Net... curtains!

[Workingman]

All those (old) electric vehicles with duff batteries that were going to be sold off (for a premium? ) in 2029 are going to have to go somewhere.

Landfill?

[Suff]

Actually the current EV sales are only marginally influenced by Net Zero 2050. Yes it would have made a really big change come 2025 to 2030, but not now.

So people are buying electric cars because they want what the EV offers and not because the government had a 2030 target.

That will become apparent as the decade rolls on.

Now as for those EV's with all those batteries which are going to be going duff? Let's do a small calculation.

LfP battery, 4,000 full cycles from 100 to 0 and back to 100. Yes LfP have about twice the cycles that NCA or NMC have.
Assume 55kw/h and 200 miles range.
That's 800,000 miles before degradation beyond 25% kicks in.

The average person in the UK does 19 miles per day. That's 115 years before their battery ONLY gives them 150 miles range. So those duff batteries will need to go somewhere, in 2145!

This is not conjecture, the NCA and NMC batteries have been tracked over millions of miles and hundreds of charges. This is already proven that these vehicles can do 300,000 miles with less than 20% degradation. LfP doubles this. In fact it is the copper wound motors with neodymium magnets which will need to be replaced long before the battery. Transmissions are already being designed for 1m miles. Unless you buy a VW, which spins at 16,000rpm at 100mph. Recipe for disaster.

Sunak may think this is a vote winner. What it does mean is everyone will hate him. The industries which bet on the 2030 timeline, the people who bought EV to be with the changeover trend and the energy companies in progress to change the UK grid to renewables.

The only people who will think it is a good idea is those who know sod all about battery EV and listen to the BS on the TV and the drivel written about it in the press.

Oh, and before I forget. EV batteries are proven 98% recyclable with 98% reclamation of materials for re-use.

I've told you that before but you ignore it every time. Just like you call 15mw wind turbines standing as tall as the Eiffel tower; windmills.

It gets a little wearying.

[Workingman]

You don't do harmless sarcasm, do you....?

I am not against all the measures, but I am against the way they were announced.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle is right that we have a parliamentary democracy and the policy should have been made in parliament when the house was sitting so that MPs could question the PM.

He also said that we do not have a Presidential system. Than God for that because if we did Sunak is up there with the weakest specimens in the whole galaxy. Brush all that under the carpet if you must.

If you want to believe the EV BS and all the battery recycling stuff while ignoring the environmental and societal impacts, that's up to you. Many of us have other takes on the milk floats.

Fortunately is is not about milk floats and ICEs, it is about all the issues with the impossible net zero. Unfortunately politicians of all stripes don't get it. Neither do you.

[Suff]

You don't do harmless sarcasm, do you....?

Yes but it is on top of a clear trend of dismissal for the technology.

Apologies if it was over the top and too heavy.

[Workingman]

Suff you are a lot OCD with EVs and heat pumps, yet you downplay or ignore other issues.

Deforestation and palm oil plantations in Indonesia are of no importance. Similarly with the same in the Amazon and soy plantations. What about the poisoning of our streams, rivers, seas and oceans with fertilizers - not a word? See Lough Neagh at present as an example. Overfishing? How about raping the planet of lithium. cobalt, nickel, cadmium, selenium, gallium, copper, silver... and on they go. What about the diminution of the nutrients in our arable lands forcing extreme artificial fertilisation? Population explosion. Silence.

I earlier mentioned the effects of wind farms on local weather patterns and solar farms on agriculture. The answer, no problem.

Climate change is bad, we al know that, it's driving Antarctic, Greenland and glacial ice melt with unknown consequences; other things will get us as well, but EVs and heat pumps are a very small part of the solution.

[Suff]

Agreed there are plenty of other things going on.

But!

Whilst we can just stop doing the other things we do and not cut down forests for plantations and not keep poisoning water, which will have an immediate short term effect and an even better long term effect, the change we have wrought in the climate is going to be there for thousands of years even if we stop right now, today. We can even re-forest. But it will be a drop in the bucket.

In fact we are not stopping emitting CO2. So we are increasing our impact on the climate every single day. Our biggest mitigations we can do to hugely deployed infrastructure are in the arena of Transport and heating. Which we can bolster with grid changes to CO2 neutral.

