I read the article carefully, twice. Doesn't have a link to any original paper, of course. And I can't find the answer to my question... did they, you know, <i>validate</i> the model? Did they actually take some samples at new locations and compare it to what the model says?<p>Or are they literally just announcing that "Hey, we told the computer to tell us something, so it told us something"? Yes, that is how it works. The computer will always tell you something if you make it tell you something. That isn't the hard part. The hard part is getting it to tell you things that correspond to reality.<p>In the absence of validation, this means very little, especially in an environment where the USGS is fairly incentivized to loudly announce to the world that we've totes got plenty of lithium, my fellow countries, any effort to keep lithium away from us is just a waste of time, look at us just rolling in lithium over here.<p>Or, maybe they did do the validation, and it's just the reporting that doesn't consider that an important aspect of the story. <i>Somewhere</i> between funding and press release someone's lost the trail but I don't know who exactly.