Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In my recent post yclept Bright Green Impossibilities, I showed that it is not humanly possible to eliminate fossil fuel CO2 emissions by 2050. I live in California, the heart of the green lunacy. Here, there’s a group called Climate-Safe California. Given that there is no sign of the much-hyped “CLIMATE EMERGENCY” I’m not sure what they’re trying to keep us “safe” from … but I digress. Their genius plan is to reduce fossil-fuel emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by the year 2030.
Now, energy use will continue to increase in California, but that will largely be offset by increases in efficiency and changes in manufacturing, with less CO2 per unit of fossil fuel used. In fact, current California emissions are only about 1% higher than they were 30 years ago in 1990. So to reach their goal, if we leave out magical fairy dust and giant imaginary vacuums sucking CO2 out of the air, we’d have to reduce fossil fuel use by 80% by 2030.
The green folks think this can be done with wind and solar … but the sad fact is, you need something close to 100% backup for the times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. We’re already suffering occasional blackouts due to our insane dependence on expensive, intermittent wind and solar. Given the existence of that ugly thing called “reality” that green folks like to ignore, that means we have to replace fossil fuels with nuclear-generated electricity.
So how much fossil fuel does California currently use? Turns out its about 1.7 petawatt-hours (PWh, or 1015 watt-hours) per year. And to replace 80% of this with nuclear, allowing for peak power and downtime, we have to increase our generation capacity by about 307 gigawatts (GW, or 109 watts). By comparison, Diablo Canyon, the only remaining nuclear power plant in California after green activists have had their say, generates 2.3 GW of electricity … 307 GW needed, 2.3 GW per big nuke plant, 8-1/2 years to do it … can you see a problem developing here?
Now, they want to do this by 2030. So we need to find sites, do feasibility studies, purchase land, get permits and licenses, manufacture, excavate, install, test and hook up to the grid a 2 GW nuclear plant, a bit smaller than Diablo Canyon, each and every three weeks from now to 2030. And that’s starting tomorrow …
It’s worth noting that in the US, the timespan from feasibility study to grid hookup is longer than ten years … so if we started tomorrow, by 2030 we’d have exactly zero new nuclear plants online. Here’s an overview of the US process:
And people with industry experience say that timeline is optimistic, it can be 15-20 years … not to mention the intense opposition from California greens to anything nuclear.
Still want wind? To do it with wind, we’d have to find sites, do feasibility studies, purchase land, get permits and licenses, manufacture, excavate, install, test and hook up to the grid no less than 1,000 two-megawatt (MW, or 106 watts) wind turbines, each and every single week from now to 2030. And that’s starting tomorrow … a thousand per week.
Solar sound better? NREL says the actual delivery 24/7/365 of of grid-scale solar farms averages 8.3 W/m2 of ground area (not panel area). That’s 8.3 MW per square kilometer of ground area. So to do it with solar, we’d have to find sites, do feasibility studies, purchase land, get permits and licenses, manufacture, excavate, install, test and hook up to the grid no less than 83 square kilometers (32 square miles) of solar farms, each and every single week from now to 2030. And again, that’s starting tomorrow …
Just finding suitable land for that scale of development is nearly impossible. Here’s some information from California regarding how hard it is to find suitable land for solar power.
Land
… Another issue is the fact that such solar ‘farms’ require huge tracts of land. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been tasked with finding 24 tracts of public land of three square miles each with good solar exposure, favorable slopes, road and transmission line availability. Additionally, the land set aside for utility-scale solar farms must not disturb native wildlife or endangered species such as the desert tortoise, the desert bighorn sheep, and others. The wildlife issue has proved to be a contentious one. Projects in California have been halted due to the threat caused to endangered species resulting in a backlog of 158 commercial projects with which the BLM is currently contending.
Note that the BLM is having trouble finding a mere 75 square miles of land for solar power generation that doesn’t have too much impact on the environment, and we’re talking about building 31 square miles of new solar power per week … for the next 446 weeks … yeah, that’s totally legit.
Then, of course, there is the stupendous cost of this whole enterprise. In addition to the decommissioning costs of our existing generating facilities, the cost to build a hundred plus new nuclear plants, plus putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and getting rid of hundreds of thousands of automotive gas stations, the entire electrical grid would have to be hugely upgraded to allow it to carry all the power for newly electric homes, businesses, industries, and cars.
And that’s not just replacing the wires, including rewiring every home like mine that uses gas for cooking and for water and space heating. It’s replacing the transformers, switches, substations, control systems, overload protection, breaker boxes, and every other part of the grid as well.
In fact, to do that the California grid would have to handle no less than 3.75 times the power it is currently carrying … that’s what “hugely upgraded means”. Not just upsized by 10%, or even 100%. It will require three and three-quarters times the volume of wiring, switches, substations, and all the rest.
