In the Department of there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, it is reported that in order to supply the raw materials needed to make batteries for EeeeeeeVeeeees, it will be necessary to break ground – literally – for 384 new graphite, cobalt and nickel mines.
Plus vast leach fields for the lithium.
That’s a lot of Earth Rape – in the name of “the environment.” 
Well, in the name of forestalling the “crisis” that is “imminent” on account of the 0.04 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere that is carbon dioxide increasing by a fraction of that percent.
Of course, they don’t tell you that. About the 0.04 percent. Because they want you to believe it is a much larger percent. So as to make you afraid and thus amenable. Like “the cases” – as opposed to the deaths. (And the deaths . . . when it comes to the “vaccines.”)
They also don’t want you to know how much it will take to forestall a fractional increase in the 0.04 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere that is carbon dioxide. As in how much it will take – from the Earth. 
Every EeeeeeeVeeeee battery requires an enormous quantity of the materials mentioned earlier – because it takes an enormous battery to power a single EeeeeeeVeeee. One that is about twenty times the weight (and size) of the automotive batteries most people are familiar with, the lead-acid ones that start the engines in non-electric cars. These are typically about 9 inches long and about the same inches wide and weigh around 50 pounds. A small EeeeeeeeVeeeee battery pack for a small EeeeeeeVeeee such as a Tesla Model 3 weighs around 1,000 pounds and is spread out over most of the length and width of the EeeeeeVeeeee’s floorpan.
A battery that size – for a Honda Civic-sized EeeeeeeVeeee like the Tesla 3 – requires about 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt and 200 pounds of copper. Larger EeeeeeVeeees – such as trucks – require twice as much of the same stuff. A big truck – like the EeeeeeVeeee versions of the big rigs that transport most everything we need from coast to coast – would need many times more of the same stuff.
Most of this stuff is extremely “environmentally unfriendly” – as well as extremely expensive.
Unlike, say, oil. Which was going down in price because supply was going up. Ergo, supply had to be limited.
Meanwhile, it is necessary to “process” 25,000 pounds of brine to get the lithium end-product for one EeeeeeeeeVeeeeeee battery. This isn’t easy – or inexpensive. Millions of gallons of water, all told, are needed to produce a single ton of the lithium end-product, which isn’t much in terms of how many 1,000-plus pound EeeeeeeVeeee battery packs can be made from it. Oceans of water must be extracted from the Earth, then used to leach out the lithium in open-air toxic swimming pools, each a different cheery Chernobyl color, as the lithium carbonate is progressively concentrated. The water is polluted.
And the lithium isn’t a “renewable.”
Once consumed, it’s gone. This ought to be of concern – if you’re concerned about EeeeeeeeVeeeees being “sustainable.” Because there’s not all that much lithium available. Not enough to provide source materials for millions of EeeeeeVeeee battery packs, at any rate.
There is certainly a lot less lithium than there is oil – which there is reason to believe is renewable. In any case, there is so much available that something had to be done about it. Abundant oil means inexpensive oil – and that isn’t what those behind the top-down push for “electrification” want.
Hence “electrification.” 
Even if it means environmental despoliation.
Not just for the sake of the lithium, either.
To get the cobalt end-product needed for one EeeeeeVeeeee battery – for a small EeeeeeeeVeeeee such as the Honda Civic-sized Tesla 3 – it is necessary to mine about 30,000 pounds of ore. Most cobalt mines are open-pit and much of the mining done by hand. The hands. Of kids. In places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Central Africa. Where African kids mine the stuff so that affluent Americans don’t have to dirty their hands handling a gas pump.
The world hasn’t got a lot of cobalt, either. It is expected that demand won’t be able to keep up with supply by as soon as 2025.
Theoretically, some of the materials that go into EeeeeeeVeeeee batteries – like cobalt – could be recycled. But most aren’t – because (here it comes, again) doing so is expensive. Each EeeeeeeeeVeeeeee battery is an intricate lattice of thousands of individual cells. Separating (and recycling) all the stuff that went into an EeeeeeeeeVeeeee battery pack is possible but not easy and that’s why it’s not cheap – and rarely done.
More than two-thirds of lithium-ion batteries (including the small ones used in handheld devices) are not recycled. Unless that changes, there is going to be a lot of what is styled “e-waste” as more EeeeeeeeVeeeeees are produced – and thrown away, when their battery packs are no longer able to retain charge.
