This is a great example of The Leftist Climate Lies Cultural Consequences. I would drop kick them if I was there. See WATTS UP WITH THAT’S stories on Just Stop Oil. END WOKENESS notes the following:
ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2017
ROLL THE TAPE PLEASE:
Of course the left thinks this “okay” symbol is racist, like everything is now “racist” (milk, the term “athletic,” criticizing the IRS, saying that Barack Obama lied, wanting lower taxes, Star Wars, your baby, craft beer, being white, lunch bags, etc., etc. — TOWNHALL | TWITTER [Tucker Carlson] | WASHINGTON TIMES | NATIONAL REVIEW | ZERO HEDGE [Tucker Carlson]).
See, of course, my previous posts on the “okay” symbol, here and here. I assume that “racist things” and the list of things caused by “Global Warming” will compete with each other.
Of course, if you are not familiar with the original graphic from SANTA CRUZ, it made #3 in the TOP 50 GREATEST SKATE LOGOS.
I was happened upon DICTIONARY.COM’s definition of the “Okay” symbol — and can you guess what I found? And the reason for Savory Agent’s version of the Santa Cruz Symbol? Here is the WRONG DEFINITION description first:
Important context: While the OK hand emoji 👌 has many harmless meanings, it was co-opted as a white supremacist symbol in the late 2010s. One should now be mindful of context when using or coming across this emoji.
This is just factually wrong. The “okay” symbol as a white supremacist symbol was first a hoax by 4Chan dating to 2017, and, the media made such a stink about it [thinking it was true] that after the media freakout, white supremacist groups adopted it.
Here is WIKIPEDIA’S noting of it:
In 2017, users on the message-board site 4chan aimed to convince the media and other people that the OK gesture was being used as a white power symbol as a joke. According to The Boston Globe, users on 4chan’s /pol/ (“Politically Incorrect”) board were instructed in February 2017 to “flood Twitter and other social media websites…claiming that the OK hand sign is a symbol of white supremacy,” as part of a campaign dubbed “Operation O-KKK”.
The satirical association of the gesture with white supremacy derived from the assertion that the three upheld fingers resemble a ‘W’ and the circle made with the thumb and forefinger resemble the head of a ‘P’, together standing for “White Power.” While some members of the alt-right used the symbol after the launch of the 4chan campaign, it initially remained ambiguous whether or not it was being used to communicate genuine adherence to white supremacy, or with deliberately ironic motives.
In September 2019 the ADL revised their earlier position and added the OK gesture to its “Hate on Display” database. The listing notes that the usage of the OK hand gesture is sometimes benign, but that it is intended as a symbol of hate in some contexts, as some white supremacists have begun using the OK symbol “as a sincere expression of White Supremacy”. White supremacists have acknowledged using the symbol as a gesture of White Power. As a result of white supremacists’ co-opting the symbol….
Dennis Prager says it often, “everything the Left touches it ruins.” The Mainstream Media and Democrats [the Left] had their grubby hands/paws/mitts all over this story as factual — and because of the perceived power play seen in using this politically — they even ruined the “okay symbol.”
Here is the ADL’s dealing with it — take note the “circle game” was ruined as well by the Democrats and Media:
In 2017, the “okay” hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters “wp,” for “white power.” The “okay” gesture hoax was merely the latest in a series of similar 4chan hoaxes using various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a common image as white supremacist.
In the case of the “okay” gesture, the hoax was so successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post photos to social media of themselves posing while making the “okay” gesture.
Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The overwhelming usage of the “okay” hand gesture today is still its traditional purpose as a gesture signifying assent or approval. As a result, someone who uses the symbol cannot be assumed to be using the symbol in either a trolling or, especially, white supremacist context unless other contextual evidence exists to support the contention. Since 2017, many people have been falsely accused of being racist or white supremacist for using the “okay” gesture in its traditional and innocuous sense.
Other, similar-seeming hand gestures have also been mistakenly assumed to have white supremacist connotations as a result of the “okay” hoax. One of these is the so-called “Circle Game,” in which people attempt to trick each other into looking at an okay-like hand gesture made somewhere below the waist. Another is the hand sign of the Three Percenter movement, a wing of the anti-government extremist militia movement. Three Percenters, who are right-wing extremists but are not typically white supremacists, often make a hand gesture to symbolize their movement that uses the outstretched middle, ring, and pinky fingers to represent a Roman numeral “3.” This gesture, from certain angles, can often resemble an “okay” hand gesture and has been misinterpreted by some as a white supremacist symbol.
But hey…. our dictionaries. Lol.
You know who get’s it right? BLOG EMOJIPEDIA!
I rarely say anything positive about VOX, but the link in the bullet point above surprised me. Bravo.
The “OK Sign” Hoax | Joe Rogan & Tim Pool
Here is a 2014 Google FLASHBACK where sanity prevailed a bit — note, I will end with it as well:
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
[….]
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
Google Joins the Common Sense Crew On Renewable Energies – Finally! (RPT)
POWERLINE!
I will add an older post below this excellent POWERLINE blogpost:
Liberals tell us that we are in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. The reality is that no such transition is taking place, nor will it. This video by Professor Simon Michaux, who doesn’t take issue with global warming hype, explains one of several reasons why this is true: the mineral requirements of a wind- and solar-based energy system can’t possibly be met.
This description accompanies the YouTube video:
The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls.
Before the video, here are a few screenshots from it. This one shows the principal metals needed for a wind and solar energy system, and compares those requirements with actual production of those commodities as of 2019, the last “normal” pre-covid year. Note that 189 years worth of copper production, 400 years of nickel production, 9,921 years of lithium production, 1,733 years of cobalt production, 29,113 years of germanium production, and so on, would be needed for the first 20 years of wind and solar installations. Then we would have to do it all over again. Talk about a lack of sustainability!
This chart looks at known global reserves of key minerals, as a percentage of what would be needed to replace fossil fuels. Note, for example, that known lithium reserves amount to less than 3% of what would be needed to replace fossil fuels with wind, solar and batteries, for the first 20 years. Known cobalt reserves amount to less than 4% of what would be needed for the first generation, and so on. Keep in mind, too, that mining projects typically take something like 20 years to come on line. Longer, if the environmentalists get their way.
[….]
Another point that is often overlooked is that mining companies exploit the lowest-cost minerals first–those that are most plentiful and easiest to extract. If demand increases exponentially, then much more expensive sources will be brought into play. This means that the cost of basic minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt and so on will skyrocket as demand increases, perhaps by orders of magnitude. I don’t think anyone has even attempted to assess the full cost of a “green” energy system when those price increases are taken into account.
HERE IS MY RECENT ELECTRIC VEHICLE UPDATE
BATTERIES
In an excellent post linking to a German documentary (30-minutes) and study showing the devastation to Chili of lithium mining, we find the following:
German ZDF public television recently broadcast a report showing how electric cars are a far cry from being what they are all cracked up to be by green activists.
