Paul Driessen:
The litigants and courts will also encounter the bitter reality that the “fundamental transformation” they so earnestly seek means covering the planet with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines … and the quarries and mines to build them. America already lacks sufficient EV charging stations and step-up and step-down transformers for new homes and a functional grid. Millions more will be needed in short order to reach Net Zero — which means thousands of new mines, quarries, processing plants and factories.
Toyota Motor Corp. calculates that “more than 300 new lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite mines are needed to meet the expected battery demand by 2035.” That’s essentially just for new EVs, and getting them approved and developed would likely take decades. A US energy transformation — to say nothing of a global transformation — would require thousands of mines, and thousands of processing facilities.
The process of converting cobalt, lithium, aluminum, iron, rare earths, manganese, nickel and other ores into high-end metals is fossil-fuel-intensive, greenhouse-gas-emitting and dirty. “Reaching the nickel means cutting down swaths of rainforest,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “Refining it … involves extreme heat and high pressure, producing waste slurry that’s hard to dispose of.” Using little children to mine cobalt and processing rare earth elements involve legendary ecological and human rights abuses.
John Hinderaker:
I think that over the rest of this century, the world will divide into rich and poor nations. Rich nations will be those that use fossil fuels and nuclear energy to power their economies and their lives. Poor nations will be those that go “green.”
Beege Welborn:
This week, when you need them most, the conditions aren’t sweet as pie for either renewable choice, and people are being told to conserve. Big fat help there, no?
No. Because the more renewables you bring into the system, the more unstable the system itself becomes trying to pick-up when they fall-off and switching between sources. It also makes it difficult when you are shutting down your reliable fossil fuel plants before you have the capacity online to handle both the renewables you’ve committed to and all the people moving to your state who also demand things like lights at night and air-conditioning in the summer. One also has to ensure that the natural gas one is betting the farm on to pick up the slack is operating at 100% efficiency throughout its cycles, and Texas has a real problem on their hands with that. One glitch, one switch, one freeze, or shutdown for emergency maintenance and they could be in a disaster again.
# posted by Ranger @ 1:56 PM
