Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Hillhater said:
The difference is the effect from “Urban Heat Islands” where most of the original temperature stations now find themselves due to urban development over the last 100+ years.
Nope. That myth has been disproved several times. One easy way to disprove it is look where the majority of the heating has been seen - in norther Russia, Alaska, far northern Canada and Greenland. Not places where there are many urban heat islands.

Another easy way is to compare temperatures between urban and rural stations during low wind and high wind periods. If UHI was having an effect on data sets, then urban temps would be higher during light winds and less during strong winds (since the air doesn't have as much time to warm. Reality - there's no measurable difference.

In fact, since meteorologists often helpfully put weather reporting stations in irrigated parks within cities (because they are more "natural") there is a _cooling_ trend in some stations that has to be corrected for.
Urban development represents less than 2% of the earths land surface, but contains the vast majority of long term temperature monitoring stations
Yes. So the warming is actually greater than what we are observing.
 
billvon said:
Hillhater said:
The difference is the effect from “Urban Heat Islands” where most of the original temperature stations now find themselves due to urban development over the last 100+ years.
Nope. That myth has been disproved several times. One easy way to disprove it is look where the majority of the heating has been seen - in norther Russia, Alaska, far northern Canada and Greenland. Not places where there are many urban heat islands...
I see the point has gone completely over your head again bill. !
I am talking about the influence of “heat island effects” on that vast majority of weather stations in the USA.
Not Russia, or the Poles etc.
Another easy way is to compare temperatures between urban and rural stations during low wind and high wind periods. If UHI was having an effect on data sets, then urban temps would be higher during light winds and less during strong winds (since the air doesn't have as much time to warm. Reality - there's no measurable difference.
..
So, you are denying there is any such thing as a “Heat island” ?? :shock:

...In fact, since meteorologists often helpfully put weather reporting stations in irrigated parks within cities (because they are more "natural") there is a _cooling_ trend in some stations that has to be corrected for.....
What ? Green areas are cooler than concreted urban areas ???
...... What is that called..”a cool island effect “ ?? :roll:

Rather than rely on some spotty keyboard jockey playing with his latest “Temperature adjustment model” ,.. it is much better to just remove the “urban” data from the data analysis completely ( which is what the NOAA has done)
 
We rather grow with the planet than against it so the more energy we create with out burning things the better, this thread proves we will never all agree ok the approach not even just 2 people of the thread could agree on all points so it will always be a mixed view, sane as the energy it self we will always use differing methods for differing situations and at least from this point forward there's an effort to stop major pollution not just of carbon sources and greenhouse gases but toxins and all sorts of cancer human killing nastys leaking into the system.

Granted we have major issues but with the current evolution of computer science we need not worry we will adapt our body's the earth more than likely if we can not change our ways humans will exist in some form we are a fighting species but the green utopian planet is at threat there's overwhelming evidence even if we choose to ignore the graphs you only have to use your knowledge and experience of the surrounding areas we live in to see major changes that have or are occurring from hottest days to coldest days all in the same year and close repeats happening there's alot of energy trapped rolling through the system and it's only increasing as we increasing the earth winter coat and wear it in the summer.
 
^^^ ?? Every year has a “hottest day” and a “Coldest day” ? ..
butyou should not believe the MSM or internet chatter.
USA’s hottest day (modern records) was back in 1913, .. before any significant CO2 increase
The coldest day was way back in the 1950’s ( Montana , -70 F)
Of course the climate is changing, the question is by how much , and what are the causes.
The earth is currently between Ice Ages , and the real risk to our civilisation , is how we adapt and survive the next Ice Age when it sets in
.. then you will want that winter coat in the summer !
.. ( it sounds like you are sold on the “CO2 blanket” story line ?)
 
For news about Tesla's Solar-city here is a newly uploaded podcast interview around the news and information of Tesla's financial health, it's quite interesting. I tend to use YouTube as an audio podcast service just as much as anything else.
Tesla's Solar-city is quite a large part of Tesla and it also provides a window into the typical activities of the renewables industry.

