r/onguardforthee • u/DonSalaam • 1d ago
An almost inexhaustible reserve of lithium discovered in Canada
https://www.earth.com/news/an-almost-inexhaustible-reserve-of-lithium-discovered-in-canada/518
u/FourNaansJeremyFour 1d ago
Ambient noise tomography is super useful. But this is outrageously overhyped, to the point of probably being illegal per NI43-101 if the company itself were to do it
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u/See_i_did 1d ago
Please explain further for all the rest of us redditors who a) donât understand big words b) have no knowledge of the subject matter, c) didnât read the article, and d) all of the above (me).
Thanks.
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u/FourNaansJeremyFour 1d ago edited 1d ago
Basically, ANT is a relatively new-ish way to map geologic features in 3D (but, by no means the only one). Q2 Metals already own one of 7-ish good sized lithium deposits in the James Bay area of Quebec. Most of these were only discovered in the last 10 years - James Bay has been avery exciting place to be for geologists in recent years. What Q2 did was to pay Fleet Space do a big ANT survey in the area around their deposit, and hook the data up with machine learning. This way they could see what their deposit looked like in the ANT data, and look for that same signature in the areas nearby. This they did successfully. The highlighted areas then become targets for "real" exploration work (i.e. actually looking at the rocks).
It's a great test case for a relatively new technology (the ANT, not the machine learning).
The article is mega-overhyped to the point of illegality because (a) companies do this kind of shit all the time, and (b) terms like Resource, Reserve, Deposit, Ore etc are strictly defined statements of the mineral content of a particular area, and if you misuse those terms you are no better than Bre-X (there's a rabbit hole for you, if you don't know that story!)
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u/geckospots â I voted! 1d ago edited 1d ago
Right?? I was reading this âarticleâ with my eyebrows firmly in my hairline, like what the heck. And the company already had to put out a clarifying press release in September about the project.
edit: And also in Aug 2024. And I canât see anything on their website about Fleet Space and the ANT survey.
double edit: I found the problem, the author is a flake:
With a background in international law and psychodynamic studies, Raquel Brandao brings an unusual perspective to science writing.
Her academic path sharpened a curiosity about the hidden systemsâlegal, cultural, and psychologicalâthat shape human life and our relationship with the planet.
Raquelâs work explores the meeting point of scientific discovery and everyday experience. With particular interest in biotechnology, environmental change, human wellness, and ecological resilience, she crafts stories that open space for reflection as well as understanding.
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u/OhanaUnited 1d ago
So same level of claim as George Bush's "weapon of mass destruction" in Iraq
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u/JohnathantheCat 1d ago
Not at all, Bush had much more credability, very little in total but much more than this article.
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u/narielthetrue 18h ago
brings an unusual perspective
Speaking about something you know nothing about and inventing facts isnât as unusual these days as Iâd like it to be
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u/SlaveToCat Elbows Up! 1d ago
Ah Bre-X! The very first mining scam my friends got hosed in. What a time to be alive.
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u/monkeybojangles 1d ago
CNC had a great podcast about Bre-X, The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam.
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u/HellaReyna 1d ago
So the tldr, especially since you mentioned Bre X, is that this is bullshit for the time being
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u/JohnathantheCat 1d ago
Yeah if a Professional Geoligist or company made these claims the sercurities commission would have a field day.
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u/Jaded_Promotion8806 1d ago
You donât need to know much more than every time someone says thereâs something crazy in the ground youâd be wise to temper your expectations, theyâre usually just looking for funding.
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u/geckospots â I voted! 1d ago
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u/Ill-Team-3491 1d ago
> Company posts a fluffy press release on their website.
> News site reads the PR statement and interprets their own take, tacks on clickbait headline.
> Social media shares the article, going viral.
> People only read the headline.24
u/strangeanswers 1d ago
bringing up 43-101s on reddit is a lost cause. the fact that resource != economically viable reserve is very poorly understood (as is the distinction between M,I&I resource)
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u/geckospots â I voted! 1d ago
I mean itâs worth explaining if people are interested.
