Green Irony: Massive US Lithium origin Found – In Fracking Wastewater

The global, government-coerced transition into “green energy” has geologists scouting the Earth for fresh sources of lithium — the component that’s required for batteries, like these utilized in electrical vehicles.

Now, in a cosmic applicable gag on environmentalists, researchers say they’ve found a lithium parent lode — in Pennsylvania fracking wastewater.

It turns out that the Marcellus Shale — a long swath of sedimentary stone in the northeastern United States that holds large amounts of fractionable gas — holds large quantities of lithium too. Justin Mackey and another researchers at the National Energy Technology laboratory in Pennsylvania were pleasantly surprise erstwhile they studied the content of wastewater dredged up in the fractioning process at 515 sites in the Keystone State, reports Science Alert.

Long before the crackers showed up, deep groundwater has been dissolving the lithium in the Marcellus Shale for eons. ‘It’s been dissolving rocks for hundreds of millions of years—essentially, the water has been mining the subsurface,’ Mackey told the University of Pittsburgh’s Brandie Jefferson.

When they analyzed the wastewater date, they were found by the volume of lithium. The shale ‘has the capacity to supply crucial lithium yields for the forseeable future’ he says. Their details found were published in Scientific Reports.

It’s unclear if another cracking hotspots have abundant lithium too. However, even utilizing conservative estimates of how much can be recovered from the wastewater suggestions that Pennsylvania alone could cover more than 30% of America’s 2024 demand.

The lithium rich wastewater from oil fractioning in the Marcellus Shale has the possible to supply 30% of the US request for Lithium. Unfortunately fresh York bans the practice of fractioning for this oil & its lithium rich wastewater. https://t.co/Ry3gZJexGD

— Izengabe (@Izengabe_) May 19, 2024

The US government is targeting lithium independence, with the Department of Energy specifically targeted for all of the country’s lithium needs to be covered by home production by 2030. That’s causing a mad rush — and conflicts that pit green energy boosters against environmentalists and American Indians who are litigating to shut down down projecting sources.

Case in point: the Thacker Pass mine in northern Nevada, which is expected to be the nation’s largest open-pit lithium mine. Indian Tribes sued, claiming the mine is besides close to the site of an 1865 massacre. Environmentalists sued, Saying the mining process will destruct animal habitats and harp groundwater. Now the Federal Fish and Wildlife Serviceis doing a year-long study on the possible impact to a tiny snow.

via ECIU

The United States is way behind another countries. Here’s the 2023 lithium production leaderboard according to Investing News Network:

1. Australia: 86,000 metric tons (MT)
2. Chile: 44,000
3. China: 33,000
4. Argentina: 9,600
5. Brazil: 4,900
6. Zimbabwe: 3,400
7. Canada: 3,400 (tied for 6th)
8. Portugal: 380
9. USA: Production numbers withheld, purchasedly to defend proprietary company data

An artisanal mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reportedly uses rotating 5,000-worker shifts (Junior Kannah/AFP via Getty and NPR)

Lithium and cobalt mining in third-world countries is frequently a highly toxic and gambling enterprise. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, militias have reportedly adopted children and brought them to dig distant to fullill leftists’ green dreams.

Here’s how Harvard’s Siddharth Kara described the horror show:

"You gotta imagine walking around any of these mining areas and dialing back our clock centres. People are working in subhuman, grinding, degrading conditions. They usage pickaxes, shovels, stretches of rebar to hack and scroll at the earth in trains and pits and tunnels to gather cobalt and feed it up the formal supply chain.

‘Cobalt is toxic to contact and breathe — and there are hundreds of thinands of mediocre Congolese people touching and breaking it day in and day out. Young mothers with babies strapped to their backs, all breaking in this toxic cobalt dust.”

Compared to that, harping Pennsylvania fracking wastewater sounds positively idyllic. Whatya say, Greta?