The information in this podcast is noticeably fair and accurate to the point where I suspect the person Teslacharts is consciously afraid of being sued by Tesla for asserting any information that could be seen as inaccurate.
The person TeslaCharts also drives a Chevy Bolt EV to help make it clear he still supports the EV movement, but I think most people will find his insights on Tesla and Elon Musk quite interesting.
@TeslaCharts Goes Deep On the SolarCity Shit Show
https://youtu.be/OetAnndyvNI?t=366
[youtube]OetAnndyvNI[/youtube]
Be sure to skip into the first 6minutes of the audio as its all adverts/sponsors/thank-yous and disclaimers.
I cannot recommend enough that people take the time to listen to this audio podcast, I have found so many people I send videos to never watch them because they are religiously ingrained into only listening/watching broadcast media.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jonescg said:
When wealthy folks buy apartment blocks as a means to park money, they prevent it from being of benefit to more people.
In Australia, it is completely illegal to buy an apartment/house and not rent it out or not live in it, this law has been around for a while.
Believing property is expensive in Australia for any reason other than the causation of new-extra people showing up and requiring the basic raw necessity to live somewhere in Australia is a total red-herring, these red-herrings are from propaganda media outlets like the ABC who deliberately do not explain supply-demand law basics.
Instead, our government agencies are forced to put out stuff like this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DiWdSDfUcAAW9Q4.jpg hopefully you see it for what it is.

https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/indians-push-foreign-tourist-arrivals-to-record-800-000-20190911-p52q45
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/06/population-growth-surges-past-400000-rising-immigration/
If you had ZERO "new arrivals" in Australia for short-stay business work etc which have been recorded as much as 800,000 in a single year(news articles urls above), and on top, have "the wealthy" buy/built 10 million new apartments that must be rented out or sold, how much do you think they could rent/sell for? Not much because the supply has massively outperformed the demand. It would be the opposite situation, they would pretty much have to give them away.

Apartments have the body-corporation levies that are about $5k per year on average to maintain the apartment block.
So even if these "super-wealthy" didn't require getting bank loans/paying interest rates to buy them because they were so weathly and could just do it all on their spare cash and were merely just holding the empty property, it would still be costing them money.

This reality is really just a simple IQ test, and I find it quite interesting how many people fail at the "supply-demand law question IQ test"
Jordan Peterson goes over "how to make an IQ test" in this part of this very interesting talk he gave.
https://youtu.be/lpny84fcThk?t=450

This is why I like the banana video, just swap bananas with apartments. What would be really great is if someone made the same video with just apartments instead of bananas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeRnxSuLFI
 
It was the parked money I was referring to, and it not circulating in the economy is the bad thing. Thats moneywhich could be doing more good in the lower, more liquid echelons of the economy. Oh, and there are thousands of vacant apartments in Australia. Being 'rented' by people you never seem to see...
 
What is the difference between “parking” money in a house purchace, or using it to buy a car or a TV ?
If you buy a new house, your money goes to a developer/builder who can use it to buy materials, employ labour , etc,
If it is an older property, the money goes to a previous owner who will circulate it by buying another house or a car , TV, etc. ..
If you use money to buy a car or TV, it will be used to manufacture more goods, create more jobs, etc.
Either way, the money is still “circulating” in the economy..
 
TheBeastie said:
For news about Tesla's Solar-city here

He didn't mention the 750 million that SolarCity took from the state of NY.

TheBeastie said:
This is why I like the banana video, just swap bananas with apartments. What would be really great is if someone made the same video with just apartments instead of bananas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeRnxSuLFI

Now substitute workers for bananas and you will see why labor has no leverage in the current market system to demand a living wage and how wealth tends to accumulate at the top of the owners of production with the only solution being government intervention in the labor markets paid for by progressive tax rates.
 
The Limits of Clean Energy
If the world isn’t careful, renewable energy could become as destructive as fossil fuels.

BY JASON HICKEL | SEPTEMBER 6, 2019, 8:51 AM

The conversation about climate change has been blazing ahead in recent months. Propelled by the school climate strikes and social movements like Extinction Rebellion, a number of governments have declared a climate emergency, and progressive political parties are making plans—at last—for a rapid transition to clean energy under the banner of the Green New Deal.

