In The News: Department of Geoscience
David Kreamer’s connection to the Colorado River is stronger than most, formed during an epic kayak adventure almost 40 years ago.
Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels averaged over 417 ppm in 2022, and even recently reached a daily reading of over 424 ppm. When this story first published in 2019, CO2 levels hovered around 412 ppm. They keep rising, relentlessly.
The dams built along the Colorado River some hundred years ago paved the way for Western cities to boom. Las Vegas wouldn’t exist without Lake Mead, our nation’s largest reservoir. But these dams came with a cost: environmental impact, cultural loss, and fraught political battles.
As the climate crisis pushes more and more people to rethink their relationship with the environment, electric vehicles are becoming one of the main products consumers can purchase to make a positive change.
India has found 5.9 million tonnes (about 6.5 million US tons) of lithium in the federally administered, long-disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, a discovery that can transform the country into a lithium global powerhouse. India currently relies on China and Hong Kong for its lithium requirements and about 96% of its lithium-ion cell and battery imports. Yet, it will be a lengthy and complicated process to get the new reserves into smartphones, electric vehicles (EVs) and wind turbines.
“Lithium and rare earths will soon be more important than oil and gas", European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last September. The Commission chief pronounced these words as Europe was reeling from an energy crisis accelerated by Russia' war in Ukraine and which led to the bloc pledging to wean itself off fossil fuels — most of which it has traditionally supplied from Russia — and accelerate its transition towards "homegrown" renewables and other green tech.
Neighborhoods all over southern Nevada have been ripping up grass for cash and replacing it with rocks, artificial turf and desert plants.
The water dispute between states is heating up after California could not come to an agreement with six other Colorado River Basin states about how to cut down on water needed from the Colorado River.
We look at the field of economic geology, or the scientific discipline concerned with the distribution of mineral deposits, the economic considerations involved in their recovery, and the assessment of the reserves available. Simon also discusses some of his latest work on looking at the impact of COVID-19 on the mineral supply chain and how the global pandemic and geopolitical tensions with China may change the way we think about raw materials and their supply chains.
Rechargeable batteries have become the lifeblood of electronics, enabling the mobile revolution. Unfortunately, today's rechargeable batteries incorporate flammable liquid cores. That could change soon, however by switching to rechargeable batteries that have solid cores with nothing to spill, nothing to catch on fire, nothing to potentially explode.
Cobalt is a mineral that is essential in a wide variety of industrial applications from batteries to jet engines. However, most ore comes from mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country that has been exploited for over 100 years. Due to the inherent risks and ethical issues of dealing with the country, finding sources from outside the region is a top US priority. However, high concentration cobalt sources are relatively rare, and most production comes as a byproduct from other mines (nickel, iron, etc).
A Jan. 22 Instagram post shows a person holding a shiny rock that appears to produce electricity and illuminate a small light connected to it by wires. "Electrically charged stones discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," reads text in the post.