The report titled: “Batteries in twilight – The dark side of e-mobility” [now not available] shows how the mining of raw materials needed for producing the massive automobile batteries is highly destructive to the environment. For example, two thirds of the cobalt currently comes from the Congo, where the mining rights have been acquired by China. Other materials needed include manganese, lithium and graphite.
Every electric car battery needs about 20 – 30 kg of lithium.
The mining of the raw materials often takes place in third world countries where workers are forced to work under horrendous conditions and no regard is given to protecting the environment. When it comes to “going green”, it seems everything flies out the window….
AGAIN… here is a Facebook post of the same thing regarding Lithium Fields:
This is a Lithium leach field.
This is what your Electric Car batteries are made of.
It is so neuro-toxic that a bird landing on this stuff dies in minutes.
Take a guess what it does to your nervous system?
Pat yourself on the back for saving the environment.
Chile, 2nd largest lithium producer, is having water-scarcity problems as this technology takes so much water to produce battery-grade lithium. 2000 tons: 1 ton.
And the current version of the “inflation reduction act” wants 100% of EV battery components produced in the US.
Lead, nickel, lithium, cadmium, alkaline, mercury and nickel metal hydride.
Batteries are a collection of things that are extremely deadly.
Alternative fuels/energy is a DIRTY BUSINESS… but the left who live in the seclusion of the New York Times and MSNBC would never know this. I can show a graph showing skyrocketing carbon emissions worldwide for the past decade and that the temperature has dropped during this time by a small amount, and it is like showing them instructions to build an IKEA bookcase with instructions written in Gaelic!
“Giga Factories” vs. Fossil Fuels | Mark Mills
Our nations Utility batteries and car batteries can only store two hours worth of our nations electricity needs. We have an estimated 1 million electric cars in use in the United States. But what goes into building an electric vehicle. How much fossil fuel is needed, and how much environmental damage is done, extracting the rare earth minerals needed to power an electric vehicle? The answer will surprise you. And prove the Electric car is not the savior for our energy woes.
MINING FOR MINERALS/METALS
What about the impact and supply of the materials needed to produce batteries? TreeHugger has a good post that mentions some of these environmental pitfalls. These issues involve many devices we use daily (cell phones, lap-top computers, rechargeable batteries, etc.), but add to this burden a mandated or subsidized car industry:
…lithium batteries take a tremendous amount of copper and aluminum to work properly. These metals are needed for the production of the anode & the cathode, cables and battery management systems. Copper and aluminum have to be mined, processes and manufacturing which takes lots of energy, chemicals and water which add to their environmental burden.
[….]
First of all, this study emphasizes that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market. It also states the fact that some of the largest concentrations of Lithium in the world are found in some of the most beautiful and ecologically fragile places, such as The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. The authors note:
“It would be irresponsible to despoil these regions for a material which can only ever be produced in sufficient quantities to serve a niche market of luxury vehicles for the top end of the market. We live in an age of Environmental Responsibility where the folly of the last two hundred years of despoilment of the Earth’s resources are clear to see. We cannot have “Green Cars” that have been produced at the expense of some of the world’s last unspoiled and irreplaceable wilderness. We have a responsibility to rectify our errors and not fall into the same traps as in the past.”
[….]
The report estimates that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market, as demand is rising for competing markets, such as cellular telephones and other electronic devices. At the same time, due to a great concentration of Lithium found in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina (70% of the world’s deposits), the United States and other developed countries needing the material will be subject to geopolitical forces similar to those they have already encountered from the member countries of OPEC…
Click HERE to go to larger file (use mouse wheel to zoom in)
In an excellent article we see the projected demands on other metals involved in the battery and transit goals:
….Regarding the demand for the different minerals, in the case of aluminum, according to our results, the demand for minerals from the rest of the economy would stand out, with the requirement for batteries having little influence. Copper would have a high demand from the rest of the economy, but it would also have a significant demand from vehicles, infrastructure and batteries. Cobalt would be in high demand because of the manufacture of batteries with the exception of the LFP battery that does not have this mineral, in the case of its demand from the rest of the economy it can be stated that it would be important but less influential than the demand for batteries. Lithium would have very high requirements from all the batteries and with a reduced demand from the rest of the economy. Manganese would have an important but contained demand coming from LMO and NMC batteries, since the requirements for this mineral would stand out in the rest of the economy. Finally, nickel would have a high demand from NMC and NCA batteries, but its main demand would come from the rest of the economy.
The batteries that would require the least materials are the NCA and LFP batteries. The NMC battery has been surpassed in performance and mineral usage by the NCA. The LiMnO2 battery has a very poor performance, so it has been doomed to disuse in electric vehicles. In addition, the LFP battery, the only one that does not use critical materials in the cathode (other than lithium), also has poor performance, requiring very large batteries (in size and weight) to match the capacity and power of batteries using cobalt.
Charging infrastructure, rail and copper used in electrified vehicles could add up to more than 17% of the copper reserve requirement in the most unfavourable scenario (high EV) and 7% in the most favourable (degrowth), so these are elements that must be taken into account…..
(GEEDS)
Half of all Cobalt made goes into electric cars.
Are Electric Vehicles really clean? | They run on dirty energy and blood of children as young as 6. | Electric cars drive human rights abuse and child labour. | China is one of the villains in this story. | Are electric carmakers equally guilty too? | Palki Sharma Upadhyay tells you.
TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE….
…. lithium is also not the only battery ingredient with a dark side. Perhaps the darkest of all is cobalt, which is commonly used, alongside lithium, in the batteries of many electric vehicles.
More than half of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to a 2016 Amnesty International Report, 20% of the cobalt exported from the DRC comes from artisanal mines, in which miners use either their hands or very basic tools to dig out rocks from tunnels deep underground, often for as little as $2 a day.
Worse still, UNICEF estimates 40,000 of the workers in these mines are children under the age of 18, with some as young as 7 years old. Cobalt mining also comes with serious health risks. Chronic exposure to dust containing cobalt can cause the potentially fatal lung disease “hard metal lung disease.” Many fatal accidents have also been caused by mines not being constructed or managed safely.
Clearly then, in the face of such widespread environmental damage and human rights abuses, the ethics of electric vehicles is far more complicated than the expensive car adverts and glowing newspaper headlines would have us believe…..
(VARSITY)
Materials for One EV Battery:
THIS COULD BE UNDER “LAND NEEDED”
LAND NEEDED
Why were federal tax subsidies extended for wind and solar by Congress? Again. For the umpteenth time! We are against subsidies because they distort markets. Those politicians who support these market-distorting policies should at least be forced to answer the question: “How much is enough?” Taxpayers have been subsidizing wind and solar corporations for more than 40 years! These companies have gotten fat and happy on your money, and Congress keeps giving them more of it. This video is based on a Texas Public Policy Foundation report that explains why it’s long past time to stop wind and solar from stuffing their bank accounts with your tax dollars.
