Renewables use sun, water, wind; energy sources that won’t run out. Non-renewables come from things like gas, coal and uranium that one day will. But unless electricity and motorised transport are abandoned altogether, all “renewables” need huge areas of land or sea and require raw materials that are drilled, transported, mined, bulldozed and these will run out. Wind turbine towers are constructed from steel manufactured in a blast furnace from mined iron ore and modified coal (coke). Turbine blades are composed of oil-derived resins and glass fibre. The nacelle encloses a magnet containing about one third of a tonne of the rare earth metals, neodymium and dysprosium. Large neodymium magnets also help propel electric cars.
Currently China provides 95 per cent of rare earths; proven reserves of dysprosium will likely run out in 2020. Processing one tonne of ore generates about one tonne of radioactive waste, 12 million litres of waste gas containing dust concentrate, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide, sulphuric acid and 75 thousand litres of waste water. Baotou, in China, mines and processes much of the rare earth ores. The town abuts a five-mile-wide, toxic, lifeless, radioactive lake of processed wastewater. Local inhabitants have unusually high rates of cancer (particularly in children), osteoporosis, skin and respiratory disease. This unseen environmental destruction may be far off but no less damaging.
h/t Kevin B
when the Chinese run out of those rare earths other suppliers will step forth as the
price goes up..
even the US will open prev closed mines..
Who will rid us of this troublesome academic?
Right. The reason China produces most of the rare earths is their lax environmental and labor standards, and low wages. Rare earths are essential to modern industrial society, so those closed mines will reopened if push comes to shove, green morons be damned. Even a dick like the president understands that.
The Scottish are all left-wing pinko commies. They will ignore the sort of sound reasoning expressed in this article.
And as we all know, the ultimate objective of the greens is not alternative energy, it is energy starvation.
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this article must be mistaken. justin trudeau says this is the government that he most admires… primarily for its ability to make political turns on a dime.
they must have impeccable green credentials to get a thumbs up from pspawn.
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Future power plants that use nuclear fusion to produce electricity
will be the ultimate go to system once a few kinks are ironed out.
One of the bigger hurdles is once such a system is powered up
much of the inner workings become intensely and permanently
radioactive so use of “carbon based life forms” for the usual
regular maintenance activities is unlikely to be very popular.
That will leave almost all of the workload to robots designed
to function in very radioactive, very hostile environments and
that is still a work in progress.
When and where was it determined that oil, gas, coal etc is no longer being made??
The inconvenient truth! Sorry no movie or Vice President to promote.
If they could harness all that Hot Air then Al Gore,Barack Obama and Greenpeace would be very useful
“[Baotou in China] abuts a five-mile-wide, toxic, lifeless, radioactive lake of processed wastewater. Local inhabitants have unusually high rates of cancer (particularly in children), osteoporosis, skin and respiratory disease. This unseen environmental destruction may be far off but no less damaging.”
Come, come. The lives of faraway Chinese people are of no consequence whatsoever.
What’s truly important is that we can all feel good about ourselves here in Canada as we text one another on our snappy iPhones about saving the environment and use our brand new tablets to search the net for tips on living better sustainably.
“The lives of faraway Chinese people are of no consequence whatsoever.”
Yup, there’s more where they came from.
That said, it’s a communist government with the world’s largest army, nuclear weapons, and a space program.
The Chicoms have no regard for the environment and it matters not a fig one way or the other what we think about how they are trashing it.
Now let’s forget about Chinese toxic waste sloughs and concentrate on the cute panda bears that the toxic Chicom regime uses as a front for their policies in general.
Some of us have been looking at this for a while.
When anyone says something like “proven reserves of dysprosium will likely run out in 2020” you know they are either ignorant or trying to deceive. Why? – because a “reserve” is stuff that we know exists and we know we can extract using existing technology and make a profit at current prices. It excludes all of the stuff that we know exists, but haven’t checked out in detail to prove all this.
Check out Tim Worstall on this: “reserves” are a bit like looking in the fridge and saying “OMG – we’re going to run out of food by Wednesday” and ignoring the fact that there are shops full of food out there and all we’ll need to do is go shopping.
When anyone says something like “proven reserves of dysprosium will likely run out in 2020” you know they are either ignorant or trying to deceive. Why? – because a “reserve” is stuff that we know exists and we know we can extract using existing technology and make a profit at current prices. It excludes all of the stuff that we know exists, but haven’t checked out in detail to prove all this.
Check out Tim Worstall on this: “reserves” are a bit like looking in the fridge and saying “OMG – we’re going to run out of food by Wednesday” and ignoring the fact that there are shops full of food out there and all we’ll need to do is go shopping.
Whenever someone says “proven reserves of dysprosium will likely run out in 2020”, I pretty much know what the author means, and I suspect most of the people who read this blog also know. I don’t immediately go to preachy, superior, jack-ass mode and talk down to the rest of the readers like some tool named Gareth (which is a good name for a preachy jack-ass tool who thinks he is smarter than everyone).
Well when it comes to the Environment…the Elephants in the room have always been China, India and the US….those 3 are like the cause of most of the pollution on the planet. You’ll note I did not say CO2…I simply do not buy that bit of absolute BS…
There is not one technology that leaves ZERO footprint. When looked objectively (something the eco-zombies simply are incapable of doing), Oil and GAs are definitely on the lower end of the scale. For an input of 1 unit – achieving 8 units of output….the ROEI is 800% better than any current Renewable on the planet.
Renewables don’t run on wind, water or the sun…they run on subsidies (Hydro nothwithstaning).
Oh Dogthing, how clever of you to write that !
…It is nice to upset a greeny once in a while 🙂