This is a welcome shift, and we need more of it. But a new problem is beginning to emerge that warrants our attention. Some proponents of the Green New Deal seem to believe that it will pave the way to a utopia of “green growth.” Once we trade dirty fossil fuels for clean energy, there’s no reason we can’t keep expanding the economy forever.

This narrative may seem reasonable enough at first glance, but there are good reasons to think twice about it. One of them has to do with clean energy itself.

The phrase “clean energy” normally conjures up happy, innocent images of warm sunshine and fresh wind. But while sunshine and wind is obviously clean, the infrastructure we need to capture it is not. Far from it. The transition to renewables is going to require a dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare-earth minerals, with real ecological and social costs. We need a rapid transition to renewables, yes—but scientists warn that we can’t keep growing energy use at existing rates. No energy is innocent. The only truly clean energy is less energy.

In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.

In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction. For neodymium—an essential element in wind turbines—extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.

The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.

And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.

That’s just for electricity. We also need to think about vehicles. This year, a group of leading British scientists submitted a letter to the U.K. Committee on Climate Change outlining their concerns about the ecological impact of electric cars. They agree, of course, that we need to end the sale and use of combustion engines. But they pointed out that unless consumption habits change, replacing the world’s projected fleet of 2 billion vehicles is going to require an explosive increase in mining: Global annual extraction of neodymium and dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent, annual extraction of copper will need to more than double, and cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four—all for the entire period from now to 2050.

The problem here is not that we’re going to run out of key minerals—although that may indeed become a concern. The real issue is that this will exacerbate an already existing crisis of overextraction. Mining has become one of the biggest single drivers of deforestation, ecosystem collapse, and biodiversity loss around the world. Ecologists estimate that even at present rates of global material use, we are overshooting sustainable levels by 82 percent.
Take silver, for instance. Mexico is home to the Peñasquito mine, one of the biggest silver mines in the world. Covering nearly 40 square miles, the operation is staggering in its scale: a sprawling open-pit complex ripped into the mountains, flanked by two waste dumps each a mile long, and a tailings dam full of toxic sludge held back by a wall that’s 7 miles around and as high as a 50-story skyscraper. This mine will produce 11,000 tons of silver in 10 years before its reserves, the biggest in the world, are gone.
To transition the global economy to renewables, we need to commission up to 130 more mines on the scale of Peñasquito. Just for silverLithium is another ecological disaster. It takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce a single ton of lithium. Even at present levels of extraction this is causing problems. In the Andes, where most of the world’s lithium is located, mining companies are burning through the water tables and leaving farmers with nothing to irrigate their crops. Many have had no choice but to abandon their land altogether. Meanwhile, chemical leaks from lithium mines have poisoned rivers from Chile to Argentina, Nevada to Tibet, killing off whole freshwater ecosystems. The lithium boom has barely even started, and it’s already a crisis.
And all of this is just to power the existing global economy. Things become even more extreme when we start accounting for growth. As energy demand continues to rise, material extraction for renewables will become all the more aggressive—and the higher the growth rate, the worse it will get.
It’s important to keep in mind that most of the key materials for the energy transition are located in the global south. Parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia will likely become the target of a new scramble for resources, and some countries may become victims of new forms of colonization. It happened in the 17th and 18th centuries with the hunt for gold and silver from South America. In the 19th century, it was land for cotton and sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In the 20th century, it was diamonds from South Africa, cobalt from Congo, and oil from the Middle East. It’s not difficult to imagine that the scramble for renewables might become similarly violent.
If we don’t take precautions, clean energy firms could become as destructive as fossil fuel companies—buying off politicians, trashing ecosystems, lobbying against environmental regulations, even assassinating community leaders who stand in their way.
Some hope that nuclear power will help us get around these problems—and surely it needs to be part of the mix. But nuclear comes with its own constraints. For one, it takes so long to get new power plants up and running that they can play only a small role in getting us to zero emissions by midcentury. And even in the longer term, nuclear can’t be scaled beyond about 1 terawatt. Absent a miraculous technological breakthrough, the vast majority of our energy will have to come from solar and wind.
None of this is to say that we shouldn’t pursue a rapid transition to renewable energy. We absolutely must and urgently. But if we’re after a greener, more sustainable economy, we need to disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that we can carry on growing energy demand at existing rates. How might this be accomplished? Given that the majority of our energy is used to power the extraction and production of material goods, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that high-income nations reduce their material throughput—legislating longer product life spans and rights to repair, banning planned obsolescence and throwaway fashion, shifting from private cars to public transportation, while scaling down socially unnecessary industries and wasteful luxury consumption like the arms trade, SUVs, and McMansions.
Reducing energy demand not only enables a faster transition to renewables, but also ensures that the transition doesn’t trigger new waves of destruction. Any Green New Deal that hopes to be socially just and ecologically coherent needs to have these principles at its heart.
Jason Hickel is an anthropologist, author, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Twitter: @jasonhicke
 
