7 ms·

Idk for this technique, but generally speaking there is no such thing as green mining.

by kombai 4y ago

dr-detroit 4y ago
lm28469 4y ago
Just put a "green" and "electric" sticker on it and it becomes climate neutral, that's what we did with cars, it works
- Gravityloss 4y ago
  Well, it doesn't solve all the worlds problems, but generally if you can avoid nasty chemicals, it's a plus.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    This specific advance just uses less of the nasty chemicals, so in car analogy terms its like an efficient hybrid, but that still seems like a good thing. I assume all the people who hate anything that's not "perfect" are effectively concern trolling, even if its just coming from a genuine sense of dispair.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. It's only 'just a label' if you're ideologically opposed. Yes, the labels can be overused, but if the discussion is only going to be about labels, why even bother? The underlying facts are pretty easy to work with.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. Making an aberration 20% more efficient doesn't make it less of an aberration The rebound effect kills all these efficiency claims anyways, you're decreasing the effect per unit not the overall effect
    - Tade0 4y ago
      Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s along with the sharp increase in oil prices back then and has been in steady decline ever since. The only additional congestion you're seeing is due to increased urbanization.
      - lm28469 4y ago
        > Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s Yet there are more cars than ever: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicles-in-use-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicle... Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative At the end of the day you're displacing 70kg of meat with 2+ tonnes of metal, electric or not it's an aberration also: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...
        elihu 4y ago
        > Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative I'm pretty sure that's not true, unless you're using some definition of "environmental impact" that puts very little weight on the climate impact of CO2 emissions from burning petroleum.
        Tade0 4y ago
        I don't understand getting worked up about modes of transport, so allow me to just correct you on a few things: > Yet there are more cars than ever: Most of that growth is in China, where the car ownership rate is less than half of what it is in Europe, not to mention the US. Tends to happen when a country crosses a certain GDP-per-capita threshold. > Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative It's actually closer to 15%. Here's a more detailed look: https://www.greenncap.com/press-releases/lca-how-sustainable-is-your-car/ https://www.greenncap.com/press-releases/lca-how-sustainable... > also: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre... I see this mentioned here and there, but so far air pollution measurements don't follow. Even the most congested of cities rarely exceed particulate emissions limits provided other sources are taken care of. This quote is significant: “Tyres are rapidly eclipsing the tailpipe as a major source of emissions from vehicles,” said Nick Molden, at Emissions Analytics, the leading independent emissions testing company that did the research. “Tailpipes are now so clean for pollutants that, if you were starting out afresh, you wouldn’t even bother regulating them.” So the real story is not that car tyres are so dirty, but that tailpipes are so clean.
schmichael 4y ago
Greenhouse gasses are an existential threat to life as we know it on earth. Mining is not. I hate what mining has done, but am heartened to see progress being made toward less dirty resource extraction.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  existential?
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I think 'existential' is a bit overused with respect to fossil fueled global warming. Full-scale nuclear war, or a major asteroid impact, would be existential. The rise in temperature and associated issues like extreme weather (droughts/floods/storms), sea level rise, the loss of permanent glaciers are serious issues but the timeline is slow enough (10 years per noticeable change) that adaptation is quite possible, to some extent. Indeed adapatation is absolutely required, as we've tipped the system such that even if we halt fossil fuel use overnight, or (more plausible) over the next 50 years, permafrost melt, shallow ocean sediment warming, etc. will continue to leak ancient carbon into the atmosphere. We're heading back to climate conditions last seen in the Pliocene (3-5 million years ago), like it or not. As far as mining, yes, it can be made cleaner but that just costs at least twice as much (because you have to spend as much on processing the waste and cleaning up the water as you do on developing the mine). The answer to that is tighter regulations, so that a dirty miner can't undersell a clean miner.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    I think you're underestimating the impact that climate change will have, most importantly from human migration, food shortages, and war (which are secondary impacts of climate change, as opposed to the primary impacts you've listed). But I also think you've underestimated the primary impacts: you're assuming that the rate of change is stable, and it's absolutely not.
    - photochemsyn 4y ago

