuma steel plant, situated about 120 miles south of Zimbabwe’s capital of Harare, is slated to be Africa’s largest integrated steelworks. According to a report in the South China Morning Post, it will also be one of Africa’s leading iron and steel producers.[...]

The Chinese firm plans to take things up a notch next month. That’s when the new steel manufacturing plant will start producing billets, the precursor to making steel. There are also plans to begin creating steel products like pipes, bolts, nuts, and even smaller slags, rolled tubes, fences, shafts, wires, and bars.

As part of the first production phase, the new plant recently set a target to make 600,000 tons of steel annually. Later, after the final phase, that production target grows to more than 5 million tons. The plant will also create jobs for the people of Zimbabwe. In the first phase alone, the new steel manufacturing facility hopes to employ around 2,000 people. This figure would double in the second phase. [...]

According to some experts, the steel plant could be a game-changer for Zimbabwe. The country has wanted to revive its iron and steel industry for a while now, especially after its largest steel plant shut down during the reign of ex-president Robert Mugabe.

In the coming years, the plant hopes to make use of Zimbabwe’s ample deposits of iron ore, chrome, coal, and more to produce iron and steel products that will strengthen the country’s value chain. Government officials recently stated that companies will mine and process these raw materials locally, with reserves projected to last for a whopping 100 years.

As a nation, Zimbabwe remains blessed with a wealth of natural resources like precious metals, nickel, ferroalloys and coking coal. According to analysts from inside and outside the country, these resources have the potential to help alleviate the country’s economic crisis.[...]

For over two decades, the U.S. and some European countries imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe. In March this year, the U.S., while terminating a Zimbabwe sanctions program, reimposed curbs on eleven individuals and three entities. This included the country’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, accused of human rights abuses, among other things. Chinese entities have capitalized on the situation by funding various projects in Zimbabwe, including dams, airports and a new parliament building.

Zimbabwe is also rich in lithium, a critical raw material for electric vehicle batteries. As a result, Chinese companies such as Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and Sinomine Resource Group invested millions of dollars in acquiring lithium mines and over U.S.$1 billion in constructing processing plants.

12 Jul 24

[cantsayidont]

Despite its protestations of progressive values, STAR TREK media has always explicitly presented (and, with only fleeting exceptions, consistently celebrated) the Federation as an expansionist imperial power, engaged in a large-scale project of colonialism.

The usual apologia/rationalization for this, both from the franchise itself and from its fans, is that the Federation is also a post-scarcity socialist utopia. However, that is expressly not the case in TOS, despite the attempts of the later series to insist otherwise.

Indeed, the plots of some of the most famous and acclaimed episodes of TOS are specifically about resource extraction and ensuring the Federation's access to crucial resources, including lithium (in "Mudd's Women"), pergium (in "The Devil in the Dark"), and dilithium (in "Mirror, Mirror," et al). We are told repeatedly that the Enterprise has a mandate to use force to secure these resources if gentler methods fail. Moreover, while the Federation has a strategic interest in these resources, it's clear at various points in TOS that their extraction and exploitation are, to a significant extent if not exclusively, overseen by private interests for profit. For instance, in "Mudd's Women," Harry Mudd remarks:

Well, girls, lithium miners. Don't you understand? Lonely, isolated, overworked, rich lithium miners! Girls, do you still want husbands, hmm? Evie, you won't be satisfied with a mere ship's captain. I'll get you a man who can buy you a whole planet. Maggie, you're going to be a countess. Ruth, I'll make you a duchess. And I, I'll be running this starship. Captain James Kirk, the next orders you're taking will be given by Harcourt Fenton Mudd!

In "The Devil in the Dark," Kirk ultimately takes a regulatory position — he will not permit the pergium miners to kill the Horta or continue to destroy her eggs — but at no point does he suggest that stopping the pergium production that threatens the Horta is a viable or even acceptable alternative. The accord he proposes is contingent on the Horta's agreement that she and her children will support the mining efforts on her planet, since Kirk emphasizes that "a dozen planets" are depending on the miners to supply needed pergium. (What would have happened to her if she hadn't agreed is not stated, but the episode strongly suggests that she would have been severely punished for noncompliance with Kirk's mediated solution: forcibly relocated to some kind of Horta reservation away from the main mining operations, perhaps.) When the Horta does agree to this proposal, Kirk assures Vanderberg, "you people are going to be embarrassingly rich," which once again suggests that while the miners may have contractual agreements to delivery pergium to Federation worlds, they are still a private, for-profit business, not a Federation department or nationalized entity.

