Vocal Voices

That is what Net-Zero is doing according to this and this.

The mine in NI is necessary, according to the miner, Dalradian, because:

Peter McKenna, community relations manager at Dalradian, said: "You can go and speak to any climate scientist in the world and I think that they all agree on one thing, that we need to either vastly reduce or perhaps eradicate our reliance on fossil fuels.

"We can only do that by a huge increase in renewables and if we're going to buy those installations and build the infrastructure in order to get that power to the point of use, we're going to need a huge new set of sources of minerals and metals."

Then there is the pile of scrapped solar panel, which will grow to a mountain by 2050

Energy experts are calling for urgent government action to prevent a looming global environmental disaster.

"It's going to be a waste mountain by 2050, unless we get recycling chains going now," says Ute Collier, deputy director of the International Renewable Energy Agency.

"We're producing more and more solar panels - which is great - but how are we going to deal with the waste?" she asks.

"By 2030, we think we're going to have four million tonnes [of scrap] - which is still manageable - but by 2050, we could end up with more than 200 million tonnes globally."

To put that into perspective, the world currently produces a total of 400 million tonnes of plastic every year.

And then there are the wind turbine blades... and their concrete bases.

Like the "Leave it in the ground" campaign. leave it in the ground if it's coal, oil or gas. But dig it up if it's lithium or cobalt!

You can't recycle Oil or gas if you have burned it.

You can recycle LIthium, cobalt, aluminium, nickel, manganese etc.

80% of all emissions from fossil burning tech comes from burning the fossil fuels. The longer you use them the larger the emissions. For Electric equipment it is the opposite. 80% of all emissions come from the construction. The rest comes from use and as the grid becomes less CO2 intensive, the less EV and other Electric equipment emit CO2. So if your EV lasts 25 years instead of the 10 years of so for a FF vehicle, even the construction emissions start to become the same.

You need to take a different frame of reference. Pages 1 - 31 tell you what you need to know. Especially the part where FF Vehicles waste 80% of the energy you put into them in heat and vibration. You don't need to go beyond slide 31, that is all about Tesla. The Tesla vehicle images in the 1-31 are just for reference to show vehicles and types. The first 31 slides are all about what we need in order to transition to clean energy and transportation.

All these "opinions" are no different form the "opinions" which said "You can't prove that smoking causes cancer". They are paid for in the same way and by a similar segment of the community.

It is not worth going over this every time the press digs up another "fossil" who is ranting on about lithium and mining. Fully 50% of lithium comes from evaporated seawater and is "mined" by being ploughed into piles and lifted onto conveyor belts to be processed and shipped. That Article I linked is from 2018. More mining is being done now. But, still, brine is the major source.

Yes there is mining of Lithium in Lithium bearing rocks but it also exists in surface clays in may areas. You just plough up the ground and send it off to be processed.

As with all resources there is supply and demand. Right now demand is running slightly ahead of supply. But supply will eventually outpace demand again.

I'm thoroughly tired of whacking this mole every time it comes up. There is no recycling of the oil and gas you burn but most of the constituents of EV technology is recyclable. Meaning once we have dug up enough materials for 1.5bn or 2bn vehicles, 90% or more of the materials will be recycled. Meaning mining will almost cease. Unless, of course, we need to go out to space and start all over again there.

The immediate emergency is getting CO2 out of the atmosphere. To do which we need to stop emitting it first. To do which we need to move everything to CO2 neutral energy and CO2 free vehicles that do not emit CO2 when running. Factories running with Solar and large battery arrays reduce grid impact and mean that emissions are less again. Especially solar panel factories who use their own product to provide the power to make more.

Modern solar panels last 50 years. Yes turbine blades are an issue, but they are fibreglass. They could be ground up and recycled but nobody wants to pay for it and it would emit more CO2 than burying them.

Reading articles about this which deny the urgent need to transition away from burning fossil fuels needs a level of knowledge most people can't be bothered to take the time to understand. Which then means stuff like this gets circulated and it simply is not correct. It is delay to put more money in the pockets of the energy companies.

Given the latest fiasco with fossil based energy prices I would have thought that nobody wanted to give them any more money???

cromwell wrote:Like the "Leave it in the ground" campaign. leave it in the ground if it's coal, oil or gas. But dig it up if it's lithium or cobalt!

You got it, well partly. I was having a rant, but it was not particularly about fossil fuels, it was mainly about resources. The mine mentioned is for gold.

Suff missed it by a country mile but couldn't resist a lecture. The only bit I can be bothered with is this quote: "Fully 50% of lithium comes from evaporated seawater and is "mined"".

It is utter bollocks: as the given link clearly states.

I am having a rant, because there are a few things we need to do as we go net-zero and we can do many - for nothing - but we do not.

One is to reduce the global population, but that is a medium to long term thing, and nobody is interested. Can't touch that or even mention it.

The second, and more urgent issue, is for all of us to stop consuming every damned thing we see before us!

We need food, obviously, but the amount that never reaches us from the fields due to "appearance" is criminal. And what do we do when we get it home; we then throw loads of it away! Madness!