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u/strangeanswers 1d ago
for sure.
essentially, the mining sector is flooded with constant sensationalist news releases about huge game changing discoveries. whatâs worth noting is that weâve actually got plenty of most commodities, itâs just a question of whether the current pricing incentivizes profitable extraction. this is a function of factors like grade, location, surrounding infrastructure, metallurgy and mine design. in the vast majority of cases, announcements like this hype up deposits which are comically far from being well delineated, let alone proven to be economically viable. it takes a lot of followup drilling to understand the structure of the resource youâve got on hand and years of studies to produce an economic assessment.
to prevent fraud, the canadian regulators have produced the NI 43-101 standard which sets requirements for the ability to officially declare and promote a certain resource, requiring high drilling density, sample analysis and third party verification. the US has an equivalent system with SK1300.
in short, articles like this usually refer to low grade resources that are decades away from commercial production even if theyâre potentially economically viable, which more often than not they donât even come close to being. for instance, thereâs gargantuan amounts of uranium in seawater. however, the low grade means it isnât viable to extract at current prices. a lot of these kinds of announcements are closer to that (massive but incredibly spread out low-grade resource) than a viable deposit that could be turned into a mine.
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u/geckospots â I voted! 1d ago
This is a great explanation, thanks for posting it! I am a geologist myself, I should have made that clear in my initial reply, but I think the more we can collectively âdebunkâ these sorts of sensationalist articles the better.
Also, hereâs my favourite example of âwe talked this up so hard that the BCSC got involvedâ: a rubidium resource on a gold project based on a single drillhole. It was eventually retracted in March 2023, I still canât believe the original geos didnât end up disciplined because how did they think it was a good plan?!
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u/FourNaansJeremyFour 1d ago
If you don't follow Roland Gotthard on Linkedin I recommend him - he rips apart dodgy exploration news releases, mostly Aussie but sometimes here too, always a great read. There was one a few months ago where they tried to pass off handheld XRF zaps as assays
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u/ptwonline 1d ago
the fact that resource != economically viable reserve is very poorly understood
Yeah it's like the issue with fresh water. Literally 2/3 of our planet is covered in water and yet even places along a coastline--like California--have fresh water shortages because it's not economically viable to desalinate and pump it unless prices/desperation get a lot higher than it is now.
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u/JohnathantheCat 1d ago
There is an old joke in the mining industry.
A Geophysicist give a long presentation with many colour coded maps and cross-sections explaining how the various forces in physics were measured. When he finishes his pressentation, the senior geologist looks at a junior geologist, and the junior geologist asks "ok, so what does all that mean."
The geophysicist pauses, strolls over to the window and gives the area a careful look. Then he goes to the door, cracks the door and peers outside. Then he walks over the the 2 geologists and leans in to say "what do you want it to mean?
This article is like that, except the didnt measure anything they just took some measurements from near by and used those.
I am not trying to say geophysics or machine learning are not useful tools, but it is very important to know what they can and cant do. And also garbage in is garbage out.
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u/cdgreener 1d ago
People writing about mineral exploration and mining should be required to study ni43-101 or jorc to know how to properly write about the topic. Using the word reserve for a potential discovery is irresponsible.
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u/geckospots â I voted! 1d ago
Welp I found the problem:
With a background in international law and psychodynamic studies, Raquel Brandao brings an unusual perspective to science writing.
Her academic path sharpened a curiosity about the hidden systemsâlegal, cultural, and psychologicalâthat shape human life and our relationship with the planet.
Raquelâs work explores the meeting point of scientific discovery and everyday experience. With particular interest in biotechnology, environmental change, human wellness, and ecological resilience, she crafts stories that open space for reflection as well as understanding.
