Net Zero

[Specmaster]

There are many more minerals that have to be mined in order to produce EV vehicles, in fact 11 as opposed to just 2 for conventional vehicles, something that is generally not mentioned, along with other factors such as the adoption of EV in the more civilised parts of the world will make a small amount of difference to climate change and air quality, but it is indeed a very small amount compared to what could be achieved by tackling other greater polluting offenders, gas heating and cooking, industry etc. Germany are using coal to generate electric, which produces more harmful emissions than fossil fuel for the vehicles, so EV vehicles there are doing more damage, similar in China and other places.

The minerals are generally mined in the poorer parts of the world where slave labour and human rights are abused, so any improvement for us, results in massive increases in their suffering etc.

This explains more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J61TPKNlls I just can't help but think that we are maybe heading full speed into yet another major problem to be resolved in a few years time, just like we have with regard to diesel. Governments around the world were all championing diesel as the wonder fuel and urging people to switch over, now we know it was a major error. There is still more that can be done to squeeze more MPG with less emissions from exiting fossil fuelled vehicles, so we produce less pollution and use less of the earths supply of such fuels, while spending more time studying alternatives solutions properly.

[25 CPS]

I just can't help but think that we are maybe heading full speed into yet another major problem to be resolved in a few years time, just like we have with regard to diesel. Governments around the world were all championing diesel as the wonder fuel and urging people to switch over, now we know it was a major error. There is still more that can be done to squeeze more MPG with less emissions from exiting fossil fuelled vehicles, so we produce less pollution and use less of the earths supply of such fuels, while spending more time studying alternatives solutions properly.

Here in Ontario, the provincial government pushed electric heat hard in the 1970s as the nuclear fleet was coming online. They even had a special rate for it that was applied to a second meter that fed a separate breaker panel for the heat so that it could be billed lower than the rest of the household. This was popular in new subdivisions, especially townhouse developments back then and a lot of them never had gas run to them.

Eventually the special rate and second meters were ditched by the Ontario government and the heat was tied into the regular full price meters in all these places, and people’s heating costs jumped. Then they brought out smart meters and time of use pricing along with a bunch of seriously misguided energy policy in the name of being green at cost no object and hydro rates exploded. I used to cringe at turning the stove on at the ring time of day depending on my shift. I couldn’t imagine hearing the whole house in winter on rip-off Ontario electricity prices especially with the mandatory time of use billing. The previous government got thrown out two elections ago and knocked down they lost official party status and it was in large part because they screwed up the electricity file so badly along with cost of living in general.

Governments really need to think carefully about pushing chosen technologies too hard because people will become once burned, twice shy if they buy in at government urging and then get stuck in the lurch by them later.

The legacy of that example I picked here in Ontario is no matter how dire the climate situation gets, trying to get people to consider electric heat of any kind is going to be an uphill battle on a 10 mile high vertical cliff face because the reputation it has now is so bad.

[tggzzz]

Basically yes, that was the use for BEDs and the reason for their decline.

Youngs used dray horses until 2006.
https://wandswortharchives.wordpress.co ... re-horses/

[bd139]

Our Evri, Royal Mail, DPD and Amazon vans here are all EVs. Only UPS is still using other vans. That is the future of the last mile deliveries.

The rest of the country uses hub/spoke architectures now with backbones being large articulated trucks. That is under review as well now.

You as a consumer do not have a right to cheap goods. You are currently just lucky it's cheap.

I was driving a 7 ton box truck and there are still loads of these on the roads and for many small companies running an articulated truck or even contracting out huge monthly consignments to the likes of last mile operators of Evri etc, even with their vast fleets of articulated trunker lorries and hubs is not either cost or time effective. With the constant loading and unloading between collection from the factory, to the local hub, to the trunk trucks, to the national hub, more trunk trucks to the final distribution hub and then to the last mile van. Then a drop-kick over your gate, adding to the risk of damage or lost goods and considerable delay in getting large orders to customers as that will sometimes fill a last mile van almost to the brim, no room then for the other 399 deliveries those vans have to do daily

I was also charged with picking up the raw materials for the next production run on my return trip in order to keep the manufacturing costs as low as possible. The other distinct advantage is of course that you don't get damaged goods being delivered or goods not arriving, definitely not something you can afford with high value items.

