Read my post before criticise.
I have Solar (which supplies most of my energy) Heat pumps and CO2 monitors at two homes.
OK - good.
I said climate change is real.
But not real enough to take action on... riiiight.
It certainly does not place all statements made about climate change beyond dispute not least because many making the claims have a vested interest in saying it is worse than it is. They get bigger research funds!
This. Again. Makes me wince. You do know that big oil and coal barons earn more in a single day than a climatologist does in an entire year, right? Who has the greatest incentive to lie and cheat and hide things from the public? EG: Shell and Exxon both ran their own climate studies in the 1980's. Want to guess how much they published their findings? Want to guess how much they 'exaggerated it' for 'bigger research funds' when this science was DIRECTLY AGAINST their business case? Let's see - wouldn't earning money from oil and gas be an incentive to MINIMISE the risks? So what did they find?
"Later that decade, in 1988, an
internal report by Shell projected similar effects but also found that CO2 could double even earlier, by 2030. Privately, these companies did not dispute the links between their products, global warming, and ecological calamity. On the contrary, their research confirmed the connections.
Shell’s assessment foresaw a one-meter sea-level rise, and noted that warming could also fuel disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in a worldwide rise in sea level of “five to six meters.” That would be enough to inundate entire low-lying countries.
Shell’s analysts also warned of the “disappearance of specific ecosystems or habitat destruction,” predicted an increase in “runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland,” and said that “new sources of freshwater would be required” to compensate for changes in precipitation. Global changes in air temperature would also “drastically change the way people live and work.” All told, Shell concluded, “the changes may be the greatest in recorded history.”
For its part, Exxon warned of “potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.” Like Shell’s experts, Exxon’s scientists predicted devastating sea-level rise, and warned that the American Midwest and other parts of the world could become desert-like. Looking on the bright side, the company expressed its confidence that “this problem is not as significant to mankind as a nuclear holocaust or world famine.”
The documents make for frightening reading. And the effect is all the more chilling in view of the oil giants’ refusal to warn the public about the damage that their own researchers predicted. Shell’s report, marked “confidential,” was
first disclosed by a Dutch news organization earlier this year. Exxon’s study was not intended for external distribution, either;
it was leaked in 2015."
Benjamin Franta: Newly found documents from the 1980s show that fossil fuel companies privately predicted the global damage that would be caused by their products.
www.theguardian.com
"propaganda" certainly triumphed over science in many ways in COVID - the reality of COVID science was manipulated by unions, a pathogenically lazy public sector and health services all of whom stood to lose nothing by shutting down on full pay - they almost shutdown the conversation on side effects on vaccines and the extent to which lockdown even helps.
Are you trying to get banned from the site? Read the forum policies mate.
Science has to RE EARN the trust it has lost in fighting propaganda wars.
Says the alt-right. Says you. The rest of us are doing just fine with accepting science.
Take the VERY dodgy obsession with electric cars - which is at best an investment with only long term return.
At worst - and certainly initially - it is counterproductive. It costs 70% more CO2 UPFRONT to build an electric car (not to mention building the factory that builds them!!) ,
(Winces again at having to cover this again.) Yes, EV's cost a lot more metal UPFRONT than an ICE car. Hello, what goes into an ice car? Did you know right now that the amount of mining for the ENTIRE energy transition is about 7 million tons of finished metal product a year? Now that's a lot more when you take into effect the tailings etc, but it's still nothing compared to 14 BILLION TONS of fossil fuels we mine.
EV's cost more energy (and therefore in dirty mining sectors) more CO2 UPFRONT. But how about you put a cherry-picked data point IN CAPS and ignore this little detail of how many TONS of oil must be burned each year for the average car?
Not replacing a car at all is 170%!
Not if it burns tons and tons of oil each year! (Facepalm!) You're only measuring the manufacturing cost of the car. When I buy an electric car it will be running from the 47 solar panels I have on my roof!
Much of the energy powering electric is not clean sources anyway!
Solar is growing at 4% per year anyway.
As EV's and solar grow, guess where we'll stop buying gas? Russia and the Middle East. This is not just good for the climate, but good for national security and toppling petro-dictators who don't like the west very much.
Then there is the question of disposal of all the dead batteries!
Have you even read anything about what's happening in this sector you're trying to criticise?
First - they're not 'dead' batteries but simply become undesirable with a shortened range at about 80% capacity after the car's lifetime.
So what's an 80% battery good for for 10 years after that?
Only backing up the grid! This is happening more and more.
Second - EV's last longer than the average ICE car. Fact. So even though it's more expensive to buy, NOT having an ICE engine to service and getting maybe 1.5 car lifetimes for the price of one car actually saves you money on the car. That is, a $40 grand EV is probably cheaper than a $25 grand ICE car in the long run.
Third - recycling programs to get the ground up 'black mass' are growing around the world with a number of start up factories opening in Europe and America. After an EV battery has helped backup the grid for a decade, there will be plenty of these new factories simply because there's so much money to be made from 'black mass'.