According to the California Public Utilities Commission, California has 25,526 miles of higher voltage transmission lines and 239,557 miles of distribution lines, two-thirds of which are overhead and one-third underground. So we’d need to install another 94,000 miles of high-voltage line and 886,000 miles of distribution lines. At a rate of 440 miles every workday. From now until 2030. Starting tomorrow.
Or we could pull out all ~ quarter-million miles of lines, above and below-ground, and replace them with much, much bigger wires.
Billions and billions and billions of dollars in pursuit of an unattainable chimera, on a quest that will do nothing to change the climate.
I gotta say … the fact that impassioned but totally innumerate folks like the “Climate-Safe California” people get listened to at all gives me nightmares about how many people have fallen for the Great Green Climate Scam … let me be clear:
It. Cannot. Be. Accomplished. This is just another bright green impossible fantasy.
Sigh …
w.
AS ALWAYS: I can defend and explain my words and am happy to do so. I cannot defend or explain your interpretation of my words. So please, QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING.
DATA:
- California CO2 Emissions By Year: EIA
- California Primary Energy Consumption: EIA
- California Total System Electrical Generation By Fuel: California Energy Commission
ACKNOWLEGEMENTS: I gotta give huge props to Anthony Watts, who conceived of and created WUWT, and to Charles The Moderator and all of the volunteer moderators around the world. My thanks to you all.
Charles saw the draft of what I was writing and sent me the following, one issued an hour ago and one a few minutes ago today (Wednesday, June 16) by CAISO, the California Independent Systems Operator responsible for the operation of the California electrical grid. Top one is the most recent.
An hour ago … “no anticipation of outages”. One minute ago … “Flexalert”, and “conserve electricity” … the lunacy of unreliable, intermittent, mostly useless renewable energy never ends.
DISCLAIMER: Don’t be misled by my contempt for the modern “environmental” groups. I am and have been since my youth what I would describe as a true environmentalist, as opposed to today’s “watermelon environmentalists”, who are green on the outside and solid Marxist red on the inside … here’s a post on that.
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Don’t forget that a lot of the existing wind and solar is nearing its end-of-life. You’ll have to add in salvage, demolition, and replacement costs too! By the way, that comes in at about a million tons (metric or imperial) of fossil fuels in materials, manufacture, and installation per 25MW capacity.
Correction: That should be 32 Million Tons per 25GWh. Estimated from table 3 Wind Energy in the United States and Materials Required for the Land-Based Wind Turbine Industry From 2010 Through 2030. Which included (IMO) very dated and low estimates for delivery and maintenance of current design wind turbines, as well as their required infrastructure and land improvement.
Excellent paper re: wind turbines. Here is another that looks at the overall environmental and mining impact, along with other factors. Greens have no concept of scale. Green Energy Reality Check: It’s Not as Clean as You Think | Manhattan Institute (manhattan-institute.org)
Offshore wind and solar! Pumped storage of desalinated sea water, thereby also fighting drought and MSL rise! That’s the ticket!
What’s the area of unshaded, south-facing rooftops in CA?
Never mind the horrific environmental costs of wind and solar power, or that panels are made by Uighur slaves and cobalt mined by forced African child labor.
I don’t think that “forced African child labor” is an accurate description. My understanding is that they are family operations that the children help with, probably by looking for pieces of ore lying on the ground. The young children aren’t capable of the heavy labor that requires an adult. By the time they are teenagers, they are biologically adults, despite western societies legally defining them as minors or children. The only forcing is economic necessity, which disappears if artisanal mining is eliminated. Then the children can starve along with their parents because the country is poor and the infrastructure to support a welfare society doesn’t exist. As bad as the situation is, it could be worse.
Little kids much younger than teenaged participate. Many indeed do work with their families, but others are orphans or kidnapped.
https://www.ft.com/content/c6909812-9ce4-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb
Many also work the mines themselves to follow the more cracks without removing too much unnecessary matrix. Kids just fit better. Even Doc and Happy know the benefits of smaller stature miners (or Minor Miners)
And Grumpy complains about the situation, but does nothing about it.
it was your comment that started it saying that they werent forced labour
John, you are correct to call out the exo-regulated aspect of some mining, like cobalt. When I visited the Bonanza Gold Mine, in Nicaragua, there were many kilometers of old underground workings. The current miner followed international protocols reasonably well, but they discovered that artisanal miners could deliver gold ore to the purchasing agent at the front gate much cheaper than they could mine it underground themselves. They were robbing pillars and venturing into unstable areas underground. The ore purchasers told me they had many occasions to ask: Where’s Jose today? We think he went on vacation for a long time his buddies would say. Mining operations in cultures without respect for reasonable protocols often end up with children in danger instead of in school.
Mining has always been an especially susceptible industry for the exploitation of women and children, as were the early textile mills, displacing skilled male cottage weavers.
Oops! Moderated because “sk!lled” contains the word which dare not name its name!