This is from a recent BLOOMBERG article:
At his international climate summit in April, President Joe Biden vowed to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The goal will require sweeping changes in the power generation, transportation and manufacturing sectors. It will also require a lot of land.
Wind farms, solar installations and other forms of clean power tend to take up more space on a per-watt basis than their fossil-fuel-burning brethren. A 200-megawatt wind farm, for instance, might require spreading turbines over 13 square miles (36 square kilometres). A natural-gas power plant with that same generating capacity could fit onto a single city block.
Achieving Biden’s goal will require aggressively building more wind and solar farms, in many cases combined with giant batteries. To fulfill his vision of an emission-free grid by 2035, the U.S. needs to increase its carbon-free capacity by at least 150%. Expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota, according to Princeton University estimates and an analysis by Bloomberg News. By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon free, the U.S. would need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories and more.
WRECKING OUR PLANET TO SAVE IT
Earth Day 2021 is April 22nd. Therefore, eco-activist groups will be preaching the gospel of wind & solar power and the importance of biodiversity. What those trying to “save the planet” fail to understand (or more likely ignore) is that these two priorities are in direct conflict. Wind & solar require far more land than nuclear, natural gas and coal power. They are also far more destructive to regions of high biodiversity as well as large birds, bats and endangered species. As we celebrate Earth Day, let’s consider the significant environmental consequences of attempting to provide electricity through low density, unreliable sunshine and breezes.
Vice President Joe Biden aims to be the most progressive president on the issue of climate change. The man who spent most of 2020 hiding in the basement believes the future of energy is renewable energy like wind and solar. Biden should go back to the basement, watch Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans,” and rethink his advocacy for renewable energy. Wind and solar are not the answer, and the idea of converting our fossil fuel-based economy into renewables could be a devastating take-down to society.
FLASHBACK
So it seems that these more left leaning environmentalists think it is okay to spend billions of tax-payer money and regulate businesses on ideas that do not work anywhere but in Utopian dreams. Let’s end with WUWT quoting these Google Ph.D.s and then segue out with commentary:
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
I must say I’m personally surprised at the conclusion of this study. I genuinely thought that we were maybe a few solar innovations and battery technology breakthroughs away from truly viable solar power. But if this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy.
Apple as well is struggling with it’s Utopian — only works on paper — dreams.
POWERLINE notes that “yesterday’s Wall Street Journal story about the production difficulties of the Arizona supplier that Apple selected to make sapphire screens for the iPhone 6 was fascinating in its own right, but there was one little detail in the story that zipped by too quickly.” Continuing they quote the WSJ:
Mr. Squiller, the GT operations chief, told the bankruptcy court that GT lost three months of production to power outages and delays building the facility.
Whoa, slow down there a moment: what’s this about power outages? I’d sure like to know more of the full story here. Was this simply bad engineering on site, or was there a problem with the local grid or the energy sources supplying the grid in that area? Grid stability is going to be a more serious issue going forward as we compel more and more “renewable” (meaning “less stable”) energy as part of the EPA’s mania to restructure the electricity sector through the Clean Air Act.
This is connected with my earlier post on “Global Warmers” saying snow would cease and children would forget what it was:
What you will find below is the “Global Warmist'” positions are not science. Why? Because, Scientific Explanations, To Be True Need Also To Be Falsifiable
Charles “The Hammer” Krauthammer makes this point in regards to the Climate Change frenzy:
Here are some examples (via the CORBETT REPORT)
The following is one of the reasons I reject Darwinian evolution (and, frankly, conspiracy theories like WTC-7 being a conspiracy), and any scientist would reject anything for.
“Insofar as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and insofar as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”
K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, England: Hutchinson & Co, 1959), 316; found in, Werner Gitt, Did God Use Evolution? Observations from a Scientist of Faith (Portland, OR: Master Books, 2006), 11. (See also: SCIENCE AS FALSIFICATION)
That is to say, if a theory explains everything it explains nothing:
This info is with a hat-tip [and excerpt] to CLIMATE DEPOT. Here is the headline of an article to give you a flavor of the new debate:
CLIMATE DEPOT deals with various aspects in the response. From Artic “Warming” — Arctic Cool Off: Canada, Greenland & Iceland Have Seen Almost No Warming So Far This Century To a myriad of headlines from across the globe predicting catastrophgic warming — Settled climate science?! Everywhere is warming faster than everywhere!
But politicians persist:
.@BetoORourke blames Americans’ “emissions and our excesses and our inaction” for cold weather in Texas pic.twitter.com/VRdZky7m7A
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 17, 2021
I will include CLIMATE DEPOT’S article dump at the end. However, I wanted to add the excerpt from Marc Morano’s book he posted, here — regarding snowfall:
Book Excerpt: Back in 2000, when it was still “global warming,” David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (the institution that would be at the epicenter of Climategate), was featured in a news article in the UK newspaper the Independent with the headline, “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” Viner predicted that within a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
So the trick of the “Global Warmers” is to define reality to fit their premise… no matter what.
Another researcher, David Parker, of the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, even went as far as to predict that British children would have only “virtual” experience of snow via films and the Internet.
The predictions of less snow by global warming scientists were ubiquitous—and dead wrong. The current decade, from 2010 forward, is now the snowiest decade ever recorded for the U.S. East Coast, according to meteorologist Joe D’Aleo. Talk about an inconvenient truth.
How did the warmist scientists explain record snow after they had predicted less snow? Easy. More snow is now caused by “climate change.” By 2013, after “global warming” had become “climate change,” snow at unusual times was evidence for the supposed man-made crisis. Senator Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee claimed. “Yeah, it’s gonna get hot, but you’re also gonna to have snow in the summer in some places.”
Boxer seems to think any weather event can be made to fit the climate change narrative.Environmentalist George Monbiot had already tried to explain away the then record cold and snow in a column titled, “That snow outside is what global warming looks like.” Monbiot did his best to square the circle: “I can already hear the howls of execration: now you’re claiming that this cooling is the result of warming! Well, yes, it could be.” Monbiot asked, “So why wasn’t this predicted by climate scientists? Actually, it was, and we missed it.”
We missed it? Predictions of less snow were ubiquitous by global warming scientists. But once that prediction failed to come true, the opposite of what they predicted instead became—what they expected. How did global warming scientists explain record snow after prediction less snow? Easy. More snow is now caused by global warming.“Snow is consistent with global warming, say scientists” blared a UK Telegraph headline in 2009. The FinancialTimes tried to explain “Why global warming means…more snow” in 2012.
The December 26, 2010, New York Times featured an op-ed with the headline “Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming,” claiming, “Overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes.” Even former Vice President Al Gore, who had claimed in his Oscar-winning film in 2006 that all the snow on Mount Kilimanjaro would melt “within the decade,” got into the act. Never once in An Inconvenient Truth had Gore warned of record cold and increasing snowfalls as a consequence of man-made global warming. As late as 2009, the Environmental News Service was reporting on Gore’s hyping the lack of snow as evidence for man-made global warming: “Gore Reports Snow and Ice Across the World Vanishing Quickly.”
