The Widespread Social And Environmental Destruction Behind Electric Car Batteries And E-Mobility

German ZDF public television recently broadcast a report showing how electric cars are a far cry from being what they are all cracked up to be by green activists.

Northern Chilean desert being ruined by widespread lithium mining. Image cropped from ZDF documentary: Die Schattenseiten der E-Mobilität

The report titled: “Batteries in twilight – The dark side of e-mobility” shows how the mining of raw materials needed for producing the massive automobile batteries is highly destructive to the environment. For example, two thirds of the cobalt currently comes from the Congo, where the mining rights have been acquired by China. Other materials needed include manganese, lithium and graphite.

Every electric car battery needs about 20 – 30 kg of lithium.

The mining of the raw materials often takes place in third world countries where workers are forced to work under horrendous conditions and no regard is given to protecting the environment. When it comes to “going green”, it seems everything flies out the window.

Immense water consumption

The report shows that one source of the lithium is the desert of northern Chile. Everyday at the mine shown some 21 million liters of ground water get pumped to the surface, where it evaporates and a sludge with 6% lithium content gets shipped to processing plants. The operations are transforming the Chilean desert landscape into a vast industrial wasteland.

Precious vegetation shriveling up

The Chilean lithium mining operations are pumping out what little precious groundwater that remains and ruining the living basis of the local population. What little vegetation there was to begin with is now dying due to falling water tables. Overall, mining operations are expected to expand four-fold within the next decade and the mining companies profit while the local citizens lose their livelihoods.

Car companies turning a blind eye

The automotive companies, the buyers of the lithium batteries insist that they have strict requirements in the sourcing of their products and make sure it is done in a sustainable way. Obviously they are having little effect.

Congolese slave labor for China

Today’s batteries for e-cars also require approx. 10 – 15 kg of cobalt, where two thirds of which comes from authoritarian Republic of the Congo. The mining rights are owned by Chinese companies. Here as well the benefits of the mining operations do not find their way to the local residents, who are forced live under horrendous conditions.

Privately operated local companies are not allowed, unless the authorities are paid bribes to look the other way. In these rogue operations, work conditions are primitive and extremely dangerous. The ZDF reports that some 20% of Congolese cobalt is extracted in this manner. Profits do not find their way down to the miners.

Child labor

Meanwhile the ground around the mining villages are now perforated with vertical shafts that pose a constant danger to children who risk falling into them. Work conditions for the miners themselves is extremely dangerous. The money they earn is not enough to provide for their families. Children are forced to work and do not go to school.

Chinese companies control most of the lithium supply chain, ZDF reports, and miners are cheated by them. The valuable raw material makes its way to China, where it gets processed for the manufacture electric batteries, according to Dr. Mathias John of Amnesty International. Congolese cobalt likely is contained in the car batteries of German electric cars.

German automakers such as Mercedes insist that they make effort to ensure that their supply chains “exclusively process cobalt from industrial mines that have the proper sustainability standards.”

As electric cars begin to flood global markets, the environmental and social destruction of third world countries where the precious minerals are mined will reach ghastly proportions. The promised green utopia will remain a an illusion.

35 responses to “The Widespread Social And Environmental Destruction Behind Electric Car Batteries And E-Mobility”

  1. John F. Hultquist

    exclusively process cobalt from industrial mines that have the proper sustainability standards.”

    I’ve read elsewhere that materials get inter-mixed in ways impossible to trace, in a practical sense.
    An analogy would be pouring a bucket of warm water into a cold lake.

  2. Kurt in Switzerland

    Imagine what the anti-carbon fanatics would have done had the Lithium tailing ponds been associated with fossil-fuels! Environmental catastrophe!

    But since the Lithium is used by SmartPhones and Electric Vehicles, it must be defended!

    1. SebastianH

      Well, Kurt, how do you think Lithium mines look like? There was a picture circulating: https://us-east-1.tchyn.io/snopes-production/uploads/2016/06/lithium.jpg

      Do you think this shows a Lithium mine? 😉

      Lithium is a salt, it basically gets mined like all other salts. You can even extract it from ocean water at the cost of around $30 per quantity needed to produce 1 kWh of batteries (at the current technology level).

      Cobalt free Lithium batteries are being worked on.

