David Craig, on June 16th, 2022Thursday/Friday blog
Biofuels – a crime against humanity
When the EU passed regulations mandating that biofuels should make up 2.7% of all transport fuel sold, the UN’s special rapporteur on food called this policy “a crime against humanity”.�The�Biofuel Directive�set indicative�biofuel�penetration targets of 2.7% by the end of 2005 and 5.75% by the end of 2010. This year biofuel content was increased to 10% – that’s the E10 petrol you’ll see on your forecourts.
It would seem that the Biofuel Directive has been one of the major contributors to a seemingly unstoppable rise in world food prices:
And this week, just to make matters even worse, the bumbling senile old fool in the White House, President Joe Biden, flew into Iowa to crow about mandating increased production of corn-based ethanol and E15 (motor fuel with a 15 percent ethanol content instead of the usual 10 percent). This will mean around 40% of Iowa’s corn production being used to inefficiently fuel cars rather than feed people.
Rising food prices may be unpleasant for us in the rich developed world. But they mean starvation for the estimated�821 million people�do not have enough of the food they need to live an active, healthy life.
Still, Biden’s biofuel policies will allow him to grovel to the Democrat lefty, libtard eco-idiots and scientifically-challenged mainstream media by supposedly acting to fight the (non-existent) threat of global warming or climate change or climate emergency or climate crisis or climate disaster or whatever it’s called this week. And greeny eco-zealots and the mainstream media couldn’t give a fig for the hundreds of millions being starved by their narcissistic, virtue-signalling climate-catastrophist nonsense.
Let’s wreck the planet
In my book – THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS – I tried to reveal the massive amounts of land and materials required to supply supposed ‘renewable energy’. This week, I found some calculations (in blue italics below) exposing the true environmental effects in terms of the huge amounts of materials used and the highly unpleasant and polluting chemical processes necessary to produce what the climate catastrophists class as ‘clean, green energy’.
I don’t know if these figures are correct. But, if they are anywhere near reality, then they show that ‘clean green energy’ is anything but.
Those who are excited about electric cars and a green revolution should take a closer look at electric vehicle (EV) batteries, and also wind turbines and solar panels.
A typical EV battery weighs a thousand pounds, roughly the size of a suitcase. It contains 25 pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel and plastic. There are over 6,000 individual lithium ion cells inside.
To make each EV battery, you’ll need to process 25,000 pounds of salt for lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for cobalt, 5,000 pounds of resin for nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore from copper. In total, you have to dig out 500,000 pounds of dirt for a battery.
The biggest problem with solar systems is the chemicals used to turn silicate into the gravel used for the panels. To produce sufficient clean silicon, it must be treated with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, fluoride, trichlorotane and acetone.
In addition, gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium diselenide and cadmium telluride are needed, which are also highly toxic. Silicone dust poses a danger to the workers and the tiles cannot be recycled.
Wind turbines are the real winners in terms of cost and environmental destruction. Each windmill weighs 1,688 tonnes (the equivalent of the weight of 23 houses) and contains 1,300 tonnes of concrete, 295 tonnes of steel, 48 tonnes of iron, 24 tonnes of fiberglass and the hard-to-win rare soils Neodym, Praseodym and Dysprosium. Each of the three blades weighs 81,000 pounds and has a lifespan of 15 to 20 years, after which they must be replaced. We cannot recycle used rotor blades – they have to be buried.
So, anyone claiming that ‘going green’ is clean and good for our planet is either a fool or a knave or (most likely) both.
Category: 
And none of that – the bit in blue – includes the energy expended, be it oil (which has itself already consumed energy in the refining process) required to transport the mined products for initial extraction of the minerals, the further energy, probably in the form of oil or gas to generate electricity, required to manufacture the batteries or solar panels, the cost of transportation of the finished products from their place of manufacture (China I believe) to their destination. Or, in the case of the abominable turbines- despoilers of the landscape be they at sea or on hilltops- the millions of tons of concrete required, plus the metals for the blades, compounded in such as manner as to render them un-recyclable. All these processes consuming energy in production and transport. And NONE of the above will give the world’s population security of power supply. At best, they can only supplement generation by traditional or nuclear means. The “green” eco-brigade are crass, ignorant idiots. But then, given the paucity of hard, scientific education of youngsters throughout the “developed” world, is it any wonder they fall for such fables? They suck up electronic gadgetry, giving hardly a thought to whence cometh the power each time they plug in to re-charge, as if their lives depend upon it, in the same way as we oldies sucked up our mother’s milk – or the baby forumla of which it appears there is a desperate shortage in the States, largely thanks to the senile Biden’s incompetence and soaring inflation. (But that’s another story. We could be worse off than we are with Bumbling Boris and his bit of birthday cake!) As for burning food in the form of bio-fuels, it is inexcusable, literally a wicked waste. But then we are criminally short on any sort of consistency of policy on food generally. I hear on today’s farming programme on R4 that in this country growers are already ploughing back some of this year’s fruit and veg crop due to shortages of pickers and packers, traditionally from Ukraine and Easter Europe. Far too few visas have been issued it is alleged. This, while Boris et al are preaching about the desirability of eating fresh fruit and veg in preference to ultra-processed, high calorie read-made junk. Consistency someone in Government, PLEASE!
I don�t drive, but I understand the other aspect of biofuels is that they don�t contain as much energy, so the mpg reduces. Your piece covers just a small aspect of the green insanity. The western governments are consistent, consistently stupid.
It is almost impossible to make any sense of this. Mattias Desmet and other philosophers explain it as a mass psychosis but for people not in the mass it it difficult to make sense of it and even more difficult to know what to do about it. I follow The Conservative Woman website and it features similar articles with people saying we have to do something, but nobody knows what to do. Desmet says we have to keep talking about it but the mass is not listening.
