Electric cars to save the world? Think again

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The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction

As the world scrambles to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, the environmental impact of finding all the lithium required could become a major issue in its own right.

Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river? The answer is lithium – the reactive alkali metal that powers our phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars.

In May 2016, hundreds of protestors threw dead fish onto the streets of Tagong, a town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. They had plucked them from the waters of the Liqi river, where a toxic chemical leak from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine had wreaked havoc with the local ecosystem. … Continue Reading →

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Heroic NZ emission cuts versus Chinese colossus

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Here’s a harsh dose of reality for the NZ Productivity Commission in attempting to convert us to a “low-emissions” economy. The map shows China’s plans to expand their links with the world in a colossal project that will triple China’s emissions. Their gas discharges already eclipse ours by 250 times so our reductions will be absurdly futile in stemming man-made global warming. The climate won’t notice, but our poor will suffer, while China’s poor rise into the middle class. What do we think we’re doing, cutting back — even banning oil exploration — when we ought to be boosting the economy at full speed?

My friend Dr Mike Kelly kindly sent me a copy of his latest analysis of New Zealand climate policy that he’s just submitted to the New Zealand Productivity Commission in response to its draft report on moving to a Low-emissions economy, which many would describe instead as disabling our productive capacity. Dr Kelly’s unflinching engineer’s eye assesses our Government’s putative policy responses to the climate perils forecast by skittish warmsters and it makes for thoughtful reading.

The New Silk Road

His central message is a revelation: whatever emissions we record over the next 20 years, China’s will be a thousand times larger. In fact, the emissions expected just from their One Belt, One Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are destined to overwhelm all other human emissions for twenty and more years. Continue Reading →

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Morgan: ‘We are cheats’

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So Gareth’s in high dudgeon again. But this is not worth his ire: what he describes is nothing on the cheating Chinese.

Companies there have been caught out making mind-boggling bags of money. In a bold-as-brass scam under the Clean Development Mechanism, the UN has been paying them to destroy a refrigerant gas that has a very strong greenhouse effect. Continue Reading →

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Europe’s lunatics don’t want cheap green energy

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Shanghai solar panels

Solar panels in Shanghai installed on a river or canal—plenty of those across Shanghai. Click to enlarge.

Bureaucrats slap tariffs on Chinese solar cells – incredible

Those non-elected, impossible-to-sack bureaucrats who “manage” Europe have lost their wits. While the rest of the world tries to hammer out a global agreement to reduce our emissions and thus “fight” climate change, these thickwits have slapped a 70% anti-dumping tariff on cheap Chinese solar panels. How mad can they get? Continue Reading →

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US carbon emissions, shale gas and Europe

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US shale gas production

Clarence drops in

Under our post about US carbon dioxide emissions flattening out, Clarence gave a pithy analysis. I promote it and add links to verify the points he makes because they’re so devastating to the warmist cause. Clarence’s comments indented and bold.

The Forbes article deals only with USA emissions. This is no surprise, as they have been declining quite quickly over the past decade – since the advent of shale gas. It is ironic that US emission reduction has handily exceeded that of Europe throughout the entire Kyoto Commitment Period.

The graph above shows the startling increase in shale gas output over the last few years. Continue Reading →

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Carbon emissions could slow for decades

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Only in the USA

Carbon Emissions Projected to Remain Flat for Decades – Forbes.

So the good news is the alarmists might be slightly pleased and quieten down a bit.

The bad news is the price of slowing the pace of the Western industrial miracle that’s been relentlessly pulling the world out of poverty, ignorance, sickness, early death and misery for over two centuries.

Will the alarmists reflect on the poverty, lack of medical care, loss of education and general reduction in levels of happiness this will bring?

Anyway, this slow-down concerns emissions only from the US. Considering they emit less than China does, it can’t make much difference to the global climate.

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Climate blackmail from China

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Bastion of freedom threatens everyone else

A few hours ago China shocked the world.

China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom.

This will have sensitive people trembling in their boots. Those who believe these gases can actually alter the climate and make holes in the ozone layer (which contradicts the science) will have nightmares; the rest of us simply encourage our leaders to refuse to bend to China’s bullying.

This strangely naive description of what’s been going on must have been framed to retain a semblance of decency for the CDM, which was always a rort waiting to be exploited (emphasis added):

China’s threat comes after the European Union and other nations moved to ban HFC-23 credits from internal carbon markets in recognition of the perverse incentives created by these credits under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The vast amounts paid for HFC-23 offsets have led factories in China and elsewhere to manufacture far more HCFC-22 and its HFC-23 by-product than necessary, just to maximize the amounts paid to destroy HFC-23 through the UN-backed carbon trading scheme.

Why not admit the truth, which is that China (and others) have deliberately set up shop to manufacture these CFCs solely in order to collect the unreasonably huge bounties (70 times the cost of destroying it) offered by the outstandingly stupid (or frankly self-serving) UNFCCC under its “Clean Development Mechanism”.

China displays clear belligerence in this “climate” official’s direct threat against the very environment his job is meant to safeguard. Continue Reading →

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