      I find it amazing that you guys find this kind of resource extraction appalling, try to guilt your opponent with this and the same time completly ignore how our large scale fossil fuel extraction processes work 😉

      1. Scott Osborne

        I disagree with your last point. The article makes it clear that all mining is dirty business including both lithium and oil or tar sands. But there are many who were conned into financial investments into alternative renewable green energy concepts as well as electric cars including most teachers within their pension funds. And because of dissappointing investment returns they all try to convince students and others to buy in anyway.

        The reason why these concepts are all failing is due to battery technology failing to evolve fast enough to become fit-for-purpose as is gasoline and diesel fuels.

        But i invested in CO2 capture and reprocessing into a vastly cleaner fuel and we are winning the battle.

        1. Alex

          ” But i invested in CO2 capture and reprocessing into a vastly cleaner fuel and we are winning the battle.”

          What battle?

        2. SebastianH

          But there are many who were conned into financial investments into alternative renewable green energy concepts as well as electric cars including most teachers within their pension funds. And because of dissappointing investment returns they all try to convince students and others to buy in anyway.

          Well, proof?

          The reason why these concepts are all failing is due to battery technology failing to evolve fast enough to become fit-for-purpose as is gasoline and diesel fuels.

          Hmm, that’s why almost all major car companies have EVs in their pipelines now and estimate to sell millions of those cars in the 2020s … because battery tech is failing 😉 Seriously, battery technology is advancing faster than ever. They don’t even need to become much lighter, it would be enough if they become just half as expensive as they are now. Mass production leads to competitive pricing. Expect EVs in the early 2020s that can’t be beaten by gasoline cars regarding the total cost of ownership in lots of markets.

          But i invested in CO2 capture and reprocessing into a vastly cleaner fuel and we are winning the battle.

          Do you really think synthetic fuels are the future? I doubt they will be cheap enough compared to EVs.

        3. John Brown

          Without oil we would not have much of Lithium in the forst place.
          Since it is highly combustible it is kept in oil to avoid oxidation.

          So much of “no oil” with Lithium. Not such a thing!

      2. Kurt in Switzerland

        Seb,

        You’re trolling again. Whatever images you found somewhere are noise. Do try to stick to the article, for a change. The images from the ZDF article are of tailing ponds for enriching and extracting Lithium.

        All extraction industries have a footprint, everyone here agrees with that. And all extraction industries should have sensible minimum standards enforced, as well as simultaneously fomenting best practices.

        But no industries should receive a free pass! Yet your beloved wind farms and e-cars receive just that!

        1. SebastianH

          But no industries should receive a free pass! Yet your beloved wind farms and e-cars receive just that!

          I agree with the first part, but they really aren’t receiving a free pass. It’s rather the fossil fuel extraction that receives said free passes as a necessary evil … we can’t live without the stuff (yet), so we tell us it is ok.

          You guys act like wind, solar and EVs are worse than what we already have. That is really mindboggling 😉

      3. John Brown

        SebH,

        you are incorrect in your statement that Lithium is a salt. It is not!

        Lithium is a chemical element!

        Its an alkali metal! And it might occur as a salt but is mostly found in pegmatitic minerals and is mined as such!

        Check out spodumene and petalite!

        This is easy to look up information. It would be worthwhile to educate yourself before commenting!

      4. Lee

        Your reference photo is definitely false. The first photo is the tar sands in ft. Macmurray AB

  3. Penelope

    Thank you Pierre for providing us w yet more evidence.

    Evidence that AGW is not to benefit people, the environment, or resource sustainability. Surely you’ve demonstrated many times that it’s not supported by science.

    I wonder whether you or anyone on the site can think of any incident where science triumphed over political opposition. I can’t.

    1. John F. Hultquist
  4. Bitter&twisted

    If it’s “green” It gets a free pass,
    No matter what ☠️🤮

  5. Jeffrey Eric Grant

    I do not see any way that battery manufacture could be “sustainable”, unless there is a recycling effort to reclaim the spent material. I know of no such recycle (like what has been developed for the lead-acid battery process. Approx 80% of all lead-acid battery materials are recycled.

  6. pochas94

    A “desert” now devoted to lithium mining has been “ruined?” You need to avoid publishing leftist screeds.

    1. Rob Hopkins

      Deserts are ecosystems all their own.