This will – as the saying goes – scale.
“We’re heading toward an extreme cliff that, unfortunately, our industry needed to invest $100 billion five years ago to avoid,” says Brian Menell who is chairman and CEO of TechMet, which financially backs companies in producing and processing the materials needed to make EeeeeeeVeeee batteries. “Over a two- to three-year horizon, the pain is going to become severe. And that pain is going to grow over the subsequent five to eight years from a constrained supply of battery metals.”
The price of lithium is already soaring – which is why the price of EeeeeeeeeeVeeees is, too. Ford recently jacked-up the price of its two EeeeeVeeeees – the “Mustang” Mach e and the F-150 Lightning – by about $8,000. Tesla did similar. They will all do the same – because they have to, in order to not lose their shirts “selling” EeeeeeeeVeeeees at a loss. 
Of course, the government could do what government does best – “mandate” recycling. But there’s no getting around the cost of that, either.
Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Especially when the government provides it.
. . .
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And then there are rare earths:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine
which are essential for many so-called “high tech” devices.
U.S. was once the *only* producer of these minerals. Now, China dominates, and their production is very dirty, based on what I have read.
This is a “national security” concern for the U.S. military (the outsourcing part, not the environmentally dirty part).
What happens when we hit “peak copper?”
Of the ten largest copper mines:
https://www.mining-technology.com/marketdata/ten-largest-coppers-mines-2021/
>2. San Vicente Mine
Located in Potosi, Bolivia, the San Vicente Mine is owned by Pan American Silver. The underground mine produced an estimated 694.7 thousand tonnes of copper in 2021. The mine will operate until 2024.
>5. Antamina Mine
The Antamina Mine is a surface mine situated in Ancash, Peru. Owned by Glencore Plc, the brownfield mine produced an estimated 426.7 thousand tonnes of copper in 2021. The mine is expected to operate until 2028.
etc.
>The Chino Mine (“Chino” is Spanish for the “Chinese”), also known as the Santa Rita mine, also known as Santa Rita del Cobre, is an open-pit porphyry copper mine located in the town of Santa Rita, New Mexico.
>The present-day open-pit mining operation was begun in 1910. It is the third oldest active open pit copper mine in the world after the Bingham Canyon Mine and Chuquicamata.
>In 2008, Chino’s parent company, Freeport-McMoRan, announced that it planned to suspend mining and milling activities at Chino, but would continue reclamation activities and copper production from its SX/EW plant. About 600 people from the work force of 830 would be laid off beginning about Feb. 13, 2009. The mine reopened in 2011.
The world’s largest copper deposits are located in Chile.
Which is why Allende had to be deposed in favor of Pinochet, 11 September 1973.
Order must be preserved, in case one wishes to conduct international business and trade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adzg_iMg9Sc
ATTENTION: This is really bad….Before the EV (with a 40 kWh battery) goes one foot the emissions/pollution just from manufacturing it is equal to driving an ice diesel 89,400 km (50,550 miles), about 7 years driving. This shows how stupid the government is pushing EV’s with their lithium fire bomb batteries (95% of lithium batteries are NOT recycled), this is an environmental catastrophe.
“If an electric vehicle is using a 40 kWh battery (some EV’s have 90 kwh batteries which are 2.25 x as bad ), its embedded emissions from manufacturing would then be equivalent to the CO2 emissions caused by driving a diesel car with a fuel consumption of 5 litre per 100 km (about 55 mpg), up to 89,400 km (about 7 years average driving) before the electric car even has driven one meter,” Circular Energy reports.
Then the battery dies in 10 years and you start over, another 89,400 km equivalent of pollution, (per 40 kwh battery), inflicted on the earth, just from the battery manufacture…lol….and it will only cost you $22,000…lol…
Is driving an electric car immoral? Here’s what they DON’T tell you
to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid as 80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear,” writes Stein.
In effect, 20% of the EVs on the road are powered by coal, 40% by natural gas and 20% by nuclear power.
95.1% of all electrical energy comes from so called dirty non green sources
(green source solar and wind supply 4.9%)….but solar and wind are not green so there is no green energy source…
Hinderaker adds that the extraordinary volume of mining needed to produce electric vehicles not only is “environmentally disastrous,” it also carries “large human costs.”