Profit is also Ron Tracey's motivation for breaking the Prime Directive in "The Omega Glory": He believes that he's discovered a "fountain of youth" that he can own, monopolize, and exploit, and that the value of that resource will be enough to buy his way out of legal trouble for his regulatory violations.

We mostly don't see the Enterprise crew handle money except on away missions in other cultures or times, but there are a number of indications that the Federation in this era has not abandoned money: For instance, Harry Mudd's list of past offenses includes purchasing a space vessel "with counterfeit currency," while in "The Apple," Kirk rhetorically asks if Spock knows how much Starfleet has invested in him, which Spock begins to answer, "One hundred twenty-two thousand two hundred …" before Kirk cuts him off. More tellingly, in "I, Mudd," we have the following exchange:

KIRK: All right, Harry, explain. How did you get here? We left you in custody after that affair on the Rigel mining planet. MUDD: Yes, well, I organized a technical information service bringing modern industrial techniques to backward planets, making available certain valuable patents to struggling young civilizations throughout the galaxy. KIRK: Did you pay royalties to the owners of those patents? MUDD: Well, actually, Kirk, as a defender of the free enterprise system, I found myself in a rather ambiguous conflict as a matter of principle. SPOCK: He did not pay royalties. MUDD: Knowledge, sir, should be free to all. KIRK: Who caught you? MUDD: That, sir, is an outrageous assumption. KIRK: Yes. Who caught you? MUDD: I sold the Denebians all the rights to a Vulcan fuel synthesizer. KIRK: And the Denebians contacted the Vulcans.

Whether Deneb is a member of the Federation at this time is unclear, but Vulcan certainly is, and so we may assume that Vulcan and presumably the Federation itself are also part of "the free enterprise system."

The first indication that the Federation does not use money is in STAR TREK IV, and it's not obvious there if Kirk's remark that "They're still using money" is talking about money more broadly or just physical currency, which the Federation may have phased out even if it still uses credit or electronic transfers of monetary value. (Certainly, McCoy's attempt in STAR TREK III to charter a starship indicates that he had some means of paying for passage, since the captain of the ship specifically demands more money upon learning of the intended destination.)

If we accept at face value the assertion of TNG and DS9 that the Federation has genuinely abandoned the use of money, rather than simply going cashless, the most reasonable Watsonian explanation is that this has been a relatively recent development during the 70–80 years between the TOS cast movies and TNG, most likely related to the development of replication technology (which the Federation did not yet have in Kirk's time).

Of course, from a Doylist standpoint, we could chalk up some of this incidental dialogue to the franchise's evolving construction of its own setting, in the same manner as anomalous references to Vulcans as "Vulcanians." Roddenberry and his apologists might also insist that he always meant to depict a socialist utopia, but was prevented by the nattering nabobs of negativity (i.e., the network's BS&P); I'm very skeptical of such claims, but the writers were acutely aware that depicting what Earth is like in Kirk's time would be opening a can of worms, which is why we didn't actually see 23rd century Earth (even briefly) until the movies.

However, the focus on resource extraction and its ramifications is such a load-bearing story element in TOS that the revisionist assertion that the Federation was already a post-scarcity socialist utopia in Kirk's time (as both DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS have attempted to claim) would require really substantial retcons of the original show, perhaps to the extent of insisting that some of those events never took place at all, or happened radically differently than what's in the TOS episodes most STAR TREK fans have seen. For me, anyway, that crosses a line from willing suspension of disbelief to "don't trust your lying eyes," and suggests a frustrating and somewhat disturbing determination to insist that TOS is something much purer and nobler than it is rather than grapple with its actual conceptual flaws and ideological shortcomings.

[collapsedsquid]

On November 28, 2023, the Department of Energy confirmed its discovery of a 3,400-kiloton reserve of lithium in California’s Salton Sea, making it one of the largest exploitable lithium deposits in the world. 

