One for the net-zero crew

[Workingman]

Reading it will give them a warm glow of satisfaction.

Especially as it is not happening on their doorstep.

Quite frankly, it appals and frightens me in equal measure.

[Suff]

Honestly this really just irritates the crap out of me.

Remember when Tobacco was the bad guy and they were defending themselves at every turn. They created a method of operation, cast doubt, point the finger elsewhere, get ordinary people to believe that what they were being told was BS.

They created their own figures and statistics and then rammed then down everyone's throat until the fact that a 100 a day smoker was coughing their lungs out right next to you could be put down to something other than the cigarretes which were killing them.

When they lost that war where do you think they went? Yep, climate change. They went to work for the fossil fuel companies.

It doesn't take much to start unravelling this kind of stuff. You think we are not mining copper anyway? You think that all those mobile phones, TV's, Tablet's or fitness devices have no copper in them? Of course they do. However the really big one that nobody talks about? Cars.

On average cars have about 20kg of copper in them. Much of it coated in plastic and difficult to recycle without burning the plastic off and emitting pretty bad pollution. How many cars to are sold around the world every year? ~70m. Yes that's 1.4 BILLION tonnes of copper for all those new cars every year. Most of which doesn't get recycled on an annual basis.

Now the "reporter" says that each wind turbine has 15 tons per megawatt. OK the largest turbine available today is 15mw. So that's 225 tonnes of copper right? Now how many wind turbines are there in the world today? Roughly 340,000. In the WHOLE WORLD. That is 76.5 Million, not BILLION tonnes of copper for every turbine in the world to be 15mw. But we know they are not 15mw right.

Because here is the other kicker.

If all these 340,000 wind turbines were 15mw offshore turbines with 46% average efficiency as we have offshore right now, then they would generate 22.5 Petawatt hours of electricity per year. Which is roughly Five Times the Entire world production of electricity today.

Let me reiterated that. For 76.5m tonnes of copper, roughly 5.5% of the copper used, every year, in motor vehicle manufacture, not EV but ANY vehicle, to produce Five times the Entire power generation of the Whole World. That is a once in 15 to 20 years and the copper in the turbine will be 100% recycled.

If that were not bad enough, we get into the whole power line connection. This "reporter" (otherwise known as flunky for the fossil fuel industry) would have us believe that HVDC power lines (yes all solar and wind turbines are DC connected, not AC connected), are copper.

This reporter either knows nothing or is snowing you.

A variety of conductor compositions and constructions are currently in use to meet a variety of specific requirements. In the early years of the industry, copper was used almost exclusively because of its high electrical conductivity, but cable diameters with copper were determined more by the need for mechanical strength than by the need for improved conductivity.

The limited the acceptable span length (distance between towers).

The first aluminum transmission lines were installed in the last 5 years of the 19th century. An additional incentive favoring in more recent times is that aluminum is more economical to use than copper, even though aluminum has only 60% of the conductivity of copper. Typical aluminum conductors are composed of multipoe 1/8-inch-thick strands twisted together.

There are about 50 varieties of multistrand conductor cables, which are named after flowers, perhaps because the cross sections suggest flower-like patterns and symmetry. The Narcissus is a 61-strand conductor that can carry over 1,100 amperes.

The article goes on to talk about the first steel/copper combination lines in 1907 which increased strength whilst retaining the aluminium conductivity.

The rest of the "EV is so bad" article is a fabrication to make it look like we are raping the world to get at the lithium and copper. Yes some flamingo's are moving habitat because we are mining lithium. They get sodium, magnesium, potassium and boron out of these brine lakes too and if you think they're going to stop taking those because we get Lithium elsewhere; you are kidding yourself. Yes EV may be driving Lithium right now, but EV lithium is a 90% one time shot which is almost completely recyclable.

The consequence of not transitioning away from fossil fuelled vehicles, on the other hand, is that what little water remains to the locals and the flamingo's is going to vanish as the atmosphere warms even more and dries even more in this location.

It is hard to keep remembering but Sky is owned by shareholders and makes a LOT of money from advertising. A huge chunk of that advertising money comes from fossil fuelled energy concerns and so articles like this come out.

It is not worth reading the whole thing. Especially when it says things like.

This evaporation process is actually one of the more environmentally friendly ways of extracting lithium

Immediately followed by just how bad it is for a few flamingo's who had to move their habitat a bit. Well, hey, lets destroy 75% of the animal species on the earth because it's just too damaging to get off fossil fuels.

Sometimes it really makes me mad to read this kind of stuff.

[Suff]

I forgot, Sky News is also owned by News Corp. You know the Trump lovers and Fossil Fuel lovers.

[Workingman]

I know, lets jiggle a few figures and totally whitewash the environmental impact. Capitalism rules, right?

It makes me incandescent, never mind mad.

The world needs a proper pandemic, not a mild Covid version. A bacterial one resistant to anti-bacs to wipe out billions of us - especially the million / billionaires, 'influencers', slebs, economists and advertisers as they are currently the drivers of our self-destruction. More, more, more!

We need a reset.

[miasmum]

Well if the war with Russia ensues, we might just get one but with no reset

[Suff]

Oh we don't need a pandemic the planet is going to deal with us just fine.

We can keep on driving our fossil fuelled vehicles which spew out 1/3 of the annual CO2 and we can produce BS articles like this that cast doubt and stop action and just keep the status quo whilst the big energy companies make a killing and prepare their enclaves to protect themselves from what is coming.

Net 3c over preindustrial will do it nicely, 75% of people on the planet dead, jobs a goodun.

Here was me thinking people understood. We see Ukraine grain held up and already there are shortages. The last time we saw major grain shortfall the Arab spring happened. How do we think this is going to fare when, for instance, the Argentinian and US grain harvests fail at the same time? Half the world grain gone in one go.

People have it in their heads that if there is no flour, or it is too expensive then all they need to do is riot and kill people and overturn the government and it will all be sorted.

A reduction in the liveable biosphere means that they can riot and kill people and remove the government all they want, they will still starve.

We know this is coming. We know that it has to be fixed. We are working on it but the problem is that most people don't believe it. They think that 3c more warmth means a better summer and better holidays.

Then there come articles like this. Designed to bolster that disbelief and make the "environmental" claim that we're doing it all wrong. Just do nothing and we're fine. Trusssst in meeeee.

I had this rubbish from my son two weeks ago, no it isn't us who are changing the climate, how could we be so arrogant, it is natural variation. He is heavily invested in Scottish nationalism and they are denying climate change so they can keep the oilfields open to fund the change.

My vote was already lost. Now it is irretrievable to the independence campaign. I do not reward stupidity or actions which are tantamount to mass murder. I see articles like this as nothing more than mass murder.