But then, after massive snowstorms hit the United States in 2010, Gore claimed that “increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with…man-made global warming.” UN IPCC lead author and Princeton University physicist Michael Oppenheimer had also exploited years of low snowfall totals to drive home the global warming narrative. He was quoted in a 2000 New York Times article: “‘I bought a sled in ’96 for my daughter,’ said Michael Oppenheimer, a scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. ‘It’s been sitting in the stairwell and hasn’t been used. I used to go sledding all the time. It’s one of my most vivid and pleasant memories as a kid, hauling the sled out to Cunningham Park in Queens.’… Dr. Oppenheimer, among other ecologists, points to global warming as perhaps the most significant long-term factor” explaining why, in the words of the New York Times reporter, “Sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling.”
When I confronted Oppenheimer about his sled comment following his appearance at a 2014 Congressional hearing, my interview was cut short. I asked, “In 2000 New York Times, you mentioned you bought your daughter a sled, but she hadn’t been able to use it…”
Oppenheimer’s aide intervened to say, “I’m sorry, but Dr. Oppenheimer has to testify.”
He Got the MemoNBC weatherman Al Roker obviously got the “climate change” memo. “This is global warming even though it’s freezing?” Larry King asked Roker in 2015.“Right, well, that’s why I don’t like the phrase ‘Global Warming.’ I like ‘Climate Change,’” the weatherman explained.The message went from global warming causes less snow to climate change causes more snow.
“So Boston at this point, is in number two snowiest winter,” Larry King asked just before Boston broke the record for it snowiest winter on record, in 2015. “Is this all part of Climate change?” Roker did not flinch. “I think it is,” he answered.
So no matter what happens, the activists can claim with confidence the event was a predicted consequence of global warming. There is now no way to ever falsify global warming claims.
REALITY CHECK
He claims that Texas cold is “directly related to the warming”, which specifically is unproven and in general wrong:
*ALL* climate models show higher temps➡️fewer cold days and nights
You can’t just look at everything you don’t like and claim it is caused by climate pic.twitter.com/7Qe9MLYHAN
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) February 19, 2021
Originally posted early 2017
UPDATE
Bottom Line:
(more)
Even Michael Mann admits the “pause” in global warming is real!
We Need MORE CO2, Not Less!
Renown physicist Freeman Dyson says CO2 does not worry him… montage
The climate models used by alarmist scientists to predict global warming are getting worse, not better; carbon dioxide does far more good than harm; and President Obama has backed the “wrong side” in the war on “climate change.”
So says one of the world’s greatest theoretical physicists, Dr Freeman Dyson, the British-born, naturalised American citizen who worked at Princeton University as a contemporary of Einstein and has advised the US government on a wide range of scientific and technical issues.
In an interview with Andrew Orlowski of The Register, Dyson expressed his despair at the current scientific obsession with climate change which he says is “not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to the obvious facts.”
This mystery, says Dyson, can only partly be explained in terms of follow the money. Also to blame, he believes, is a kind of collective yearning for apocalyptic doom.
It is true that there’s a large community of people who make their money by scaring the public, so money is certainly involved to some extent, but I don’t think that’s the full explanation.
It’s like a hundred years ago, before World War I, there was this insane craving for doom, which in a way, helped cause World War I. People like the poet Rupert Brooke were glorifying war as an escape from the dullness of modern life. [There was] the feeling we’d gone soft and degenerate, and war would be good for us all. That was in the air leading up to World War I, and in some ways it’s in the air today.
Dyson, himself a longstanding Democrat voter, is especially disappointed by his chosen party’s unscientific stance on the climate change issue.
It’s very sad that in this country, political opinion parted [people’s views on climate change]. I’m 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side…..
[….]
He concludes:
“I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.”
Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: Human-Induced Global Warming Is a “Complete Fabrication”
A Professor of Physics at Princeton University agrees with this summation, that increased CO2 levels are not nearly as harmful as the LEFT makes them out to be:
Dr. William Happer, currently a professor of Physics at Princeton University, was once fired by Gore at the Department of Energy in 1993 for disagreeing with the vice president on the effects of ozone to humans and plant life, also disagrees with Gore’s claim that manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) increases the temperature of the earth and is a threat to mankind. Happer appeared before the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee on Feb. 25 and explained CO2 is in short-supply in relative terms of the history of the planet.
Happer said that when CO2 levels were higher – much higher than they are now, the laws of nature still managed to function as we understand them today.
“The earth was just fine in those times,” Happer said. “You know, we evolved as a species in those times, when CO2 levels were three or four times what they are now. And, the oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that, you know, we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started.”…
(see more at TREE HUGGER).
Must see interview
Here is a quick video which includes 2-minutes from the co-founder of Greenpeace sharing a short soliloquy about why we need more CO2, not less, FOLLOWED by an actual example of plant growth with different CO2 ppms:
Dr. Robert Giegengack, the chair of Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, has said this in the past. I am merely giving these as examples to counter the “absolute claims” coming from the politicized left (scientists and politicians as well as the media) about CO2.
(Hat-tip to CLIMATE DEPOT)
Can you imagine the polluted, destroyed, world we would have if the left had their way with green energy?
Environazis, like all progressives, care about two things: other people’s money and the power entailed in imposing their ideology. Prominent among the many things they do not care about is the environment, as demonstrated by a monstrosity planned for Loch Ness:
A giant 67 turbine wind farm planned for the mountains overlooking Loch Ness will be an environmental disaster thanks to the sheer quantity of stone which will need to be quarried to construct it, according to the John Muir Trust. In addition, the Trust has warned that the turbines spell ecological disaster for the wet blanket peat-land which covers the area and acts as a huge carbon sink, the Sunday Times has reported.
According to global warming dogma, carbon sinks are crucial in preventing human activity from causing climatic doom.
The planet isn’t the only victim of this ideologically driven enterprise:
Around one million people visit the picturesque Loch Ness, nestled in the highlands of Scotland each year, bringing about £25 million in revenue with them. Most are on the lookout for the infamous monster, but if Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) get their way the tourists will have something else to look at: the Stronelairg wind farm – 67 turbines, each 443ft high, peppered across the Monadhlaith mountains overlooking the Loch.
Remember what the TWO TOP GOOGLE SCIENTIST in charge of their renewable energy program just said?
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
[…..]
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
But asking someone who has swallowed this story is like beating a dead horse. They will tell me — to my face — that mankind releasing CO2 into the atmosphere is driving weather changes.
I will point out a graph that shows in the past couple of decades man has produced more CO2 combined from the previous 100-years, overlayed to the temperature staying the same for over 18-years (in fact, falling a bit since 2005), and this MAJOR, FOUNDATIONAL belief being shown false doesn’t sway their “belief” towards rethinking their previously held paradigm.
See Also, “Dr. William Happer Speaking To The Benefits Of CO2.”