The cobalt that is needed for every electric vehicle comes mostly from the Congo, where the United Nations Children’s Fund estimates 40,000 children are working in cobalt mines.
cobalt is mined by Chinese companies employing child labor in the Congo, breathing in radioactive dust in horrible working conditions. And then the cobalt is shipped to China, where again, with terrible environmental controls, 75% of Lithium batteries made in China come from Uyghur Muslim concentration camps. Slave labor for Green Energy….Uyghur slaves are also producing solar panels……………..
the batteries are manufactured for Western green virtue signalers.
And Hinderaker emphasizes that the solar panels that produce some of the energy stored in EV batteries are mostly produced by slave labor in China.
75% of Lithium batteries made in China come from Uyghur Muslim concentration camps. Slave labor for Green Energy….Uyghur slaves are also producing solar panels……………..
500 tonnes of Earth are needed to be unearthed and mined for every tonne of Lithium. more destruction of the Earth for EV fallacy
That’s a lot of work for those 6 year old cobalt hand miners in Congo .
NOTE: mining lithium is racist so EV’s are racist….so EV pushers are racist…..
Who knew the greenies would be the biggest promoters of strip mining in the world
“And, for what it’s worth, Chinese solar panels are produced with coal-fired power plants.”
Hinderaker concludes:
“Green” energy is a catastrophically bad idea. I think many people understand that wind and solar power and electric vehicles are economically ruinous, but when we also take into account environmental degradation and child and slave labor, one can seriously question whether it is immoral to buy an electric car.
https://www.wnd.com/2022/06/driving-electric-car-immoral/?fbclid=IwAR1nGccvi46Le2Ms1I-TpIDGxHImWgX8w0BqOppmKr-a280yIb5dB3OfILQ
Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division): “Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption.
Ten years ago, they were at 82%. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about $3.8 trillion,
NOTE:let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82% to 81%, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82%.” … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.”
Nothing of this matters to the herds of the 3C’s – Climate Change Church…
Eric’s a little behind on the technology.
Most everybody’s switching from NCA to LFP since it’s cheaper and a lot less likely to catch on fire.
No need for ‘conflict diamond’ cobalt or expensive nickel with LFP:
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/a-closer-look-at-lithium-iron-phosphate-batteries-teslas-new-choice-of-battery/
Will be interesting to see which materials will be used for the upcoming solid-state (electrolyte) battery packs.
Those will have roughly double the capacity for the same size/weight, and should be cheaper, though only time will tell.
Were you replying to me, Bill, or just “Great Minds…”?
I’m about to buy lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries for my main off-grid power. It’s a more environmentally friendly option than standard Li-ion, lasts longer, and has much less chance of errantly bursting into flames. They, unfortunately, aren’t using this option for cars because it has slightly less energy density.
As a chemist, exploitation of cobalt in this way is unsettling. It is much better used as a catalyst in the Fischer-Tropsch based synthesis of hydrocarbons, from which hydrocarbons such as diesel and gasoline, could be synthesized from biomass, making for carbon-neutral fuels and, ostensibly, making “both sides” happy.
Couldn’t do anything like actually solve problems in ways everyone might agree on, though.
“We’re heading toward an extreme cliff that, unfortunately, our industry needed to invest $100 billion five years ago to avoid,” says Brian Menell…
Not to worry, Brian: the earth saviors in D.C. have your back. Because of the billions they’ve wasted – er, invested – there have been several announcements in recent weeks of new EV battery factories springing up in my neck of the woods.
This article should be sent to everyone who is concerned about “slavery” and “the environment” because they bought a ‘made in China’ shirt, while they smugly drive around in their EeeeVee.
Toyota has pushed back against fully electric cars for years, as it believes car shoppers don’t really want them………. plus the politicians in japan aren’t owned by the ccp like the other G7 countries……
The globalist/communists are going to ban all ice cars, worldwide, replacing them with EV’s
This is a big problem because some 1 billion people simply don’t have reliable access to electricity. This is a racist policy because it is not inclusive.
Who benefits the most from the EV vehicle conversion and the ESG program? china does.
japan does very well selling ice cars, china doesn’t, but is ahead in EV’s and EV components and batteries, so it wants to push EV’s, ban ice cars.
75% of Lithium batteries made in China come from Uyghur Muslim concentration camps. Slave labor for Green Energy….Uyghur slaves are also producing solar panels……………..
