Do the Sums Add Up to Net-Zero?
Are Policies Based on Anti-Knowledge Driving Us off a Cliff?
This is a little off-topic for me, and on a subject area I wouldn’t normally venture into, but I felt it was important to help highlight this potential fundamental problem in the thinking of our policy makers. Once I had seen the presentation, I can not unsee it, and it continues to bother and disturb me.
I have a concept I call “anti-knowledge”, which I basically define as "when a theory doesn't match, explain or predict the real world observations, the real life world is taken as being wrong, and the theory is upheld!", or “operating on data/ideas/models which are diametrically opposed to the truth”. I saw anti-knowledge rife across scientific disciplines, and industries, during my time as a University academic, when I first started using the term. I am now seeing it rife in our society at large, driven by the increasingly siloed nature of ultra-specialized “technical experts”.
I inadvertently came across another stark example of anti-knowledge in action, via the report and presentation by Prof. Simon Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland. He simply added up all the minerals and metals which will be needed to replace all fossil fuel plants with renewable energy, wind turbines and solar panels, and replace the vehicle pool with electric cars. It seems that none of the technocrats planning the laudable goal of phasing out fossil fuels thought to do these basic sums [and so, it turns out, have been operating on anti-knowledge].
Michaux's findings are stark, and a little frightening, but point to the dream of net zero/green revolution in its current form being highly unrealistic - impossible, in fact.
According to his sums, for the first generation of renewable energy infrastructure, we would need 4.5 trillion tonnes of copper, which at todays rate of extraction, would take 190 years to mine from out of the ground. Of course, we could vastly increase our copper mining activities, at the expense of burning much more fossil fuels and significantly increasing mining pollution, but even if we did that, the known reserves of all the copper in the world amount to 800 billion tonnes, i.e. 20% of the total needed. Even then, this first generation of renewable infrastructure would need replacing in 20 years.
Michaux goes on to do the same sums for all the other metals and minerals needed, e.g. Nickel: 940 billion tonnes, which would take 400 years at current mining rates, and the world only contains 10% of this amount, or Lithium: 944 billions tonnes, which would take 10,000 years to mine, and the world only contains 2% of this amount.
As far as I know, no-one has been able to dispute Michaux's figures, and he would need to be many orders of magnitude wrong for the renewables solution to become workable (if anyone does know of alternative analysis, I would certainly like the reassurance that things aren't as bad as Michaux's report indicates).
What was very clear from his presentation is that our glorious technocratic leaders are operating on anti-knowledge, and had never even thought to do the back-of-the-envelope sums in the first place, let alone done them. I am afraid they are likely to drive us off a cliff in their steadfast pursuit of a solution which appears to be a pipe dream, based on wishful and magical thinking. I'm not sure what I find most frightening here: that they already know these numbers full well, and are going to drive of us off the cliff anyway, or they don't know and don’t understand the implications of these numbers, because they are totally incompetent.
After this interlude, we now return to normal programming. The animation below shows examples of my more standard fare.
Is it even meant to make sense? Or is the environment/climate used as an excuse to bring in the 'New Normal' that they talk about which gives them more control and covers up the fact that their financial system is bust and they can't pay out people's pensions.
Great article, as Jonathan Haidt proposes, a situation like this arises because in government and our institutions to a certain degree internal disagreement ceases, either because its people have become ideologically uniform or because they have become afraid to dissent. When going against any climate change policy became seen as climate change denialism or wrong, participants in our key institutions began self-censoring to an unhealthy degree, holding back critiques of policies and ideas, even those they believed to be ill-supported or wrong.
The most pervasive obstacle to good thinking is confirmation bias, which refers to the human tendency to search only for evidence that confirms our preferred beliefs.
The most reliable cure for confirmation bias is interaction with people who don’t share your beliefs. They confront you with counterevidence and counterargument. John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that,” and he urged us to seek out conflicting views “from persons who actually believe them.” People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain. People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider, almost as if they are shooting darts into their own brain.