Dispatch from the Lithium Mining War on the West - McDermitt Creek, Thacker Pass and Beyond
In general, whenever the well known and frequently observed failure of solar and wind energy to be available during periods of high demand, advocates of this failed strategy start to talk about energy storage, even though solar and wind rarely, if ever, produce surplus energy worthy of industrial facilities to back them up.
This doesn't stop people from carrying on about this nonsensical daydream that wastes money, energy, and time to address climate change. I calculated not so long ago, using something called "data" what the demand for cobalt would have been to cover that coal burning hellhole Germany in the month long wind and sun drought last November through December:
The Number of Tesla Powerwalls Required That Would Address the Current German Dunkleflaute Event.
The low energy to mass ratio of solar and wind energy is made even worse - even ignoring the Second Law of Thermodynamics as apologists for this ersatz "strategy" do - by adding redundant energy storage systems, which in any case, don't actually exist on any meaningful scale, despites decades of cheering.
The most serious impediment for batteries is of course, cobalt, currently mined my modern day slaves, but lithium is another issue that drives the mass intensive demands of so called "renewable energy," that renders this scheme unsustainable.
There is some push back from people who still consider people who wish to save wilderness, a class I consider to be "environmentalists" of the kind I endorse, John Muir kind of environmentalists. (I'm sure the modern day Sierra Club would disgust him.)
From Counterpunch:
Dispatch from the Lithium Mining War on the West – McDermitt Creek, Thacker Pass and Beyond
Excerpts:
This is a map of the ghastly 2023 Jindalee exploration plan to punch in 267 new drill hole and sump sites and construct 30 miles of new roads. It would fragment an area with a very high density of nesting sagebrush songbirds of all kinds. Birds like Sagebrush Sparrow require continuous blocks of dense mature or old growth big sagebrush. Jindalee boasts its consultant environmental and cultural studies have found “no show-stoppers” and “no red flags”. Industry gets the results it wants when it pays for mine consultant work. Federal and state agencies, after a bit of pro forma sniping, acquiesce to what the mine comes up with.
No red flags? Does the company really expect us to believe they or their consultants aren’t aware of the plight of Sage-grouse, and the importance of the stronghold habitat they would wipe out? The 2015 BLM Sage-grouse plan found the entire McDermitt Creek area and nearly all caldera lands were essential for the bird’s survival. BLM determined that a federal mineral withdrawal was necessary to protect this Focal habitat and to ensure Sage-grouse species survival. The withdrawal never happened, stopped first by mining and cattle industry litigation. BLM then began a stand-alone NEPA analysis for the withdrawal...
There are people here who think we need mountains of batteries the size of Mount Everest to put a bandaid on the failed solar and wind industry.
We don't need any such mountains.
We need reliable, clean energy, of which there is one, and only one type, nuclear energy.
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