Author Topic: the dark side of cobalt  (Read 15689 times)

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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #125 on: July 15, 2023, 05:24:07 am »
The problem is high pressure events like that tend to stick around, so now what happens to crop yield when you have sustained 45C temperatures in a place that would normally see 35C?

Well, it's interesting to note that global crop yields have been increasing even as the global climate has been warming. I fail to observe any inverse correlation between the two.

I checked, and this seems true. As the average temperature has already quite significantly increased, if it was true that further increase would quickly start hurting crop yields, some sort of signal should be already visible, but it's clearly not. There can be local consequences, but somewhere else the conditions will get better. One of the problem in climate discussion is that only negatives are discussed, while positives are being ignored; but many changes are actually net neutral; human is good at adapting. The relatively high speed of the changes is challenging, though.

Still, burning fossil fuels when better alternatives are available is extremely stupid, and playing around with the climate is a colossally bad idea exactly because of the we don't know for sure factor.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 05:29:41 am by Siwastaja »
 

Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #126 on: July 15, 2023, 08:23:35 am »
Fertiliser technology, greater agronomist understanding and automation in agriculture (one farmer can do so much more) surely also has a significant impact on crop yields.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #127 on: July 15, 2023, 10:15:58 am »
Fertiliser technology, greater agronomist understanding and automation in agriculture (one farmer can do so much more) surely also has a significant impact on crop yields.
Very true. Most of the agricultural land is not used to the maximum yield that can be obtained due to inefficient / archaic farming.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 10:22:18 am by nctnico »
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Offline Zero999

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #128 on: July 15, 2023, 11:29:15 am »
Fertiliser technology, greater agronomist understanding and automation in agriculture (one farmer can do so much more) surely also has a significant impact on crop yields.
Very true. Most of the agricultural land is not used to the maximum yield that can be obtained due to inefficient / archaic farming.
If the climate warms further, it will increase the amount of land which can be farmed, rather than reduce it. The panic about famines is unfounded. Higher temperatures means land which is too cold can be turned over to agriculture and a longer growing season, will enable a greater range of crops and more food to be grown within a year. Higher global temperatures result in increased global precipitation, so deserts will on average shrink, increasing the arable land further.

Of course we should be careful about how our actions affect the environment, but we need to avoid policies which will over-react and adversely affect economic growth. The health of the general population is linked to economic wealth. Richer countries have longer life expectancies and the death rate always increases after an economic downturn.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #129 on: July 15, 2023, 11:47:10 am »
Fertiliser technology, greater agronomist understanding and automation in agriculture (one farmer can do so much more) surely also has a significant impact on crop yields.
Very true. Most of the agricultural land is not used to the maximum yield that can be obtained due to inefficient / archaic farming.
If the climate warms further, it will increase the amount of land which can be farmed, rather than reduce it. The panic about famines is unfounded. Higher temperatures means land which is too cold can be turned over to agriculture and a longer growing season,
No. And the simple reason is that land needs to be prepared before it can be farmed. You'll need roads, drainage canals, removing debris / vegetation. And some land (like tundras) might not be suitable at all because it basically is a swamp when unfrozen. It is much more economic to try and keep farm land than making new. In the NL there are numerous land reclamation projects which took place over the last few centuries and for those projects it took decades before the land was actually useable.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 12:00:19 pm by nctnico »
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Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #130 on: July 15, 2023, 12:04:36 pm »
If the climate warms further, it will increase the amount of land which can be farmed, rather than reduce it. The panic about famines is unfounded. Higher temperatures means land which is too cold can be turned over to agriculture and a longer growing season, will enable a greater range of crops and more food to be grown within a year. Higher global temperatures result in increased global precipitation, so deserts will on average shrink, increasing the arable land further.

There's no shortage of agricultural land though, so I don't view this as a positive outcome even if it were true.  The problem with global hunger is one of infrastructure rather than farming.  If the rest of the world's agricultural land was as productive as the West is with its, we'd easily be able to support a 10bn+ population with no one in hunger.  Even more so if you reduced food waste, the average person wastes a ridiculous amount.  But if you can't get food to the deepest parts of, say, Somalia, because of war and conflict, people are going to starve regardless.