Today we're seeing the birth of a whole new generation of business and technologies that are desperate to get at old EV batteries. They discharge and dismantle the battery and shred the cells. This makes 'black mass' that they can then recycle stuff out of. They're getting to 95% to 98% rates of recovery. The top 10 companies in North America alone represent over $5.5 BILLION in investment.
10 battery recycling startups revolutionizing the industry in 2023 Hydrovolt is Europe's largest EV battery recycler, and will do 25,000 batteries a year (opening in just a few months) and is set to grow exponentially over the next few years.
Norway's quest for 'black gold' from used car batteries In fact - the Eurozone are JEALOUS for old EV batteries and their 'black mass'. It's become a geopolitically recognised precious resource.“Exports [of black mass from Europe] will finish by around 2025 [and] with the regulations coming in, I don’t see how Europe can afford to lose any of it,” said one black mass processor."
https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/european-battery-regulations-to-restrict-black-mass-exports There are efforts to tighten up the legislation to prevent export - at least to non-OECD countries.
A number for you . The particulate matter is a factor of 1000 bigger from tyres and brakes than from good diesel exhausts.
So on particulates the change to electric is irrelevant.
This is the first smart observation you've made. And the figure is worse!
Almost 2,000 times more particle pollution is produced by tyre wear than is pumped out of the exhausts of modern cars, tests have shown.
The tyre particles pollute air, water and soil and contain a wide range of toxic organic compounds, including known carcinogens, the analysts say, suggesting tyre pollution could rapidly become a major issue for regulators.
Toxic particles from tyre wear almost 2,000 times worse than from exhausts as weight of cars increases
www.theguardian.com
But I hope you remember that I'm a New Urbanist. I'd rather a more European town plan with townhouse and eco-apartment neighbourhoods all within 5 minutes walk of the town square, tram, and a few nice parks. I'm not about banning the car - but like Tokyo - maybe halving car ownership because it's just cheaper and faster to get around by Metro or tram.
EV's are only to give us time to get off oil and transition to a better city plan. After the rezoning there could be remarkable accumulating benefits to our town plans within 20 years - but the full job will take 50- to 60 years at least.
And most of the world cant afford to change car. There is no chance of most of the poor countries changing at all.
$40k EV = about $25k ICE. Are you sure?
Also, just as wind and solar have been on a learning curve that has reduced costs by 90% in just over a decade, so EV's are on a learning curve.
So electric cars for "climate change" is nuanced as to whether they help or hinder.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) disagrees.
ANother stat for you. It costs a big part of a Kw/hr to make a single use plastic bottle for water. In the UK we use 70billion a year!!!!
So getting rid of single use water bottles would have a bigger impact. Why is the focus not there?
Lester Brown of Earth Watch Institute HATES this industry. So I'm inclined to agree.
It also costs something like 3000 times as much to buy a bottle of water than drink from a tap. If governments cannot guarantee clean safe drinking water from a tap - then there needs to be a whole bunch of protesting and voting for the other guys.
BUT - this is a strawman. Why can't we both wean off fossil fuels, let solar keep doubling every 4 years the way it has been because the MARKET wants it - and go off plans like Andrew Blakers? I have answered your questions and points. You have not addressed any of mine.
You have not disproved that wind and solar are doubling so fast. You have not disproved that Overbuild can reduce the storage we need, nor how much PHES potential there is (Pumped hydro electricity storage), nor that sodium and liquid flow batteries are a thing.
Nor that Blakers - who won the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (like a Nobel peace prize for engineers) says a renewable grid will come in cheaper than coal. CHEAPER! And that's the coal electricity price - not including the health cost.
FACT: You should double the electricity price to include the health costs! Forbes 2012
“Although it is difficult to assign a cost to these numbers, estimates have suggested a 10% increase in health care costs in countries where coal makes up a significant fraction of the energy mix, like the U.S. and Europe (NAS 2010; Cohen et al., 2005; Pope et al., 2002).
These additional health costs begin to rival the total energy costs on an annual basis for the U.S. given that health care costs top $2.6 trillion, and electricity costs only exceed about $400 billion. Another way to describe this human health energy fee is that it costs about 2,000 lives per year to keep the lights on in Beijing but only about 200 lives to keep them on in New York.
How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt? We Rank The Killer Energy Sources
WHO estimates that fossil fuel pollution costs the world's health sectors $5 TRILLION a year!
Stop funding pollution
This is like letting big oil and old king coal outsource murder and economic mayhem. But the good news - although still a challenge - is the IEA estimates we need to spend $4 TRILLION a year on renewable energy and clean energy tech.
Net Zero by 2050 – Analysis - IEA
The great news is that as we have to spend this money anyway to solve climate change, one day as our skies clear - it will start to ALMOST PAY FOR ITSELF as our health bill drops. One day we'll even come out ahead! This is just from the health cost of fossil fuels - not even counting the cost of climate change, or geopolitical factors like getting bullied by Petro-Dictators like Russia’s former sway over Europe. Who wants to go through another 2021-23 energy crisis again just because some Petro-Dictator wants to exert more control over the world and invade a neighbour - or dictate energy prices to us? It’s time to do the patriotic thing and build clean, home grown renewable energy that improves our health, our climate, and our national security.
clintel.org
