Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.You never hear environmentalists talking about this, do you? I wonder why? Canada is an easy target. We are a democracy, so you can say anything you want without fear of being locked up in jail for years without a trail, or hung. Basically, environmentalists are chickens. They are also stupid. Ouch, am I being too harsh?
Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.
The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.
Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.
They want us to change to light bulbs that contain mercury, this is somehow more environmentally friendly than our regular light bulbs. They want us to convert from coal/gas/nuclear powered energy to wind turbines that are environmentally ruining our habitat. They turn their noses up at nuclear energy because it's too clean, too efficient, and creates waste, that can now be re-used. It just doesn't fit their hippy anti-corporate lifestyle.
They want our standard of living reduced because we have it too good compared to those people in third world countries. We should be ashamed of our good fortune. Never mind that our ancestors toiled long and hard to get us to where we are today, we should feel guilty because we are not groveling in the dirt, living a life of pain and hunger. Not that they would volunteer to forgo their ipods and go to Africa to help those people. They are too busy scamming people into believing that "global warming" exists and they need to be funded to research it, to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars. We are not buying it. The science is NOT settled. Organizations like the Suzuki Foundation should not be considered charities, they are not.
Let's go along with their world view for just a minute. The oil sands should be shut down, everyone should ride their bikes to work, and you can only eat whatever can be produced within 100 miles of where you live. Are they kidding me? Seriously? They want us to be living a substandard lifestyle, while they fly off to Bali for the latest Eco-conference. Talk about hypocrites, but they don't see it. They are so brainwashed by Gore/Suzuki and various teachers/professors that they actually believe they are crusaders for a new world. Dumb a$$es.
How are those wind turbines working out? Try this one:
Wind farms in Pacific Northwest paid to not produce
Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest -- built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced -- are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the region's electricity grid says there's an oversupply of renewable power at certain times of the year.
The problem arose during the late spring and early summer last year. Rapid snow melt filled the Columbia River Basin. The water rushed through the 31 dams run by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency based in Portland, Ore., allowing for peak hydropower generation. At the very same time, the wind howled, leading to maximum wind power production.
Demand could not keep up with supply, so BPA shut down the wind farms for nearly 200 hours over 38 days.
"It's the one system in the world where in real time, moment to moment, you have to produce as much energy as is being consumed," BPA spokesman Doug Johnson said of the renewable energy.
Now, Bonneville is offering to compensate wind companies for half their lost revenue. The bill could reach up to $50 million a year.
The extra payout means energy users will eventually have to pay more.
7 comments:
A look at proposed IWT development for Ont, shows a forest of ugly turbines from Bruce Co, all along lake shores to Amherst Island, conveniently skipping Toronto-Hamilton.These plants are only viable because of lucrative subsidies paid by the McGuinty government. Ont has a surplus of electricity, much of the wind generated product ends up dumped to US at a loss. Ontarians end up subsidizing US customers. Quite a way to run a business.
Your usual view is that environmentalists should live in grass huts and not use fossil fuels if they protest them.
Therefore, if you are protesting neodymium tailings, you should stop using cell phones and computer hard drives, both of which use neodymium.
Boycotting the Chinese suppliers of neodymium who don't even follow China's low environmental standards would help. I'd like to think that a Canadian supplier would not have such massive tailing ponds for their waste.
We could stop using dirty neodymium and use less dirty sources. Kind of like using less dirty oil to create economic incentive to improve their processes...
LS. His point isn't that he is protesting neodymium tailings. His point is that you (I mean 'you' in the kindest and most general way) are NOT protesting neodymium tailings. Just like you are NOT protesting the slaughter of golden eagles in California or the slaughter of other protected birds at the ever multiplying wind 'farms' at Wolfe Island. These FACTS are just another type of "Inconvenient Truths"....
The ability of 'your group' to "filter" away factual information is absolutely awe-inspiring.
LS... I don't know if a boycott is even feasible these days given the shortage of supply of these metals. BUT it sure would be good if Canada's governments (including Ontario) invested billions in developing these resources instead of spending billions on Korean companies to build wind turbines we don't even need.
Great post, hunter! The green energy freaks' hypocrisy knows no bounds.
It's an old canard, "if you protest A, but not B, then you're a hypocrite and your concerns about A can then be discounted and ridiculed." It's a suppression tactic, not unlike robocalling, to demand those opposing you to jump through various hoops and waste their time on said hoops and other distractions leaving you to continue on your merry way.
Not going to happen. It may work on kids to demand they clean their rooms when they are asking what's for supper, and it's a valid tactic for such situations. But we have a climate that is changing, and other than the heartlanders, even conservatives are remembering the "conserve" part of conservatism. Many conservatives agree that there is a problem, and that we will have to either live in grass huts or find cleaner ways to power our modern world. One can work with such people since the political argument is what to do about rather than being tied up in arguing about whether there is a problem at all.
There is a third way, but it will involve maintaining our current trajectory which can be done for much longer if a few billion people are eliminated which will reduce emissions and slow the change. The far right love to claim this is what anyone left of them actually wants, when those left of them are not busy standing with child pornographers. When in fact a massive population reduction is the likely consequence of maintaining the status quo, not the prerequisite.
Thank you for agreeing we should spend billions developing our own rare earth resources. But these billions can't come from not "spending billions on Korean companies to build wind turbines we don't even need". That money doesn't exist. Perhaps you're thinking of some other deal I don't know about, if so let me know. But if it is the Samsung deal, at the moment there has been ZERO dollars spent by the government. Samsung will get $5.5M a year for 20 years from hydro rates. Since none of their projects have yet been built, they have received $0. They will start to get some money after they have invested $7 BILLION in Ontario. The billions are coming from Samsung, not the government. Now some of that will end up in taxes to the government, those dollars should go to developing our own rare earth resources.
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