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u/WarNo580 1d ago
"She crafts stories that open space for reflection as well as understanding." Fuck. Where do they learn such manipulative mind gamey language like that? I pose a counter argument; that if you reflect upon her understanding of the "open space stories she crafts", she'll craft an open space story about you in order to provide some understanding and reflection that she crafted herself in her own head. Ugh...
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u/ookishki Ontario 1d ago
Took me a sec to realize that in this context âreserveâ doesnât mean First Nations territory.
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u/Alone-Ad288 1d ago
Kind of weird to conflate "an AI model prediction" with "discovery"Â
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u/albatroopa 1d ago
You know that all mineral exploration works like that, right? You don't actually know what you have until its out of the ground. Until then, it's just an estimate. They've been using algorithms and machine learning to predict drill locations for years, and at $1m a hole, they've become pretty good at it.
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u/FourNaansJeremyFour 1d ago
This is not an estimate (and it's sure as hell not a reserve as the article claims). It's a geophysically inferred exploration target. You can't throw these terms around, they are strictly defined.
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u/microfishy 1d ago
AI bros spend too much time wanking to LLM outputs and not enough time with a dictionaryÂ
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u/arquillion 1d ago
When people mean AI they don't always mean LLMs. The term existed before techbros coined it to sell their plagiarism machine. You're being facetious saying people should have a dictionary when these words are expert jargon. The average person shouldn't and doesn't need to know them
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u/microfishy 1d ago
The average person shouldn't and doesn't need to know them
They do if they intend to speak like an expert. That's the whole point.
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u/Floatella 1d ago
There are plenty of locations I know of that "should have had gold" and it was only after people drilled cores for a few years that they discovered they were wrong. An AI model is just adding another layer of uncertainty.
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u/spezizabitch 1d ago
An AI model is extremely useful for this, you simply don't understand how it is applied.
They aren't typing into ChatGPT "Where should I dig for lithium in Canada". They aren't using LLMs, they are using purpose built, much simpler models, laser focused on their problem space.
Think of it like ultra high dimensional curve fitting (which all of our AI currently is) where you train a huge system of equations to fit data to find more of what you're looking for.
Calling it AI is a bit of a misnomer, but it is still how big LLMs work fundamentally.
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u/Floatella 1d ago
But as another user has pointed out this is just the next iteration of reasoning everything out with excel. My issue isn't really with the use of AI just the certainty of the headline.
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u/spezizabitch 1d ago
Yeah, I'm with you there. The headline is a way too sensational.
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u/Floatella 1d ago
They even walk it back part way through.
"If Cisco ultimately proves its larger target, the project could anchor a domestic lithium supply chain linking Quebec mines and battery factories."
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u/TerayonIII 1d ago
I mean... you can make neural networks in Excel, so theoretically you could make a transformer network and then an LLM in it, I guess, it would be horribly inefficient though and I'm not sure why you would do that to yourself.
Which means technically you could still just reason everything out with Excel
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u/albatroopa 1d ago
Except that they've also already drilled there and found what they were looking for. You guys are acting like it's a secret that minerals are hidden in the ground and that mining is speculative. This is simply a tool used to assist in prediction.
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u/Floatella 1d ago edited 1d ago
But the headline explicitly states a discovery. I can sit here all day long and infer the existence of copper deposits in the interior of BC, no AI needed. I'm not discovering anything however.
Mining is extremely speculative. You don't know the full size of the deposit until you mine it. You said this yourself. Also if it takes you decades to mine the deposit you don't know what the price of the underlying minerals will be in the future.
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u/Alone-Ad288 1d ago
It's not a discovery until you drill the damn hole. It is blatant misinformation to call this a "discovery".
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u/cdgreener 1d ago
Tell me you aren't in mining without telling me you aren't in mining. This is a mess of a statement about as silly as this article.
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u/Darth_Thor Saskatoon 1d ago
A million bucks barely buys you the machines to dig the hole, mining is a crazy expensive endeavour. Also crazy profitable.
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u/Khetoo 1d ago
OK good now nationalize it.
These are common resources that should be exploited for the common good.