Of course we should be careful about how our actions affect the environment, but we need to avoid policies which will over-react and adversely affect economic growth. The health of the general population is linked to economic wealth. Richer countries have longer life expectancies and the death rate always increases after an economic downturn.

Agreed, in general.  The biggest issue with the climate change activists is they intersect very strongly with the anti-capitalists.  There is a way to solve the problems of climate change and maintain our way of life, but it requires action now and not later.  That is hard, but not impossible, to do with capitalism still in place.  The idea that replacing capitalism with anything else would solve our problems is absolutely bonkers - especially given it essentially means that everyone agrees to significantly reduce their standard of living.  Not happening in any democracy.

It's one of the reasons I'm constantly frustrated by statistics like "Apple pollutes X% of global emissions" ... without anyone apparently acknowledging that they, the consumer, bought a thing and caused that pollution.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 12:06:55 pm by tom66 »
 

Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #131 on: July 15, 2023, 12:13:02 pm »
Curbing emissions is simply something interesting to do while the wall of peak everything and demographics looms. Emissions are at least a tractable problem and the renewable solutions technologically much more interesting to me than the nuclear one.

Either way, only AI can save us now. Singularity or bust.
 

Offline AVGresponding

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #132 on: July 15, 2023, 12:13:09 pm »
Fertiliser technology, greater agronomist understanding and automation in agriculture (one farmer can do so much more) surely also has a significant impact on crop yields.
Very true. Most of the agricultural land is not used to the maximum yield that can be obtained due to inefficient / archaic farming.
If the climate warms further, it will increase the amount of land which can be farmed, rather than reduce it. The panic about famines is unfounded. Higher temperatures means land which is too cold can be turned over to agriculture and a longer growing season, will enable a greater range of crops and more food to be grown within a year. Higher global temperatures result in increased global precipitation, so deserts will on average shrink, increasing the arable land further.

Of course we should be careful about how our actions affect the environment, but we need to avoid policies which will over-react and adversely affect economic growth. The health of the general population is linked to economic wealth. Richer countries have longer life expectancies and the death rate always increases after an economic downturn.

An increase in global precipitation is irrelevant, if it doesn't happen where and when you want it to, and it won't.
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Online vad

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #133 on: July 15, 2023, 12:32:20 pm »
Still, burning fossil fuels when better alternatives are available is extremely stupid, and playing around with the climate is a colossally bad idea exactly because of the we don't know for sure factor.
I beg your pardon, what better alternatives can replace fossil fuels now and in the foreseeable future?

The world's total energy production was 617 EJ in 2019, increasing at a 2% annual rate. Fossil fuels accounted for more than 81% of production in 2019, as in previous years (source: IEA, https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-balances-overview/world).

All hydro, nuclear, biofuels, wind, solar, and geothermal combined amounted to less than 19% combined, and the 80/20 ratio has been stagnating for years.

P.S. Please note that this is total energy production, including liquid fuels for transport, and not just electric generation.
 

Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #134 on: July 15, 2023, 01:06:58 pm »
When there is a gun to your head, better is not getting shot.
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #135 on: July 15, 2023, 01:28:19 pm »
I beg your pardon, what better alternatives can replace fossil fuels now and in the foreseeable future?
How about just using less for a start? One example would be to require all new cars to get at least 35 MPG highway, a level that was easily achievable over a decade ago.
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Offline PlainName

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #136 on: July 15, 2023, 01:32:22 pm »
Quote
require all new cars to get at least 35 MPG highway

Without cheating  8)
 

Online vad

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #137 on: July 15, 2023, 01:34:48 pm »
When there is a gun to your head, better is not getting shot.
Putting aside the discussion of whether there is a real gun or if it is all a delusion…

Let's say you decide to reduce energy consumption by a factor of 5, to get rid of dependency on fossil fuel energy sources. This would involve constructing houses that require 5 times fewer materials for building and 5 times less energy for maintenance and heating and cooling, using vehicles that require 5 times less energy for manufacturing, driving and recycling (such as electric scooters instead of fancy family EVs), consuming 5 times less food, and overall reducing consumption by 5 times in every category.