Hillhater said:
jimw1960 said:
So, I downloaded that data (all of the data!) and plotted a trend line myself. It shows a trend of 0.56 degrees F per decade. ........
And what exactly is “all of the data” ?

The data points on the plot that YOU showed from the link that YOU gave me. That data. Don't you even know how to plot a trendline through a time series in Excel? Do you even know what a time series is? And you feel qualified to even opine on this subject?
 
sendler2112 said:
And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.
which is one of the reasons why i think a hydrogen infrastructure for energy storage & transport (not energy source), even with its attendant poor efficacy is what the world planners have in mind for us.

we need to disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that we can carry on growing energy demand at existing rates. How might this be accomplished?
STOP
MAKING
NEW
LIFEFORMS

Hillhater said:
Either way, the money is still “circulating” in the economy..



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_flow_of_income
The circular flow diagram is an abstraction of the economy as a whole. The diagram suggests that the economy can reproduce itself. The idea is that as households spend money of goods and services from firms, the firms have the means to purchase labor from the households, which the households to then purchase goods and services. Suggesting that this process can and will continuously go on as a perpetual motion machine. However, according to the Laws of Thermodynamics perpetual motion machines do not exist.
 
Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh said:
Hillhater said:
Either way, the money is still “circulating” in the economy..



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_flow_of_income
The circular flow diagram is an abstraction of the economy as a whole. The diagram suggests that the economy can reproduce itself. The idea is that as households spend money of goods and services from firms, the firms have the means to purchase labor from the households, which the households to then purchase goods and services. Suggesting that this process can and will continuously go on as a perpetual motion machine. However, according to the Laws of Thermodynamics perpetual motion machines do not exist.

Well , which idiot suggested it was a perpetual motion machine, with no losses or inputs ?...
... or in any way governed by the laws of Thermodynamics ?
Its just simple economics, with its inherent losses and weaknesses
Whatever you prefer to call it, (Moneygoround ?). when you purchase a house etc, the money doesnt get frozen in the basement, it is still “in the economy” working for someone.
 
But the trouble is, these congealed lumps of capital (apartments and houses) are very poor use of capital. If the goal was to get wealthier with your family bequest, you can either invest in a company developing new energy generation technology for example ;) ) or you can buy a 2 bedroom apartment on the 4th floor of a tower in the city. The perception is that housing has been a safe investment with sounds returns, but right now we have no demand for the houses already bought. So there is a push to bring more people into the country to live in them, but they need high paying jobs to pay the rent. Where are these jobs? That new energy generation company could have created some, but instead they are stalling in a city full of empty apartments...

It's poor use of money, is my point.
 
jimw1960 said:
So, I downloaded that data (all of the data!) and plotted a trend line myself. It shows a trend of 0.56 degrees F per decade. ........
You seem to get a different trend to the NOAA toolset, which indicates a trend of 0.31 F/dec over that data ?
But... what error range did your trend calc show ??
..my analysis shows an error range much greater than the trend,..which renders the result pointless.
Punxor had it when he showed how irrelavent short term trend calc’s can be.
 
jonescg said:
But the trouble is, these congealed lumps of capital (apartments and houses) are very poor use of capital. If the goal was to get wealthier with your family bequest, you can either invest in a company developing new energy generation technology for example ;) ) or you can buy a 2 bedroom apartment on the 4th floor of a tower in the city. The perception is that housing has been a safe investment with sounds returns, but right now we have no demand for the houses already bought. So there is a push to bring more people into the country to live in them, but they need high paying jobs to pay the rent. Where are these jobs? That new energy generation company could have created some, but instead they are stalling in a city full of empty apartments...