The belief in witchcraft was a mass psychosis and that apparently went on for about 100 years. The deaths of mainly women was obvious to see but the supposed benefits never materialised and people could not see that. Is it even worse now because our scientific knowledge should prevent nonsense but science is being perverted.
It is all based on an idea taking hold which must be implemented with the assumption that there are no consequences. Deaths are happening but they are not so obvious as witch burning and difficult to associate with specific policies. If we couldn�t see that killing women was pointless, how can we see the stupidity of present policies? It looks like we we only see it when we suffer the consequences and by then it will be too late.
Socialism which is taking hold more and more in the west is another mass psychosis- the promise that the state will make all aspects of life better, and with no consequences – you will oven nothing, and be happy. The two are inconsistent and will never work. This applies to all types of mass psychosis and now we have a lot of them running in parallel.
Indeed Thorpe. You and I and the writer and readers of this blog will own nothing, while the self-styled world’s Elite whizz around around in their private jets preaching to us ignorant plebs the benefits of self-denial and telling us to walk or cycle everywhere. Bill Gates and the deplorable Harry and MeGain are prime example. The hypocrisy is breath-taking, yet masses of the young, and even quite a few who are old enough to know better, evidently swallow it whole and can’t wait to come back for more! If you are too old tov cycle, or your hips and knees hurt, or you don’t fancy being obliterated under the wheels of an uninsured thug and there’s little or no public transport where you live, then too bad! Stay at home and rot! No one in authority gives a damn whether or not you can get to the doctor’s(not that they see anyone anymore!) or even to the nearest reasonably-priced general store to pick up a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. The world as we oldies knew it has ceased to exist. The “Green” idiocy, with all that encompasses – the cost of fuel of all types rising to unaffordable levels, the deliberate burning of food which ought to be feeding hungry humans, the evident inability of a middle-aged man who aspires to be the UK’s next Great Leader to define on the basis of anatomy what a woman is, the move now to make co-ed schools “gender free” by insisting the girls weat trousers, the increasing trend in GIRLS ONLY SCHOOLS to insist staff refer only to “students” and no longer to “girls” since so many are “transitioning” – all herald a society which, like all the great Civilizations which preceded it – Egyptians, Greeks, Romans – has outlived itself and is bringing about its own demise through decadence.
Plus our mental government that needs to be under the auspices of the Court of Protection, which has a very bad case of the Davos virus as measured by the sizes of bank balances, is reducing the railways across the country, not increasing them. If climate change were a reality, that would not be the case, not so?
Peter Hitchens goes into that state of affairs in his latest article.
PETER HITCHENS: The stupidity of ministers and train firms wrecked our railways � not the unions –
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10921277/PETER-HITCHENS-stupidity-ministers-train-firms-wrecked-railways-not-unions.html
Many Thanks to you three gentlemen, all of a mind, for the excellent analyses above, with salaams to Captain Craig of course. Rarely do I have the chance to say I completely agree with every word, which I do right here and now. Thank you Sirs. Our minds spring immediately, as said, to �What on earth can we do ?�
A Christian will always believe Faith is the Way, the Truth and the Life. But it�s hard to convince others of it, not that I try very hard these days. Welby and �the Argie� are not exactly good spiritual guides, nor any kind of leader. Neither is that fellow, the one with the 9 year old (you know), his lot prefer to line up behind the sword.
Is it not accurate to believe huge numbers of English/British folk couldn�t really care less ? Or are they utterly sick and absolutely tired of it all, or are they all bored ? A vulnerable state of affairs. Is it down to a semi-conspiracy of the MSM ?
Who knows ? More importantly, who cares ?
Fear not, folks. What is happening now is the logical follow-on sparked off by by the first nihilistic political virus that reversed natural values and spawned all of the main isms – socialism, communism and feminism – that have kept that pot constantly boiling over ever since then – Christianity!
Friedrich Nietzsche. Ecce Homo:
“The history of mankind would be far too stupid a thing if it had not had the intellect [Geist] of the powerless injected into it: � let us take the best example straight away. Nothing that has been done on earth against �the noble�, �the mighty�, �the masters� and �the rulers�, is worth mentioning compared with what the Jews have done against them: the Jews, that
priestly people, which in the last resort was able to gain satisfaction from its enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most deliberate revenge. Only this was fitting for a priestly people with the most entrenched priestly vengefulness. It was the Jews who, rejecting the
aristocratic value equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = blessed) ventured, with awe-inspiring consistency, to bring about a reversal and held it in the teeth of the most unfathomable hatred (the hatred of
the powerless), saying: �Only those who suffer are good, only the poor, the powerless, the lowly are good; the suffering, the deprived, the sick, the ugly, are the only pious people, the only ones saved, salvation is for them alone, whereas you rich, the noble and powerful, you are eternally wicked, cruel,
lustful, insatiate, godless, you will also be eternally wretched, cursed and damned!� . . . We know who became heir to this Jewish revaluation . . . With regard to the huge and incalculably disastrous initiative taken by the Jews with this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I recall the words I wrote on another occasion (Beyond Good and Evil, section 195) 21 � namely, that the slaves� revolt in morality begins with the Jews: a revolt which has two thousand years of history behind it and which has only been lost sight of because � it was victorious…”
His book called “The Will to Power: An Attempt at the Revaluation of All Values” was his attempt to reverse the reversal of values that has taken place over two millennia.
Here is the link to a full audiobook, very well read, of Nietzsche’s political polemic – “On the Genealogy of Morals” that expounds on the quote given above.