  7. patrick healy

    one of the issues with Scalextric cars is one which surfaces every day when I listen to the traffic reports.
    Most Mondays and especially Fridays we are told of 20 or 30 miles traffic jams on the M25 or M1/3/4 /5 or M6. Now extrapolate this across the vast motorways of Europe and North America.
    Now visualise a typical winter night with subzero temperatures.
    Thousands of these pretend cars are stuck in a traffic jam for up to 5 hours. Their batteries are exhausted, the traffic is gridlocked and the passengers are frozen corpses inside their plastic igloos.
    I am sticking to my 8 year old diesel with 150,000 miles still to go.

  8. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #332 | Watts Up With That?
  9. Penelope

    John, yep, thx for an example of when science wasn’t ruled by politics. We have to take victory where we can get it– but victory over — words fail me.

    1. SebastianH

      It would be a welcomed change if politics were ruled by science again … the anti-science climate (pun intended) in current administrations of certain countries is something I only knew from the movies (Idiocracy) and now it’s becoming reality.

      Let’s hope people are smarter than the leaders a majority elected in the previous years and stop experimenting with undermining democracy and science.

  10. Steve

    Sebastian, the anti-science element in this country has always been and will always be on the left. If the real science doesn’t prove what they want, then just change the numbers and move the goal posts. And clueless people like you continue to fall for the game. Very sad.

    1. SebastianH

      On the contrary … the current climate of anti-science comes for the far right movements. They are all about acting on feelings or perceived reality and cater to and try to amplify irrational fears that people have.

      While I am sure science ignoring people are present in all kind of political parties, it never was a big problem up until certain people won elections. Now being anti-science or saying “I don’t know what do with math” has become mainstream … which is a sad development.

      1. Kenneth Richard

        On the contrary … the current climate of anti-science comes for the far right movements. They are all about acting on feelings or perceived reality and cater to and try to amplify irrational fears that people have.

        So this “science” is from the “far right”?

        https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/07/sea-level-study-james-hansen-issues-dire-climate-warning.html
        “The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.”

        https://www.theage.com.au/national/one-million-species-extinct-by-2050-scientists-20040108-gdx2q5.html
        “A quarter of all land animals and plants will not survive the onslaught of climate change, an international group of scientists has predicted. Their alarming findings, published in the scientific journal Nature today, show more than a million existing species could be extinct by 2050 as human-induced climate change heats up the earth.”

        Flashback 1978: Scientist Predicts 10°C Warming, 5 Meter Sea Level Rise, 660 ppm CO2…By 2028!

        http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294.short
        “If we assume that fossil fuel emissions increase by 3% per year, typical of the past decade and of the entire period since 1950, cumulative fossil fuel emissions will reach 10 000 Gt C in 118 years [~2130]. Are there sufficient fossil fuel reserves to yield 5000–10 000 Gt C? Recent updates of potential reserves, including unconventional fossil fuels (such as tar sands, tar shale and hydrofracking-derived shale gas) in addition to conventional oil, gas and coal, suggest that 5×CO2 (1400 ppm) is indeed feasible [by ~2130].”

        Our calculated global warming in this case [1400 ppm] is 16°C, with warming at the poles approximately 30°C. Calculated warming over land areas averages approximately 20°C. Such temperatures would eliminate grain production in almost all agricultural regions in the world. Increased stratospheric water vapour would diminish the stratospheric ozone layer. More ominously, global warming of that magnitude would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans.”