This comes by way of Gay Patriot, and shows how scientific the party of science is:
Bypassing Congress yet again, Obama today announced a unilateral imposition of carbon dioxide emission limits for electrical power plants.
Even the NYTimes admits the regulations will have no discernible impact on Global CO2 levels. They will, however, cost $50 Billion per year in regulatory costs, raise energy bills an average of $1,200 per family per year, and destroy 224,000 jobs annually through 2030.
The Administration promises none of those outcomes will happen, but then, they also promised “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” and “We will be the most transparent administration in history.”
Obama is justifying his dictatorial imposition of carbon dioxide regulations partly on the basis that carbon causes asthma and heart attacks.
You read that right. Carbon. Causes. Asthma.
Party of science my ass.
Climate scientist Dr. Murry Salby, Professor and Climate Chair at Macquarie University, Australia explains in a recent, highly-recommended lecture presented at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany, why man-made CO2 is not the driver of atmospheric CO2 or climate change.
Dr. Salby demonstrates:
See and Read More HERE
This is really a story about a GOVERNMENT INDUCED SHIT SHOW. The artificial inflation of a segment of the market that will “trickle-down” (so-to-speak) to many aspects of our lives. And so, with billions given to EV production from the Inflation Reduction Act will accomplish the exact opposite of what the Democrats promised it would do. Of course we all knew this, I am just pointing out the EV connection. As one article notes below,
It will take years for economists to sift through the wreckage of Big-Government edicts and messianic proclamations to “save the planet.” For now, all I can do is sound the alarm bells, in my own corner of the WWW.
QUOTE w/MEDIA
This is a FLASHBACK that originally aired on the radio Jul 2, 2013. Dennis Prager interviews George Gilder about his new book, “Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World.” I found this small bit on Dodd-Frank interesting as it leads to government interference creating a business atmosphere that nets zero information — or — creativity, entrepreneurial investment, or new growth and business.
EDITOR’S NOTE: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works. Only the free-market can do this.
Why the posting of this key idea, or, rightly called an economic law. There are two stories I wish to share that brought me to think about this old audio I uploaded to my YouTube, and just fixed and reuploaded to my RUMBLE.
STORY 1
US to Give Automakers, Suppliers $12B to Produce EVs
The United States is making $12 billion available in grants and loans for automakers and suppliers to retrofit their plants to produce electric and other advanced vehicles, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters Thursday.
The Biden administration will also offer $3.5 billion in funding to domestic battery manufacturers, Granholm said.
For the advanced vehicles, $2 billion of the funding will come from the Inflation Reduction Act which Democrats passed last year, and $10 billion will come from the Energy Department’s Loans Program Office, Granholm said…….
STORY 2
U.S. EV Share Goes Flat At 7.1% Through June As Gas Autos Return
EV share of the new-vehicle market flattened out at 7.1 percent across the first half of the year after growing steadily in 2021 and 2022, according to U.S. new-vehicle registration data from Experian.
Is the party over? Hardly.
But in the fast-growing U.S. market of the moment, as microchip supplies improve and the production of popular gasoline-engine autos returns in force this summer, EVs are no longer outpacing the rest of the car business — at least for now…..
ALSO:
However, the push by governments to replace fossil fuels will increase production of these EV vehicles, reducing inflation will be impossible as prices of all sorts of items will greatly increase. 2-billion wasted and doing just the opposite of what Democrats say it would do.
The below articles will deal primarily with Nickel, but the overuse of this material as well as others in battery production due to this artificial inflation by governments will create interference in knowledge to be produced allowing the market [people] to make choices based on supply and demand.
What this means is that a shit show will trickle-down the supply chain. To the cost of stainless steel, to other ingredients key to electronics and all batteries. In other words,
A GOVERNMENT INDUCED SHIT SHOW HAS BEGUN
NATIONAL SECURITY (Sino-Russian)
Global Nickel Mining Industry – Statistics & Facts
Nickel is a chemical element and a transition metal. It is mostly used for high-grade steel manufacturing, and increasingly so, in batteries. Global production of nickel from mines was estimated to amount to a total of 3.3 million metric tons in 2022. The major countries in nickel mining include Indonesia, Philippines, Russia, and New Caledonia. Home to the world’s two largest nickel mines based on production in 2022 was Russia, with the Kola MMC Mine’s production amounting to 151,030 metric tons and the Sorowako Mine producing 77,270 metric tons of nickel. Indonesia has the largest reserves of nickel, tied with Australia, and followed by and Brazil in third place. Interestingly, nickel reserves are among the metals and minerals with the least remaining life years, however, because nickel is a highly recyclable material, this poses less of a problem.
Nickel Mining Companies
The leading companies based on nickel production worldwide as of 2022 were Tsingshan Group and Delong from China, Nornickel from Russia, and Jinchuan Group from Hong Kong [China]. Tsingshan Group alone accounted for a 20 percent share of global nickel production that year. The world’s leading nickel producing companies based on market capitalization as of July 2023, however, were a different cohort: BHP from Australia had the leading market cap, at 155.2 billion U.S. dollars. The Brazilian company Vale came in second, with a market cap of nearly 62 billion U.S. dollars…..
Russia and China Unveil a Pact Against America and the West
In a sweeping long-term agreement, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two most powerful autocrats, challenge the current political and military order.
n their matching mauve ties, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping last week declared a “new era” in the global order and, at least in the short term, endorsed their respective territorial ambitions in Ukraine and Taiwan. The world’s two most powerful autocrats unveiled a sweeping long-term agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, nato as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world. “Friendship between the two States has no limits,” they vowed in the communiqué, released after the two leaders met on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Agreements between Moscow and Beijing, including the Treaty of Friendship of 2001, have traditionally been laden with lofty, if vague, rhetoric that faded into forgotten history. But the new and detailed five-thousand-word agreement is more than a collection of the usual tropes, Robert Daly, the director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, at the Wilson Center, in Washington, told me. Although it falls short of a formal alliance, like nato, the agreement reflects a more elaborate show of solidarity than anytime in the past. “This is a pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder against America and the West, ideologically as well as militarily,” Daly said. “This statement might be looked back on as the beginning of Cold War Two.” The timing and clarity of the communiqué—amid tensions on Russia’s border with Europe and China’s aggression around Taiwan—will “give historians the kind of specific event that they often focus on.”….
NICKEL SHORTAGE AND BATTERIES
Electric Vehicles And The Nickel Supply Conundrum: Opportunities And Challenges Ahead
…One of the key commodities to realizing this ambition is nickel. Unlike other battery materials such as cobalt and lithium, nickel is unique in not being primarily driven by global battery demand. About 70% of the world’s nickel production is consumed by the stainless steel sector, while batteries take up a modest 5%.
S&P Global Market Intelligence forecasts global primary nickel consumption to rebound year-on-year due to stainless steel capacity expansions in China and Indonesia. Demand outside China is expected to be the main driver of global growth in volume terms in 2022 and global consumption is forecasted to rise at a compound annual growth rate of about 7% between 2020 and 2025.