Demanding a California wealth fund, like the Alaskans have

[abalidoth]

It bugs me so much that half the posts about how public transit is better than car-centeic infrastructure have to make a swipe about "electric cars are just as bad!!!!1!!"

EVs are a critical part of any transition plan from car centered infrastructure to public transit. Even in the absolute best case scenario where we put a socialist brain control chip in every single politician, changing our infrastructure to something less harmful is going to take a LONG time. There are a few changes that can be made quickly, like adding bus routes and such, but none of those really fix structural issues.

The fact of the matter is that a huge proportion of Americans live in places that will be hard to service with public transit on a short timeframe, if ever. EVs are vastly more efficient than internal combustion engines, even if 100% of your energy grid is fossil fuel. (Which, it SHOULDN'T be, nuclear is RIGHT FUCKING THERE, but that's a separate rant.) They massively reduce the need for gas station and pipeline infrastructure, reduce local smog, etc etc.

Can we fix all our problems by switching from ICEs to EVs? No, obviously not. And there's a significant number of issues they have on their own (lithium reserves for example) but by every metric I can think of they're an easy drop in replacement that will greatly ease the transition away from personal vehicle dependence all together. The massive hate-on I see for them makes no sense, and I can only guess that it's being driven by how much of a douche Elon Musk is (and Tesla's fuckups in general.) The fact that people so often conflate EVs with self-driving technology seems to point to that -- they're completely separate, and I can only imagine that it's Tesla's fault that people are commingling them.

[crying-fantasies]

First contact blues

Masterlist

A bond shared between spark siblings, twins, is like a river, a constant flow of energy, emotions, feelings, some have bonds so strong and hard that they can feel everything the other does, be it love, be it pain, to the point that is physical even when they are apart by a whole galaxy, other are like the opposite sides of a magnet, once a single being but now so different that sometimes they can't even share their bond to the fullest.

Then you have them, harmonious as they are, combative as they are, they make it work, they make it bare results, the coldness and bloodlust they share shines the brightest among the soldiers, there is no need for a heavy tank, there is no need for a fast speedster, they are the best gunners the Autobots ever had, so, imagine his disgust when Sideswipe's spark fluctuates with affection, seeking out and burning for a single touch while smiling your way, his feelings, his emotions, as expected, flow in their bond like heavy lithium, so sweet it's sickening, so kind it's full madness, all because he got a hold of a servoful of soft squishy that didn't scream at him, curious strange eyes that seemed to look at their bare spark, Sideswipe has show affection for others more than once, Sunstreaker has done the same on his and on his own terms, they have never been in the same page when it comes to mates or berth partners, and they respect that, and he should respect this one too, but it still angers him with no end when you look at Sides like this, so much affection while he smiles like a mischievous sparkling, you take a moment to return a similar smile, it's fleeting, like it didn't exist, so short and in fact as vain and useless as anything that comes from your own existence.

At first it takes some time to notice what is happening, he has to make a second glance in your direction to be sure about what is seriously happening before righteous fury builds on his processor, sure to blow him a gasket.

"You sure it doesn't hurt?"

Sunstreaker almost laughs after hearing you, Sideswipe hasn't such reservations, laughing sincerely from the spark when Sunstreaker should have made fun of you, he still wants to but prefers to shut the bond to stop filling it with happiness as a digit on Sideswipe's free servo gets that abhorrent thing called hair from over your strange organic optics, "you wouldn't hurt me even if you wanted to".

His brother was right, or in other moment that would be the case, as you are seated on Sideswipe opened mid arm armor doing Primus-knows-what on his internal circuitry, is in moments like these that he is sure if one of your greasy organic digits loosen at least a cable he could probably forget of firing a blaster ever again; this is so wrong, and Sunstreaker should do the right, sensible thing that is to call Ratchet and stop you from touching his brother in such way inside their shared habsuit, maybe you have infected him with something to this point.

Instead, Sunstreaker does the best next thing and more available for him, he shows up, not even knocking first because this is his fragging habsuit too, he doesn't care about the way you two visibly get startled by his intrusion, he could expect it from an organic like you, totally pinpointing it to your lack of proper EM field and not because you already know your way in the basics of their limbs to be focused on your work, but his brother? He almost takes it personal when Sideswipe's field covered your archaic one, protecting you and showing he had his defenses low in your presence.