Idk for this technique, but generally speaking there is no such thing as green mining.

by kombai 4y ago

Idk for this technique, but generally speaking there is no such thing as green mining.

dr-detroit 4y ago

lm28469 4y ago

Just put a "green" and "electric" sticker on it and it becomes climate neutral, that's what we did with cars, it works

Gravityloss 4y ago
Well, it doesn't solve all the worlds problems, but generally if you can avoid nasty chemicals, it's a plus.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This specific advance just uses less of the nasty chemicals, so in car analogy terms its like an efficient hybrid, but that still seems like a good thing. I assume all the people who hate anything that's not "perfect" are effectively concern trolling, even if its just coming from a genuine sense of dispair.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. It's only 'just a label' if you're ideologically opposed. Yes, the labels can be overused, but if the discussion is only going to be about labels, why even bother? The underlying facts are pretty easy to work with.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. Making an aberration 20% more efficient doesn't make it less of an aberration The rebound effect kills all these efficiency claims anyways, you're decreasing the effect per unit not the overall effect
  - Tade0 4y ago
    Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s along with the sharp increase in oil prices back then and has been in steady decline ever since. The only additional congestion you're seeing is due to increased urbanization.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s Yet there are more cars than ever: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicles-in-use-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicle... Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative At the end of the day you're displacing 70kg of meat with 2+ tonnes of metal, electric or not it's an aberration also: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...
      - elihu 4y ago
        > Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative I'm pretty sure that's not true, unless you're using some definition of "environmental impact" that puts very little weight on the climate impact of CO2 emissions from burning petroleum.
      - Tade0 4y ago
        I don't understand getting worked up about modes of transport, so allow me to just correct you on a few things: > Yet there are more cars than ever: Most of that growth is in China, where the car ownership rate is less than half of what it is in Europe, not to mention the US. Tends to happen when a country crosses a certain GDP-per-capita threshold. > Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative It's actually closer to 15%. Here's a more detailed look: https://www.greenncap.com/press-releases/lca-how-sustainable-is-your-car/ https://www.greenncap.com/press-releases/lca-how-sustainable... > also: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre... I see this mentioned here and there, but so far air pollution measurements don't follow. Even the most congested of cities rarely exceed particulate emissions limits provided other sources are taken care of. This quote is significant: “Tyres are rapidly eclipsing the tailpipe as a major source of emissions from vehicles,” said Nick Molden, at Emissions Analytics, the leading independent emissions testing company that did the research. “Tailpipes are now so clean for pollutants that, if you were starting out afresh, you wouldn’t even bother regulating them.” So the real story is not that car tyres are so dirty, but that tailpipes are so clean.

schmichael 4y ago

Greenhouse gasses are an existential threat to life as we know it on earth. Mining is not. I hate what mining has done, but am heartened to see progress being made toward less dirty resource extraction.

bilsbie 4y ago
existential?
photochemsyn 4y ago
I think 'existential' is a bit overused with respect to fossil fueled global warming. Full-scale nuclear war, or a major asteroid impact, would be existential. The rise in temperature and associated issues like extreme weather (droughts/floods/storms), sea level rise, the loss of permanent glaciers are serious issues but the timeline is slow enough (10 years per noticeable change) that adaptation is quite possible, to some extent. Indeed adapatation is absolutely required, as we've tipped the system such that even if we halt fossil fuel use overnight, or (more plausible) over the next 50 years, permafrost melt, shallow ocean sediment warming, etc. will continue to leak ancient carbon into the atmosphere. We're heading back to climate conditions last seen in the Pliocene (3-5 million years ago), like it or not. As far as mining, yes, it can be made cleaner but that just costs at least twice as much (because you have to spend as much on processing the waste and cleaning up the water as you do on developing the mine). The answer to that is tighter regulations, so that a dirty miner can't undersell a clean miner.
- SECProto 4y ago
  I think you're underestimating the impact that climate change will have, most importantly from human migration, food shortages, and war (which are secondary impacts of climate change, as opposed to the primary impacts you've listed). But I also think you've underestimated the primary impacts: you're assuming that the rate of change is stable, and it's absolutely not.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago