http://lithiumabundance.blogspot.com/

The web-page lists a number of sources of lithium within the confines of the USA. The eye-ball total is about 6 million tonnes — a third of that in Nevada — or about 15% of your claimed 35 million tonnes world-wide.

http://www.daughtersoftiresias.org/greenwiki/Peak_lithium

“[at] 10x the [current] price, [...] you can easily afford to extract it even from seawater.”

What this means is that in a future lithium economy, if Argentina and Chile was captured by Hugo Chavez and refused to sell you lithium, you could simply give him the finger while you make your own.

Now let’s contrast that to another imagined future: John McCain is elected, and he puts a collective gun to the heads of 300 million Americans, forcing them all onto oil platforms in the Gulf, into the taiga of Alaska — without mosquito or black fly netting — or the semi-arid deserts of western Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, or to the iron mines or steel smelters to build all the pipes and decking, there is no possible way you could make more than a minuscule dent in oil production for a significant period of time. You just don’t have enough of the stuff, even if production cost was exactly $0 and the sale price of oil was $1000/bbl, and everyone would pay it cheerfully. (As http://www.daughtersoftiresias.org notes in another page on the wiki, past $300/bbl or so, you’d do better to just synthesize the oil from raw carbon, hydrogen or other feedstocks. If oil made any sense at all at that point…)

“Alex Rodriguez :
July 31st, 2008 at 4:40 pm
“Gas prices plummet in Oklahoma City”

Just like I’ve said all along. Oil will go back beneath $100 in the next 60 days if not sooner. I would not be shocked if it gets back under $70 by the end of the year.”

$150 had absolutely ZERO to do with Supply and Demand. It had everything to do with speculation from people who had no intention of ever taking delivery.

I called this plunge months ago, if I had time, I’d cut and go and find my exact statements here on TTAC (I will if challenged.) It is the Dot Com, the Enron bust all over again.

Peak oil. What a friggin joke.

Every person I mention EVs to sooner or later talks about the cost.

Everyone that I talk about PV (solar) with eventually talks about the cost.

Doesn’t matter what the RIGHT answer is – cost is a major factor.

Now conversely if I suggest free Linux over $200 Microsoft Windows – then the conversation shifts to easy… (Linux is easier I think).

So there you have it – whatever America will choose – will be max profits or easy.

I’d agree with Mr. Goolsbee but I am concerned with how many American dollars are going out of the USA already. Potentially that would enable those foreign countries to come back and buy things with their American dollars but I’m not so sure that this is what is going on.

Tell me why a trade deficit is a good thing.

Our county is our state’s largest recycler of household waste. I heard a fellow argue against recycling b/c of the cost (i.e. not a profit). Still, even if there is a cost, isn’t it the right thing to do?

Maybe the environmentalist lobbying is really funded by OPEC it is easy to do. Just have your US moslim friends send money. Has anybody checked?

The small amount of Lithium Nevada has is not worth mentioning let alone mining.

Anyone who puts together a thought string longer than that is intellectual elite, out of touch with the gum chewing voting public, and subject to easy ridicule.

Arguments that it wont really help, or oil companies already sit on proven reserves, are long winded diatribes and the public already tuned you out.

I think a politician can never lose by underestimating the public’s ability to reason out a situation.

I think the drill train has left the station.

This idea the US can drill itself into control of the price of oil makes the Saudi’s, the Canadian’s and Hugo Chavez laugh.

The USA simply does not have enough oil to meaningfully influence the price from a supply point of view.

This will be remain true at any price of the stuff.

Honestly, you’ll do a hell of a lot better on the demand side.

But I guess nostalgia is an even more powerful force than the laws of the nature when it comes to politics.

The Democrats don’t have to keep the environmentalists happy, because those people are going to vote Democrat (or rather, not vote Republican) anyway. It’s a taken-for-granted vote, just as much as the Christian Right is for the Republicans, because these people are not going to cross the line in significant numbers.

Conversely, the Republicans don’t have to appease hard-core environmentalists, nor Democrats the gun-rights advocates for the same reason.

This marginalization of the marginal is the reason there’s functionally no real difference between the two parties, regardless of how either side paints the other as extremist.

Don’t forget that for the last ten years there has been a cooling of the temps on Earth while manmade CO2 has seen a huge increase. Don’t quite fit in with the AGW theory does it?

Oil as a feedstock is only 10% of the total consumed:

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2008/01/326-detailed-breakdown-of-us-petroleum.html

Almost all of the remainder is converted into fuel of some kind or another. The vast majority — 42% — goes to gasoline for cars.

It should also be noted that even if every oil pump on Earth went dry as soon as I click on “submit comment”, there are many other feedstock substitutes available, beginning with natural gas.

blindfaith: By the way, as we move to lithium batteries you mite want to know there is only 35 million tons of the junk and we don’t own any of it.

http://paguntaka.org/2008/04/02/western-uranium-corporation-provides-corporate-activity-update/

Wikipedia says that Nevada is in the United States, but as we all know, anyone can say anything at all at Wikipedia…

This leaves Canada with two trillion barrels!

The US one trillion barrels!

And Venezula with 2 trillion barrels of hard to get oil!

What do we do Sell it for $120 a barrel since it costs about $40 a barrel to get. Lot of money?

By the way, as we move to lithium batteries you mite want to know there is only 35 million tons of the junk and we don’t own any of it. O my the problems we get ourselves into when we depend on others (Global Economy)

YES. There will certainly be price fluctuations up and down before the crush.

Indonesia just left OPEC since it is now an oil importer. UK, oil importer in 2009-2010. Mexico’s oil fields are crashing, to become importer in about 2015.

Shell and Total are very sure of it and have public statements of their surety of the end of cheap oil between 2012-2015.

The last thing the Saudis want is for us to drill, and for them to lose pricing power, hence control and wealth. Expect the price of oil to continue to decline as long as Drill Baby continues.

As soon as Drill Baby stops the price of oil will go back up again.

This is no coincidence.

I can’t see my next laptop in tin.
Its plastic from oil and so is the one you used to call me an addict.
So, eventually we will drill and drill some more.

Doesn’t really matter what the opposition says.
When people decide they need something, come hell or the earth, they are going to get it.
No NIMBY is gonna be able to hold off me and an on-coming crowd with empty buckets and drilling equipment.

This silliness, which at best will impact the market by less than 2%, simply distracts from what should be our real goal – protecting future generations by innovating NOW, but starting to look 10, 50, 100 years in the future instead of always to next week. We can grab and grasp at the closest solution like fools in the dark or we can generate some bright ideas and see our way out of this mess.

Innovate, Baby, Innovate!

My only question about Drill Baby Drill at this point is: if we require oil drilled offshore to be processed and consumed only in the USA, would the GOPs still allow the legislation to move forward?

Americans generally don’t care about their country or their grandchildren or conservation in general. I’ve heard more than a few people in this country tell me that they don’t care what happens to anybody but themselves, and once they die, they have no reason to care. They believe America’s headed to becoming a third world nation anyway, so why should they try harder? It won’t get them anything.

As for more efficient vehicles: I would like some more. But I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever oil we drill will just be used so people can buy Tundras and Silverados as commuter vehicles. Gotta have that three foot ground clearance and six foot ceiling height, am I right?

Drill or not drill – it won’t make any difference. An energy revolution is coming and “drill baby drill” is like shouting for more carbon paper and electric typewriters at the dawn of the computer revolution. The slogan should be “Adapt or die”.

I sure hope so. We need more solar, nuclear, and wind power desperately. Diversification of energy sources is the only way we can protect ourselves from oil shortages and other energy crises.

And the oil companies won’t be building those pumps for free – we’ll pay for that at the pump too.

Are you an Exxon shareholder or executive? Not making millions of dollars might constitute “harm” from their perspective.

In the past I’ve typically argued that drilling at ANWR is inevitable, and that we might as well get it over with. But Chuck Goolsbee’s point is an interesting wrinkle, and it gives me pause. Patience is, however, not the most American of virtues.

How do we know it won’t go back up again?

I don’t understand why in the whole discussion of whether or not to drill there is hardly anything mentioned about conservation? What’s the harm in more efficient vehicles running on cheaper gasoline?