Sideswipe has never been like that, not when they were forged and tossed in Kaon, not when they had to struggle in the city or in the war, what have you done to his brother?

At least he doesn't have to waste his words to have you gone, getting a surprised glance before getting back at what were you doing, patching whatever you were touching inside there before giving space for Sides's armor to close back again, flexing his digits, he has never seen those going so smoothly.

"Better?", You don't even want to see him, instead giving him your back and collecting those strange little tools that looked like a sparkling's first medical kit- is that a jar with dirt?

The scowl on Sunstreaker's face only deepens when Sideswipe moves his digits in front of him, showing off, "Much better, alright".

In all the exchange you say something about seeing them later, most likely only Sideswipe, but it gets over his brother helm as he keeps on showing off his new more faster fist, Sunstreaker on the edge even after you're gone, in any other circumstances, like before he got out of base in his personal search, or before he didn't talk with anyone after recuperating, you would have chastised Sides and tell him to leave his brother alone.

He hasn't heard a word out of your dermas directed to him since he got out of the brig, putting everything you had to say when he marched out that night, only receiving a comm from Sides asking what had he done, a message that repeated when he was finally awake and his frame was complete, perfect, once again, as it was all supposed to be; he believed, stupidly, that Optimus wouldn't need the humans anymore after everything they did, but you all had open invitation to the Ark.

You're mad, but it didn't stop you from coming back and still linger around them, one thing was to be a wandering thing around but now you even remained here more than once in the night cycle when you would go out before.

Sideswipe is mad, but he tries to cover for it, taunting him with stupid jokes to get a raise and be able to punch him with a reason good enough as self defense.

He's mad, because his space is intruded, because he has to see what his brother is up to, more times than not, spending time with you, going as far as to saying: "If you feel so lonely, why not go see Hunter?", before saying sorry, knowing how that point of his life is still a great problem for him to cope with.

They are mad, they've gone way more than just the expression of the word.

Majority try to look out for the swarm, the ones that can shoot back do so with gritted dentae, discharging their anger in every blaster or bullet used thinking that they're putting down another decepticon, think of other things away from it, just to be reminded of organic faces, smiling ones, strange water like optics looking at them with awe, before simply gripping what they can to charge off all the worry, he has seen Hound do it, Mirage too.

Jazz, as if his smile could no longer keep on in his usual facade of positiveness, only looks around, already on the edge, making continuous rounds in an effort to guard Optimus in his most debilitated state, they have hear him listen to human music, human words, and they know he is also worried by the humans they left behind to be arrested by their authorities, only expecting what is to come for them in the moment they realize the decepticons are there, or the moment the decepticons realize they're close to one another, or the moment humans start to get one point to another and notice some of them knew of the cybertronians already on the planet.

They have seen it happen more times than they could really want as Ratchet worries himself, thinking of Jimmy, Verity and Hunter, to what the enemy, human or decepticon, may do without anyone protecting them and the truth gets out, if it hasn't already.

First contact results, seems like it, when you worry in such a way for an alien race that has never been in a war as horrible as theirs, and fear for what is to come just because you weren't careful enough or because you couldn't stop yourself from a little diversion outside of the war, something to forget about it and everything you lost with whatever the new planet would bring you, just to see it gone in a sea of fire, if Magnus was here everyone that had contact with the humans or, Primus forbid, even took them to their base was going to be lectured to the Earth and back to Cybertron.

Sunstreaker should know, as he feels the nauseating feeling of dread and anger creep in his spark chamber before he gives Sideswipe a very well earned hit to the helm, because he doesn't want to be remembering you in this right moment, much less with a ground shaking fear that comes from a gun pointing your little helm, an image created by the sick imagination full of what if taking the worse turn possible because the gun on such image is Megatron's.

Not his problem.

Sideswipe may be short of an arm and his fuel is almost nonexistent, but he worries about you first as it was mandatory.

Sunstreaker hates it, because it drags him in, and he shares the image by how hard and how much Sideswipe thinks of it, combined with his natural talent of creativity, drawing a desolating future picture that has them both boiling the few energon they have left on their lines before he shuts the bond for good, before the bleeding spark of his brother tries to reach out again for comfort, he can't deny him.