It's poor use of money, is my point.
Just like selecting a company to invest in ( no risk there ,..is there ?)........ Selecting a property needs to be done equally wisely. There are good areas and bad areas.
No point “investing” in property in Woop Woop when there is no demand, ..but Sydney or melbourne (New York , London, etc). Where there is always a demand, for sales and rentals.
 
Hillhater said:
Punxor had it when he showed how irrelavent short term trend calc’s can be.

And localised to one spot on the globe.

There's nothing wrong with that NOAA dataset - it shows what it shows. But it cannot be used to disprove or downplay the global anamoly.
 
sendler2112 said:
...Keep in mind that they have demolished 4.000 MW of generating capacity. And in it's place now stands 44MW name plate capacity of solar. Which will actually have a capacity factor of 15% in it's snowy location. So will only average 6.6MW. 0.17% of it's former output. With many days near zero in the winter.
.
This is where we are headed. Things will be much smaller and simpler once again in the future. Simplify now and beat the rush.
...

With growing prices for CO2 finally Germany started to produce more electricity from renewable energies than from coal + natural gas in 2019:

https://www.pv-magazine.de/2019/09/09/energy-charts-nettostromerzeugung-in-deutschland-erneuerbarer-und-co2-aermer-in-den-ersten-acht-monaten/

Energy_Charts_Nettostromerzeugung_Januar_bis_August_2019_cFraunhofer_ISE-1024x447.jpg


Energy_Charts_Stromerzeugung-von-Januar-bis-August-2019_5c_c_Fraunhofer_ISE-1024x422.png
 
The IPCC is apparently even waking to the reality that wishful thinking about the timeline for decarbonization or hoping for the future possibility of massive bioenergy with carbon capture and storage does not make it pragmatically possible. There is new discussion promoting a required degrowth of the world economy.
.
https://mronline.org/2019/08/30/degrowth-a-theory-of-radical-abundance/
.
"The primary reason for this problem is that economic growth is projected to drive energy demand up at a rate that outpaces the rollout of clean energy capacity (Raftery et al., 2017). This has already presented a problem in the 21st century. Today the world is producing 8 billion more megawatt hours of clean energy each year than in 2000, which is a significant increase. But over the same period, energy demand has grown by 48 billion megawatt hours. In other words, new clean energy capacity covers only 16% of new demand. It is of course technically possible to scale up clean energy output to cover total global energy demand (Jacobson and Delucchi, 2011). But the question is whether it is feasible to do so at a rate that is fast enough to respect the carbon budget for 1.5 or 2°C, while at the same time growing the global economy at the usual pace.

We can assess this question by looking at projected rates of decarbonization. If we assume that global GDP continues to grow at 3% per year (the average from 2010-2014), then decarbonization must occur at a rate of 10.5% per year for 1.5°C, or 7.3% per year for 2°C. If GDP slows down and grows at only 2.1% per year (as PWC predicts), then decarbonization must occur at 9.6% per year for 1.5°C, or 6.4% per year for 2°C. All of these targets are significantly beyond what existing empirical models indicate is feasible (see Hickel and Kallis, 2019). A few brief examples will serve to illustrate this point. Schandl et al. (2016) indicate that decarbonization can happen by at most 3% per year under highly optimistic policy conditions. The C-ROADS tool (developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan) projects decarbonization of at most 4% per year under the most aggressive possible abatement policies: high subsidies for renewables and nuclear power, plus high taxes on oil, gas and coal. In a recent review of existing evidence, Holz et al. (2018) find that the rate ofdecarbonization required to meet the Paris targets is “well outside what is currently deemed achievable, based on historical evidence and standard modelling.”