500 tonnes of Earth are needed to be unearthed and mined for every tonne of Lithium. more destruction of the Earth for EV fallacy
That’s a lot of work for those 6 year old cobalt hand miners in Congo . mining lithium is racist so EV’s are racist….so EV pushers are racist…..
Who knew the greenies would be the biggest promoters of strip mining in the world
japanese are the ultimate car freaks, (they just bought Caterham), don’t want to lose their ice cars to the chinese backed EV junk, collector car people may have to move to japan…lol
Around the world the fake CO2, global warming bs narrative is being used to push EV’s, china spreads this bs narrative……china has a lot of influence in your government
Anybody pushing EV’s, solar panels or wind turbines and the ESG is a paid ccp shill.
Every EV is a chinese EV, 80% of all the key parts and the battery come from china, same as solar panels or wind turbines …low quality, they all catch fire.
All the most important components in the new EV’s are all made in china.
80% of the lithium fire bomb batteries in EV’s are made in china.
These lithium fire bomb batteries are very dangerous, these EV’s shouldn’t be allowed on the road…lol….but …..china has a lot of influence in your government so they are given a pass.
Then you are dependent on china for replacement parts, etc., in effect they take over the whole vehicle supply chain. Vehicle production then centralized in China.
the chinese are taking over the electric car market, they are starting to export their EV’s worldwide.
the chinese make most of the chips, maybe the shortage was to help their EV launch….lots of their cars coming here soon
china…..it is where most rare earths are processed; and most of the mineral supply-chains for electric vehicles lead there, with existing supply sewn up.
With more EV’s the grid has to be upgraded, most of the equipment for expanding the grid is made in china.
The largest beneficiaries are the Chinese manufacturers of electric transformers, cables, generators, etc. since almost none of that stuff is made anywhere else anymore.
If there is a war and china detonates a neutron bomb that takes out the grid, they get to supply all the replacement equipment, another win for them.
What about all the vaccines and drugs the government has been pushing, all the ingredients for all vaccines and drugs come from china, they benefited the most from the bat germ bs narrative. japan quit, just walked away from that narrative too….
https://carnewschina.com/2022/04/18/chinese-electric-vehicles-are-on-fire/?fbclid=IwAR3B66QpVwTNXfJEYyuBajbdYOkFwSbQz9s5kFJleVy9Cpc5un__hAyRs0I“
hahaha…..virtue signaling…..immoral green morons….
All the most important components in the new EV’s are all made in china.
80% of the lithium fire bomb batteries in EV’s are made in china.
75% of Lithium batteries made in China come from Uyghur Muslim concentration camps. Slave labor for Green Energy….Uyghur slaves are also producing solar panels……………..
Where is the power going to come from to charge all of these EVs? Not coal, liberals want to shutter all coal plants. Not from wind or solar, they already maxed that out. Not hydro, they want the dams removed. The only choice is nuclear (they will need 500 new nuclear power plants according to Charles Hugh Smith – not a chance in hell they will build even 1) , and I don’t know a liberal that doesn’t view nuclear power with utter horror and disdain. Nuclear power is not organic and not green.
They have no power generation solution. So they are either brain dead or being sneaky about what they are going to do when the crunch comes. We are going to an Elysium future, the haves will have it all, and you will have poverty. They will use social credits to demonize enough of the population to manage the ever dwindling supply of energy per capita.
So the only thing a liberal can do to power their pie in the sky unicorn and rainbow dreams is to cut demand – by making you take the bus while they drive around in designer clothes sipping foamy lattes while they, the elite, plan a better world for them and for you – a trip to the soylent factory and human compost heap. California has legalized human composting and selling it as fertilizer. Connect the dots with vaxx deaths and your local hospital is now the new green soil factory.
BTW they already did this with monetary inflation and home prices. Currently if you don’t own a home, which now are valued at half a million for a junker, you are screwed – especially as interest rates go up. Those who own homes can constantly borrow from their ever increasing equity to buy new cars or even a Tesla. Inflation of home prices = free cars for those well placed.
‘Currently if you don’t own a home, which now are valued at half a million for a junker, you are screwed – especially as interest rates go up.’ — Yukon Jack
Oops — this just in — currently if you DO own a home, especially with only 10 or 20% equity and a mortgage, you too are screwed.
As mortgage interest rates approach 7 percent, house prices are crashing hard. If they sink by 30 percent, most owners who bought in the last 5 to 10 years will be underwater.
