"Green" Mythology

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(EXCELLENT EXPLANATION)
Batteries, they do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.

Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?"

Einstein's formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery's metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive production costs.

A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. 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."

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?"

I'd like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being 'green,' but it is not. This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

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. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills 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.

There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions.
"Going Green" may sound like the Utopian ideal but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth's environment than meets the eye, for sure.

Other than hydroelectric production, which is obviously limited by natural occurrences, NUCLEAR power plants produce electricity without hydrocarbon burning or the mining and physical problems of "wind" or "solar" plants.  The environmental zealots started with air and water pollution, but ran out of those complaints when dramatic improvements happened in both the air and the water.  They then joined the anti-war left, who thought nuclear power equaled nuclear weapons, to continue their zealotry.  Currently, France produces so much electricity by nuclear plants that THEY could sustain electric vehicles, although natural gas powered vehicles would still be better than the battery pollution from mining and castoff batteries.  


Every version of environmental zealotry amounts to anti-human, earth-worship that would be at home with human sacrifice and volcano worship in 10,000 BC.  Make no mistake, it IS RELIGION.  Facts will not dissuade the true believers.  As modern day Malthusians, they continue to predict the end-of-days through mankind's abuse of the earth.  Whether it was the erroneous prediction of Malthus over two hundred years ago, or the dire prediction of food shortages and death in fifty years that were stated as fact on the first Earth Day when I was a sophomore at OU in 1970.     

Because schools (and more so colleges) inculcate the youth in their religion and the media has accepted the same religious teachings as fact, dissuading the brainwashed is as difficult as doing the same against a cult follower.  The FACT that the gross overstatements of the 1990s about the condition of the planet in 2020 are never mentioned, but new, equally dreadful prognostication do get attention, shows the one-way nature of information (and disinformation) regarding the SCIENCE of the earth's environment.  A recent problem for the "warmers" is that the antarctic ice cap has grown in both 2020 and 2021.  


PS - Those that promulgate conspiracy theories about government, big-business, or elitist cabals actually help the zealots and their followers deflect scientific evidence of their errors as they sweep all contradictions to their religion into a bin of crazy people.  Conspiracies require exceptionally smart people that never break ranks to gain power over one another.  Ignorance, laziness, and bureaucratic incompetence are common and far more likely the cause of problems than brilliant people conspiring.