Globaloney’s Copper Conundrum [Reader Post]

At WUWT recently, a peer-reviewed study has confirmed that world surface temperatures have not risen at all since 1998

Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008.

As most are aware by this time, global warming is really nothing more than a green scheme, i.e. green as in dead presidents. To wit: worth somewhere around $1 million when he left the Senate, Al Gore is now worth upwards of $100 million, courtesy of global warming hysteria.

“Green been berry berry good to me!”

Over at The Daily Caller Joseph Moser observes the copper caper:

Recently, the EPA declared a new corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard of 34.1 mpg by 2016. Going a step further, the NRDC is demanding Obama administration officials set even stronger global warming pollution and fuel-efficiency standards to ensure cars and trucks average at least 60 mpg by 2025. The hope is that higher standards and government “incentives” will encourage automakers to produce more fuel-efficient hybrid and electric cars.

One problem: the more electric a vehicle is, the more copper it contains.

Each hybrid contains about 100 pounds of copper — most of that is in the electrical cables and the electric motor. A conventional car only contains about 50 pounds of copper.

Other “green” technologies also contain lots of copper. A five-megawatt wind turbine is made of nearly five tons of copper and solar panels are up to 60 percent copper. Blocking future mine construction effectively jeopardizes the very technology greens want to power their vision of a “clean-energy future.”

And Kevin at Wizbang see the copper conundrum:

Turns out there’s a major discovery of said copper (and gold) near Bristol Bay, Alaska, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, that if unearthed, would produce over 80 billion tons of copper. Even though it’s still in the planning stages, the Pebble Mine appears to hold some of the largest natural reserves of copper and gold in the world.

Environmental groups are fiercely opposing the proposed mine. As noted at Resourceful Earth, environmentalists want to massively scale up development of electric vehicles, solar panels, windmills, etc but don’t want to approve of projects that will extract these minerals need to build these new green products from the earth. They’d much rather that the messy business of producing “green” be done overseas…

Which also means more jobs overseas. Thank you, greenies.

Just to show you that events tend to repeat themselves- copper has been valuable in the past.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pWBJiW0Xpo[/youtube]

DrJohn

DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 40 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 45 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter who is in the field of education.

DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Except for liberals being foolish.