BlackRock stands ready to buy your home … at an appropriate discount for market conditions. They’ll even put your family up in the Heartbreak Motel for a couple of weeks after closing, until you can acquire a tent (or a cave) to live in, and apply for food stamps.
Oh, but ain’t that America for you and me
Ain’t that America somethin’ to see, baby
Ain’t that America home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses for you and me
— John Mellenkamp, Pink Houses
real estate inflation…part of ESG
brandon loves it supports it…lol….For those with authoritarian ambitions, housing inflation is a boon (now you know what brandon is doing…lol), the real estate industry helps it, probably gets ESG cash….lol……..push real estate prices up, which pushes rents up, (and keep increasing property tax) = create homelessness = attain 2030 reset agenda = you will own nothing and be happy…lol…
Homelessness feeds the kind of desperation that drives the public to support totalitarian actions. They might provide you with housing eventually, a 100 sq ft soviet style dump apartment….lol….if you survive the cull…. but it will be at a terrible cost.
The last thing anyone with common sense would want is for the government to become their landlord by default. It’s very hard to defy the trespasses of government overreach when that government controls the roof over your head……..
government works with big business, like blackrock, = corporatism = facism, = the combination of government and big business,….
Massive conglomerates like Blackstone and Blackrock have been increasingly involved in the housing market since the crash of 2008.
While Blackrock claims it has no involvement with the single-family housing market, it works closely with companies that are involved, buying up multiple houses and bundles of distressed mortgages.
Blackstone has continued to buy houses in bulk for the past decade, removing properties from the market for a time. These mass purchases give the public the impression that local sales are “hot” and that the market is thriving. As you might expect, these actions force prices up even further to meet this artificial demand.
the gov’t gives tax dollars to big business to promote ESG goals, the agenda 2030 climate change/ great reset/globalist/communist takeover
Totalitarian Larry and big equity parasites are buying up massive amounts of single housing stock and towns. Amazon too guarantees a good monthly return on single family rental housing. Goal is a complete rentier life, no ownership of anything including tools.
Then they build them with ubiquitous sensors and cameras like in refrigerators, beds, toilets, and have countless forever running data to sell and use for social credit scores. Surveillance rental homes, digital concentration camps is their goal. They brag about on their WEF 4th Reich podcasts. We must push back against “smart (stupid)” buildings and cities.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/what-esg-its-leveraging-tool-woke-communist-takeover
Jeff Bezos-Backed Arrived Homes Acquires Another $23 Million Worth Of Single-Family Rental Homes As Number Of Active Investors Doubles
https://www.benzinga.com/real-estate/22/06/27844953/jeff-bezos-backed-real-estate-investment-platform-acquires-another-23-million-worth-of-single-family
Yukon,
“The only choice is nuclear”
And guess what else is in short supply besides lithium, cobalt, etc. Uranium. Like the power grid being unable to support current demand, the Uranium supply is unable to support a significant increase in nuclear power.
russia was suppling most of the uranium…lol
A wind farm is being dismantled in western Germany to make way for an expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in a “paradoxical” situation highlighting the current prioritization of energy security over clean energy in Europe’s biggest economy.
It kind of signifies just how dire the energy situation in Europe truly is. They were talking smack against Russian gas not two weeks ago, and now, they’re dismantling wind farms in favor of coal?
You’re watching an epic display of petrified politicians.
Now if they scrapped wind and solar they wouldn’t need as much natural gas fired plants as backups for when the wind didn’t blow and the sun didn’t shine in the first place. They wouldn’t need as much coal to create the wind and solar, or to recycle them.they could operate so much more efficiently.
Robert Bryce’s Iron Law of Electricity.
People will do whatever they have to in order to have electricity.
Even become the world’s leading green hypocrites, 31 years after the “Kyoto Protocol”, 6 years after the “Paris Agreement” and after 25 years of shaking their finger at the US for our coal-fired power plants.
Survival is a strong instinct, it overpowered the delusion of ‘green energy’ and this should be repeated throughout the world.
Wind farms have never and will never makes any economic nor societal sense. Just more graft for the loser elite class.
EVERY climate computer model prediction has been so horribly inaccurate that it is now correct to spit on them, and their makers. Put fairy dust in you get fairy dust out. The models are based on preconceived ideology, not science. Plus lots of Benjamin’s to be made.