When it comes to me as a consumer, I don't mind not having the right to cheap goods, as long as my income would allow me to afford to pay more for them, its that simple , trust me.

This is quite frankly a load of bollocks. I worked in logistics actually designing the routing algorithms and software. It is optimised for the lowest cost and time always. Literally micro-optimised for it.

As for damaged goods, that's factored in as well. It's more cost effective to just replace them. High value items are insured.

[bd139]

The legacy of that example I picked here in Ontario is no matter how dire the climate situation gets, trying to get people to consider electric heat of any kind is going to be an uphill battle on a 10 mile high vertical cliff face because the reputation it has now is so bad.

Yeah electric heat is a silly idea anyway.

The problem we have here is that we ancient houses lined with poor insulation. They should knock them all down and move people into estates with geothermal heating. But everyone gets pissy about the idea of sharing resources because they all want their own slice of ground.

Case in point, my electricity bill is around £21 a month. I don't pay for heating and hot water.

[Specmaster]

Here in Ontario, the provincial government pushed electric heat hard in the 1970s as the nuclear fleet was coming online.

Talking about nuclear, how about this nuclear power station that was never switched on. It was seemingly built in secret by the Austrian government before they had a referendum asking the public if they wanted nuclear-powered generation, the results allegedly were 50.5% against it, so they never activated it and cancelled their plans to build more.

Now it begs the question, if this built in secret, what over things have been in secret by various governments around the world, and do you trust your government not to be working to a secret agenda?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVZbBBHrI4

[Specmaster]

The legacy of that example I picked here in Ontario is no matter how dire the climate situation gets, trying to get people to consider electric heat of any kind is going to be an uphill battle on a 10 mile high vertical cliff face because the reputation it has now is so bad.

Yeah electric heat is a silly idea anyway.

The problem we have here is that we ancient houses lined with poor insulation. They should knock them all down and move people into estates with geothermal heating. But everyone gets pissy about the idea of sharing resources because they all want their own slice of ground.

Case in point, my electricity bill is around £21 a month. I don't pay for heating and hot water.

Well you are shit lucky then, my own electric bill is £178 exactly per month and gas is £193 and have the bills to prove the point.

[Specmaster]

This is quite frankly a load of bollocks. I worked in logistics actually designing the routing algorithms and software. It is optimised for the lowest cost and time always. Literally micro-optimised for it.

As for damaged goods, that's factored in as well. It's more cost effective to just replace them. High value items are insured.

Except for the fact that it isn't, I know, I was there and what I said is factual. I don't doubt for a moment that what you describe is the case with larger companies, but for the smaller company employing about 8 people, that was not true, all the costs were carefully worked out and it was not viable. I used to load the lorry after I had worked out the route, and it was loaded in sequence.

I also worked for a small power transformer manufacture, again similar sized operation based in Chelmsford, and they had a contract to supply transformers to Coldflow in Sheffield, for building into their range of beer coolers and bar pumps and every so often I would have to hire a box truck and drive a load to Sheffield, because it was considerably more cost-effective for me to do that than to get a carrier in and do the same, and that company I know is still doing the same today as it is still true now.

[Specmaster]

Here in Ontario, the provincial government pushed electric heat hard in the 1970s as the nuclear fleet was coming online.

Talking about nuclear, how about this nuclear power station that was never switched on. It was seemingly built in secret by the Austrian government before they had a referendum asking the public if they wanted nuclear-powered generation, the results allegedly were 50.5% against it, so they never activated it and cancelled their plans to build more.

Now it begs the question, if this built in secret, what over things have been in secret by various governments around the world, and do you trust your government not to be working to a secret agenda?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUVZbBBHrI4

Well be careful what you wish for, turns out the UK government were planning some secret nuclear bomb explosions here, in Yorkshire, this short video confirms this is true and also it seems in the USA. Scary stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceWZslOfEjs

[bd139]

Well you are shit lucky then, my own electric bill is £178 exactly per month and gas is £193 and have the bills to prove the point.

