Adapting to Climate Change is a Better Strategy than Preventing it

I notice that one of the biggest issues for people leading up to the September 20 federal election is still the environment --- same as with the 2019 election. Yes, covid and the economy are among the top issues also, but a very recent Angus Reid poll shows that climate change is the number one issue on people’s minds. Parties are scrambling to develop strategies to slow down or reverse climate change. So far as I can tell, we will not succeed in doing so because nothing man is doing is causing the problem. My comments at https://gordonfeil.blogspot.com/2019/09/ are still my belief in the matter.

Climate change is inevitable. It is solar related, not man related. What we need to do is develop policies to help us adapt to the inevitable. The targets we have set for ourselves to eliminate the petroleum powered cars and to build massive solar and wind farms are impossible to meet with current mining technologies. Think for a moment. An electric car battery requires minerals obtained from processing 250 tons of ores. To replace the world’s billion cars with electric versions would require 250 billion tons of materials to be mined and refined.

Assuming that the average car only traveled 10,000 km per year, and that a recharge can power a vehicle 500 km, which is very generous, we are talking about 20 billion recharges a year. We don’t come close to producing enough electricity. Solar and wind will not do the job. Firstly, they are not serious solutions in the latitudes and regions where energy is most needed, and secondly, to produce a single wind turbine takes 45 tons of non-recyclable blades made from plastic ---- petro-chemicals --- and solar panels of the quantities that would be needed require prohibitive amounts of rare earths and other minerals. Uranium might do the job, but not wind and solar.

What we need to do is plan how to cope with climate change, not how to prevent it.