How would you force your neighbors to switch to a 500-calorie-per-day diet and living in dens? I understand that regulations, policies, and imprisonment in socialist labor camps could be a potential approach. Fair enough.

But how would you ensure that China and Russia also follow this trend? Start a war? Remember, that you also cut your military by the factor of 5.

I am just curious.
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #138 on: July 15, 2023, 02:07:34 pm »
consuming 5 times less food
Or produce 5 times as much food for the resources used. Turns out that's as simple as getting rid of factory farming and replacing it with sustainable farming, which also would cut down on deforestation. There's also a lot of health problems with factory farming, so a good reason to rapidly phase it out.
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Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #139 on: July 15, 2023, 02:38:17 pm »
Putting aside the discussion of whether there is a real gun or if it is all a delusion…

Not really the gun I was talking about, I meant the real guns from government. Especially in the EU treaties have a habit of leading a life of their own.
Quote
Let's say you decide to reduce energy consumption by a factor of 5
Energy inputs are nowhere near a large enough input for western consumption to drive down consumption linearly with energy costs. Building up renewables and renewable fuel infrastructure is very expensive, but we are very very rich and very very productive. It's just a question of mobilisation.

By the time the west has pulled the cart and mass production has started and R&D cost has been paid, it will be a lot cheaper for the rest of the world. No strings attached globalisation is dead, they will transition away from fossil fuel because it's cheaper than being isolated from the west.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 02:41:40 pm by Marco »
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #140 on: July 15, 2023, 02:44:25 pm »
I beg your pardon, what better alternatives can replace fossil fuels now and in the foreseeable future?

Heatpumps for heating, electric vehicles for transportation, wind and PV power, energy storage in flexible load management (e.g. heating loads), thermal storage, and to some extent, yes hydrogen too (but not in personal vehicles). All of this has already happened to the extent it's significant, and is already proven practical and possible. Note, there is nothing wrong in keeping using fossil fuels in supportive role, for example during dunkelflaute weeks. Significant reduction is all that's needed, both for climate and political stability of fossil fuels. Also price; now fossils can be used as an extortion mechanism.

Current situation is much better than people seem to assume, to the point of me being positive about it by simple extrapolation, even if assuming decrease in rate of change. We don't need to hope for exponential growth anymore, we are way beyond that point.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 02:46:18 pm by Siwastaja »
 
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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #141 on: July 15, 2023, 02:55:30 pm »
Let's say you decide to reduce energy consumption by a factor of 5, to get rid of dependency on fossil fuel energy sources. This would involve constructing houses that require 5 times fewer materials for building

This sort of "cheese grate" approach where you grate off some fixed % from everything is absolutely stupid because you end up making sacrifices that are large, but do not produce significant gains.

For example, over the lifecycle of a house, energy spent burning fossil fuels to heat the house greatly outweighs the construction materials, so better insulate the house better to begin with. Or, a simple heating system change from fossil fuels to heatpump reduces energy use not by factor of five but pretty close, because a heatpump itself is a stored solar energy harvester.

Also we don't need such factor of 5 in reduction of energy consumption. We are quickly approaching a situation where half of our energy need is already supplied by renewables directly. Cut usage in half which happens with modest adoption of EVs and heatpumps (not every car / estate has to convert), and fossil use is down to one quarter, by simple math. Reality is much more complex of course but this is the ballpark and this is something which is happening within next 15-20 years or so.
 
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Offline Zero999

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #142 on: July 15, 2023, 03:05:49 pm »
If you do the maths on the infrastructure required for EVs you will see that if every passenger car switched overnight we'd need approx 15-20% more electricity to be generated.  That isn't nothing, but it's also not ridiculous to expect the grid to grow by such a size by 2040 or so by which time the vast majority of cars will be electric.
Considerable investment in power distribution is required. The grid in many areas is struggling to cope with existing peak demand as it is. It would fall over way before everyone got an EV and a heat pump.

