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“Book Review: “On the Move” Is a Must-Read Account of U.S. Climate Migration”
“The press has been reporting on more and more extreme weather events, not just unusual heat but also torrential rains that dramatically flooded Dubai. That’s on top of atypically wet weather that wrecked UK crops. Without giving a catalogue, it’s becoming clear that more and more residences and livelihoods and therefore communities are at risk from climate change.
The Pentagon had the geopolitical impact of climate change on its radar in the early 2000s. One of the early concerns was sea level rises producing mass migration out of particularly vulnerable countries like Bangladesh. But as this article describes, climate migration has already come to the US and is set to increase.”
Naked Capitalism:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/04/book-review-on-the-move-is-a-must-read-account-of-u-s-climate-migration.htmlJust have a think’s Dave Borlace has a video available looking into China’s transition to renewables and away from fossil fuels. They don’t shy away from the fact that China uses huge amounts of coal currently but there is more nuanced detail. China is moving away from fossil fuel dependence on other nations to generating it’s own renewable energy at breakneck speed. The rest of the world is far away from doing this.
https://www.justhaveathink.com/is-china-cheating/.You may or may not agree with some of the semi-political views expressed but the pace of change in energy infrastructure is stunning.
Allan Howard, here’s something you might like:
– Let’s end Traffic. Start your local group today.
– Cycling Rebellion is a movement to put people before cars in our towns and cities
ET
haven´t watched yet but thx!
I do not understand why the German and European environmental activists instead of parroting the government propaganda have not started to build ties to China, India, Russia, to create networks and exchange expertise on environmental issues and above all pushing the governments of Europe to cooperate with the Chinese.
Because if Germany fails its climate targets we not gonna die. But if due to hate, PR, warmongering, isolating into blocks even more, China fails its targets we are in much bigger trouble. Then a green clean Germany won´t mean shit.
“The BBC Global China Unit has identified at least 62 mining projects across the world, in which Chinese companies have a stake, that are designed to extract either lithium or one of three other minerals key to green technologies – cobalt, nickel and manganese.
All are used to make lithium-ion batteries”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-68896707
Possibly the Chinese do intend to use less coal in the future but they have not wound down coal use, so far, they have wound it up.
The Chinese dominate Lithium-iron battery production.
While that may not be a problem to the World economy, massively using Lithium-iron battery technology for electric vehicles is not doing our planet any good, at all.
Extracting the Lithium for desert areas, utilises much of the available water.
The Lithium mining, will when over, leave that area devastated, such that it will be more or less unusable for a very long time.
What happens to the native people, who currently live on that land?
There is only a limited amount of economically recoverable Copper.
If much is splurged on electric vehicles, less will be available for other projects, like electrification of railways, wind farms and hyro projects.
These minerals should be used as carefully, as miserly as possible.Recycling, to some level is possible but complete recycling will never be possible.
Round my way, it is getting very hard to find a yard that wants to scrap cars, hardly profitable with modern cars, almost none will take electric vehicles, for recycling.
In an EV pack, there are about twenty different minerals. Economically separating these is expensive and potentially toxic/dangerous to the people undertaking these tasks.I drive an EV. It is the best car I have ever bought, and at the same time I am not directly poisoning the pedestrians I pass when I drive through town.
I don’t want to recycle my car battery because it works fine. Just as the driver of an ICE vehicle doesn’t immediately panic about recycling their engine, gearbox and transmission; when they may fail after 10 years.
At least with recycling EV battery components, there is something left to recycle. There is little recycling of petrol or diesel fuel to be had, as it has all been converted into other elements, such as Nitrous Oxide, Carbon Monoxide, and Sulphur Dioxide; all of which are poisonous to humans. If the majority of my battery recharge comes from my solar panels, then I am creating almost no atmospheric pollution at all. Maybe some tyre wear, but all vehicles have that problem.
I notice that in these cut & paste anti-ev posts, there is no mention of the equivalent environmental damage done by oil extraction. Try Googling “shale oil extraction” and ask yourself if the horrific images returned are more acceptable than the alleged future problems of mining lithium, cobalt and manganese?
We need a better way of life where people can stay in one place for longer, and stuff and people don’t need to be moved around so much and so fast. Like things used to be done before there was masses of cheap transport and everyone started taking it for granted.