The entire purpose of Green spending is to fund the Globalist agenda. Kickbacks and subsidies finance the WEF and the Paris Accord will fund the UN’s World Army.
Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division): “Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption.
Ten years ago, they were at 82%. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about $3.8 trillion,
NOTE: let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82% to 81%, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82%.” … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/paradoxical-situation-germany-dismantling-wind-farm-make-way-coal-mine
Is this the beginning of the end of EV’s? Is this the death knell?
I hope so, I hope this crap finally dies out once and for all
Attila the Hun was more kind-heart-ed than Nancy will ever be.
She needs to be prescribed some lithium, it works wonders to control behaviors. She’s a maniac. Lithium will help her condition. She’s gotta lay off the booze.
Of course, the Roman Empire forked over 350 pounds of solid gold every year to Attila just so would behave himself.
Those evaporation ponds are a flattened Rubik’s Cube.
Jevons Paradox states that if you increase the efficiency of a resource, you will increase the use of the resource effectively increasing consumption.
Jevons predicted that coal in England would be all mined before the beginning of the twentieth century. All gone.
There are trillions of tons of coal in the Doggerlands.
Edison was a peak oiler, thought it would be gone in no time.
In 1934 the US gov predicted the end of oil would happen before 1950. In 1968 in a civics class at school, the instructor repeated the prediction that oil would be gone by 1988. Got it wrong, another incorrect prediction.
The ground floor investors in PayPal fired Elon Musk early on.
META had a high price of 379.50 USD, closed at 126 USD the other day, down 253 dollars per share.
I hope Rochelle is feeling better. Has to be a credibility issue now. A conundrum, too late now, the damage is done, she has been vaccinated and boostered enough, you’d think would have had enough by now.
I don’t know what to say about my fellow countrymen other than we have reached the point of Idiotocracy. They lined up like little sheep to get the vax and had their children do the same, now their kids are having strokes and wonder why? Those useful idiots that have money will buy EV’s so they feel they are better than the 75MM maga voters they hate. The only thing holding back this EV madness is reality. You can’t force something for nothing. There is always a cost or loss in the equation. The average low information voter will not be buying these EV’s based on the cost of the equipment alone even if they take away the option of buying an ICE. Xiden will have to fully subsidize the whole affair if they think the majority of the public will be riding around in these things… to which he has only 2-weeks to make that happen.
EV battery raw materials are indeed in short supply, and the miners extracting them don’t exactly care about being nice to the earth, I’ll give you that, but I don’t think the environmental damage is destined to be all that bleak. You know where it’s a lot easier to get all that lithium, manganese, cobalt and whatever than digging it from the earth? Getting it from a used battery pack. There are companies figuring out how to deconstruct these batteries and reuse the materials (Redwood Materials, for example). My hope is that one day, once EV’s are forced down our throats, the earth-rape will end once we have enough batteries in circulation to rebuild them. Take the lead-acid batteries we use for starters as an example. We have almost 100% recycling of lead from these back into new ones, but it’s far easier to melt down and clean some old sulfated lead than it is to de-polymerize a lithium ion polymer battery, which is the formulation in EV’s. We still have some market forces remaining in this country, and markets are good at solving supply problems.
Oh wow, I came across this link describing the process of mining copper. I wonder what EV-mandate proponents would think of this.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1584306032653717505.html
Opposite,
“markets are good at solving supply problems.”
The markets had already solved the supply problem, starting 30 years ago. When the astonishing improvement in ICVs exploded.
But the market cannot in any way solve the problem of the over supply of insanity, or pure evil, imposed by the Psychopaths In Charge.
IIRC, Redwood Materials was founded by JB Straubel; he was Tesla’s CTO and one of their co-founders.
A lot of people can’t or refuse to see that they don’t want to put us all in EVs and collapse the electrical grid, or build up the infrastructure so we can all have an EV.
First they only want 1% going anywhere except work and their pods. Second they want the rest of us on public transportation, ride shares, tuk tuks, or whatever. Third is they want around 90% of us dead. This is what we face, even if it is ALMOST impossible to believe.
Leaving aside the extreme damage from acquiring these rare minerals, and the damage from disposing of them, making a car of any kind requires massive energy. And if the car only lasts half as long as what is now standard among ICEVs, that cost doubles. At least.
It is truly an amazing feat of engineering how much improved ICEVs are over the last 30 years. And now they want to piss on it.