When children worked the stopes in bronze age Britain they didn’t die in the stopes ,the stopes are still there ive seen them,they often left offerings to what ever mine gods they worshipped, I draw an analogy with Clyde’s post, bronze age mining in the UK was similar to Africa today . Settlements were next to the mine were bronze age man lived,and so by and large it always has been.
Mechanisation was the cause of vast increases in deaths when the stopes were that big stemples and pillars were needed ,children did not work stopes in the Mechanised mining world ,strength was needed rather than small size children ,children work on the dressing floors ,
The point of poverty, poverty in Africa in the context of child labour is western terminology, family units have always worked together be it on the land or under, this is life,life is what they make it, telling them they are wrong ,its dangerous is patronizing and stinks of imperialist telling the natives what to do,
There’s too many folk telling folk what they should and shouldn’t be doing,, I don’t see many folk nipping out to Africa and saying ” here yer go sunny there’s a new mining school , heres the mineral rights for ten miles around your village , never happens we just moan in the hope the family are saved from themselves meanwhile they die from starvation and boredom.
Guess you skipped school on the day your British history class learned about child labo(u)r in Industrial Age mines:
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/child-labour#:~:text=The%20Factory%20Act%20prohibited%20the,colliery%20workers%20to%2010%20years.
PS: My fellow Oregonian Ron Long is arguably the greatest metallic mining geologist from our state since Herbert Hoover.
My fellow Stanford grad Hoover made his name in Asia, and Long in South America. Great Americans geologists go where the minerals are. Or hydrocarbons. Oregonian geologists also figure prominently in petro play history. Our state has a lot of geology to inspire us early on. Sadly short on the hydrocarbons,
More from Ron’s bailiwick than mine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Steineke
Another Western Oregonian who cycled through Stanford before going out into the world to find needed resources.
Granted, Brookings is already almost in CA.
Not at all John, Your talking coal mines, I’m talking hard Rock mines completely different and my example is what Clyde was talking about.
I’m aware Mr Long has some knowledge on mining as I’ve come across him before , he once stated he was a volcanic guy , my professor of geology once stated he didn’t do volcanic stuff ,he was a hydrothermal guy who earned his stars working in the oil industry, I worked with him mapping out our local ore field.
Coal mining communities lived and breathed it, not so in the hard Rock mining world.eg even in the early 19th cent hard Rock Boys downed tools during the summer to get the crops in ,lambing in spring and so on, the tribute system linked withe cost book system ,how they screwed the miners, then we got the contract miners as the science and industrialisation progressed. Its a fascinating subject John not yours is bigger than mine , Clyde was right in what he said and I drew a comparison, I’m willing to learn more particularly early mining in the USA which is as yet not really researched and documented.although I know a few bods doing some good work.
It wasn’t just coal mines:
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/child-labor-during-the-british-industrial-revolution/
Estimates of Child Labor in MiningChildren and youth also comprised a relatively large proportion of the work forces in coal and metal mines in Britain. In 1842, the proportion of the work forces that were children and youth in coal and metal mines ranged from 19 to 40%. A larger proportion of the work forces of coal mines used child labor underground while more children were found on the surface of metal mines “dressing the ores” (a process of separating the ore from the dirt and rock). By 1842 one-third of the underground work force of coal mines was under the age of 18 and one-fourth of the work force of metal mines were children and youth (1842[380]XV). In 1851 children and youth (under 20) comprised 30% of the total population of coal miners in Great Britain. After the Mining Act of 1842 was passed which prohibited girls and women from working in mines, fewer children worked in mines. The Reports on Sessions 1847-48 and 1849 Mining Districts I (1847-48[993]XXVI and 1849[1109]XXII) and The Reports on Sessions 1850 and 1857-58 Mining Districts II (1850[1248]XXIII and 1857-58[2424]XXXII) contain statements from mining commissioners that the number of young children employed underground had diminished.
In 1838, Jenkin (1927) estimates that roughly 5,000 children were employed in the metal mines of Cornwall and by 1842 the returns from The First Report show as many as 5,378 children and youth worked in the mines. In 1838 Lemon collected data from 124 tin, copper and lead mines in Cornwall and found that 85% employed children. In the 105 mines that employed child labor, children comprised from as little as 2% to as much as 50% of the work force with a mean of 20% (Lemon, 1838). According to Jenkin the employment of children in copper and tin mines in Cornwall began to decline by 1870 (1927, 309).