IPCC scientists and authors have been aware of this problem for some time. In the Fifth Integrated Assessment Report (AR5), they dealt with it by assuming the future existence ofspeculative “negative emissions” technologies. The theory is that while business-as-usual growth will cause emissions to exceed the carbon budget in the medium term, that is fine so long as we find a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere later in the century. The dominant proposal for achieving this is known as BECCS, or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. BECCS entails developing large tree plantations around the world to absorb CO2from the atmosphere, harvesting the biomass, burning it for energy, capturing the emissions at source and storing the waste underground. In AR5, the vast majority of scenarios for 2°C (101 of the 116) rely on BECCS to the point of achieving negative emissions.

BECCS is highly controversial among scientists, however. There are a number of concerns. First, the viability of power generation with CCS has never been proven to be economically viable or scalable (Peters, 2017). Second, the scale of biomass assumed in the AR5 scenarios would require plantations covering land two to three times the size of India, which raises questions about land availability, competition with food production, carbon neutrality, and biodiversity loss (Smith et al., 2015; Heck et al., 2018). Third, the necessary CO2 storage capacity may not exist (De Coninck and Benson, 2014; Global CCS Institute, 2015).

Anderson and Peters (2016) conclude that “BECCS thus remains a highly speculative technology” and that relying on it is therefore “an unjust and high stakes gamble”: if it is unsuccessful, “society will be locked into a high-temperature pathway”. This conclusion is shared by a growing number of scientists (e.g., Fuss et al., 2014; Vaughan and Gough, 2016; Larkin et al., 2017; van Vuuren et al., 2017), and by the European Academies’ ScienceAdvisory Council (2018).

Responding to these concerns, the IPCC (2018) has for the first time published a scenario for reducing emissions in line with the Paris Agreement that does not rely on speculative negative emissions technologies. Developed by Grubler et al. (2018) and known as Low Energy Demand (LED), the scenario works by reducing global energy consumption by 40% by 2050, which makes it much more feasible to achieve a transition to 100% clean energy. The key feature of this scenario is that global material production and consumption declinessignificantly: “The aggregate total material output decreases by close to 20 per cent fromtoday, one-third due to dematerialization, and two-thirds due to improvements in materialefficiency.” LED differentiates between the global North and South. Industrial production and consumption declines by 42% in the North and 12% in the South. Given improvements in energy efficiency, this translates into industrial energy demand declining by 57% in the North and 23% in the South.

The LED model represents a “degrowth” scenario–a planned reduction of the material and energy throughput of the global economy. Its inclusion in the IPCC report as the only scenario that does not rely on questionable negative emissions technologies suggests that degrowth may be the only feasible way to achieve the emissions reductions required by the Paris Agreement. This is a major milestone in climate mitigation theory. What is appealing about this approach is that it not only addresses emissions and climate change, but also reduces ecological impact across a range of other key indicators, including deforestation, chemical pollution, soil depletion, biodiversity loss, and so on (Rockstrom et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015)."
 
sendler2112 said:
Punx0r said:
How many terra-watts, again? :wink:

Actually closer to 18TW now. And increasing every day.

And your personal power consumption is? (please name also your share of power use from your country and name your use of grey energy/power from imported products)

So if you firmly believe we are "near the doomsday apocalypse" what are you personally doing to avoid it?

What amount of power do you think is sustainable and what is your fair share of that lets say in 2020, 2030 and 2050?
 
sendler2112 said:
—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.

So how much metals do we need to build around 5 billion cars until 2050?

In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction. For neodymium—an essential element in wind turbines—extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.

The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.

you can build wind power plants without a gram of neodynium and solar panels without silver have also been done, indium is only used in a very small minority of CIGS solar power moduls. No need to build them in the future.

And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.

I also think this is nonsese? What is enormous? You also do not need Lithium for grid storage batteries, you can also use sodium based batteries? Afraid that we do not have enough sodium?