We do not, absolutely DO NOT, need all the clothes we have in our wardrobes; yet we go out and buy, buy, buy - then throw.

We do not need shelves, drawers and cupboards full of part used creams, lotions, potions and smellies to make us feel that "we're worth it" FFS! That's men and women btw.

And we certainly do not need the latest gadgets and gizmos when the "old" ones worked just fine, especially as we just throw them, containing their valuable and rare minerals and metals, away. Only 12% of mobile phones get recycled, then there are TVs, consoles etc. "Can" recycle and "do" recycle are miles apart.

The vast majority of products made on a daily basis throughout the world are not necessary. They are there to make us feel good... oh, and to make loads of money for the manufacturers.

Workingman wrote:

cromwell wrote:Like the "Leave it in the ground" campaign. leave it in the ground if it's coal, oil or gas. But dig it up if it's lithium or cobalt!

You got it, well partly. I was having a rant, but it was not particularly about fossil fuels, it was mainly about resources. The mine mentioned is for gold.

Suff missed it by a country mile but couldn't resist a lecture. The only bit I can be bothered with is this quote: "Fully 50% of lithium comes from evaporated seawater and is "mined"".

It is utter bollocks: as the given link clearly states.

I am having a rant, because there are a few things we need to do as we go net-zero and we can do many - for nothing - but we do not.

One is to reduce the global population, but that is a medium to long term thing, and nobody is interested. Can't touch that or even mention it.

The second, and more urgent issue, is for all of us to stop consuming every damned thing we see before us!

We need food, obviously, but the amount that never reaches us from the fields due to "appearance" is criminal. And what do we do when we get it home; we then throw loads of it away! Madness!

We do not, absolutely DO NOT, need all the clothes we have in our wardrobes; yet we go out and buy, buy, buy - then throw.

We do not need shelves, drawers and cupboards full of part used creams, lotions, potions and smellies to make us feel that "we're worth it" FFS! That's men and women btw.

And we certainly do not need the latest gadgets and gizmos when the "old" ones worked just fine, especially as we just throw them, containing their valuable and rare minerals and metals, away. Only 12% of mobile phones get recycled, then there are TVs, consoles etc. "Can" recycle and "do" recycle are miles apart.

The vast majority of products made on a daily basis throughout the world are not necessary. They are there to make us feel good... oh, and to make loads of money for the manufacturers.

OK I'll go with that. But you are not going to win. Not any time soon.

I do have more clothes than I need mainly because I keep swinging between 40 waist and 38. Which means I need doubles. But my clothes, when no longer fit to wear, get cut down and used for working stuff. Then the applicable one's are torn apart and used for cloths before eventually hitting the bin a few years later.

My main failing is in the technology sector but not, as you might think, replacing my phone every 12 months. My main phone is heading on for 5 years old. I simply can't get a screen the same size any more. They've gone backwards again unless you spend £1,700. It has had two new batteries now and it's looking at getting the third.

My PC stuff gets updated every 5-7 years as the hardware starts to age badly by then. Although one of the boxes in my office is over a decade old. It simply burns too much of my time to replace them.

The old phones are sitting in the cupboard. Have to recycle them some day.

On the population front you are going nowhere. Nobody even wants to talk about it. Apparently it's not acceptable to talk about it. A bit like "misgendering" someone even if they don't carry a label showing what they identify as. Perhaps it works? Well if you can't determine the gender it is "it" isn't it?

The vast majority of products made are there for the purpose of generating wealth. Wealth which creates the markets for the goods. The superwealthy take less of the wealth and allow more of the wealth to trickle down to the "market". The market buys the goods and throws it away. Allowing room to make more. Which makes more wealth. More people, more goods, more goods, more workers, more workers, more goods and more sales and more wealth.

We are not going to change it. That ship sailed off the edge of the world and vanished. We are just going to crash and burn and then we're going to do it all over again because there will be no memory of what went before.

Ah, the trickle down bollocks.

Yes, these products generate wealth - for the few. It's the poor who buy them for one cent on the dollar that create that wealth. Billions of cents is a lot of dollars, day in, day out.

The big problem is that all these products use energy, FF energy largely, in their production, and they also use up finite resources, then we throw them away. You might not, but millions do. Most of them are totally unnecessary. Asian rivers are some of the most polluted, yet they are home to some of the world's poorest.

More people, more goods, more goods, more workers, more workers, more goods and more sales and more wealth.

And more environmental destruction. I suppose that you also believe in eternal (economic) growth! It's a dream. We are going to have to change because the road to net-zero is multifaceted with many twists, turns and forks in the road, so I try to look over other horizons.

My latest is ultra processed foods (UPF). You know, the stuff like ready meals, sausages, vegan "fake meat", reformed ham and so on. All of them processed in energy intensive factories, wrapped in plastic, then kept for God knows how long in chillers or freezers.

Nothing near net-zero or "green" or environmentally friendly, are they? Just like electric Tonka toys and windmills.

Workingman wrote:Ah, the trickle down bollocks.

I agree. We're not going to change it. But that does not mean we don't try and fix the rest of it. That really is stupid.