        AGW causes sheep to shrink…
        http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17407-incredible-shrinking-sheep-blamed-on-climate-change.html
        —–
        AGW causes longer days…
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1816860.stm
        —–
        AGW causes shorter days…
        http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11555
        —–
        AGW causes fish to shrink…
        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/01/climate-change-fish-shrinking_n_1927009.html
        —–
        AGW causes fish to grow…
        http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-07-11/bigger-fish-due-to-climate-change-tuna-industry/437232
        —–
        AGW causes gingerbread houses to collapse in Sweden…
        http://www.terradaily.com/2006/061211182846.nwcc15td.html
        —–
        AGW causes bear attacks to surge in Japan…
        http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20101020/twl-bear-attacks-surge-in-japan-climate-4bdc673.html
        —–
        AGW causes eggplants to look weirder (a “wake up call”)…
        http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/climate-change-to-make-steak-and-chicken-taste-worse-ruining-barbecues-for-future-aussies/news-story/b43ce8918021a31ece68aa17042c725f
        “A study of the impact of climate change on 55 foods grown in Australia, found the quality of beef and chicken may plummet, eggplants may look weirder than they already do and carrots could taste worse. …. University of Melbourne associate professor Richard Eckard said the report was a wake up call, with some of the effects predicted in the next five decades.”
        —–
        AGW causes jellyfish invasions…
        http://www.edie.net/news/3/Jellyfish-invasion-blamed-on-climate-change/11846/
        —–
        AGW causes beer to taste different…
        http://www.ediblegeography.com/the-taste-of-climate-change/
        —–
        AGW causes volcanoes to erupt…
        http://time.com/3687893/volcanoes-climate-change/
        —–
        AGW causes music to sound worse….
        http://www.firstpost.com/living/wonder-songs-getting-worse-might-global-warming-2196750.html
        —–
        AGW causes heroin addiction…
        http://www.gridovate.com/climate-change-causes-heroin-addiction_11024.html
        —–
        AGW causes asthma, and cancer…
        http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117675/national-climate-assessment-public-health-effects-warmer-planet

        1. SebastianH

          So this “science” is from the “far right”?

          Is it from “the left”?

          Have you even read the articles you are linking to here? Perfectly good science, at least those I randomly clicked on. I was talking about the anti-science climate in politics … not about how you should be able to find “contradictions” in climate science that really aren’t there. But surely a skeptic strolling by this comment will be convinced AGW is totally nuts from how you summed up the articles. Good job!

          1. Kenneth Richard

            So this “science” is from the “far right”?

            Is it from “the left”?

            I don’t view science as right or left. Science is supposed to be about observation and evidence.

            Have you even read the articles you are linking to here? Perfectly good science

            Oh good. So you agree that the science says that human emissions will cause the atmospheric CO2 concentration to rise to 660 ppm by 2028 and we’ll get 5 meters of sea level rise in the next ten years.

            And you agree that it’s “perfectly good science” that…

            http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1816860.stm
            2002: “[I]ncreasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will slow the Earth’s rotation.”

            …or is it…

            http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11555
            2007: “Global warming will make Earth spin faster

            …no, it’s that…

            http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/11/climate-change-longer-days-glaciers-north-south-pole
            2015: “[W]ater from shrinking glaciers slows Earth’s rotation

            …or perhaps it’s this…
            http://www.livescience.com/53071-melting-glaciers-change-earth-spin.html
            2015: “Earth May Spin Faster as Glaciers Melt

            Which science do you believe in, SebastianH? Will humans cause the Earth to spin faster…or slower?

            And explain why it is you’re a believer that we humans cause volcanoes to erupt with our CO2 emissions since this is “perfectly good science” too.

            http://time.com/3687893/volcanoes-climate-change/
            How Climate Change Leads to Volcanoes (Really)

            Do you believe that AGW causes fish to shrink…or do you believe AGW causes fish to grow? Which “science” do you believe?

          2. SebastianH

            Which science do you believe in, SebastianH? Will humans cause the Earth to spin faster…or slower?

            Those are all different effects mentioned in those linked articles that make Earth spin faster and slower. Add them up, together with the much larger influence of the Moon and you’ve got your net directions of the change of the length of a day in the future.

            Are you seriously doubting that a shift of mass towards or from the axis Earth spins around will have no effect on the length of a day?

            And explain why it is you’re a believer that we humans cause volcanoes to erupt with our CO2 emissions since this is “perfectly good science” too.

            Less weight from melting ice causes less pressure to contain the magma, thus causing volcanoes to errupt. Perfectly good and very plausible science.

            Do you believe that AGW causes fish to shrink…or do you believe AGW causes fish to grow? Which “science” do you believe?

            One is about fish getting smaller because of less oxygen in the water from warming, the other one is from bigger tuna caused by more upwelling of small fish and nutrient that tuna’s eat. Why do you think there are contradictions here?

          3. Kenneth Richard

            Less weight from melting ice causes less pressure to contain the magma, thus causing volcanoes to errupt. Perfectly good and very plausible science.

            That you believe the speculation that humans cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt — and therefore humans cause volcanic eruptions and the Earth to spin faster (or slower) — is actual science just goes to show how little you understand what real science actually is.

