I had an email sent to me trying to point out that raw materials to go green just arent there OR china controls all the resources. my response is as follows:
I am also concerned about raw materials that are mined from the earth. Would we just switch from draining the earth's oil to draining the materials needed to go green? My answer is no. we will start mining rare earth metals in place of oil however we will be getting enough to complete the global shift from oil to renewable energy and then stopping. Also the items made from rare earth metals will last 20 to 30 years before needing to be replaced. We would not be just burn the metals like oil and then going back for more. Through recycling the metals can be retrieved from the items we build with them. The lead used for batteries is 98% recycled, so why not lithium batteries? oddly enough, lithium isnt the main part of lithium ion batteries and in fact do not contain any lithium at all, only an ionic form of lithium produced from cobalt, copper, nickel and iron. China is the highest source for rare earth metals simply because its the cheapest place to get them from. China treats its workers like slaves and the government controls all the companies so they can control the prices. I would imagine when the going green shift ramps up the companies that once searched for oil will search for the rare earth metals and find them abundantly elsewhere other than china. The good thing here is when we get all the metals we need and start producing the batteries, super capacitors, solar panels, etc... we will make what we need for 30 years and then recycle the failing items and do not have to depend on mining. http://seekingalpha.com/article/103972-rare-earth-metals-not-so-rare-but-valuable There is already a process that can divide all metals and plastic from computer circuit boards so a process to recycle all the metals from lithium batteries and solar panels to be reused isn't a far stretch. Europe has already solved the problem by passing a law that all batteries, regardless of type, must be recycled. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001626 As far as mass transit, I forsee a transportation system just like from the movie "The Minority Report". Transport modules that run along electrified tracks just like slot cars. When you want to go somewhere you just tell the transport where to go and it takes you there. we already had electric street cars that ran all over a city, so changing all the roads to imbedded tracks to everywhere isnt a stretch because noone but cargo transport people would have cars or trucks. as far as where the electricity comes from to power the transport units, thats easy, over all the roads that are now slot tracks are solar panels. Think how much power could be obtained if all roads had a car port type roof over them that was nothing but a huge solar panel. we would be producing more power than we would need. _______________________________________________ Florida EAA mailing list [email protected] http://www.floridaeaa.org