"Keep your processor down for a few clicks or get away from me", there is no softness in his words as he remembers on his own, how they took Sideswipe's arm by force right in front of him, his brother gives him a look, "why are looking at me like that? I told you over the bond to stay near! It's not my fault you ended like this!"

It was enough molten anger to keep him going, he didn't need to think, he didn't need to remember.

It wasn't his fault that everything became like this.

"I never said it was", fear gripped his spark for a second, shutting down the bond faster than ever, his brother didn't seem to know or feel, only referring to his missing member while touching the fast work they had to do in order to prevent him from leaking to death, flexing his digits, proving once again the fruit of your progress, "I'm just... I wish I could've said see you later at least".

Sunstreaker wasn't know for his patience, in the past it was almost neverending for his own brother, but even now it was running quite dry when another image of you with a gun in your head appeared, "Just let it rest, Primus damn it".

Saying it, demand of such, is wishful thinking, Sideswipe is worried and also drags Sunstreaker down for other reasons, everything happens way too fast for his own liking but not for Sideswipe, for him this is going on so slow, like a sick torture.

One moment, he is looking at the betrayed expression of his brother, the other half of his spark, the next, he can't even feel his digits move, he can't activate his optics, fear takes his spark at believing he has lost all visual sensors and when he tries there's a huge desire to remain blind once again.

The body of his brother is what greets him when said sensors are, apparently, activate, he doesn't know how much time goes by, but he has long stopped trying to even reach the supposed carcass or the accusations coming from it before his solitary dementia takes a turn for the worse.

"Sunstreaker".

That isn't Sideswipe voice.

Air chokes on his ventilation system, bringing his real body back online if only for a moment, he can hear, see, and all around him is the destroyed bridge, the corroding frames above him, there is nothing, but the voice calls once again, he realizes it's coming from his mind.

"Do you think of anything else that isn't you?", your voice, this supposed voice of yours, comes from his databank, Sunstreaker knows you once said those words, but never with that little smile, the same you would give to Sideswipe all the time, the same you showed when he at least viewed you like a wild animal inside his home since you didn't do a mess around you, a glitch of his memories, corrosion has made it's way to his brain processor, he is sure, this isn't real, you never said those words like that, he tries to deny it, you've never talked to him in that way, words that sting but heavy with sweet softness, how long has it been since he heard another being talking, at least in his head? If this was the real you, he realizes, he would have been pleased to hear you, and once he focuses enough, he can see you, and it's fantastic, it's part of his broken mind but it will torment him anyway, "They all could've died".

Your smile is soft, your words sting, and he reacts in a defensive way.

"No one died!"

"Sideswipe could've died".

"He didn't die! I made sure of it!".

"Earth could've died".

The phantom of you is worst than any illusion created by a phobia shield, as it whispers in his audials, so near to him, your hands get near his faceplate and, as disgusting as he feels, his biolights are bright, his EM field sends a hot pleasurable wave when the expectation of touch after so long is almost a reality before you stop, centimeters before touching him, his spark cries out for contact after so long as he grunts in frustration, "I could have died".

"You didn't", conviction drips from his words, the need to move just a tad bit more, memories of your little organic servos touching and getting debris out with delicacy, as if you could damage him.

He wishes to have know how your skin felt, how it would have been without those gloves, so he could use it now, he gets to see your hands again, but they are rotten meat and bones in front of him.

Sunstreaker screams, he screams your name with worry, with sadness, with anger, there is nothing he can do to stop it as he tries to stop it with his servos as if stopping a leaking line it was.

Kill them all

Your voice isn't yours anymore, the way your eyes look at Sideswipe isn't there anymore, and the decaying of your body keeps on going as if you got the rust disease.

Sunstreaker wants to scream again, call for help, help for him, help for you, Sideswipe, Ratchet, Prowl, Ironhide, Optimus, someone, just someone.

Kill all the humans

He wants you to stop, wants to tell you it isn't true, yell it so hard his vocalizer malfunctions just to make you believe him, it wasn't him, he didn't mean it! He just couldn't forget it! He couldn't handle it any longer!