The battery sector’s nickel demand is also expected to accelerate substantially, with many predicting it to near 35% of total demand by the end of the decade….
Why An Electric Vehicle Battery Shortage Could Be a Big Problem
With more electric vehicle orders than ever, can our international supply chain keep up with the demand? Or can the U.S. constrict its own battery plants in time?
Consumers have never been more interested in electric cars and climate change goals. But with automakers scrambling to produce more EVs than ever, we could be facing a problematic shortage in the near future.
Jerry, your favorite super car app, breaks down why the predicted lack of inventory could be much worse than the current computer chip shortage.
A Storm Is Brewing
With a looming battery shortage, carmakers are doubling down on mining raw battery materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. The shortage would affect not only sourcing materials but processing and building the actual batteries as well.
Some companies are taking battery manufacturing into their own hands and constructing exclusive battery plants.
Rivian Automotive Inc. Chief Executive RJ Scaringe said, “Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years,” according to Market Watch. Essentially, at least 90% of the necessary supply chain to keep up with demand does not exist.
…CNN notes that “the United States sources about 90% of the lithium it uses from Argentina and Chile, and contributes less than 1% of global production of nickel and cobalt, according to the Department of Energy. China refines 60% of the world’s lithium and 80% of the cobalt.”
No Ev Battery Plan For The Long-Term
We all know about Biden’s goal to ensure that at least half of all vehicles will be electric by 2030. We’re talking a $7.5 billion electric vehicle charging infrastructure. California even pledged that by 2035, all cars must be zero-emission vehicles.
Though the Biden administration has pushed for more EV production in the short term, there aren’t long-term plans pertaining to electric batteries. Did you know it can take at least seven to 10 years to set up a mine?
Unfortunately, the U.S. is very dependent on foreign countries that have the manufacturing capacity and raw materials that we don’t.
If for political reasons China shut down the world’s electric vehicle transition, what happens then? It’s also possible that China could restrict “exports of lithium hydroxide to give its domestic electric battery and vehicle manufacturers an advantage,” according to CNN.
As you can imagine, the price for critical battery metals has shot through the roof. According to CNN, “Some automakers like Tesla have made deals with suppliers of raw materials recently, which may help insulate them from shortages.”
If you’ve looked into buying an electric car recently, you’re very familiar with the federal tax credit awarded to EV car owners.
According to CNN, “The government has offered subsidies for electric vehicle purchases and charging infrastructure, but the mining sector hasn’t seen similar support, the battery metals experts say.”
[….]
Will Super-Sized EV Batteries Strain the Supply Chain?
Electric vehicle battery costs soared in 2022. But that doesn’t seem to have slowed the pace of automakers planning to adopt ever larger battery packs to satisfy ever-higher EV driving range claims.
As Bloomberg recently calculated, using EV models from the U.S., Europe, and China, the average pack size is now around 80 kwh, from in the vicinity of 40 kwh in 2018, and the growth trend is expected to continue for some years.
Meanwhile, average global EV range is now at 210 miles—up dramatically versus the average range of 143 miles in 2018.
That also means average EVs are less efficient, the byproduct of a shift to larger EVs.
EV driving range has been increasing at a rate of about 10% each year. Bloomberg sees the market finally reaching a ceiling in its demand for more range at 250-310 miles depending on the size of the EV, with the smallest city cars well below that range.
[….]
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the Silverado EV’s pack, topping 200 kwh, represents $25,000 to $27,000 of direct cost to GM. That happens to be as much as a well-equipped 2024 Chevrolet Trax crossover, or a base 2024 Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV.
The Chevy Silverado EV won’t even have the biggest battery among full-size electric trucks. Ram plans a gigantic 229-kwh pack for its upcoming Ram 1500 REV.
The Silverado EV’s battery pack has more than twice the capacity versus that of the top Lucid Air that can go more than 500 miles on a charge. It’s also enough to power an average American house for almost three weeks, based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2021 household daily average of 10.632 kwh.
Ford isn’t going to go to 600 miles of range and thinks the sweet spot is around 350 miles. Mazda has said that long-range EVs aren’t the future…..
Behind the 2023 Surge in Battery Demand for EVs
Global sales of electric cars are set to surge to yet another record this year, expanding their share of the overall car market to close to one-fifth and leading a major transformation of the auto industry that has implications for the energy sector, especially oil. That’s according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recent report, “Global EV Outlook, 2023”, accessible here [as a PDF], which, in its 142 pages, shines a bright light on the remarkable dynamics that have unfolded in the field of battery demand for Electric Vehicles (EVs). This gallery summarizes the IEA report to navigate six compelling sides of the industry’s transformative journey. It begins with a surge in battery demand for EVs, outlining how, in 2022, it soared by approximately 65%, reaching a colossal 550 GWh from 330 GWh in 2021. This growth, fueled by a 55% increase in electric passenger car registrations, is a global phenomenon, yet it finds its epicenter in China and the United States.
[….]
1. Battery demand by mode and region, 2016–2022:
IEA’s report states that the demand for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in the automotive sector surged significantly in 2022, rising by approximately 65% to reach 550 GWh, up from about 330 GWh in 2021. This remarkable growth was primarily attributed to the increasing sales of electric passenger cars, which saw new registrations rise by 55% in 2022 compared to the previous year.
In China, the demand for batteries in the automotive industry experienced an even more substantial increase, exceeding 70%. This coincided with an 80% increase in electric car sales in 2022 compared to 2021. However, this upward trajectory in battery demand was somewhat tempered by the rising prevalence of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs).
Meanwhile, in the United States, the demand for vehicle batteries also witnessed robust growth, expanding by approximately 80%, even though electric car sales only saw a comparatively modest increase of around 55% in 2022 relative to the preceding year.
2. Overall supply and demand of battery metals by sector, 2016–2022
The surge in battery demand is spurring the need for essential materials. In 2022, there was still an imbalance between the demand for lithium and its supply, a situation that persisted from 2021. This discrepancy occurred despite a significant 180% rise in production since 2017.
This chart shows that in 2022, EV batteries accounted for approximately 60% of the demand for lithium, 30% for cobalt, and 10% for nickel. In contrast, just five years prior, in 2017, these proportions were roughly 15%, 10%, and 2%, respectively.
(READ THE REST! – Great Summary of larger report! Maria Guerra’s articles are now my first stop on this topic)
Electric Vehicle Industry Jittery over Looming Lithium Supply Shortage
The transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) is picking pace with concentrated efforts to achieve the net-zero carbon scenario by 2050. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that global EV sales reached 6.6 million units in 2021, nearly doubling from the previous year. IEA projects that the number of EVs in use (across all road transport modes excluding two/three-wheelers) is expected to increase from 18 million vehicles in 2021 to 200 million vehicles by 2030, recording an average annual growth of over 30%. The estimation is based on policies announced by governments around the world as of mid-2021. This scenario will result in a sixfold increase in the demand for lithium, a key material used in the manufacturing of EV batteries, by 2030. With increasing EV demand, the industry looks to navigate through the lithium supply disruptions.