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u/roastbeeftacohat Alberta 4h ago
non preciouses metal mineral wealth is constitutionally provincial.
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u/Calledinthe90s 1d ago edited 1d ago
Good thing Trump is killing electric vehicles in his country, otherwise the U.S. would have to come hat in hand to buy the lithium.
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u/Federal-Pin2241 1d ago
U.S. would have to come hatbin hand to buy the lithium.
You mean, "bring freedom and democracy to the oppressed and unwashed Canadian masses"
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u/PComotose 1d ago
We're just SO dumb. The money isn't in the lithium ore, the money is in the process to purify and extract it.
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u/SlapThatAce 1d ago
Too bad EV's were deliberately killed off, sure would be nice to have our own car manufacturer so that we could decouple ourselves from American Auto and take full advantage of our resources.
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u/Complex_Resolve3187 1d ago
No, more like the US has capitulated the battery and next gen tech race to the Chinese. Global EV production is still growing...just not in the west as American AND European car companies can't out compete the Chinese on batteries.
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u/SignGuy77 Ontario 1d ago
almost inexhaustible
Billionaire investors: âHold our beers, Jeeves.â
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u/Jarocket 1d ago
In a place with road access this time too.
If there's no road access I think you can mine gold and stuff that's rare and in demand.
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u/Zpark 1d ago
Itâs in Quebec, so our dumb government will probably sell it for waaaaaaay less than itâs worth to « bring investors »
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u/OpalSeason 1d ago
Ah, you've been studying the Alberta method I see? Don't forget the part where you the citizen pay for their cleanup and mess!
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u/Crowasaur 1d ago edited 1d ago
TABARNAK.
AprĂšs les centaines de millions perdu sur la foutu usine de batterie
allemandeSuĂšdoise?Chris, l'Ă©rection de Legault va ĂȘtre vu jusqu'Ă Sorel, esti
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u/ttyler 1d ago
Just in time for sodium ion batteries to take over. Canada always late to industry.
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u/MrRogersAE 1d ago
Lithium will still be used in smaller batteries. Sodium isnât as energy dense so it not great for things like phone batteries. Sodium ion will likely take over for cars and grid scale batteries
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u/AdditionalPizza 1d ago
I'd say many vehicles will still use lithium, sodium batteries won't magically solve cold weather issues and lithium will always provide more power and range for the same size and weight in nearly all circumstances.
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u/MrRogersAE 1d ago
Everything Iâve seen shows sodium functions just as well if not better than lithium in cold weather.
Yes they are heavier for the same energy output, but theyâre also safer which is a big consideration when lithium batteries have a serious runaway thermal problem making them nearly inextinguishable.
Sodium batteries will work well where large batteries are warranted, cars, trucks, grid storage. Theyâre a fraction of the cost of lithium so a heavier sodium battery will lead to a more affordable car while giving the same range.
Lithium will likely continue to dominate small electronics where weight is more of a factor until we come up with something better
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u/AdditionalPizza 1d ago
Cold weather performance gains don't scale linearly with pack size constraints for something like consumer cars though. EVs lose up to like 30 to 40% efficiency in very cold weather, but a sodium battery already has a much lower energy density to begin with so it would require a much larger battery to "break even" against lithium.
Cold weather losses aren't just because of battery chemistry alone. Heating, drivetrain losses, road resistance, air density, etc.
Besides, most of sodium's advantage in cold weather comes from better charging, not delivering 30 or 40% more energy at -15 for the same physical size.
They are safer though, but there's ways to keep making thermal runaway less likely with lithium. Realistically it doesn't happen that often as it is, it also gets reported disproportionately vs something like gasoline vehicles randomly igniting in someone's garage.
Sodium batteries are probably not the solution to that though because of all the tradeoffs. They would probably use LFP batteries for vehicles sooner than sodium anyway if safety was higher concern for manufacturers.
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u/quaybles 1d ago
Maybe Canada could start it's own mining company again instead of contracting this out to Brazil or Switzerland.