There's no luck involved. As always look over the horizon and make plans to avoid existential risks. That's all I did.

[bd139]

This is quite frankly a load of bollocks. I worked in logistics actually designing the routing algorithms and software. It is optimised for the lowest cost and time always. Literally micro-optimised for it.

As for damaged goods, that's factored in as well. It's more cost effective to just replace them. High value items are insured.

Except for the fact that it isn't, I know, I was there and what I said is factual. I don't doubt for a moment that what you describe is the case with larger companies, but for the smaller company employing about 8 people, that was not true, all the costs were carefully worked out and it was not viable. I used to load the lorry after I had worked out the route, and it was loaded in sequence.

I also worked for a small power transformer manufacture, again similar sized operation based in Chelmsford, and they had a contract to supply transformers to Coldflow in Sheffield, for building into their range of beer coolers and bar pumps and every so often I would have to hire a box truck and drive a load to Sheffield, because it was considerably more cost-effective for me to do that than to get a carrier in and do the same, and that company I know is still doing the same today as it is still true now.

That's actually likely because the company and yourself don't know about load sharing exchanges like CX / HX, not because it's more cost effective.

I bet your hired box truck was empty half the journey...

[tggzzz]

Well you are shit lucky then, my own electric bill is £178 exactly per month and gas is £193 and have the bills to prove the point.

There's no luck involved. As always look over the horizon and make plans to avoid existential risks. That's all I did.

There's always luck involved.

But, as Arnold Palmer put it, "the more I practice, the luckier I get"

[Specmaster]

Well you are shit lucky then, my own electric bill is £178 exactly per month and gas is £193 and have the bills to prove the point.

There's no luck involved. As always look over the horizon and make plans to avoid existential risks. That's all I did.

Yeah, as always its the poorest in society who carry the can, I don't and never had the necessary to do anything but rent social housing and still doing so, and unless I win the lottery will have to continue doing. I can't see the housing association anytime soon deciding to install geothermal heating and solar panels to help reduce bills. Yes we have solar panels on our roof, but not owned or operated by the housing association, but by another company who are merely burrowing the roof (crap deal by the HA, they have no say about it now) and that company have been half-heartedly trying to get them back up and running now since July 13th 2022, so I'm guessing that either they can no longer sell any spare power back to the grid, or the panels are not an economical repair option.

[Specmaster]

This is quite frankly a load of bollocks. I worked in logistics actually designing the routing algorithms and software. It is optimised for the lowest cost and time always. Literally micro-optimised for it.

As for damaged goods, that's factored in as well. It's more cost effective to just replace them. High value items are insured.

Except for the fact that it isn't, I know, I was there and what I said is factual. I don't doubt for a moment that what you describe is the case with larger companies, but for the smaller company employing about 8 people, that was not true, all the costs were carefully worked out and it was not viable. I used to load the lorry after I had worked out the route, and it was loaded in sequence.

I also worked for a small power transformer manufacture, again similar sized operation based in Chelmsford, and they had a contract to supply transformers to Coldflow in Sheffield, for building into their range of beer coolers and bar pumps and every so often I would have to hire a box truck and drive a load to Sheffield, because it was considerably more cost-effective for me to do that than to get a carrier in and do the same, and that company I know is still doing the same today as it is still true now.

That's actually likely because the company and yourself don't know about load sharing exchanges like CX / HX, not because it's more cost effective.

I bet your hired box truck was empty half the journey...

No, it was usually carrying coils of copper wire, transformer laminations and shells, bobbins etc so it was paying for it self in both directions.

[Cerebus]

There are many more minerals that have to be mined in order to produce EV vehicles, in fact 11 as opposed to just 2 for conventional vehicles,

Graham, you do spout some rubbish from time to time. Just 2 minerals in a 'conventional' vehicle? Pull the other one: iron, aluminium, lead, tin, zinc, platinum, silicon, copper, oil (for all the plastics), tungsten, molybdenum, calcium, nickel - that's 13 just off the top of my head.

You can also almost certainly add chromium, vanadium, sulphur/sulphates to the list as well.

[Cerebus]

Basically yes, that was the use for BEDs and the reason for their decline.