Lithium Supply Shortages Are Not Going Away Soon
The global EV market is already struggling with lithium supply constraints. Both lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) and lithium hydroxide (LiOH) are used for the production of EV batteries, but traditionally lithium hydroxide is obtained from processing of lithium carbonate, so the industry is more watchful of lithium carbonate production. BloombergNEF, a commodity market research provider, indicated that the production of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) was estimated to reach around 673,000 tons in 2022, while the demand was projected to exceed 676,000 tons LCE. In January 2023, a leading lithium producer, Albemarle, indicated that the global demand for LCE would expand to 1.8 million metric tons (MMt) (~1.98 million tons) by 2025 and 3.7 MMt (~4 million tons) by 2030. Meanwhile, the supply of LCE is expected to reach 2.9 MMt (~3.2 million tons) by 2030, creating a huge deficit.
There is a need to scale up lithium mining and processing. IEA indicates that about 50 new average-sized mines need to be built to fulfill the rising lithium demand. Lithium as a resource is not scarce; as per the US Geological Survey estimates, the global lithium reserves stand at about 22 million tons, enough to sustain the demand for EVs far in the future.
However, the process of mining and refining the metal is time-consuming and not keeping up pace with the surging demand. As per IEA analysis, between 2010 and 2019, the lithium mines that started production took an average of 16.5 years to develop. Thus, lithium production is not likely to shoot up drastically in a short period of time.
Considering the challenges in increasing the lithium production output, industry stakeholders across the EV value chain are racing to prepare for the anticipated supply chain disruptions.
[….]
The automakers are still healing from the chip shortage, which we talked about in one of our previous articles: Chip Shortage Puts a Brake on Automotive Production. They are now faced with lithium supply constraints which are not expected to ease down for a couple of years. And then there is also a looming threat of a shortage of other minerals such as graphite, nickel, cobalt, etc., which are also critical for the production of EV components. While the world is determined and excited about the EV revolution, the transition is going to be challenging.
So challenging in fact that GOOGLE years ago admitted the problem:
We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
[…..]
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
Google Joins the Common Sense Crew On Renewable Energies ~ Finally! (RPT)
Global Lithium Shortage Could Severely Impact EV Makers In 2025
Here’s what could happen if demand outstrips supply.
The automotive industry could be in for a shock, with a new report predicting that a lithium shortage is on the horizon. Citing BMI, a research unit of Fitch Solutions, CNBC reports that by 2025, demand will outstrip supply. The BMI report puts this down to China’s soaring appetite for the alkali metal.
“We expect an average of 20.4% year-on-year annual growth for China’s lithium demand for EVs alone over 2023-2032,” reads the report. Lithium is an essential component in electric vehicle batteries. It is used in most battery packs, including those found in popular vehicles such as the Tesla Model S. According to Euronews, the electric sedan uses approximately 26 pounds of lithium in its battery pack.
While China’s lithium demand will increase by 20.4% year-on-year, the country’s supply will only grow by 6% over the same time. It’s worth noting that China is the world’s third-largest lithium producer after Australia and Chile…..
Professor Ian Plimer is Australia’s best-known geologist. He is currently professor emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne and formerly a professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide and head of geology at the University of Newcastle. Mr Plimer is also the former director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies and has published more than 120 specific papers on geology. Professor Plimer was also Managing Editor of Mineralium Deposita, president of the Society for Geology Applied (SGA), president of International Association on the Genesis of Ore Deposits (IAGOD), president of the Australian Geoscience Council and sat on the Earth Sciences Committee of the Australian Research Council for many years. He is most famously known for his controversial book Green Murder
0000
… Failure Through Mandates, Penalties, And Subsidies
In Creating A False Supply/Demand Market
Based on An Industry Propped Up By The Same
One funny comment on the channel was this: Another good comment, based on the drop in performance* when these batteries are cold, is this: * CLIMATE/WEATHER IMPACT ON EVs Another factor regarding optimal output and electric vehicles is hot and cold weather. I will let a wonderful WIRED MAGAZINE article explain: …EV drivers have other factors to consider in winter weather: How far they can go, and how long it will take them to recharge. Cold temperatures can hurt both, especially when it gets as severe as Winter Storm Jaden, which has triggered states of emergency across the country and will subject more than 70 percent of the US population to subzero temperatures over the next few days. That’s because the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs (as well as cellphones and laptops) are very temperature sensitive. “Batteries are like humans,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, director of the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute. They prefer the same sort of temperature range that people do. Anything below 40 or above 115 degrees Fahrenheit and they’re not going to deliver their peak performance. They like to be around 60 to 80 degrees. As the temperature drops, the electrolyte fluid inside the battery cells becomes more sluggish. “You don’t have as much power when you want to discharge,” says Stefanopoulou. “The situation is even more limited when you want to charge.” Modern cars are designed to take that into account, with battery thermal management systems that warm or cool a battery. But while an internal combustion engine generates its own heat, which warms the engine and the car occupants, an EV has to find that warmth somewhere else, either scavenging the small amount of heat that motors and inverters make or running a heater. That takes energy, meaning there’s less power available to move the wheels. Additionally, to protect the battery—the most expensive component of an EV—the onboard computer may limit how it’s used in extreme low temperatures. The Tesla Model S owners manual warns: “In cold weather, some of the stored energy in the Battery may not be available on your drive because the battery is too cold.”… Updated Video Comparison: Ev vs. Gas How Far Can a Gas Truck & an Electric Ford Lightning Go Towing the Same Camper On ONE Fill-up? Near the end the EV hauler says of the gas-powered Ford, “Even though he is burning dinosaurs” — um — so are you. According to the study directed by Christoph Buchal of the University of Cologne, published by the Ifo Institute in Munich last week, electric vehicles have “significantly higher CO2 emissions than diesel cars.” That is due to the significant amount of energy used in the mining and processing of lithium, cobalt, and manganese, which are critical raw materials for the production of electric car batteries. A battery pack for a Tesla Model 3 pollutes the climate with 11 to 15 tonnes of CO2. Each battery pack has a lifespan of approximately ten years and total mileage of 94,000, would mean 73 to 98 grams of CO2 per kilometer (116 to 156 grams of CO2 per mile), Buchal said. Add to this the CO2 emissions of the electricity from powerplants that power such vehicles, and the actual Tesla emissions could be between 156 to 180 grams of CO2 per kilometer (249 and 289 grams of CO2 per mile). In a conversation between EV owners and others at WATTS UP WITH THAT, a comment that sums up the above but in a short paragraph, reads: THE DAILY MAIL notes that “[e]lectric cars have 40 per cent less range when the temperature dips below freezing, new research has revealed.” Wow. Canadians are well-aware of the issue — as are the people in the northern states. IN~OTHER~WORDS, this “venture is a giant boondoggle and these charging-stations would never survive outside of transferring wealth from business owners and those that drive the economy to cover this failure of a “choice.” I was also “challenged” a bit, not really a challenged as much as a friendly observation — to which I just wish to record my response, as, it is a decent summation to the video regarding the review of the EV Ford Truck. My friend noted: After a somewhat silly response I continued with this: On a more serious note, yes, pushing technology that does not work well at all in replacing fossil fuels as sound (solar, wind, current battery tech, etc.) through subsidies and edict… yes, THAT is the issue. This video highlights [encapsulates] the result of government largess IN THAT people have a false impression these vehicles are just as good and would in a free and open market fail. Europe is moving to make natural gas and nuclear “green,” because (a) they are, and (b) they work. The U.S. has the most corrupt and politicians that vote legislation based on a Utopian ideal (say, a Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc.) or personal enrichment (say McConnell or Pelosi, etc.). Reality bites and refuses to let go… even Newsom extended Diablo Canyon nuclear plant life instead of shutting it down. Why? because it works, wind and solar wanes at best… It is an impossible goal, but many miss out on inculcating that fact into their thinking. Thomas Sowell notes the biggest difference between “conservatives” and “the Left” are these simple and basic questions: 1) compared to what? Which even if someone were to read just my “BATTERY” section of my EV Post, they will encounter thinking unheard of in their normal diet of “clean energy” thinking. “At What Cost” So, the “short answer” to my fellow compatriot on a similar life journey is, that that video shows the failure of what a large government “buying widgets” can do: Via an Interview by Dennis Prager [EDITOR’S NOTE: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” no one needed in the real world (things made that it could not use, or people did not want based on what a politician or leader in a controlled environment “thought” people would need). This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program works. Only the free-market can do this: I-PENCIL]
2) at what cost?