Fertiliser technology, greater agronomist understanding and automation in agriculture (one farmer can do so much more) surely also has a significant impact on crop yields.
Very true. Most of the agricultural land is not used to the maximum yield that can be obtained due to inefficient / archaic farming.
If the climate warms further, it will increase the amount of land which can be farmed, rather than reduce it. The panic about famines is unfounded. Higher temperatures means land which is too cold can be turned over to agriculture and a longer growing season,
No. And the simple reason is that land needs to be prepared before it can be farmed. You'll need roads, drainage canals, removing debris / vegetation. And some land (like tundras) might not be suitable at all because it basically is a swamp when unfrozen. It is much more economic to try and keep farm land than making new. In the NL there are numerous land reclamation projects which took place over the last few centuries and for those projects it took decades before the land was actually useable.
The warming is taking decades, if not centuries, which gives plenty of time to adjust our land usage. It's not going to all happen overnight.

If the climate warms further, it will increase the amount of land which can be farmed, rather than reduce it. The panic about famines is unfounded. Higher temperatures means land which is too cold can be turned over to agriculture and a longer growing season, will enable a greater range of crops and more food to be grown within a year. Higher global temperatures result in increased global precipitation, so deserts will on average shrink, increasing the arable land further.

There's no shortage of agricultural land though, so I don't view this as a positive outcome even if it were true.  The problem with global hunger is one of infrastructure rather than farming.  If the rest of the world's agricultural land was as productive as the West is with its, we'd easily be able to support a 10bn+ population with no one in hunger.  Even more so if you reduced food waste, the average person wastes a ridiculous amount.  But if you can't get food to the deepest parts of, say, Somalia, because of war and conflict, people are going to starve regardless.

Of course we should be careful about how our actions affect the environment, but we need to avoid policies which will over-react and adversely affect economic growth. The health of the general population is linked to economic wealth. Richer countries have longer life expectancies and the death rate always increases after an economic downturn.

Agreed, in general.  The biggest issue with the climate change activists is they intersect very strongly with the anti-capitalists.  There is a way to solve the problems of climate change and maintain our way of life, but it requires action now and not later.  That is hard, but not impossible, to do with capitalism still in place.  The idea that replacing capitalism with anything else would solve our problems is absolutely bonkers - especially given it essentially means that everyone agrees to significantly reduce their standard of living.  Not happening in any democracy.

It's one of the reasons I'm constantly frustrated by statistics like "Apple pollutes X% of global emissions" ... without anyone apparently acknowledging that they, the consumer, bought a thing and caused that pollution.
I think you've hit the nail on the head, when you talk about anti-capitalists pushing this. It's probably one of the main reasons why so many of those on the Right are suspicious of climate change. The likes of Greta and co. are just harming their cause, by attracting more of a right-wing backlash.

My may concern with government policies such as banning ICE vehicles is they will affect the poor most, completely antithetical to the Left's supposed goals. I would support boosting energy dependence, starting with fossil fuels, because it's relatively quick, then nuclear, which takes along time to come to fruition, as well as renewables. If electricity can be made cheap and clean, most people will adopt EVs and heat pumps in good time.
 

Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #143 on: July 15, 2023, 03:20:35 pm »
If regulations don't force the transition nothing will happen. Some new very low extraction cost sourced can still be discovered, so from pure economics you will never get to net zero without force.

You could play pretend and say "well they can always do air capture" except that will never work economically, so then you're stuck with all these factories too big to fail.