Explanations for Child LaborThe Supply of Child LaborGiven the role of child labor in the British Industrial Revolution, many economic historians have tried to explain why child labor became so prevalent. A competitive model of the labor market for children has been used to examine the factors that influenced the demand for children by employers and the supply of children from families. The majority of scholars argue that it was the plentiful supply of children that increased employment in industrial work places turning child labor into a social problem. The most common explanation for the increase in supply is poverty – the family sent their children to work because they desperately needed the income. Another common explanation is that work was a traditional and customary component of ordinary people’s lives. Parents had worked when they were young and required their children to do the same. The prevailing view of childhood for the working-class was that children were considered “little adults” and were expected to contribute to the family’s income or enterprise. Other less commonly argued sources of an increase in the supply of child labor were that parents either sent their children to work because they were greedy and wanted more income to spend on themselves or that children wanted out of the house because their parents were emotionally and physically abusive. Whatever the reason for the increase in supply, scholars agree that since mandatory schooling laws were not passed until 1876, even well-intentioned parents had few alternatives.
The Demand for Child LaborOther compelling explanations argue that it was demand, not supply, that increased the use of child labor during the Industrial Revolution. One explanation came from the industrialists and factory owners – children were a cheap source of labor that allowed them to stay competitive. Managers and overseers saw other advantages to hiring children and pointed out that children were ideal factory workers because they were obedient, submissive, likely to respond to punishment and unlikely to form unions. In addition, since the machines had reduced many procedures to simple one-step tasks, unskilled workers could replace skilled workers. Finally, a few scholars argue that the nimble fingers, small stature and suppleness of children were especially suited to the new machinery and work situations. They argue children had a comparative advantage with the machines that were small and built low to the ground as well as in the narrow underground tunnels of coal and metal mines. The Industrial Revolution, in this case, increased the demand for child labor by creating work situations where they could be very productive.
Influence of Child Labor LawsWhether it was an increase in demand or an increase in supply, the argument that child labor laws were not considered much of a deterrent to employers or families is fairly convincing. Since fines were not large and enforcement was not strict, the implicit tax placed on the employer or family was quite low in comparison to the wages or profits the children generated [Nardinelli (1980)]. On the other hand, some scholars believe that the laws reduced the number of younger children working and reduced labor hours in general [Chapman (1904) and Plener (1873)].
So the article agrees with what I said ,very few worked underground exactly as I said ,also agrees with me that children were less needed as production increased from 1870, the article states in various places “children worked at the mines” but they did not work underground as already established,they worked on the surface, a child could not climb the ladders to get to the working areas, as I already stated children worked in coal mines not metal mines ,so your not really proving anything except I’m right,the only teenagers who worked underground 8n metal mines were part of the gang the farther belong too in his right of passage as a apprentice, teenagers also sat just inside the adit entrance and mixed sulphides of zinc with bread crumbs which they sold for rat posion,did your article tell you that.
As for the textile industry I lived and worked it in its last days,don’t patronise me on my own history.
Children did most certainly work in metal mines.
No patronizing, just fact. As noted below, I was a seasonal child laborer in agriculture, and glad for it. But that can’t compare with the child labor of the Industrial Revolution, whether in factories or mines.
Your experience was as nothing compared to kids in the 19th century, whether in coal or metal mines. Granted, child labor was more common above ground in the latter, but by no means restricted thereto.
Nor in your day were the child workers under ten years of age.
I think that workers should be allowed to do what they are capable of doing, and not be restricted arbitrarily by age, unless there is a clear benefit to society for doing so.
That is, if a job requires strength, then women and children are not qualified. If a job requires a reach or height that excludes children, then it is self-limiting. If a job requires a mastery of calculus, that automatically excludes young children (and a lot of adults).
No John by and large they worked at metal mines.not in.
As in ancient times, children also worked in metal mines, in spaces adults couldn’t reach, and pulling ore carts out.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160420-the-ancient-copper-mines-dug-by-bronze-age-children
If you had read my first post above which you replied to I already covered bronze age children working in mines .
this article is the politically correct
no mention of death rate
no mention of average life expectancy
no mention of health
As for working in the textile industry by the time you worked in it Britain was highly regulated
Not the case in modern Africa
Highly regulated. In some respects , we worked in the same mills as our great grandfathers did ,we lived in the same back to back terrace houses, we were taught in school what life was life in the 19th century.
It was the unions above all else that increased the wellbeing of the work force.
The concept of what a “child” is has changed through time. Miyamoto Musashi, known as the Sword Saint of Japan, killed his first opponent in a duel at the age of 13. Sitting Bull, of Custer’s Last Stand fame, killed his first enemy at age 14. Many of the decisions to ‘protect’ children are economic in origin. That is, by reducing the legal labor market, those who are old enough to legally work can command higher wages.
If education is actually valuable, then it makes sense to keep children out of the labor market so that they can get an education. However, one of the downsides is that the curriculums get dumbed down so that the ‘children’ stay in school longer. I suspect that both of my Depression Era parents learned more before they dropped out of high school than most college graduates learn today.
You of all people should realize that a mine is not just a location where a particular mineral can be found. There has to be sufficient grade and volume to justify the large capital investment to produce. Often times there are additional expenses in poor countries in the form of bribes to get the permits to proceed and continue operating. Also, the location has to be sufficiently secure that the company and investors won’t be concerned about losing everything to local warlords or being nationalized by the government. If a location doesn’t meet the minimal requirements for being a profitable mechanized enterprise over a period of time necessary to amortize the costs, it will never happen!