3) what hard-evidence do you have?
If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was:
Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?
Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.
EQUITY
OFF THE PRESS bullet points DAILY CALLER’S story for us:
BREITBART has more:
A state water agency in Hawaii has been accused of delaying the release of water from a traditional farm that landowners reportedly wanted to use to protect their property as the Maui wildfire spread last week.
According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) initially refused a request from West Maui Land, a real estate development company, to provide water to protect properties that were at risk in the area.
Fingers have been pointed at one official in particular, M. Kaleo Manuel, DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management.
The Honolulu Civil Beat reported:
[….]
According to the sources, Manuel wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had spread. It was not clear on Monday how much damage the fire did in the interim or whether homes were damaged.
Manuel participates in the Obama Foundation’s Leaders Asia-Pacific program and prioritizes traditional local views on water.
Honolulu Civil Beat quoted Gov. Josh Green (D) as saying that there had been some local opposition in general to using the state’s scarce water resources to fight fires. A state bill to promote the use of state and private reservoirs for fire safety was proposed in 2022 by legislators from Maui, but was not passed….
Here is this “water official” using woke buzzwords like “holistic” — they just string words together to sound important / compassionate:
(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) ….“Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths,” Jeremy Kauffman wrote on X, citing the original article. “A Hawaiian Studies major, Kaleo prefers a traditional, holistic ‘One Water’ approach where water is revered, not used. Water requires ‘true conversations about equity.'”
Kauffman, the CEO of a bitcoin company, included a Zoom interview video of Manuel, posted to YouTube about 10 months ago.
“Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god,” Manuel said in the video. “We’ve become used to looking at water as something that we use and not something that we revere. … We can reconnect to that traditional value set.”….
[….]
[….]
What a douche. The LEFT looks for religion in all the wrong places.
WATER & POWER
The government would rather blame “climate change” for the Hawaii wildfires than take responsibility for their own reckless disregard.
And Steve Milloy points out another NEW YORK TIMES article that missed an opportunity to zero in on the issue:
And THE BLAZE notes the issue with the power companies
A number of Democrats and other leftists have blamed the deadly wildfires in Hawaii on the specter of anthropogenic climate change. They may be right, but only in a perverted sense.
Like the Biden administration, Hawaii’s Gov. Josh Green (D) and both the state’s 88%-Democratic House and 92%-Democratic state Senate are ostensibly keen to “lead the globe on clean energy and climate issues.”
It appears that the efforts by Hawaii’s largest energy provider to follow suit and satisfy a Democrat-mandated transition to renewable energy took priority over alternatively pragmatic efforts to maintain its equipment and deal with the known and documented threat of fuel buildup in the form of flammable vegetation…..
All these useless policies to make politicians fell good through “messianism” [saving the planet] have consequences. Like all the other policies with a stated outcomes by the Left – they hurt those they purport to want to help.
SAINTHOOD
It reminds me of the stellar [extended] quote by David Mamet:
One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.
But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.
When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.
Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.
A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.
What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.
The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.
One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.
Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.
These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.
[…..]
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the pro-prietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men. †
PAGE-NOTE FROM PAGE 154
*No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
† As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135; 116-117, 122, 151, 154.
Climate alarmists insist there’s a “scientific consensus” that says climate change is a crisis, and man causes it! Researcher Judith Curry tells me, “it’s a manufactured consensus.” Curry was a department chair at Georgia Tech when she spread alarm about climate change. The media loved her then. She claimed there was an increase in hurricane intensity. But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research: years with low levels of hurricanes. “Like a good scientist, I went in and investigated.” When she acknowledged a lack of evidence that hurricane intensity had increased, she was ruthlessly attacked by climate alarmists. Her career suffered. Now Curry reveals nefarious ways “the science” about climate change has been corrupted.
(Video of VP via RNC RESEARCH) KAMALA HARRIS: “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breath clean air and drink clean water.”
See my main page title: 97% FABRICATED
(Hat-tip to Heisenberg’s Revenge via ACE OF SPADES) In this updated “Fact Check” video from the Climate Discussion Nexus, Dr. John Robson investigates the unsound origins and fundamental inaccuracy, even dishonesty, of the claim that 97% of scientists, or “the world’s scientists”, or something agree that climate change is man-made, urgent and dangerous.
THE PIPELINE! ….Here’s an excerpt, which examines the sleight of hand at the heart of the “97 percent” claim:
Furthermore:
97 Percent of scientists believe in catastrophic human caused climate change? Of course not! But far too many believe this ridiculous statement that defies basic logic and observation. (Can you think of any highly-political issue where you could get even 65% agreement?) The 97% Myth has succeeded in fooling many people because the phony number is repeated over and over again by those who have a financial and/or ideological stake in the outcome. By the way, what any scientist “believes’ doesn’t matter anyway. Science is what happens during rigorous and repeated experimentation.
**Regrettably, a graphic error appears on this video from 1:31 to 1:42. The percentage of climate studies that explicitly claim most of the recent warming is manmade was listed as “.03%” when it should have been “.3%”. The narration says “less than one-percent”, which is accurate. While the graphic is incorrect, the point being made is still completely valid. The “97%” mantra is a wildly inaccurate myth being cynically used to scare an unwary public.