The impact of this climate juggernaut is not some locally poisoned stream or some deforestation. It is the shrinking of the liveable biosphere to support less people than are on the planet today.

It doesn't mean we'll have to climb down from our ridiculous stance on GM crops which are needed to counteract climatic changes to the soil they grow in. It doesn't mean that we'll have to take dilute solution chlorine washed chicken or beef which has been given hormones.

It means we won't be able to buy food at any price, of any type. If we can't grow it at home then we won't get it. That means 52% of people in the UK are going to go hungry or die in the worst case scenario.

Now tell me. Which should I care about more? Some lost areas of forest where they are growing palm oil or 52% of people in the UK going hungry or dying? Raping the world of Lithium? Don't make me laugh there is only Oxygen, Iron and one other element more plentiful than Lithium. Can't be bothered to look up the other element, the message is obvious.

If you believe we are raping the world of Lithium then you are reading literature which is specifically designed to delay action on reducing fossil fuel use and the reduction in CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. Just as there was literature to delay action on smoking. This literature is written by the same groups of consultants.

So I may be OCD as you say. But I'm focusing on the real problems which are going to decimate humans on this planet in the next 100 years. Not on the next 10 days.

In fact if we allowed GM crops we could use less fertilisers and less pesticides. Go figure. Our own arrogance about what is "quality" leads to the very problems you highlight. Yet when I point out that dilute chlorine washed chicken is not "chlorinated" chicken as if we inject chlorine under the skin, I am bombarded with a huge array of trade embargo propaganda.

So I may be OCD but I have my eye on the ball. Joking about measures to ensure more than half the UK won't go hungry in 100 years is, to me, worth being OCD about.

[Workingman]

Lithium is the 33rd most abundant element on Earth, not the 3rd.

In its solid form it averages 45 ppm in igneous rocks such as granite. It is energy intensive to mine and process and not generally economic.

In solution it is about 0.2 ppm. To get 1 part takes 5 million parts of solution. 1kg takes 5 million kg or 5,000 tonnes of brines. There are about 14kg of lithium in a mid-range EV battery. Do the maths.

The UK has been sub 50% sufficient in food since the mid eighteenth century. We import most of our food meaning that there should only be about 32.5 million of us.

We (the world) cannot go on the way we are and you dismiss the destruction of our various environments at you children's and grandchildren's peril. Environments and climate are inter-linked. Change (destroy) one and you change (destroy) all the others - for the same amount of time.

Take away the bees and see what happens.

[Workingman]

Two programmes for you to seek out:

Chris Packham: Is it time to break the law? C4 last night. Some very pertinent observations.

Five a day: The Big Con? C5 tonight. A lot of info on food production and, importantly, our attitudes. Quite a few myths.

[Workingman]

And if EVs are the bee's knees, as you claim, why aren't the queues out the doors to buy them? We Brits do like a bargain after all.

Sales are so sluggish that the government has mandated, not requested but "mandated", that from Jan 2024 some 22% of all new car sales must be electric. Manufacturers will be fined up to £15,000 per car if they are not. That's market rigging.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66875554

And how can it be enforced? A punter cannot be forced to buy something they do not want. If eight turn up and only one wants a milk float what do the others buy? Only four more can get a car... the others?

"Sorry sir, the quota for ICEs is at it's limit, but you can have this super heavy pothole producing milk float for an extra £15k"
.
"No thanks, all I need is a four seat 1200 cc box with aircon and reversing sensors doing 60 mpg. I'll be at the front of the queue for new car sales next year. Bye."

[cromwell]

The instruction that 22% of car sales must be electric is ludicrous. The only way they will meet that is to pre-register some electric vehicles (aka fiddling the figures).
I do feel for car manufacturers.
They've had the government grandstanding and shouting "Make it so - 2030 is the year!". And then Sunak says "Well, actually...."

Eventually political posturing was going to meet reality, and it just did.
If anyone can solve the battery issues I would put my money on Toyota.

The elephant in the room is that some people want to use the climate crisis as an excuse to introduce a more authoritarian life for us; and as Sad Dick Khan has just found out, that's not going to be as easy as they thought.

eta - Chris Packham ought to be careful. Breaking the law? A lot of people who work in agriculture would like to break the law by doing Chris Packham a mischief.