With the media so obsessed with the eventual "waste" from green energy production - end of life solar panels, turbine blades, batteries etc, wouldn't it be great if they provided context?
There are 9000 oil tanker ships on the planet. 10s of thousands of petrol trucks. 10s of thousands of petrol stations. 10s of thousands of miles of pipeline.
All of which are environmentally damaging to dispose of.
Yet, never discussed in the media. Its just the green boogeyman.
@nina_kali_nina See my earlier toot about coal production... Every 1 tonne of hard coal production produces 400kg of waste (not byproduct).
So, when you look at everything in totality, the issue is that the media are highlighting the need to recycle green tech, but don't make a peep about the enormous amount of waste from fossil fuel production.
Every year, we produce more waste for fossil fuels than every bit of green tech in existence, combined.
@eternalgoldenbraid except, we keep building new oil tankers. We keep building new pipelines. New fuel trucks. New coal ships. New mining equipment. And we produce far more of that than green tech.
But that's never discussed.
@eternalgoldenbraid I'm not sure you're really understanding my point. This isn't a complaint that the media publish articles looking at the end of life of green tech.
My complaint is that it is provided in isolation. Without the context of the existing fossil fuel industry waste.
Without that context, it leads people to believe that green tech is somehow worse than fossil fuels. You can see this consistently in comments on articles about EVs, wind turbines etc.
@localzuk Whatabouisms never seem to die out in green talks. Same thing with electric vehicles.
'but but but the battery is made overseas and will have to go to a landfill and leech out into the soil"
You know what also does that?
Every other vehicle they've driven!
At least one is working to a net benefit over time instead of benefitting the status quo
@localzuk It's entirely possible some media outlets are being disingenuous for their own reasons, but that also doesn't mean some of those questions aren't valid ones.
Oil tankers and petrol trucks have their end-of-life already worked out. Shipbreaking is a big industry (if not exactly a 'green' one as it is practiced in e.g. Bangladesh), as is vehicle scrapping, and reusing the steel most ships, trucks, pipes, etc. are made from is largely a solved problem. (From personal experience, old well-drilling pipe is worth a substantial amount of money, because it's made of high-quality steel. It will disappear if you leave it lying around.)
We need to develop similar facilities for lithium batteries, solar panels, etc. There's no reason that scrap batteries and solar panels shouldn't be an asset rather than a liability, just like scrap steel is an asset. But the facilities and supply chains need to exist.
@localzuk I guess it depends what media you watch/read, but I don't think coal tailings are a secret or anything.
The 'solution' is the time-tested "pile that shit up where only poor people live, and pay them just enough to not complain too much" disposal method. We (theoretically) don't allow that anymore, for good reason, but there's a de facto grandfather rule for anything we're doing already.
But yes, I agree that new energy sources should be compared to the status quo, not to some impossible standard of perfection.
I don't think the problem is the media discussing it, though, or that it would be improved by less discussion of the full lifecycle of new energy solutions. The problem is entrenched interests who actively oppose change and a political system that caters to them.
(Also, FWIW, the coal mining that most people think of in the US when they hear "coal mining"—underground Appalachian mines—is metallurgical coal. It's actually pretty safe for the foreseeable future.)
Welcome to the club. Nuclear energy is never compared fairly either.
Most people don't even know the fears they have about it come from outright lies.
#GreenNuclearDeal🌿⚛️⚡🤝
@tcely @localzuk Has anyone run down the ultimate source of the anti-nuclear campaign? It was a well coordinated effort. Soviet propaganda? Certain Middle Eastern countries that wanted American military support, and therefore American oil dependency? (I can think of three countries in particular that would have an incentive there, especially after 1991.) Nowadays China?
The "climate emergency" thing is definitely anti-Western propaganda. China is still expanding coal power.
@tcely I live a few miles from Hinkley Point. I have had a tour of the B station and have zero fears with it. A banana gives off more radiation than a modem nuclear station emits into the environment.
The only things we need to sort with nuclear is dealing with the waste (which realistically isn't actually that much, in comparison to other energy types like coal), and the sheer cost of building the stations.
@localzuk @whetstone but wait Mr. Bean, who has an electrical engineering degree so he must be right (!) says to hold off on electric vehicles, in the prestigious Guardian.
“Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn.”
Mr. F*cking Bean
For starters, they skip over the 30 billion tonnes of waste that is disposed of by dumping it into the atmosphere, every year.
The drilling industry uses up 19.2 million tonnes of steel per year, leaves nearly all of it in the ground. But the 120,000 uncapped oil wells on the continent are a multi-hundred-billion-dollar cleanup problem that is simply not addressed.
9000 tankers? Big deal! The Gulf of Mexico ALONE has 4000 platforms, each bigger than a tanker by far.
@prokofy Don't forget that China et al are only mining and polluting so much to feed the demand for goods for us lot in the West.
Their own economies are growing, for sure, but the consumption in the USA, UK, EU etc, far outstrip theirs.
@localzuk I can see you have a very limited understanding of Russia and China if you think all they do is mine and pollute to feed the West.
Did you know about the war in Ukraine or nah.
@prokofy I'm afraid it's you that have a limited understanding.
The West consumes far more than either Russia or China, per capita. We outsource enormous amounts of manufacturing to China, Indonesia, etc... It is a fact that considerable amount of the pollution from China is due to our consumption.
Not sure what Ukraine has got to do with a discussion about the consumption of the West and our outsourcing the production.
@localzuk I'm afraid you don't understand AT ALL the role of these countries in their own country, and the world. Nor is Western consumption the only evil of the world.
Where do I start? Russia occupies 1/6th of your Gaia's surface, ,dear.
@localzuk Do you think you can avoid the obvious ideological bias you've made visible by saying: "It is a fact that considerable amount of the pollution from China is due to our consumption.
China has a population of 1.4 billion people and is plundering other parts of Asia and Africa. The West is not at the center of the world.
You said China are "only mining and polluting so much" to feed the West. Do you think they didn't feed themselves first?
The oil industry plans on dumping a massive environmental cleanup of their obsolete infrastructure on the taxpayer.
We definitely need context in this. Waste from petroleum products are probably 1000's of times greater. We'll never hear about it because those corporate overlords are filling the pockets of media, too.
@jornane I live a few miles from Hinkley Point, and have been on a tour if the B station there before it shut down. Zero issue with nuclear, other than cost these days.
A banana is more radioactive than anything a nuclear plant is putting out into the world other than the small amount of waste.
@quirk sorry, but that's nonsense. If you're doing that, are we going to include all the cars that use petrol and diesel? All the gas hobs in kitchens? All the gas boilers?
This is about lack of context regarding media coverage of energy production.
Consumption is an entirely different matter. But yes, if you want to include all that? Electric vehicles are also greener than their fossil fuel burning ancestors.
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