That’s just for electricity. We also need to think about vehicles. This year, a group of leading British scientists submitted a letter to the U.K. Committee on Climate Change outlining their concerns about the ecological impact of electric cars. They agree, of course, that we need to end the sale and use of combustion engines. But they pointed out that unless consumption habits change, replacing the world’s projected fleet of 2 billion vehicles is going to require an explosive increase in mining: Global annual extraction of neodymium and dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent, annual extraction of copper will need to more than double, and cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four—all for the entire period from now to 2050.

More realistic.

On the other Hand you would need platinum or Palladium for those 2 Billion cars with ICE. Those matels really are rare, "rare earth" metals are not.

Lithium is another ecological disaster. It takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce a single ton of lithium. Even at present levels of extraction this is causing problems.

This is only true for some Kind of Lithium harvesting.

It's very diferent in Bolivia vs Chile for example.

The Lithium 1 Tesla battery (12kg Lithium) consumes around 5,000 to 30,000l of water.

1kg of coffee consumes around 20,000l of water.

So?

It’s important to keep in mind that most of the key materials for the energy transition are located in the global south. Parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia will likely become the target of a new scramble for resources, and some countries may become victims of new forms of colonization.

Yes. Other countries will become victims of global climate change.

Given that the majority of our energy is used to power the extraction and production of material goods, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that high-income nations reduce their material throughput—legislating longer product life spans and rights to repair, banning planned obsolescence and throwaway fashion, shifting from private cars to public transportation, while scaling down socially unnecessary industries and wasteful luxury consumption like the arms trade, SUVs, and McMansions.

Nothing wrong with that.
 
Cephalotus said:
And your personal power consumption is? (please name also your share of power use from your country and name your use of grey energy/power from imported products)

So if you firmly believe we are "near the doomsday apocalypse" what are you personally doing to avoid it?

What amount of power do you think is sustainable and what is your fair share of that lets say in 2020, 2030 and 2050?

So do you also mock 350.org, FridaysForFuture, Sunrise, Extinction Rebelion, ect for using words like emergency, catastrophe, collapse?
I understand and accept I will receive ridicule for jumping through the Overton Window to present essential information that is far outside the consensus trance that most people wish they did not have to hear.
.
So you have asked me what I am personally doing to avoid collapse of society already a year ago. Or was it two?
.
Most of my answer would still be the same. I have yet to move onto a self sufficient homestead or intentional community. Indeed, social momentum prevents most of the world from undertaking such immense shifts in such a short time.
.
One thing that I would add is that now more than ever, I seek to maximize my impact. By Learning. Thinking. Talking. in person and in every media forum that I can. To steer the outcome for better futures.
 
We have the world's most productive lithium mine here in South-West Western Australia. It's water consumption is entirely managed by a few rain-fed dams. The spodumene is up to 8% Li by weight, and the LiOH plant in Kwinana will make battery-ready chemicals by the end of this year.

As for how will we produce 5 billion EVs? I don't know - the world doesn't need 5 billion vehicles. The world needs less than a billion vehicles, but these should all be electric as they consume fewer non-abundant resources than ICE.

Get the snip fellas. Probably the equivalent of taking 10,000 cars off the road for 30 years.
 
jonescg said:
As for how will we produce 5 billion EVs? I don't know - the world doesn't need 5 billion vehicles. The world needs less than a billion vehicles, but these should all be electric as they consume fewer non-abundant resources than ICE.

There are 788 cars for 1000 people in the US and 488 cars for every 1000 people in the EU

At just 1 billion vehicle for 10 billion people in 2050 you would have to give up most of your vehicles in the US to make room for all those new cars in China, India, Africa and so on....

Good luck with that!

A more realistic prediction is 2 billion cars in 2050.

Cars do not last 50 years, so we will see some more car generations from todays 1 billion cars to 2 billion cars in 2050. So my estimation is something around 5 billion cars will be built until 2050. Make it 4 billion oder 6 billion it doesn#t matter. Noone does even question the amount of resources that we put into building those cars.
(but building some million wind turbines should be a problem?)

Of course I do agree that with 2 billion ICE powered cars the world will be doomed. Those cars need to be electric. And the electricity needs to be generated mainly by solar and wind power plants.
 
Back
Top