Michael norton and Fat Jon; you’re both right. Electric vehicles are less damaging than internal combustion engines, but billions of private electric cars and their necessary infrastructure are still far too damaging to even contemplate. We need less bloody cars, and less flights, and less iPhones, and less all manner of unnecessary modern shite. We need more and better public provision instead, and a far less manic way of life.
Most of all we need to plan. That’s how China is currently outclassing the West, but it only buys them a few decades before minerals run scarce. We need an even better plan than that.
(West)Germany, numbers in millions
cars bicycles popul.1950 0,7 ? 50,96
1955 1,9 ? 53,52
1960 4,8 ? 55,96
1965 9,9 18,00 59,03
1970 15,1 23,00 61,00
1975 19,6 29,00 61,64
1980 25,9 37,00 61,66
1985 29,2 45,00 61,02
1990 35,5 55,00 79,75
1995 40,4 73,00 81,82
2000 42,8 75,00 82,26
2005 45,4 73,00 82,44
2010 41,7 69,00 81,75
2015 44,4 72,00 82,18
2020 47,7 76,00 83,16
2024 49,1 84,00 84,07or this one, a little animated graphic:
bikes – cars- motorbikes – buses 1960-2021
https://de.statista.com/infografik/31169/bestand-an-kraftfahrzeugen-und-fahrraedern-in-deutschland/Darn, that didn´t work out:
cars bicycles popul.
1950 – 0,7 ? 50,96
1955 – 1,9 ? 53,52
1960 – 4,8 ? 55,96
1965 – 9,9 18,00 59,03
1970 – 15,1 23,00 61,00
1975 – 19,6 29,00 61,64
1980 – 25,9 37,00 61,66
1985 – 29,2 45,00 61,02
1990 – 35,5 55,00 79,75
1995 – 40,4 73,00 81,82
2000 – 42,8 75,00 82,26
2005 – 45,4 73,00 82,44
2010 – 41,7 69,00 81,75
2015 – 44,4 72,00 82,18
2020 – 47,7 76,00 83,16
2024 – 49,1 84,00 84,07sry I am too dumb for this. But the numbers should be readable
Thanks AG. I think we can make sense of the figures, which are interesting.
Clark makes a very valid point about the numbers of vehicles and electronics; and the need for less global travel.
I don’t believe the lithium argument is valid, because by all accounts there are 180 billion tons of lithium in sea water, and we have no shortage of that on the planet. If we thought long term and built solar powered sea water processing plants, we could extract this and other chemicals, desalinate the water and use wind/solar powered pumps to move fresh water over to our driest areas.
This might also help to keep the rising sea levels under some form of control. But, do we have the will to think long term any more? Or must everything be sacrificed on the altar of ‘get mega rich quick’?
If we mostly moved to battery vehicles, and the fabled Net Zero society, just in the United Kingdom, we would need to grow out our National Grid by four times. So World Wide, impossible to resource or pay for.
I think the U.K. is only responsible for one percent of Global Warming. Solar panels only last for fifteen years, then they are almost unrecycled, just the Aluminium frames saved, rest land filled. E.V. batteries are barely recycled anywhere on the planet. Nobody wants to take old E.V. cars, too dangerous, too difficult.The average solar panel lifetime is 25-30 years. They don’t stop working after that, just become less efficient and produce less electricity. It may yet become economically viable (or imperative) to recycle the metals within them. They are mostly silicon (for now) with the rare earth metals used in tiny quantities to dope the silicon. Silicon is plentiful. Recovering the rare earth metals is somewhat more challenging for now.
Lead acid batteries were not recycled initially but there is a substantial industry now to do just that. In time, recycling of solar panels can get to the same point.Batteries don’t necessarily need to be made from lithium, especially ones that don’t need to move about such as those for houses, factories and storage for generated renewable energy. There are alternatives, pumped hydro, thermal batteries, iron batteries and other solutions. The current fossil fuel subsidies are enormous at somewhere around 900 billion dollars globally. Those subsidies could go a long way to re-purposing and building out the grid.
Michael, a large part of it is the incumbent fossil fuel interests don’t want to give up their concentrated huge profits to more energy-independent households and countries. The West with its stranglehold on the fossil fuel industries doesn’t want to give up the profits for their economies nor the political control over the provision of energy supplies. That is why China is rushing to do what it’s doing and they are a generation ahead of everyone else. When they don’t need to import such large quantities of fossil fuel for their energy needs, the West will lose that lever of control – which is what’s pissing them off.
