Something the #GreenEnergy advocates never want to talk about is the environmental damage so called "renewables" do to the planet. I mean who cares about a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China, as long as it's not in my backyard. Right? 🧵
Much of China’s green energy boom was supported by a phenomenal growth in coal consumption which rose from 300 million tons annually in 1970 to 4.3 billion tons last year.
As a consequence, the air is unbreathable in many cities, and soil contamination has left 20% of China’s arable land too polluted to grow crops safely. The air is so polluted the chimneys from a smelting plant are barely visible.
Other nations are wreaking environmental damage on themselves as well for the Almighty Dollar, but China is the “winner”. No other nation can compete. China controls about 63% of rare earth metals, and 90% of the supply chain.
Baotou is the world’s biggest supplier of rare earth minerals — the fundamental ingredients used to make today’s technologies The refinery on the other side of the lake is the largest rare earth plant on the planet and all the waste material from this process is dumped here.
This toxic waste in this lake was found to have radiation levels ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside and was made up of a cocktail of acids, heavy metals, carcinogens and radioactive material used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world.
People too began to suffer, their teeth fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffer from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.
Official studies carried out in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases.
But who really cares about all this, as long as we have our shiny white wind turbines, solar panels and EVs to show the world we really care, right?
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Welcome to the reality of mining underground. Could you do it? We used to joke, if there was a massive cave in, our families would save thousands in funeral costs.
Not all underground mines are like this of course. 100s of pieces of equipment. The equipment has to be taken a part/cut up and lowered down the shaft and reassembled.
Let's talk about Biomass. To produce just 10% of U.S. electricity (405 TWh) it would require harvesting and burning wood plantations the size of Minnesota every year. #GreenEnergy 🧵
Now imagine all the energy that went into building the power station and emission controls, planting and logging tree plantations, trucking the biomass to the power station, chipping it into smaller bits, and burning it at only 35% efficiency or less.
According to the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers:
Carbon Dioxide Emissions will increase by 48% in 2030,
because gas plants constantly starting up and shutting down expel more emissions than if they ran continually. #GreenEnergy
This is what my part of the country used to look like. Farmland.
$6.7 trillion invested in #GreenEnergy since 2004. To continue this green dream the world will need 10 million tons of new copper supply over the next decade, or the equivalent of a new Escondida copper mine, the biggest in the world, into production every year. #GreenEnergy
The Chinese copper smelter Guixi had the largest production capacity worldwide, amounting to some 900 thousand metric tons as of June 2022. In the process the smelter has caused cadmium, arsenic, copper and lead contamination in the soil and water.
Coal remains at the heart of China's flourishing green economy. In 2019, 58 percent of the country's total energy consumption came from coal, and China continues to build coal-fired power plants at a rate that outpaces the rest of the world combined.
This 1 ton rock contains between 0.6 and 1 per cent of copper. One ton of ore generates a maximum 6 to 10 kilograms of copper. Depending on the size of battery, an electric bus can use between 224 and 369 kg of copper. How do we get the copper out of the rock? Mining 🧵
To start with we have to do a whole lot of mining. Mining requires massive amounts of equipment, fuel, oil and electricity. This shovel requires 4160 Volts to operate.
But before we get into that first we need core samples. Core samples determine whether or not we have a mineable property. How do we get core samples? We call in the diamond drillers.
The $5 billion Tesla “Gigafactory” in
Nevada is currently the world’s biggest battery
manufacturing facility. Its total annual production
could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S.
electricity demand. Now imagine the amount of mining we have to do in order to build this
But wait it's solar powered. Ok let's take a look at what is required to make PV panels. Green? Not in the least. Raw materials for 1 ton of metallurgical-grade silicon.
● Quartz 2.4 t
● Coal 550 kg
● Oil coke 200 kg
● Charcoal 600 kg
● Woodchip 300 kg