            Science is about observation of real-world phenomena, not unfalsifiable claims and explanations of what we believe might possibly maybe perhaps be true.

            When it comes to the Greenland ice sheet, “the anthropogenic melt from the Greenland ice sheet is still too small to be detected.” Of course, you don’t really care that an anthropogenic signal has not been distinguishable from natural variability. Humans caused it, you believe, so therefore it’s true. And it’s science. And so is humans causing volcanic eruptions “perfectly good science”. And humans making the Earth spin faster or slower or fish shrink or grow is science too. Because if you believe it’s true, it is. Who needs observational evidence when we have perfectly good beliefs.

          4. SebastianH

            When it comes to the Greenland ice sheet, “the anthropogenic melt from the Greenland ice sheet is still too small to be detected.” Of course, you don’t really care that an anthropogenic signal has not been distinguishable from natural variability.

            Don’t get us started on this human signal thing again. I tried using analogies, I pointed you to papers … nothing seems be able to make you understand. Yeah, not distinguishable in a certain location, that doesn’t mean we don’t have a signal on a global scale.

            Who needs observational evidence when we have perfectly good beliefs.

            This is being observed. AGW is real and it causes shifts in mass. Shifting mass has effects on Volcanism and spin rate of the planet.

          5. The Indomitable Snowman, Ph.D.

            “Science is about observation of real-world phenomena, not unfalsifiable claims and explanations of what we believe might possibly maybe perhaps be true.”

            Kenneth, you have to remember what you’re dealing with here (and more widely). Your statement is basically correct for the STEM fields – the real science fields in which some of us were educated and now work.

            But you have to understand that there is a difference between science and “science” – the latter being the cargo-cult, imitative, wanna-be fields that wish that they could be science, can’t really be… and try to make up for it by pretending to be science. This is mostly due to the proliferation of fields like psychology and sociology – and their various malign progeny. (This is also why when you see an article about the crisis of credibility and replicability in science, the fields discussed are nearly always from “science” and not from science.)

            The way STEM works, as you know and indicated above, is that observations are made and possible explanations are offered. Then, methods of testing the explanations are considered, so that they can be tested – and the incorrect ones discarded. (Over-simplified perhaps, but that’s basically how real science works.)

            But in the cargo cult fields, indeed the way things are done amounts to “unfalsifiable claims and explanations of what we believe might possibly maybe perhaps be true.” Those fields are soft and amorphous, and it’s difficult (if not impossible) to get at solid facts – and thus it is difficult to actually come up with solid tests to separate the plausible explanations from the ones that don’t pass the tests.

            So indeed what happens is that various anointed “experts” in the field sit around considering possible explanations. But because “science” is different from science – and because the explanations really can’t be rigorously tested in “science,” just imitated – the “experts” decide ex nihilo what the “truth” is – and declare it to be so. That’s how “science” (as opposed to science) works. Even worse, once the so-called “experts” have spoken, their conclusions (despite a lack of – or even complete absence of – support) become the absolute truth – and if you disagree and even have evidence that this “declared truth” is not correct, then the burden is on YOU to prove beyond any doubt that the “experts” are wrong (even when you have actually evidence and they don’t).

            What you’re seeing is the corruption of science by “science” – by the importation of the “standards” (sic) of “science” into science. Add in some of usual marxist fascism and you end up with what we have.

            I’m not naïve – even real science suffers from a surprising amount of corruption. But it’s essentially a bug. However, in “science,” it’s a feature.

          6. Kenneth Richard

            That’s how “science” (as opposed to science) works. Even worse, once the so-called “experts” have spoken, their conclusions (despite a lack of – or even complete absence of – support) become the absolute truth – and if you disagree and even have evidence that this “declared truth” is not correct, then the burden is on YOU to prove beyond any doubt that the “experts” are wrong (even when you have actually evidence and they don’t).

            This is the most infuriating part. It’s become so reflexive that humans are causing the ice to melt from below the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets with CO2 emissions, for example, that we are told that we must provide evidence that this is not true. Of course, real-world, falsifiable evidence and cause-effect measurements are not available for their “truth”, but this is just inconvenient.

            Science must be falsifiable, and it is their job to look for evidence to disprove or falsify their claims. They do the opposite.