So, what is it going to be? Accept that a modern, safe operation is improbable, and allow artisanal miners and their children to eek out a living, or set your moral outrage so high that they starve to death instead of dying in a mining accident?
How many children die from mining accidents compared to the number that die from malnutrition and lowered immunity to infectious diseases because of poor nutrition? Until recent times, the low life expectancy, as calculated from the survival of 1-year olds on, was because of the high death rate among children. Take a walk sometime in a very old cemetery and look at the ages of those buried there. They are mostly very young and old, with far fewer in-between.
In Third World countries (TWC), with little or no medical care, there is a high loss of life of women in child birth, in part because they are malnourished, and don’t have access to any but a midwife. Children are very susceptible to what were called “childhood diseases,” that have largely been eliminated in advanced countries because of vaccines and antibiotics that are unavailable in TWCs. Accidents are common, which in tropical countries frequently result in infections, for which antibiotics, if available, may be too expensive for the very poor, or not be as represented because of the lack of a governmental infrastructure to insure purity.
What are the opportunities for children to attend school in the DR of Congo, and what is the quality of the ‘education’ they would receive? Might they not be more support to their family, helping find something that has a ready market, then getting an education that they will never have an opportunity to apply?
All of this IS NOT a zero sum game. That is what most leftists do not understand.
It has been mentioned on this site in the past that if a small fraction of the money wasted on wind, solar and other GREEN energy “solutions” was used to build COAL power plants and a grid in Africa, there would be a possibility of industry and reasonably paid jobs. If there was not a leftist government push for electric cars and grid scale batteries, then there would be no demand for the minerals being mined by these children.
As to your “an education that they will never have an opportunity to apply”, again that is due to GOVERNMENTS keeping Africa in the hole it has always been in. I understand the World Bank will not lend funds to construct coal fired power plants, Clyde, so those choices are keeping the children in those holes.
But I guess you get your electric car, and with your comments here, you seem to be proud of feeding those kids by buying the results of their labor. Good for you.
If you are confusing me with a leftist, then I think you have your glasses on backwards.
I’m arguing against government or any social justice warriors deciding what is good for other people and forcing their opinions on others.
I cannot shake the suspicion that you were typing that as you looked out the window at your groundskeeper from Chihuahua – or further south. “Doing the work that an American won’t do” – for what you are willing to pay.
No, at almost 80 years of age I still mow my own lawn with a push lawnmower. You are arrogant to make such a remark without knowing me or my history!
Meanwhile in KwaHlathi, South Africa…
https://image-prod.iol.co.za/resize/610×61000/?source=https://xlibris.public.prod.oc.inl.infomaker.io:8443/opencontent/objects/a7e1a177-80d3-5058-9fcd-35c440c7a2e8&operation=CROP&offset=0x0
https://s.observers.france24.com/media/display/bfcb2bb8-cebb-11eb-bcfa-005056a98db9/w:1280/p:16×9/subshot1_2.webp
People who are poor, and don’t see anyway to improve their lot, rushed to the area to collect colorless, transparent crystals that look a lot like quartz crystals — which is more probable.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/quartz-and-shattered-dreams-south-africa-diamond-rush-is-a-bust/ar-AALh6EH?ocid=msedgntp
The situation is different for coltans, where the mining is apparently controlled by warlords, compared to the cobalt production where it seems to be poor families re-working abandoned mines that were once mechanized.
If you are an orphan, who is going to take care of you and feed you? You either get by as best you can or die. This is, after all, a poor Third World Country!
According to that international child care specialist, the orphans’ villages would care for them.
But in fact of course it doesn’t work that way. The continent notorious for its child soldiers also features child forced workers.
The specialist is Hillary Clinton.
I was a child agricultural worker, by today’s standards, as a teenager. But my neighbors employed their nine year old kids to drive trucks and combines on their parents’ land.
Then Oregon required that adult migrant workers picked our crops instead of teenage natives, so I was out of the cucumber or strawberry harvesting business until old enough to drive a wheat truck.
But this seasonal, healthy employment is literally a world away from six year olds in the cobalt mines of Africa.
I was a child labourer too on the farm, starting at 2-3 years old in the garden weeding the lettuce, carrots and peas. Probably did more eating of veggies with the dirt still on them than work. All kids were expected to work within their ability and babies and toddlers were either sleeping in the raspberry shade or playing in the rows. Potatoes needed a hoe, so that was for 6 year olds and up. There were ‘chores’ including feeding the pigs, chicken, cows & horses, and hand cranking the cream separator so Mom and Gramma could make butter. Milking the cows was for the older teenage kids, or Dad.
