Lithium drilling advances at the Salton Sea
The last 5 to 10 years has had a succession of doom-sayers riding the Paul Ehrlich  line to &quot;we will run out&quot; -And as Julian Simons bet [0] showed, it may be true but it&#x27;s based on a false premise of supply chain logistics, mining and planning.<p>In absolute terms yes, there is a finite amount of lithium in the crust. Transmutation aside, What we see in real life is unequal distribution and then bad modelling on assumptions this represents all available lithium when in reality it mistakes availability for existence. There is a lot more lithium in the world. The problem is finding it, and its price in extraction complexity, density, and other &quot;costs&quot;<p>The ramp up time to replace all ICE with EV will consume a lot of Lithium. I have no doubt there will be rises and falls in costs of Lithium extraction, as a function of the investment cycle and demand. What I do doubt, is that we will &quot;run out&quot; for any reason other than investment in this discovery and extraction. What they&#x27;re doing in the Salton Sea is sensible, and what will happen in Australia (which also has lithium rich  soils) is sensible, and no, we&#x27;re not entirely captive to some fantasy of &quot;there isn&#x27;t enough lithium in the world&quot;<p>Aside from anything else, there are other battery chemistries out there. Lithium battery chemistry is only the one we like now.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Simon–Ehrlich_wager" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Simon–Ehrlich_wager</a>