Youngs used dray horses until 2006.
https://wandswortharchives.wordpress.co ... re-horses/

I was disappointed when they stopped. I used to see them quite often. They actually continued to use them because they made economic and practical sense, as well as being gloriously traditional. The reason for stopping using them was related to rationalising their real estate portfolio, and the stables (near the barbican) and associated brewery buildings were sitting on land worth a small fortune.

[Specmaster]

There are many more minerals that have to be mined in order to produce EV vehicles, in fact 11 as opposed to just 2 for conventional vehicles,

Graham, you do spout some rubbish from time to time. Just 2 minerals in a 'conventional' vehicle? Pull the other one: iron, aluminium, lead, tin, zinc, platinum, silicon, copper, oil (for all the plastics), tungsten, molybdenum, calcium, nickel - that's 13 just off the top of my head.

You can also almost certainly add chromium, vanadium, sulphur/sulphates to the list as well.

You're right, I was sprouting rubbish, I was just quoting what was actually said in the video, they subsequently produced a chart that I think showed only 7 in the EV power plant not the 11 the presenters spoke of, that's the rubbish.

They also were only talking of the power plants, the rest that you mentioned are common to all cars wouldn't you agree? As such, not worthy of mention in the presentation as it serves no purpose if you're not comparing apples with apples, you can't move goalposts if you want your audience to believe you.

Do you agree that it is right for us to effectively ship the pollution from our country to Third World countries, where these minerals are typically found and mined with virtually slave labour and hazardous conditions I don't.

[vk6zgo]

The legacy of that example I picked here in Ontario is no matter how dire the climate situation gets, trying to get people to consider electric heat of any kind is going to be an uphill battle on a 10 mile high vertical cliff face because the reputation it has now is so bad.

Yeah electric heat is a silly idea anyway.

The problem we have here is that we ancient houses lined with poor insulation. They should knock them all down and move people into estates with geothermal heating. But everyone gets pissy about the idea of sharing resources because they all want their own slice of ground.

Case in point, my electricity bill is around £21 a month. I don't pay for heating and hot water.

If you think electric heating is expensive, try wood heating!

The wood space heater at our place was magnificent at heating the whole house, but the cost of wood, & the work of cutting the slabs they delivered down to a size that fit the firebox was ultimately unsustainable, so we went for "reverse cycle" air conditioning.
Because we live somewhere that the sun actually shines, we have direct solar hot water (it does have an electric booster, but you can even turn that off & get through a winter pretty well).
For drying clothes, we have a rotary clothesline, so much of the year can rely on the sun & wind.

"The powers that be" would like us all to live in "apartments" in tower blocks & dry our clothes with clothes dryers year round, so that we have to pay extra to cool the flat from the waste heat.

[vk6zgo]

There are many more minerals that have to be mined in order to produce EV vehicles, in fact 11 as opposed to just 2 for conventional vehicles,

Graham, you do spout some rubbish from time to time. Just 2 minerals in a 'conventional' vehicle? Pull the other one: iron, aluminium, lead, tin, zinc, platinum, silicon, copper, oil (for all the plastics), tungsten, molybdenum, calcium, nickel - that's 13 just off the top of my head.

You can also almost certainly add chromium, vanadium, sulphur/sulphates to the list as well.

You're right, I was sprouting rubbish, I was just quoting what was actually said in the video, they subsequently produced a chart that I think showed only 7 in the EV power plant not the 11 the presenters spoke of, that's the rubbish.

They also were only talking of the power plants, the rest that you mentioned are common to all cars wouldn't you agree? As such, not worthy of mention in the presentation as it serves no purpose if you're not comparing apples with apples, you can't move goalposts if you want your audience to believe you.

Do you agree that it is right for us to effectively ship the pollution from our country to Third World countries, where these minerals are typically found and mined with virtually slave labour and hazardous conditions I don't.

A lot of those materials are found & mined in Western Australia-----no slave labour here!

[vk6zgo]

Basically yes, that was the use for BEDs and the reason for their decline.