Was driving the old Cockshutt tractor with an umbrella for shade summerfallowing by age of 11-12 and driving the grain truck and augerering the grain into granaries by age 14, when I bought my first old 1951 Chevrolet for $75 in 1969. This all served me well, as had my own business at 15 with paper routes and shovelling snow or digging gardens for city folk after school and weekends after we moved to the city.
We even had a pair of old nags that I could harness up by age 12 and take a wagon ride picking up the square bales in the cooler evenings. I missed the binder and stooking age, but heard a lot about it from all the uncles and grand parents. Now that would have been work, standing up 160 acres of wheat sheaves of grain stalks to dry in the Sun. And then feeding the thrashing machine. We’ve come a long way in 75-80 years.
Have never been out of work my entire life. A good hard work ethic didn’t hurt too many kids, unless it was done by mean parents and/or older siblings. Granted, 3rd world slavery like conditions working for some warlord in the Congo that sell artisanal mined cobalt by hand to the Chinese agent probably isn’t comparable to even 100 years ago here on the family farm in North America. But everyone has to make a ‘living’.
My son spent years complaining about child labor laws that made it impossible for him to get any sort of job when he was 12, until he finally aged out and was able to go to work.
and many die in the mines due to collapse of tunnels or toxic waste poisoning due to extraction
their is a good reason why they call it blood money
its because many humans die in the process of the overlords
And if the mining was done on an industrial scale by responsible companies, their parents would have decent jobs and the kids could go to school.
You are assuming that both the mines are large enough to support industrial scale and that the infrastructure exists to support it as well.
Cobalt is not found as a hard rock ore but as blue mud.
Most of the worlds cobalt is found in copper and nickel ores ,and some from smelting
Would you mind providing a citation for that claim to this ignorant geologist?
Forced doesn’t mean someone holds a gun to your head. Just like UK children didn’t have guns held to their heads when they went up chimneys to sweep them or work in Dark Satanic Mills. Economic pressure in parents was enough, orphans and foundlings had no choice.
Would the orphans and foundlings be better off with no jobs available?
Agree with Clyde Spencer. Please see
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/22/child-labor-in-the-drc-and-climate-change/
Thank you for the well-documented contribution to this controversial topic.
Probably much less than half, like everywhere else.
Agrivoltaics!
https://qz.com/1913868/why-agricultural-land-is-better-than-rooftops-for-solar-panels/
Of course, where I live, in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s north-facing that collects photons.
Then obviously the answer is simple. Move all the north-facing homes (actually it is the E-W facing homes that have the problem) south of the equator, and vice versa! That is the sort of answer any liberal suffering with Kruger-Dunning syndrome should be able to come up with.
L.A. Freeway road rage just won’t be the same.
More like a return to the Dark Ages where human life and the filth they lived in was worthless to society’s “betters,” sorta like the back streets of San Fran or under a freeway overpass in LA today.
Thanks. I love the laughs that come from doing the math on the “build back better”.
Build back better for someone else
“I live in California, the heart of the green lunacy.”
Massachusetts is just as bad. It was MA that sued the EPA in the Supreme Court to require it to declare carbon emissions a pollutant.
Doncha know math is racist because it requires correct answers. Green math isn’t, because it doesn’t. Just ask the squad.
Green math is idealistic, propagandist counting, which is, ironically, based on naive assumptions/assertions.
“today’s “watermelon environmentalists”, who are green on the outside and solid Marxist red on the inside”
I think many are not Marxist- but, their fault is that they foolishly think we can have a modern civilization with no impact to nature. I prefer to call them naive pagans. Many are wealthy like Gore and Kerry- I doubt they want to spread around THEIR wealth like good Marxists should. I blame their stupidity on never having real jobs where you have to get your hands dirty. Ivory tower intellectuals.
JZ,
Most of the professed Marxist elites have no intention of ever sharing THEIR wealth! Like all slave masters, they take the bulk of the wealth, and leave some crumbs on the table for the proles to fight over!
Only a sociopath like Marx could come up with a slave state wrapped in quasi-religious robes, and call it egalitarian!
It’s time to again look at coal. America has more BTU’s in our coal than what natural gas and oil can deliver combined. It’s time to become Energy Wise. Coal can be combusted and emit less CO2 into the atmosphere than what natural gas does.
[No Soliciting~cr]
Once again, Sid pops up to peddle his solution that doesn’t work for problem that doesn’t exist.
Sid, I see you are still having trouble getting anyone to pony up to support your scheme.
Anthony, I’ve seen you chastise other posters for putting links to their own blogs.
How does directing others to their own investment scheme any different?
Well, it’s not a link and Anthony doesn’t read every comment. But yeah, I’ll take care of it.
“That’s 8.3 MW per square kilometer of ground area.”
Not sure I buy this. A square kilometer is about 1/3 of a section (247 acre). That seems like a very small area in which to generate 8MW of electricty. I’m not sure that includes all the extra ground required for maintenance sheds, warehouse sheds, access roads, right-of-way, etc.