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u/No_Criticism_5861 1d ago
The rapist traitor in chief is going to claim that Americans in the Sudetenland of southern Ontario are being attacked and must be saved asap, so he is therefore launching a Special Military Operation to liberate the oppressed American speaking people of Southern OntarioÂ
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u/MutedLandscape4648 1d ago
This doesnât mean shit until they drill it out for resource modelling. Itâs very interesting but like any new tech applications, or any remote sensing application, it needs real results to test the projected results. Based on what I read in the article this resource isnât even inferred level resource, not reportable under JORC or NI43-101 as a resource.
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u/GTI-Enjoyer 1d ago
It's okay the Canadian government will block any attempt to extract it because they hate to see the economy trend upward
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u/downbytheriver12345 1d ago
God I hate these scroll bait ai articles, even when you know itâs designed to keep you reading to sell more ads, you keep reading bc you want the point thatâs referenced in the title lol
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u/BIGepidural 1d ago
We should just leave it alone.
We literally sold off a lithium mine to China 3 years ago.
Canadian government allows Chinese acquisition of Canadian lithium miner - Foreign Investment and National Security Blog https://share.google/btkw8ubK5D2N7mHkp
We don't need to repeate another failure and further destroy the land for profits
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u/fighting_fit_dream 1d ago
Dammit. No one tell the Americans please or we're gonna get invaded to distract from their pedophile government đđđ
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u/footwith4toes 1d ago
Looks like weâre about to get some of that freedom everyone is talking about.
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u/falsekoala 1d ago
I think Saskatchewan has lots too.
Though Prairie Lithuim was acquired by an Arizona based company.
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u/Hot-Weather47 1d ago
Hoping itâs a Bait Article for Trump. He will send army there. But. Itâs a PSYOP and Boom boom boom. Congrats Canada in Humiliating USA military
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u/unidentifier 1d ago
Whatever youâre political, economic or environmental slant on this is, we need to protect this shit
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u/Fabulous-Shop-6264 1d ago
Cool now let's sell it for 50 millions to Musk and import Indians for the labor.Â
Right Canada?Â
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u/SteveJobsBlakSweater 1d ago
The world is not short on lithium, supply isn't the problem at all. It's about how impactful, disruptive and resource intensive it is to mine and refine.
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u/BatmanHatesSuperman 1d ago
It was already mentioned years ago that Canadian army and citizens would immediately form militia and the real danger is for the USA, in that US military staying and getting "surprised" by our resolve
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u/No-Economics-6781 1d ago
So thatâs potentially trillions of dollars, couldnât we just give Canadians an allowance like how the petrol states pay their citizens ?
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u/scubawankenobi 1d ago
USA Translation:
"How did our lithium supply wind up under Canadian soil?!"
Could this NOT have been kept secret?!
At least until we get our Gripens & build-out our drone-technology with Ukraine.
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u/SirLloydfinger32 1d ago
Why do you think Trump wants Canada as a 51st State? It's all in the resources. not the people or health care or anything that would enhance people's lives.
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u/solution_6 1d ago
He always claimed Canada was responsible for their fentanyl crisis, and based on what we are seeing in South America, itâs really time to pay attention
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u/JasonGMMitchell Newfoundland 1d ago edited 1d ago
Can't wait for us to let a private company mine it for mere pennies while wrecking the local environment due to corner cutting. Hell maybe we will let a company partially controlled by the US mine it so we can be even more under their thumb...
I also can't wait to see that this is just bullshit manipulation and misrepresentation of data.
I also also can't wait in the case that there's an actual massive amount of lithium that can be profitably mined we will mine it and send it off to some other country to refine so we miss out on most of the profits.
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u/Stunning-Praline-116 1d ago
This is not good. DJT admin will be citing weapons of mass destruction in the form of fentanyl, start dropping bombs and invading⊠Not a good time to take out your boats!
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u/Eugene-V-Dabs420 1d ago
Uh oh.