Youngs used dray horses until 2006.
https://wandswortharchives.wordpress.co ... re-horses/

I was disappointed when they stopped. I used to see them quite often. They actually continued to use them because they made economic and practical sense, as well as being gloriously traditional. The reason for stopping using them was related to rationalising their real estate portfolio, and the stables (near the barbican) and associated brewery buildings were sitting on land worth a small fortune.

We had a horse & cart in the 1950s when I was a kid, & when we moved back into Perth WA in 1955 there were still a lot of horse drawn milk carts & baker's vans, but they rapidly disappeared over the next 10 to 15 years.
There were no steam vehicles, except railways (till early 1970s), so I was astounded in 1974 in England to see a real steamroller hard at work on a worksite!

[Specmaster]

The legacy of that example I picked here in Ontario is no matter how dire the climate situation gets, trying to get people to consider electric heat of any kind is going to be an uphill battle on a 10 mile high vertical cliff face because the reputation it has now is so bad.

Yeah electric heat is a silly idea anyway.

The problem we have here is that we ancient houses lined with poor insulation. They should knock them all down and move people into estates with geothermal heating. But everyone gets pissy about the idea of sharing resources because they all want their own slice of ground.

Case in point, my electricity bill is around £21 a month. I don't pay for heating and hot water.

If you think electric heating is expensive, try wood heating!

The wood space heater at our place was magnificent at heating the whole house, but the cost of wood, & the work of cutting the slabs they delivered down to a size that fit the firebox was ultimately unsustainable, so we went for "reverse cycle" air conditioning.
Because we live somewhere that the sun actually shines, we have direct solar hot water (it does have an electric booster, but you can even turn that off & get through a winter pretty well).
For drying clothes, we have a rotary clothesline, so much of the year can rely on the sun & wind.

"The powers that be" would like us all to live in "apartments" in tower blocks & dry our clothes with clothes dryers year round, so that we have to pay extra to cool the flat from the waste heat.

Those wood burners can certainly chuck out the heat though, one place I worked at was a factory in the GEC/Marconi group, where I had a massive workshop, 80ft by 12ft and this burner was halfway along this workshop, within half an hour of lighting the fire on a cold day, the workshop was nice and toasty. The factory itself was adjacent to the shop, separated by the access road to the loading bay, the factory had an oil burner feeding a lot of ceiling mounted massive blower units located throughout the space, all switching on before the factory shift started for the day so in the winter it was the warmest place to be at the start, but once my burner was running lit, I had a steady stream of bodies coming to stand around the burner. The burner was far from environmentally friendly, as it used to chuck some terrible smoke at times.

[Cerebus]

Do you agree that it is right for us to effectively ship the pollution from our country to Third World countries, where these minerals are typically found and mined with virtually slave labour and hazardous conditions I don't.

That argument applies just as much to ICE vehicles as EVs. There's nothing mineral wise that goes into an EV that doesn't go into an ICE vehicle. So where does that leave your argument?

If you want to campaign for only using minerals that come from countries with a squeeky clean human rights record, then do so, it's a laudable aim, but don't try and pretend that is it only EVs that use those minerals, and therefore that EVs especially exploit people in shithole countries. They are in everything that you own. If those things are new-ish then the exploitation was done by tinpot dictatorships in collusion with western companies, if they're old then the exploitation was done by the British Empire, or the colonial French, or Belgium, or Holland, in collusion with western companies.

[Specmaster]

Do you agree that it is right for us to effectively ship the pollution from our country to Third World countries, where these minerals are typically found and mined with virtually slave labour and hazardous conditions I don't.

That argument applies just as much to ICE vehicles as EVs. There's nothing mineral wise that goes into an EV that doesn't go into an ICE vehicle. So where does that leave your argument?

If you want to campaign for only using minerals that come from countries with a squeeky clean human rights record, then do so, it's a laudable aim, but don't try and pretend that is it only EVs that use those minerals, and therefore that EVs especially exploit people in shithole countries. They are in everything that you own. If those things are new-ish then the exploitation was done by tinpot dictatorships in collusion with western companies, if they're old then the exploitation was done by the British Empire, or the colonial French, or Belgium, or Holland, in collusion with western companies.

