https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/19-simon-michaux Simon Michaux: “Minerals Blindness” Episode 19 May 18, 2022 (Conversation Recorded on March 29, 2022.) On this episode, we meet with Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland, Simon Michaux. Why do humans ignore important mineral and material limits that will effect human futures? Michaux reveals how we are “minerals blind” — and the consequences of this myopia. To shed light on the effects of our minerals blindness, Michaux explores the disconnect between experts in renewable energy and economic and government leaders. Michaux offers individual strategies for us to overcome our energy and minerals blindness. How can we learn to adapt in order to overcome the coming challenges? About Simon Michaux Simon Michaux is an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland. He has a PhD in mining engineering. Dr. Michaux’s long-term work is on the development and transformation toward a circular economy. Show Notes & Links to Learn More 00:45 - Simon Michaux info + works 01:10 - Energy Blind 02:58 - Mintech 03:11 - Geometallurgy 08:10 - Fossil energies are finite 08:15 - Mineral resources are finite 09:30 - Volcanic reproduction of minerals 10:25 - The fourth industrial revolution 14:20 - Coking coal 15:08 - Low carbon steel 15:59 - Scalability 17:11 - It takes decades to build a grid of new plants 19:40 - 19 terawatt powered society 20:44 - In general we’re adding 1-2 nuclear power plants per year 22:19 - Nuclear cannot scale up fast enough to replace fossil fuels 22:51 - Base metals are recycled at 30-60% and technology metals don’t get recycled at all 24:09 - Circular economy 25:20 - Resource balanced economy 26:42 - Quantitative easing 29:26 - Availability of uranium and thorium 30:50 - Energy properties 32:22 - Cobb Douglas Function 32:50 - Generation IV nuclear power 35:15 - 2018 Peak Oil 38:10 - Extracting copper will become more difficult 40:28 - Renewables: Right answer to the wrong question 32:35 - Minerals in a wind turbine (2-ton neodymium magnet) 43:28 - ⅓ of current system will be electrified according to the European commission 43:43 - There’s not enough time or materials to mine and replace lithium to meet goals by 2030 46:07 - Brandenburg, Germany 100% renewable by 2030 52:03 - Manufacturing and raw material production in Russia and China 52:38 - Natural gas in Europe comes from Russia 53:50 - Liquifying and unliquifying gas loses 30% of energy properties 58:04 - Peak coal 2013 and peak gas 2019 1:03:10 - Paul Ehrlich info + TGS Episode 1:03:20 - Industrial fertilizer 1:03:40 - We’ve lost 40% of arable land since 1960 1:05:45 - Cuban response to oil embargo
I'll watch more of this at lunch, but when they start movies with imagery and suspense music like this, its almost always more about drama and less about math.
Agree, those are reasons for caution. But the science is there, imo. If you become interested more in this aspect, there is much more to find, without music, and loaded with data.
I'll always read or listen to what you post on this subject. This is a subject I have admitted before to not knowing enough about. Part of me gets annoyed when I see obvious narrative being pushed without the data, but I have to keep my own narrative in check and remain open to risk. And that's kinda what this is - risk identification and mitigation. I'm a big one for risk mitigation.
That's about right. Though in my defense, the implications of "non action" aren't as severe for my family as they are for the human race, since my impact isn't that of a government or sovereign. Were I a king or a President, I would likely be a little more inclined to action, having much better resources available as counsel.
Infinite growth on a finite planet (or island)... not gonna work. England’s housing strategy would blow entire carbon budget, says study Target of 300,000 new homes a year not sustainable, finds researchers, with negative biodiversity and climate impacts England can’t go on building new houses forever, the researchers say. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images England would use up the entirety of its 1.5C carbon budget on housing alone if the government sticks to its pledge to build 300,000 homes a year, according to a new study. The building of new homes under a business as usual scenario, coupled with current trends on making existing homes more efficient, would mean the housing system would use up 104% of the country’s cumulative carbon budget by 2050. Radically retrofitting existing houses, cutting the number of second homes, stopping people from buying houses as financial investments and making people live in smaller buildings would be more sustainable ways to address the housing crisis, the paper says. A carbon budget is the cumulative amount of emissions a country can emit over a specific period. England’s 1.5C budget means restricting total emissions to 2.5 gigatonnes of CO2 between 2022 and 2050 say the researchers, who did not look at how this compares in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but they believe it is likely to be a similar picture. “In the long run, we argue that England can’t go on building new houses forever, and needs to start thinking about better and more systematic solutions as to how we are going to house everyone within our environmental limits,” said lead researcher Dr Sophus zu Ermgassen, from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent. The paper, published in Ecological Economics, is the first to comprehensively analyse the impact of the government’s response to the housing crisis on national carbon and biodiversity goals. The researchers write: “Secure housing is a fundamental human right. However, potential conflicts between housing and sustainability objectives remain under-researched.” They looked at two existing models, one for evaluating the emissions needed to run UK houses, and the other, emissions from constructing new housing. The figures come from looking at decarbonising trends of housing between 1990 and 2019, meaning housing is set to be 50% more efficient by 2050. For England, if current trends continue, 92% of emissions will come from existing housing, and 12% from the emissions of building and running new houses, the study finds. There are about 25m dwellings in England, and the amount of emissions from existing homes is high because large parts of the housing stock are prewar, and more challenging to insulate. For example, half of homes built between 1919 and 1930 have uninsulated solid walls which account for almost half of heat loss. Thermal image of terraced houses in Guildford illustrates the energy cost of heat loss. Photograph: Jason Alden/Bloomberg/Getty Images Researchers looked at the biodiversity and climate impacts of these trends continuing as they are. “Our scenarios show how drastic the problem is and how ambitious the solutions actually have to be if we’re serious about staying within our 1.5C carbon budget,” said Ermgassen. The paper also warns that policies to protect wildlife will have to be “very effective” if housing is not to undermine the government’s big biodiversity target of halting species declines by 2030. The government has committed to implement legally binding targets to halve wildlife declines by 2030, which requires all new developments to have “biodiversity net gain”. Globally, 24% of threatened species on the IUCN red list are threatened by commercial and residential building developments. Retrofitting existing stock so all homes could be zero carbon by 2050 would save 38% of the cumulative carbon budgets for 1.5C, the researchers say, adding that this is “by far the most impactful policy for reducing housing’s conflict with climate targets”. Meeting housing needs without rapid expansion of housing stock is in theory possible, although the paper did not look at how many homes the government should be building. Using figures from the English Housing Survey, the researchers estimate that there are1.2m empty or underused homes. Dr Kate Simpson from Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, said: “This is an ambitious paper that highlights some of the big problems with the current UK housing system, our collective lack of a cohesive strategy to meet carbon budgets, and fundamental biodiversity considerations. We urgently need more joined-up thinking like this. “As my research is on housing retrofit, I agree we need to find incentives to bring empty homes back into use, protect the embodied carbon of existing homes and prioritise efforts to upgrade those to reduce energy demand while ensuring affordable housing and comfort for all.” https://www.theguardian.com/environ...&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue newsletter
While I believe the concept of Ecological Overshoot to be a real and dire problem that needs to be addressed, it would be helpful to put away the alarmists who turn more folks off to listening to the potential solutions because of things like this.