Well! Winter finally got here – a time of year during which I especially appreciate my 21st century existence. Baby, it’s cold outside (kind of), but here sit at my not-so-nice computer, with a hot cup of coffee while the flakes drift down on the other side of the glass, my tummy happily processing some smoked turkey and mashed spuds while I ponder.
What to ponder, with 16 hours of cold darkness each day? Global warming, of course! In the past several months, I’ve been hearing a new, extraordinarily stupid environmental buzz-phrase that seems to be gaining popularity: “Leave It in the Ground.”
According to the LINGO website – yep, there’s a website and acronym, kids – the “problem” is that “conventional [fossil fuel] reserves are so plentiful that we will pass critical thresholds” if those reserves get used.
LINGO has been developing ever since climate change “experts” ran the math on carbon mass in the atmosphere about 10-15 years ago and developed a “carbon budget.” Ever since, the hard-core believers have fought fang and claw (successfully, with hundreds of millions of targeted “nonprofit” dollars) to prevent new mining and uses of coal.
For a while, Greens also hyped the idea (with money from natural gas barons like T. Boone Pickens) of using natural gas as a temporary “bridge fuel” away from coal until the miraculous day when windmills and solar panels covered our “saved” planet.
Then, of course, frack happened, with all the Greens formerly making lovey-dovey with the gas barons suddenly opposing drilling for anything, especially in the four or so years since climate change acolyte Bill McKibben declared that burning known reserves of oil and coal would destroy the Earth. Therefore, the impeccable logic would be to, of course, of course, stop burning fossil fuels. Now!
Finally, in the hype leading up to the Paris agreement signed by all those jet-setting planet-savers, the warmunist cult leaders latched onto a new narrative commandment for the congregation – bingo, LINGO.
Really? Leave it in the ground?
Forget fossil fuels for just a second – let’s take the fancy-pants mobile phones cool people walk behind these days. The niftiest material is indium, which along with tin makes an oxide that is transparent and conductive. No indium, no touchscreen, no appy-tappy, no Paris updates.
Extracted mostly from zinc ores, indium was first discovered in 1863, first found useful in the mid-1920s, with things getting really interesting and important in electronics and nuclear engineering starting in the 1950s. But since 2000, indium production has tripled – against estimates that only 14 years of reserves remain.
Then there’s gold, silver, platinum, tungsten, copper – boring stuff, and rare earths like neodymium that go into the speakers and tiny motors. Oh, and plastic, refined from oil. Ick. So, let’s just leave all that in the ground – or more likely, China, which digs up 97 percent of the world’s rare earths and about 400 tons of the world’s 650 tons of indium production. America has rare earths, but the biggest known American reserve (in California) has been hung up on environmental permitting for at least a decade.
Ironically, rare earths are a hugely critical mineral for both solar and wind energy production, without which both would be hugely inefficient at converting sun and wind into useful energy – so much for “conservation,” right?
What if we left less-sexy stuff in the ground? Gravel! No concrete, no asphalt, no sand for glass. No dams blocking rivers and fish, no turbines generating juice for our computers and cell phones. No footings for wind generators, either!
Let’s leave iron in the ground! No skyscrapers or bridges or automobiles. No light-rail trolleys, not even Chinese-style black iron bicycles! Walk on bare feet – rubber comes from fossil fuel!
Heck, let’s leave stuff on the ground, too! No more cutting trees! No books, newspapers, not even the paper to print copies of climate change treaties. And so on….
I suppose plenty of climate changeists will be resolving to “Leave it in the Ground” for New Year 2016 – but I won’t. I resolve to dig modern life – Happy New Year!