Monday 31 January 2011

How Green is Green?

Underdogs bite Upwards has a blog about the neodymium used in magnetic devices such as generators, including wind turbines. 

The highly un-green background to what the eco-loons proffer as green technologies is something they like to sweep under that carpet and hope you won't find out. I've already pointed out the vast industrial processes that go into converting mined Lithium into a rechargeable battery. As battery powered cars take off, so will the demand for Lithium and huge swathes of the world will be blighted as Lithium is extracted. Not very eco-friendly.

Neodymium is also used in.... you guessed it, electric motors; the same electric motors that power battery powered cars.

You see, there's always a downside to any technology, but the eco-nutters still want to force us to get our electricity from vast, useless windmills that consume huge amounts of neodymium, want us to drive lots of cars that use both neodymium and lithium in large quantities and both require vast amounts of energy to refine all of the stuff that goes into them like steel. Energy that would be saved by making existing technology a little bit more efficient and cleaner. Not to mention all the other "rare earth" minerals that are used to produce modern-day sensors and other devices and materials.

But no, we have to completely change our lives around, because the great quasi-religion that has sprung up around CO2 has deemed our current lives unfit. We must not be allowed to continue with existing technology, we must consign our old technology to the scrapheap and renew, we must consume all that is deemed to be worthy.

Hardly eco-friendly.