Not only are the batteries not “environmentally friendly,” running a car on electricity isn’t “environmentally friendly” either. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred according to the law of conservation of energy. So the juice needed to recharge the batteries has to be created somehow, and there is simply no way it can be done solely by “natural” methods: hydro, solar, and wind.
It is impossible to replace ICE vehicles with electric ones without a massive program of building gas, coal and nuclear-fired power plants and an enormous increase in the size of the grid infrastructure. Even if all that were accomplished, EVs would remain less practical than ICE vehicles.
Western civilization is literally being led by a cabal of childlike morons who are implementing fairy tales as government policy.
X,
Not to mention that electrical power lines are one of the LEAST efficient means of transporting energy. And definitely one of the least efficient means of generating heat, as in water heaters, home heating, cooking ranges, clothes dryers, etc.
The government has stupid solutions for the climate change lies……technology that is far more destructive to the environment…..
NOTE: solar panels, lithium batteries and wind turbines are all catching fire, they are very dangerous…
95% of lithium batteries aren’t recycled, Solar panels can’t be recycled, Used wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds, they are made from fiberglass.
Lithium batteries:
Can’t be recycled = really green energy….haha
A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, (tesla batteries go up to 1800 lb., hummer battery is 3000 lb. ) It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.” For the larger batteries multiply all that by 2 X.
Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”
Open pit lithium mining for battery manufacture, often done with child slave labour, is worse then tar sands mining.
95% of lithium batteries aren’t recycled……someone said there is a $4500 recycling fee, so they will get thrown into the woods probably.
Lithium fire bomb batteries catch fire, are very dangerous….
Solar panels:
The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicone dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.
Solar panels can’t be recycled…..what will they do with them (and wind turbine blades)? throw them down old mine shafts like nuclear waste?…..lol..
solar panels are toxic. They sterilize the ground they sit on. Birds that fly over a solar farm are roasted mid-flight.
Have you researched the temperature directly above a solar farm?? These farms have been accused of creating warming in the regions around them.
Solar panels catch fire, they are a fire hazard…
The alarmists will always show you pictures of solar panels on green grass – which have to taken as soon as the panels are installed. They leach cadmium and other toxic chemicals and sterilize the soil. Just try to find anything growing under a solar farm that has stood for a few years.
Going 100% wind and solar would mean the landmass that both wind and solar would take up would be most of the farmland in America.
Right now we’re not even at 3% electrical production of both. We’re going down a doomed path!
Wind turbines
Wind turbines are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.
Wind turbines are junk energy yes the cost is enormous! They have a lifespan of roughly maybe 20 years and to decommission one costs $500,000! And the landmass that both wind and solar take up will take up most of the farmland in America. Right now we’re not even at 3% electrical production of both. We’re going down a doomed path!
Used wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds, they are made from fiberglass.
The average wind farm has 150 turbines. Each wind turbine requires 80 gallons of oil for lubrication, and this isn’t vegetable oil; this is a PAO synthetic oil based on crude… 12,000 gallons. Once a year, that oil must be replenished.
The wind farm in Mt. Pulaski has been running for 3 1/2 years. They have been replacing the generators in all the wind towers. There are 100 of them in this wind farm. So evidently the life span on the generators on these things is about 3 to 4 years. It takes 12 semi trucks and trailers, A 9 axle 500,000 pound crane, A 100,000 pound crane and 12 pick up trucks to change each generator. That is a huge amount of diesel fuel being used to maintain these wind towers. And the “Green Groups” would like You to believe they are all fueled by magic fairy dust.
they leak oil from their motors. They cannot be recycled so they are buried in Landfills. They use more electricity than they create. They can fling ice for hundreds of meters. They kill large predatory birds, bats and insects. Their infrasound negatively affect the hearts of humans and animals that live near them. The huge cement footings damage aquifers.
wind turbines catch fire, they are dangerous a fire hazard……
But truly, there is no making sense of these people anymore.