  11. Kenneth Richard

    Don’t get us started on this human signal thing again.

    Oh yes, how inconvenient it is that the ice melt from the Greenland ice sheet — which has contributed 0.39 of a centimeter to sea levels since 1993 — is too small to be detectable as clearly anthropogenic in origin. We wouldn’t want to, for example, consider that observations from satellites indicate that cloud forcing has been identified as the driving force responsible for the Arctic’s ice losses.

    Kay et al., 2008
    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL033451
    “Reduced cloudiness and enhanced downwelling radiation are associated with the unprecedented 2007 Arctic sea ice loss. Over the Western Arctic Ocean, total summertime cloud cover estimated from spaceborne radar and lidar data decreased by 16% from 2006 to 2007. The clearer skies led to downwelling shortwave (longwave) radiative fluxes increases of +32 Wm−2 (−4 Wm−2) from 2006 to 2007. Over three months, simple calculations show that these radiation differences alone could enhance surface ice melt by 0.3 m, or warm the surface ocean by 2.4 K, which enhances basal ice melt. Increased air temperatures and decreased relative humidity associated with an anti‐cyclonic atmospheric circulation pattern explain the reduced cloudiness.

    Hofer et al., 2017
    http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/6/e1700584
    Decreasing cloud cover drives the recent mass loss on the Greenland Ice Sheet
    “The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) has been losing mass at an accelerating rate since the mid-1990s. This has been due to both increased ice discharge into the ocean and melting at the surface, with the latter being the dominant contribution. This change in state has been attributed to rising temperatures and a decrease in surface albedo. We show, using satellite data and climate model output, that the abrupt reduction in surface mass balance since about 1995 can be attributed largely to a coincident trend of decreasing summer cloud cover enhancing the melt-albedo feedback. Satellite observations show that, from 1995 to 2009, summer cloud cover decreased by 0.9 ± 0.3% per year. Model output indicates that the GrIS summer melt increases by 27 ± 13 gigatons (Gt) per percent reduction in summer cloud cover, principally because of the impact of increased shortwave radiation over the low albedo ablation zone. The observed reduction in cloud cover is strongly correlated with a state shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation promoting anticyclonic conditions in summer and suggests that the enhanced surface mass loss from the GrIS is driven by synoptic-scale changes in Arctic-wide atmospheric circulation.”

    I tried using analogies,

    Yes, and they’re worthless and hence delete-worthy.

    nothing seems be able to make you understand.

    It’s not a matter of me understanding. I know you believe humans cause volcanoes to erupt and the Earth to spin faster or slower…and that these beliefs are “perfectly good” science. Science is not about speculation and ad hoc explanation-fitting. It’s about real-world observation, physical measurements, and falsifiable, testable hypotheses. Nothing about humans-cause-volcanoes-to-erupt is falsifiable. You believe it, so therefore it’s true…and “perfectly good science”. It would be humorous if it weren’t so pathetic…because you actually believe that your beliefs are science.

    Yeah, not distinguishable in a certain location, that doesn’t mean we don’t have a signal on a global scale.

    If an anthropogenic signal isn’t detectable for the Greenland ice sheet, and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is deemed responsible for volcanic eruptions and the Earth spinning faster (or slower), then this is not a “global scale” phenomenon. Ice sheets don’t melt in the mid-latitudes or tropics. And Antarctica hasn’t been cooperating either…

    20+ Scientists: ‘No Continent-Scale Warming Of Antarctic Temperature Is Evident In The Last Century’

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v535/n7612/full/nature18645.html
    Absence of 21st century warming on Antarctic Peninsula consistent with natural variability

    So where is this “global scale” trend in ice sheet losses that is detectable as having been anthropogenic if both pole’s ice sheets do not show there has been enough melt to distinguish from natural variability? Don’t answer. We know you have nothing.

    AGW is real and it causes shifts in mass.

    Yes, we know you believe that CO2 emissions cause ice to melt over Greenland and Antarctica. We’ve not observed this, and the ice melt is so small it’s not even detectable as anthropogenic against the background of natural variability, but you go right ahead and believe it’s true anyway.

    This is precisely why we’re the skeptics and you’re the believer on these comment boards.

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    […] The Widespread Social And Environmental Destruction Behind Electric Car Batteries And E-Mobility […]

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