Trevor McKendrick - Greenland, Lithium, and the fires

Hi all,

January is almost half over, I hope your new year has officially begun.

Trevor

The best write up on the fires so far (article)

From Noah Smith:

“Basically, the lessons I take away from the horrific L.A. fires are:

- The insurance industry as we know it is in big trouble.

- Climate change is making wildfires worse, but there’s not much we can do about that right now.

- Forest management needs to get a lot more proactive, but is being blocked by regulation.

- Wildfire preparedness is just a lot more important than it used to be.”

It does feel framed a little both sides-y. Like climate change is part of this AND we have to prepare better.

But I think the climate change impact is a given. I don’t feel like anyone even close to someone normal on right is saying otherwise. What they’re saying and what I’d say is “given climate change and other things have made fires much more likely, we need to do a much better job of preparing.”

China story of the day (article)

China seems to be allowing the destruction of their venture capital space.

They are also blocked from a range of economic activities, such as taking planes or high-speed trains, staying in hotels or leaving China. The country lacks a personal bankruptcy law, making it extremely difficult for most to escape the debts.

New Lithium Discovery (article)

“While the United States is home to considerable proven lithium reserves, it has not yet built up its own extraction and refining capacities to be competitive on any relevant scale with China and other major lithium-producing regions like Australia and South America’s “lithium triangle” at the intersection of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. There is currently only one operational lithium plant in the entire United States – Nevada’s Silver Peak facility.”

And:

“A groundbreaking initiative called the Thacker Pass project – a $2 billion project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors – is supposed to start operations in the McDermitt Caldera as soon as 2026, shaking up the status quo for lithium production on a global level. The project’s initial target is to produce 40,000 metric tons of lithium annually.”

How to be better (tweet)

"i hate how well asking myself “if i had 10x the agency i have what would i do” works

Also works for Claude & Chatgpt! I wonder if the similarities between us and the bots says something about intelligence itself (or maybe the bots are just similar to us because they’re trained on our stuff?)

Should America Buy Greenland (article)

Richard Hanania:

"So they want to be their own country, but not the responsibilities that would entail. In the end, being part of the United States, the most powerful empire in the history of the world where all races are equally welcome, may start to look like a much more enticing prospect than being ruled as a welfare dependent of a tiny and not particularly distinguished European country.”

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