PS. ICEs are not banned in the EU, they just will require detection circuitry for renewable fuels. A pyrrhic victory for ICEs, they will not be economical, just toys for the rich.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 03:24:26 pm by Marco »
 

Offline Zero999

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #144 on: July 15, 2023, 03:25:05 pm »
If regulations don't force the transition nothing will happen. Some new very low extraction cost sourced can still be discovered, so from pure economics you will never get to net zero without force.
That's exactly why net zero is a bad idea. Most people will not vote for it. The only way to get it is authoritarianism. It's pointless anyway, since the countries aiming for it only produce a relatively small proportion of global emissions.
PS. ICEs are not banned in the EU, they just will require detection circuitry for renewable fuels. A pyrrhic victory for ICEs, they will not be economical, just toys for the rich.
Running ICE vehicles off renewable fuels is not a sensible approach. Biofuels are less efficiency compared to solar cells and making synthetic fuel from electricity is very inefficient. I don't know what the EU policy is, but the UK want to ban new ICE cars by the end of the decade.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 03:28:19 pm by Zero999 »
 

Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #145 on: July 15, 2023, 03:48:21 pm »
If the US, EU and Japan force the issue and say "net zero emissions or zero trade" the world follows.
 

Offline Infraviolet

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #146 on: July 15, 2023, 04:46:56 pm »
" so from pure economics you will never get to net zero without force."
Firstly, we don't need to reach net zero, just to eventually get emissions down to a level which doesn't add much on top of naturally occuring emission levels (volcanoes and such).

Secondly, fossil fuels are in limited supply, all the low hanging fruit has already been extracted, prices can only rise over time. A truly effective replacement with properly adequate performance will win out in a free market, eventually.

We can solve all the environmental issues without resorting to tyranny, but there are too many would-be-tyrants and tyranny-sympathisers who are desperate to get a chance to enact tyranny regardless of whether it would help the climate. The solution to the climate is in engineering, not societal change and force, the solution to authoritarian "green" policies is mass public non-compliance.
 
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Offline Zero999

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #147 on: July 15, 2023, 05:19:21 pm »
If the US, EU and Japan force the issue and say "net zero emissions or zero trade" the world follows.
They won't. The US will elect a president who won't allow it and EU citizens are already increasingly voting for Euroskeptic parties. I don't know about Japan, but I doubt it would happen there either. They've got too much common sense. I generally look to Japan as an example of competent governance.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2023, 08:56:26 am by Zero999 »
 

Online Marco

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #148 on: July 15, 2023, 05:25:42 pm »
We can solve all the environmental issues without resorting to tyranny

We have a time horizon of less than a decade, transition will never make sense to most of us (certainly not nuclear, which only ever got created because our tyrants wanted nukes).
 

Online vad

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #149 on: July 15, 2023, 05:34:28 pm »
Let's say you decide to reduce energy consumption by a factor of 5, to get rid of dependency on fossil fuel energy sources. This would involve constructing houses that require 5 times fewer materials for building

This sort of "cheese grate" approach where you grate off some fixed % from everything is absolutely stupid because you end up making sacrifices that are large, but do not produce significant gains.

For example, over the lifecycle of a house, energy spent burning fossil fuels to heat the house greatly outweighs the construction materials, so better insulate the house better to begin with. Or, a simple heating system change from fossil fuels to heatpump reduces energy use not by factor of five but pretty close, because a heatpump itself is a stored solar energy harvester.

Well, a hypothetical flat 5 times reduction was a first-order approximation. We are not going to discuss a detailed 1,000-page energy reduction budget in this forum, are we? However, I agree that some categories would require milder reductions in energy consumption. Perhaps cutting military energy expenses by more than half would increase the risk of imminent colonization by Russia to a level greater than the risk of Earth turning into Venus in the next 100,000 years. Reducing food consumption to 500 kilocalories per adult per day is also too aggressive. Therefore, energy budget for other categories would have to be reduced by a factor of 10, 20, or even 100, to stick to the 5 times overall reduction. In such a scenario, there might not be any energy budget left to produce heat pumps, and heating tiny dens with renewable sources such as tree logs through campfires would be the only option.


Also we don't need such factor of 5 in reduction of energy consumption. We are quickly approaching a situation where half of our energy need is already supplied by renewables directly.
Oh, I apologize. You must be better informed than the IEA, who states, and I quote: ”Fossil fuels accounted for more than 81% of production in 2019, as in previous years.” Or perhaps you were referring to electricity generation specifically, rather than total energy production?
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 05:39:19 pm by vad »
 


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