Is my math wrong?
The further north you go, the more the panels have to be tilted towards the south in order to maximize solar collection. The greater the angle of tilt, the further apart the panels have to be in order avoid shading each other.
Near me in mid-west at 38N latitude is a solar farm of 20 acres the claims to be 6MW
But I’m sure that is only generated when sun is shining unimpeded at the optimal angle
I you account for that sun shines only half the day and little production near sunrise/set and the clouds probably block out sun about 30% of the time, then they probably only produce on average 2 MW at best.
But still that’s 1 MW per 10 acres or about 25 MW per km&2.
6 MW will be equal to n modules times the deceptive power output rating*** on the back of the modules.
***markings of module ratings are required by the National Electric Code, and are only tangentially related what power the module will produce in actual use. They are more relevant to safety rather than power.
Another great article, Willis…..thanks for continuing your mission to help debunk this nonsense.
However, as long as the MSM pumps out its propaganda and innumerate (& often corrupt) politicians keep voting for laws that destroy our civilisation and culture, we face an uphill struggle.
I keep hoping the energy companies will shut off supplies for a few days just to let people understand what it means to have no hydrocarbons! Now that would be a wake up call….
Didnt the Russian hackers just do that?
Didn’t Biden just give Putin a list of the industries the hackers need to target next?
Willis, the greenies know deep down that their wind & solar won’t cut it.
And that somebody else will have to effect a practical solution for supply of reliable electricity ongoing.
BUT, the greenies want to always be in a position to lambaste ANY developments that provide cheap, reliable power for the masses. Fuels that reviled consumerism, doncha know.
That’s the very essence of climate virtue signaling
But they are willing to drag California and all Californians over an economic cliff to try.
First, baby, then granny, then community.
Remember that Joe Biden claims that California is his model for the resto of the US.
Sent the link to the wierd undemocratic Climate Change Committee in U.K. which plans to crash our economy on purpose
The force in anti fossil fuel people runs deep. Facts don’t faze them. The propaganda has been very effective and I doubt experience would make much difference either. I can see them dying from lack of fossil fuels and still not relinquishing their dogma.
It’s like a feedback loop.
Leftists demand taxes on companies because apparently companies aren’t paying their fair share.
Businesses raise their prices in order to compensate for the higher taxes.
Leftists condemn businesses for being greedy, demand higher taxes as a punishment.
This is why smart leftists are switching from advocating socialism to advocating fascism.
Fascism is a form of socialism. Even Fabian socialism was fascistic. Socialism was supposed to produce heartier warriors the better to subdue the lesser races.
It’s amazing to me how few people actually understand Marxism. Marx advocated the following timeline:
Fascism: govt control of business and capital
Socialism: govt ownership of business and capital
Communism: collective ownership of business and capital
Each step was to facilitate the movement to the next. Problem is that Socialism has *never*, not once, moved from Socialism to Communism. Once the dictators and their enabling bureaucracies get into power and actually own the means of production they never let go, not ever. Oh, they hang out trappings of collectivism but it is always meaningless at the working level. The dictators and bureaucracies have the real control.
Too many get hung up on thinking of Hitler’s insanity about Jews as being the definition of “Fascism”. His insanity actually never had anything to do with fascism. Both he and Mussolini were rabid Socialists – until they got into power and saw that Fascism gave them all the power they wanted with none of the actual responsibilities that ownership of the means of production would have required. So neither ever moved to true nationalization and ownership of business and capital.
It’ll work this time, comrades! 🤣
The difference between govt ownership and collective ownership is purely semantic.
Not really. Under collectivism (i.e. Communism), the entire population doesn’t own each individual unit of production. The workers at a mill collectively own the mill. Workers 100 miles away in an auto factory have their own collective and have nothing to do with the distant mill. Each collective is responsible for maximizing the output of each production unit. The outputs of the production units are shared among the entire population.
Under Socialism the govt owns each unit of production. The workers have no role in maximizing the output of the production unit because they don’t have any buy-in to the sharing of the production. The govt owns the outputs of the production units and distributes those outputs as it sees fit – usually based on loyalty to the government.
It’s why Socialism never works, it *can’t* work. It’s why Marx only saw Socialism as a temporary, transitory step on the way to Communism.
Of course, communism can’t work either but for a different reason. The central planning function required under Communism is simply not a workable substitute for a free market with numerous competitors each trying to maximize profit.
“Socialism works until the government runs out of other peoples‘ money to spend.” — Margaret Thatcher
“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” — old proverb out of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Texas has a somewhat similar warning to California, checked around didn’t find much wind or gusts on the coast near the wind farms and San Antonio, apparently need to relearn as those found out when they built the first windmills. Texas coast is famous for its winds, just beginning the slow season, except for the too much category.