Sorry, but that just is not true, not only is there a higher number of minerals used in EV cars over those used in ICE cars, the quantities being used of what are rare minerals is simply staggering and experts around the world are warning us, if we can be bothered to listen to them (shades of Brexit here where the experts were denied the oxygen to put forward their case, and the politicians and the MSM came up with the catchphrase of "Project Fear"), are saying that we currently do not have enough resources of Lithium for example, to last a decade if half the worlds vehicles are EV by 2030. If that is true, then we shall have well and truly shot ourselves in both feet.

To illustrate my point, I attach a file that shows the various minerals used in the making of both EV and ICE cars and their amounts (steel and aluminium not included, as they are thought to be approximately the same). This chart is based on a 75Kwh battery and cars like some Tesla's with larger batteries and dual motors will have considerable greater quantities of these minerals in them.

As I have already said, I'm not anti EV cars at all, I just do not believe that they are not the magic pill that people think they are, and I think that far more can still be done with ICE cars to reduce their impact on pollution. For instance, do we really need to have massive great big engines, say over 3 litres in capacity?

EV v GAS.jpg

[Cerebus]

Sorry, but that just is not true, not only is there a higher number of minerals used in EV cars over those used in ICE cars, the quantities being used of what are rare minerals is simply staggering and experts around the world are warning us, if we can be bothered to listen to them (shades of Brexit here where the experts were denied the oxygen to put forward their case, and the politicians and the MSM came up with the catchphrase of "Project Fear"), are saying that we currently do not have enough resources of Lithium for example, to last a decade if half the worlds vehicles are EV by 2030. If that is true, then we shall have well and truly shot ourselves in both feet.

Natural abundance (crustal) on earth, by mass:

Copper 50 ppm
Neodymium 38 ppm
Lithium 20 ppm
Cobalt 20 ppm
Lead 14 ppm
Samarium 7.2 ppm
Tin 2.2 ppm
Tantalum 2 ppm

Lithium has so far had relatively minor industrial use, whereas we've been using lead since roman times, and the amount of copper and tin we've got through since the bronze age must be breath taking. So, the narrative that EVs use vast quantities of "rare" minerals compared to ICE vehicles, or any other of a million industrial processes is false.

The only reason that we do not currently have enough developed sources of lithium at the moment is that there has been little historic demand for lithium. There clearly is much much higher demand now, and the money is flowing to develop the supply chain. Developing markets starting out with constrained supply and high demand is economics 101 as to how those markets get developed.

[Specmaster]

Sorry, but that just is not true, not only is there a higher number of minerals used in EV cars over those used in ICE cars, the quantities being used of what are rare minerals is simply staggering and experts around the world are warning us, if we can be bothered to listen to them (shades of Brexit here where the experts were denied the oxygen to put forward their case, and the politicians and the MSM came up with the catchphrase of "Project Fear"), are saying that we currently do not have enough resources of Lithium for example, to last a decade if half the worlds vehicles are EV by 2030. If that is true, then we shall have well and truly shot ourselves in both feet.

Natural abundance (crustal) on earth, by mass:

Copper 50 ppm
Neodymium 38 ppm
Lithium 20 ppm
Cobalt 20 ppm
Lead 14 ppm
Samarium 7.2 ppm
Tin 2.2 ppm
Tantalum 2 ppm

Lithium has so far had relatively minor industrial use, whereas we've been using lead since roman times, and the amount of copper and tin we've got through since the bronze age must be breath taking. So, the narrative that EVs use vast quantities of "rare" minerals compared to ICE vehicles, or any other of a million industrial processes is false.

The only reason that we do not currently have enough developed sources of lithium at the moment is that there has been little historic demand for lithium. There clearly is much much higher demand now, and the money is flowing to develop the supply chain. Developing markets starting out with constrained supply and high demand is economics 101 as to how those markets get developed.

How much of these minerals are buried at the bottom of the oceans, when there are many parts of the sea bed that are simply too deep even to be properly mapped. Making extraction almost impossible, that could explain why many of the world's experts are declaring that we only have enough to last approximately a decade. EV's need them in such huge volumes per car, we will be using up the natural resources at an alarming rate, bringing forward the destruction of the planet, rather than reducing the amount of current consumption.