Kill all the humans for what they did to me

"I didn't-", regret is something he didn't need, tears are things he saw as part of the most weak, but he can't stop himself, "I didn't mean to- I didn't- I'm sorry-", and he sees it again, the image of you with a gun directed to your head, he can see now the reflection of his actions as now Starscream's blaster is pointing at you, Sunstreaker has little time to even form a word, try to move, or even think before the image is processed or before the blaster has already been shoot right in front of him, right through you.

All he can do is look at your moveless body in an ocean of hundreds at his pedes, in front of him, blood gushing out of them, to then realize the blaster is on his own servos.

It was an image that keeps repeating, over and over, a sickening response with no answer from you at his pleads to stop, to come back, and then you're no longer, a face putrid and lost in the corroding meat around.

As the real you is holding Sideswipe's servos in your tiny hands, hearing him lament his fallen brother with gritted dentae, holding back tears of ire and grief as he asks you to stay with him, stay where he can keep you safe when the images of your face are show in the TV as you were a criminal, footage of you being chased by Sideswipe in the week filled with angry in your own pettiness, but now there is so many people being questioned about strange driverless cars and why they were near them.

Optimus said he was sure your government would see reason and understand the situation, but you are human, you know your people better, you feel uneasy when they talked with the autobot leader, that strange doubt making a pit in your stomach, your family begging you to come back home, away from the aliens, pointing at them like they were the ones to destroy New York not long ago.

And Sideswipe, who always thinks first based on his instincts, holds you tenderly by your hands, almost begging you not to go because he doesn't trust them, because when he found Hunter he noticed, those machines were made by humans, were made to massacre your own, for what reason? Information? Subjugation? He doesn't know and he doesn't want to try his luck with what mess humans and decepticons could do.

Who is to tell if there isn't something bigger among the lines in front of you? Waiting for the moment you step on a trap, he has seen it happen so many times to so many good autobots before.

"Don't go", Sideswipe exclaims once again, his hold is gentle, warm, as he has always has been, but there is that new urgency, his usual mischievous tone is long gone and is replaced by genuine hurt, one you've never heard before, "don't go with them, stay here, I'll- I will take care of everything, you can't- I can't-".

His vocalizer is glitching, resetting more than once, he is hiccuping like one would do if the tears and sobs were overwhelming, it pains you to see him like this.

How could you leave him now?

How could Optimus tell you to go with Jimmy and Verity when you hug his soldier as far as your body can permit with a delicacy reserved for refined glass? The answer is simple, he doesn't, and he tells the humans so, because they can interrogate every human they had previous contact with if the questioned party wants so in the first place, and when they demand otherwise he only claims he bases it on humanity's own law system.

As if they wouldn't change it in their favor just to get a little more of information on the alien race.

Or even care when you make a run for it with them as their helms now have a price.

"I'm so sorry, Sides", sincere words bloom before he can stop you, or have the energy to do so, "I'm sure Sunstreaker is now in peace", your chant, your spell, goes long and beyond, and while the truth is heavy in his glossa there is a real truth he can't forget.

Sunstreaker tried to kill humanity.

And that true fact weights heavy on him as he chooses to destroy the idea of silence over the sincerity that wants to reach you from his spark, one that wants to tell you, knowing full well that he couldn't blame you if the final decision was for you to leave him too.

It's what he expects, it's what is going to happen, but even when your family tells you in shouts to come to them Sideswipe sees that look in your eyes, one that only brings him to peace as your hands take his servos with a force that doesn't seem to come from your body, "I'm here", is what you said, there is terror on your expression but you are trying to be strong for him, your body going as far as it can to embrace part of his faceplate, hold him together, "I'm not going anywhere, Sides".

Your words are true, until one day you try to clean, getting inside Sunstreaker's part of the habsuit, and find the lost cashmere blanket, tucked into a secret compartment in a delicate way even when it's torn in some places, not knowing what to do of it as the newly gifted hair clip starts to weight on you as if it is cursed.

Realizations take time in some occasions, this one took you long enough, years of obliviousness, years of living and learning of their culture to take your notice, the implications of it, and you don't know how to answer to it when Sideswipe calls your name from outside the habsuit, servos full of your things and his, ready to go to your new shared habsuit with your roomie in Autobot city.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

The first time I visited Peehee Mu’huh, mining for lithium had already begun.