Assuming it’s possible to reduce emissions by 80% by 2030, what effect would that have on the climate? No one ever addresses that question. My guess is there will be NO measurable effect on climate.
Good guess. It’s actually more ridiculous than none—it’s much less than none.
I just ran the numbers. California is 7% of US CO2 emissions, and US is 14% of the world, so CA is 1% of world.
By comparison, China alone is presently increasing its emissions by 0.8% annually. So California trying reduce 80% by 2030 is overmatched by China alone increasing over 7x by 2030.
If CA were to sink below the waves tomorrow and you ran up a chart of CO2 levels from Mauna Loa, wouldn’t it be impossible to see a blip at the monitoring resolution used?
Yes, but they would probably feel the splash.
Siting is truly the issue, particularly with nuclear plants.
However, done with care, very positive results can be obtained. Here I detail the placement of just a few nuclear reactors which would have a salutary effect on the CA energy environment.
Site 1) Two reactors – Sacramento, one reactor on the site of the state legislature, the other on top of the governor.
Site 2) One reactor – Los Angeles, on the current city hall.
Other reactors can be placed wherever they will do the most good. CARB, the Clean Air Resource Board recommends itself as a useful site.
Those sites are for the Chernobyl style graphite reactors – right?
I don’t know. Using those sites for long term waste storage seems attractive also.
James, those sites already ARE waste storage…
Fission reactors in an earthquake zone? What could possibly go wrong…
Amen. The author has hit the high points.
I wish he had added another “not to mention” portion where he listed the other stuff that is less obvious, but still boggles the mind. Things such as:
Just return to horse and carriage, dirt roads, candles, whale oil, fireplaces, 47 year life span, etc. etc.
Problem solved.
Except for equine methane and the fact that wood has a higher carbon to hydrogen ratio than coal, which is higher than oil, which is higher than gas. CH4 is close to running on hydrogen rather than carbon. Which is why the US, without signing, has met the Kyoto reductions while so many other signees haven’t.
horse and carriage – Nope. Horse farts and Forest Habitat Destruction
dirt roads – Nope, PM 2.5
candles – Nope, CO2
whale oil – Nope CO2 plus “Save thew Whales”
fireplaces- *Already Banned*
47 year life span – What? Ya Wanna Live Forever?
To make that much hardware would require most of the fossil fuel in the world. If we didn’t follow that path, it might last long enough to bring small scale fusion or other nuclear plants on line and run everything on electricity.
While that is an option, we could also admit that there are good reasons to continue making liquid fuels our of any available material that works. There is a great deal to be said for liquid energy carriers. Algae and sunlight would be sufficient.
I have a pond that gets fouled with algae. When it does, it starts to stink. The pond also evaporates copious amounts of water in the summer. Are you sure you want to waste California’s precious water on covering the state with toxic, stinking algae pits? You know algae fuels are much less efficient than solar, don’t you, and solar is a very inefficient use of land.
In the 500 to 1000 years that we have until oil and coal start to run out, who’s to say what technologies will be developed.
There is no need to waste money on expensive and poorly thought out schemes to try and get oil and coal to last a few years longer.
I wonder if the trolls who declared that the power problems in Texas as proof that Texas can’t run a power grid will have anything to say about the repeated problems in California?
Also, CA is connected to the national grid. So being connected to the national grid is not the panacea that some want to believe.
TX is connected to another grid, which is connected to the others.
The political and economic solution to this problem is for the “greens” to officially recognize natural gas as a renewable biogas that nature has spent millions of years producing more than we can use for decades. In addition we can produce it from coal and most any form of biomass. It burns clean and efficiently. It burns four hydrogen atoms for each carbon atom. The “greens” can the push rooftop solar with natural gas fired backup generators. Power companies can continue to convert coal fired plants to natural gas. We need more storage and pipelines in our future.
Fred,
Expecting the climate crazies to do anything besides pushing their unworkable solution to a nonexistent problem is a pipe dream!
Their faith in the Green catechism is deep, and only a severe reality check will wake them from their profound fervor! If Mother Nature doesn’t issue a wake up call soon, they will drag the once Golden State down into the Third World!
Environmentalism is an extremist philosophy with a narrow, nominally environment-oriented focus, where in fact it is analogous to anarchy in service to single/central/monopolistic/minority solutions. Conservativism is a philosophy of moderation. American conservativism is Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness under a Constitutional framework of reconciliation.
I guess Palo Verde Nuclear power output at 3.3 gw will need to continue for many more decades to prop up California, at their expense of course.
WWMichaelMannSay?
We’re
DoomedDooped (duped)Is it just me, or is he getting chubbier? Climate worrying must be a well-paying gig.
Always good to come across yclept, a word not used nearly enough these days. Thank you Willis.
For me, a welcome improvement to my vocabulary.
https://www.wordsense.eu/clepe/
clipe(d) is the Scottish version.