I will just reiterate before I respond. I feel neutral and conflicted on the Ambler Road project. I like the idea of roadless, remote areas, but I use a smart phone, synthetic clothing, drive a combustion vehicle etc.
The first article you linked from Science was a news article about a published study. I was unable to find the published study. According to the news article, more efficiency at existing mining projects as well as better recycling procedures can provide a large supply of some of these minerals. Without looking at the actual study, I am not able to provide my detailed opinion on it. I am not an expert on mining practices so I am not sure my analysis would be all that better than a layman's. I absolutely agree with the idea that better efficiency and recycling practices should be employed to help meet demand. Doing so is not only a good way to delay or avoid mining in sensitive areas, but making reserves last longer into the future. I don't think any mining operation would be against improving efficiency but doing so in practice is costly and probably difficult operationally.
As to whether efficiency and recycling improvements can meet demand, I think that is a stretch personally. The reason I continually talk about net zero is because it bring scale of the energy transition and timeframe of the transition into the picture. The idea that recycling and mining efficiency technology are going to evolve and be retrofitted into existing operations on such a small timeframe to meet the increasing demand seems impossible. The scale of the energy demand we are talking about meeting is replacing all fossil fuel emissions by 2050 (minus capture technology). That is only energy demand, vast storage requiring huge quantities of lithium and other battery components are required to make the transition to a renewable grid. Then, if we start talking about the rapid growth of AI and AI datacenters then demand for these minerals increases even more.
The second article about mine water as a source of minerals. I am also a big yes on that one. I have been in numerous conferences that are trying to address that or mineral extraction from oil and gas brines. Seems like this might be a potential source, but like the first article, meeting demand with this method is going to be a stretch especially in a short term scenario. I don't think this tech is quite there yet and certainly not close to being deployable at scale from what I have heard. Maybe someone more knowledgeable in that field can correct or confirm my understanding.
As far as caribou behavior and conservation links, you forgot more caribou knowledge just yesterday than I have ever possessed. I can't comment on that species or study specifically other than the guy/group in the article seems sincere and knowledgeable.
The point of my post was pretty much that telling the general public that the world is going to end catastrophically in a few years unless we globally transition to renewable and emission free technology within 2 decades has resulted in a large push towards increased mining. Many of those mineral deposits are in remote locations that we as hunters would prefer stay remote.
www.minesnewsroom.com