I was there in the fall of 2023 as part of my work with People of Red Mountain, descendants of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Tribe who lead the movement against extraction on this sacred landscape. We gathered at the valley in northern Nevada, known as Thacker Pass, to commemorate the massacre of 31 Paiute-Shoshone people there by the U.S. Cavalry on Sept. 12, 1865.

To dig up every pound of lithium, the mine will remove thousands of pounds of rock, soil, and other minerals, most of which will not be used and are considered waste.

That’s the secret of mining: It requires significant space to dump its byproducts.

Mine waste is no longer in the forefront for the environmental movement as it was when coal and nuclear power had their heyday, but it remains a key issue activists and scholars should be following. At Thacker Pass the 1,300 acres of wasteland will occupy the space indefinitely. Arsenic, antimony, and other hazards from the refining process to get lithium from the clay will pile up in this backfill pit and leach into the soils, watersheds, and air.

Historically miners have faced minimal oversight. Any individual could venture onto public lands and stake a claim to the minerals they contained — rights to occupy the land were established merely by proving a mineral’s presence and getting there first. Unlike loggers on public land, miners don’t pay any royalties; mine leases on public lands cost as little as $3 dollars per acre.

You might be forgiven for thinking this scenario sounds like something out of the 1800s prospector and ‘49ers era — and in fact, it is. Mining law was last meaningfully legislated under the 1872 General Mining Act.

Just as with the Black Hills gold rush in the Dakota Territory and those in Oregon and California, mine fervor during the gold and silver rushes that white settlers led on the red-colored mountains of Paiute-Shoshone lands in the 1850s-60s was violent and met by Indigenous resistance.

That resistance was crushed. Many noncombatants were killed and others forcibly displaced to Washington; the destruction continued for decades and hasn’t stopped yet.

Today the land base of the Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock peoples of the area — collectively known as Atsawkoodakuh wyh Nuwu or Red Mountain Dwellers — is permeated by both abandoned and active mines. Gold and tungsten mining waned in the early to mid-1900s, but then companies started extracting uranium and mercury at the McDermitt and Cordero mines across the road from Fort McDermitt. According to Department of the Interior archives, this was the nation’s largest mercury mine from the 1930s to the 1970s. After the Cordero mine closed, crews spread arsenic-contaminated waste from the mine around the town and reservation as a fill dirt. The region was later declared a Superfund site, and the contaminants were removed between 2009 and 2013.

But the toxic waste caused decades of harm in the community before that removal. In a brazen environmental injustice, many Tribal members who worked there perished of cancer. Sunoco and Barrick Gold, the companies that exploited the quicksilver lode, simply “declined” the EPA’s order to clean up the area and escaped culpability.

Now the sacred landscape of Peehee Mu’huh will become the country’s largest lithium bounty.

A new bill before Congress aims to strip away even the baby-steps reform of Rosemont. The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act (HR2925) passed the House in May and awaits Senate approval (S1281). One would assume a bipartisan effort with such a name would offer progress, but the bill guts Rosemont by removing the requirement of claimants to prove minerals before using and dumping waste on public land.

A competing bill, the Green Energy Minerals Reform Act, would introduce requirements such as paying mineral royalties and funding cleanup — basic protections that should have already been in force. Congress held hearings about this proposed legislation in late 2023, but it has not moved forward since.

[mapsontheweb]

Global lithium production and reserves in 2020.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

With global demand for lithium-ion batteries fast depleting reserves of raw materials, experts are seeking safe, affordable and reliable alternatives for rechargeable batteries. Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) could be the answer to producing low-cost alternatives from abundant feedstocks, and Flinders University scientists are paving the way for the production of simple and practical polymer AZIBs using organic cathodes for more sustainable energy storage technology. "Aqueous zinc-ion batteries could have real-world applications," says Associate Professor in Chemistry Zhongfan Jia, a nanotech researcher at the College of Science and Engineering at Flinders University.

Read more.

[dailyoverview]

Numerous saltwater evaporation ponds have been built in China’s Qarhan Playa since the early 1990s. Located in Qinghai Province, Qarhan was once a single unitary lake and is now an expansive salt flat covering 2,261 square miles (5,856 square km). It is heavily exploited for its valuable reserves of salt, potash, lithium, iodine and other minerals.

37.024081°, 95.138925°

Source imagery: Google Timelapse