ET, I have read that in the U.K. solar farms have a fifteen working life. Meaning that the wind and sun have “clouded” the surface, so they are not as effective as when they were new.
So, for several reasons, they are planned to have a fifteen year life span, then taken down, pannels crushed, Aluminium recovered, the rest dumped.
The farm land that was used as a site, is then returned to farming.
I expect if an ordinary person pays to have solar panels installed on their roof, they may want to keep them, until such time as they need a new roof. On, say a fifty year old roof, once you deinstalled your solar panels, you would need to have your roof replaced. Normally roofs need redoing after 30 -50 years. But have people clamber about on your roof installing panels, will not improve the weather resistance of your roof.Elon Musk of Tesla, is shedding jobs like nobody’s business, maybe the endgame is in sight?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68935522
All battery powered car makers are going tits-upMassive fossil fuel burning is going to stop; no two ways about it. It’ll stop because governments have the foresight to limit its extraction, or it’ll stop because industrialised society collapses due to its effects. If by some miracle it survives the latter, it’ll stop as it runs ever shorter – the entire fossil fuel peak can be only three centuries or so from start to finish at the rates we’re burning it, a twentieth of the time since the invention of the wheel and less than an eyeblink geologically. If we don’t drive ourselves extinct we’re going to have to learn to live without it again.
“All battery powered car makers are going tits-up”
Electric vehicle sales are trending upwards globally Tracking global data on electric vehicles
The BBC article linked tells of Tesla laying off its supercharger team responsible for building Tesla’s network of charging stations. Tesla is also facing stiff competition from other cheaper marques. The propietry charging station thing annoys me. Similar to the phone charging propietry nonsense that went on for years and took until recently to legislate that all phones must use USB C (in EU). That took way too long. It’s time to legislate similarly for EV charging stations and make them universally standard.On another note relating to batteries here is a piece about sodium battery commercial production beginning to roll out. Sodium is much more plentiful that lithium, is more easily extracted and the chemistry doesn’t need rare earth metals and safer. Ideal for static battery storage Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production
ET apparently there are many thousands of new EV cars parked in fields in China, they are struggling to find punters who want one, hence the Chinese attempt to dump them on Europe.
In Norway it seems more than half of cars on the road are now EV.
Over 80% of new cars sold last year were EV.
Next year 2025 you will no longer be able to buy a new gas guzzler, in Norway.
Most electricity in Norway comes from Hydro, they have a lot of rain and mountains. So, it is a good fit, most electricity made from renewables, not many people on the roads and stunningly high incomes. Now for the good bit, “generous financial help” is given to encourage punters to buy new EV. This has been partly funded by the Government Pension Fund Global, the World’s largest sovereign wealth fund that has amassed its wealth from the sale of Oil and Natural Gas! EV cars are not too good in very cold weather. Their range is also reduced towing and going up mountains! The amount of Oil consumed in Norway has hardly gone down, even though over half the cars are now EV?For the last twenty five years of my working life, I have been a tree surgeon, using a Diesel Landrover to tow a trailer.
There are probably many jobs that would be unsuitable to use EV.
Also, if EV becomes compulsary it will be the death of caravans being towed for recreation.
I use to go sea fishing with my mate, we used his builders van to tow his boat, about 90 miles to the coast and ninety miles back, the van was a diesel, the boat ran on two stroke petrol.
Maybe we should all stay at home and give up all socialising/enjoyment?– “Maybe we should all stay at home and give up all socialising/enjoyment?”
I don’t know; what would you suggest?
Clark, after watching this talk by Prof. Paul Christensen,
I want nothing to do with Lithium ion battery technology or EV.Professor Paul Christensen
Prof of Pure & Applied Electrochem
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/paulchristensen.html
He gives the notion that Lithium ion is the work of the devilI do not know what the future is. I doubt it will be battery cars.
I didn’t really intend for this thread to be a dumping ground for every passing notion one might have about the environment, batteries, cars, caravans, and all matters however tenuously related, Michael. If you want to do that, please start another thread for that purpose.
It really is intended – as the title suggests – to be an opportunity for climate ‘sceptics’ to make their case about why they think climate change and the science behind it is all – somehow – nothing but a hoax, and a massive conspiracy of global proportions.
So far, we’ve had a few completely unsupported “well, I reckon…” type of arguments, but nothing more substantial than that. They’re very shy, these denialists.
