What's Wrong with Wind and Solar - Mark Mills
Also John Lee Pettimore made several remarks on renewables and how humans may destroy the planet in the process in the name of "green energy". Here are his remarks:
MiningWatch Canada is estimating that “3 billion tons of mined metals and minerals will be needed to power the energy transition” – a “massive” increase especially for six critical minerals: lithium, graphite, copper, cobalt, nickel and rare earth minerals
Over the next 30 years 7.5 billion of us, we will consume more minerals than the last 70,000 years or the past 500 generations, which is more than all of the 108 billion humans who have ever walked the Earth.
Mining requires the extraction of solid ores, often after removing vast amounts of overlying rock. Then the ore must be processed, creating an enormous quantity of waste – about 100 billion tons a year, more than any other human-made waste stream.
Purifying a single ton of rare earths requires using at least 200 cubic meters of water, which then becomes polluted with acids and heavy metals. On top of that, imagine the destruction and energy required to obtain these essential metals: 18,740 pounds of purified rock to produce 2.2 pounds of vanadium 35,275 pounds of ore for 2.2 pounds of cerium 110,230 pounds of rock for 2.2 pounds of gallium 2,645,550 pounds of ore to get 2.2 pounds of lutecium Also staggering amounts of ore are needed for other metals.
By 2035, demand is expected to double for germanium; quadruple for tantalum; and quintuple for palladium. The scandium market could increase nine-fold, and the cobalt market by a factor of 24. (Marscheider-Wiedemann 2016 ‘raw materials for emerging technologies’.
The potential demand for rare metals is exponential. We are already consuming over two billion tons of metals every year — the equivalent of more than 500 Eiffel Towers a day.
There is nothing refined about mining. It involves crushing rock, and then using a concoction of chemical reagents such as sulphuric and nitric acid, a long and highly repetitive process using many different procedures to obtain a rare-earth concentrate close to 100% purity.
As rare metals have become ubiquitous in green and digital technologies, the exceedingly toxic sludge they produce has been contaminating water, soil, the atmosphere, and the flames of blast furnaces.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqppRC37OgI
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/01/18/we-will-destroy-the-earth-in-the-name-of-green-energy/
#climatechange
Also John Lee Pettimore made several remarks on renewables and how humans may destroy the planet in the process in the name of "green energy". Here are his remarks:
MiningWatch Canada is estimating that “3 billion tons of mined metals and minerals will be needed to power the energy transition” – a “massive” increase especially for six critical minerals: lithium, graphite, copper, cobalt, nickel and rare earth minerals
Over the next 30 years 7.5 billion of us, we will consume more minerals than the last 70,000 years or the past 500 generations, which is more than all of the 108 billion humans who have ever walked the Earth.
Mining requires the extraction of solid ores, often after removing vast amounts of overlying rock. Then the ore must be processed, creating an enormous quantity of waste – about 100 billion tons a year, more than any other human-made waste stream.
Purifying a single ton of rare earths requires using at least 200 cubic meters of water, which then becomes polluted with acids and heavy metals. On top of that, imagine the destruction and energy required to obtain these essential metals: 18,740 pounds of purified rock to produce 2.2 pounds of vanadium 35,275 pounds of ore for 2.2 pounds of cerium 110,230 pounds of rock for 2.2 pounds of gallium 2,645,550 pounds of ore to get 2.2 pounds of lutecium Also staggering amounts of ore are needed for other metals.
By 2035, demand is expected to double for germanium; quadruple for tantalum; and quintuple for palladium. The scandium market could increase nine-fold, and the cobalt market by a factor of 24. (Marscheider-Wiedemann 2016 ‘raw materials for emerging technologies’.
The potential demand for rare metals is exponential. We are already consuming over two billion tons of metals every year — the equivalent of more than 500 Eiffel Towers a day.
There is nothing refined about mining. It involves crushing rock, and then using a concoction of chemical reagents such as sulphuric and nitric acid, a long and highly repetitive process using many different procedures to obtain a rare-earth concentrate close to 100% purity.
As rare metals have become ubiquitous in green and digital technologies, the exceedingly toxic sludge they produce has been contaminating water, soil, the atmosphere, and the flames of blast furnaces.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqppRC37OgI
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/01/18/we-will-destroy-the-earth-in-the-name-of-green-energy/
#climatechange
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