They are ready to shell out hundreds of billions to take over arable acreage with solar panels even as we face a food crisis,
and festoon the countryside with bird-slaughtering windmills rather than permit more pipelines and refineries to open.
https://www.truth11.com/content/images/2022/07/5F4EEBF7-CFDB-4DC0-8406-D8B485529046.jpeg
‘Most of this stuff is extremely “environmentally unfriendly” – as well as extremely expensive.’ — eric
Likely the energy inputs for a zero-carbon economy would exceed energy outputs, meaning it’s unsustainable from the get-go. As the eminent Vaclav Smil (unfortunately a climate change collaborator and EeeVee advocate, despite his sensible caveats which follow), writes:
“The only way to achieve net-zero emissions is to resort to what Princeton researchers label the “fourth pillar” of their overall strategy — to mass-scale carbon capture and storage of emitted CO2. Their calculation requires the removal of 0.9 billion to 1.7 billion tons of the gas per year, necessitating an entirely new gas capture, transportation and storage industry that every year would have to handle 1.3 to 2.4 times the volume of current U.S. crude oil production — an industry that took more than 160 years and trillions of dollars to build.
“These magic prescriptions give no explanation for how the four material pillars of modern civilization (cement, steel, plastic, and ammonia) will be produced solely with renewable electricity. Nor do they convincingly explain how flying, shipping, and trucking (to which we owe our modern economic globalization) could become 80 percent carbon-free by 2030; they merely assert that it could be so.”
“It makes no sense to argue with the details of what are essentially the academic equivalents of science fiction. They start with arbitrarily set goals (zero by 2030 or by 2050) and work backward to plug in assumed actions to fit those achievements, with actual socioeconomic needs and technical imperatives being of little, or no, concern.
“Reality thus presses in from both ends. The sheer scale, cost, and technical inertia of carbon-dependent activities makes it impossible to eliminate all of these uses in just a few decades. We cannot instantly change the course of a complex system.”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-magical-thinking-time-to-get-real-about-climate-change
When reality collides with Congress Clowns, reality wins every time … though some eggs get broken making the inedible omelette. 🙁
Jim,
“The only way to achieve net-zero emissions” is to get us all living in mud huts farming our half acre of beans with hand tools.
“They start with arbitrarily set goals (zero by 2030 or by 2050)”
They really think they are Gods, and can create their preferred reality by dictate.
Hi Jim,
It never ceases to amaze me how these govco clowns think they can ignore physics and just say (Capt. Picard voice) “make it so!” How’d that work out for King Canute 😆
Mike the difference between King Canute and today’s stuffed shirt leaders is that Canute ordered the tides to prove a point to the idiots who thought he was supernatural, that he was no more god than they. In today’s clown world version, the tide still comes in, but the bootlickers ignore it and the flunkys deny it. And the king doesn’t have any idea why he is sitting on the beach.
“Millions of gallons of water, all told, are needed to produce a single ton of the lithium end-product, which isn’t much in terms of how many 1,000-plus pound EeeeeeeVeeee battery packs can be made from it.”
Yikes.
The leftist environazis poop their pants at the mention of fracking water / wastewater. I doubt they’ll lift a cheek to fart for the millions of gallons of water per ton of lithium.
The EV free-lunch bait seems to run inline with the thinking being used to try and build ‘the line city’ concept in Saudi Arabia.
In this video an architect describes a number of flaws behind the concepts of a ‘line city’ which ~ parallel the EV idea, imho:
‘This city concept breaks architecture (THE LINE)’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b7uMJkvS0o
‘This city concept breaks architecture (THE LINE)’ — helot
A line is not an organic shape for a city, the video commentator points out. Normal cities grow radially, unless there’s a hard constraint like a mountain range or coast.
And, she notes, mirrored multi-story exterior walls mean the only natural light enters from overhead. Thus the inward-facing apartments will have only front windows, with blank walls on the sides and back. No watching sunsets or the landscape. Maybe there will a ground-level exit door every kilometer, so residents can actually step into the desert … or escape a fire. (Movie plot: terrorists invade through the underground service level and torch THE LINE.)
Billionaire Charlie Munger’s egregious, idiotic windowless dormitory at UC Santa Barbara is the prototype for THE LINE. Architect Magazine calls it ‘an abomination.’
https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/buildings/the-munger-dorm-is-bad-but-why_o
What the LINE shares with EeeVees is Big Gov’s non-market grandiosity. They just plunge ahead on a vast scale, dismissing market signals which suggest these projects violate fundamental constraints and could end up — like high-rise public housing projects of the mid 20th century which ended up being dynamited — as colossal failures.
Jim,
“dismissing market signals”
The market is the ENEMY of FedGov. They despise it, and will destroy it at any opportunity.