Expecting to see dozens of new memes sent via Facebook about the China-Martian conspiracy. Or the Gates Foundation virology plot.

Start with the premise that "flattening the curve" means that a given number of deaths is spread over a longer period of time (6 months rather than 2 months, so as not to overwhelm health care). The first dozen deaths in my state of Vermont involved "Do Not Resuscitate" patients, average age 80, many with Alzheimers. "Co-morbidity" will eventually mean that causes of death are moved from category A (e.g. COPD, lung cancer, alzheimers) to category B (COVID19)

Some African countries only have 3 ventilators for the whole country. So the "no longer needed" in the headline not only fails to consider the value of having them in stock next time (per parent thread), but also isn't considering the same world-scale playing field as the coronavirus is.

Article in The Atlantic ... https://www.theatlantic.com/id...

The subject matter is my career. There is 80% truth told here, but the Paretto Principle dictates the 20% lies will do more damage.

The mining cost is gigantic, and it's good to flag it. But the reuse, repair, and secondary market is ignored. He tries to dodge the OEM class, but winds up cricketting the "no repair no reuse" mantra

@Voyager529 makes several valid points, however the examples of trust problems pre-internet are not as material because the press (Widely circulated newspaper readership plus CBS Walter Cronkite, McNeil-Lehrer, etc) was economically sound. My dad was a Journalism professor (and grandson of a Missouri publisher) and he always explained that there were 3 sources of newspaper revenue. 1) Subscriptions, 2) Advertising, and 3) Classified Ads. And for most papers, #3 was the most important.

It was in the late 1990s that the newspapers had an opportunity to essentially buy out ebay and keep the classifieds income. They failed to evolve, lost 1/3 of revenue extremely quickly. That led to cutbacks and, as Voyager529 explains, selling resentment opinion because it's less expensive to research than long form journalism, and sells just as many ads.

true mod up

China mass produced them, putting USA energy efficient bulb manufacturers out of business, and everyone complained for 10 years about it. In the meantime the cost of energy efficient bulbs (and LEDs) dropped massively due to the scale of production, and they were adopted by emerging cities, and it was basically much better than if Americans had produced them in smaller numbers at higher costs. That is what the article says is happening to the cost of new solar panels.

WSJ is one of the best researched journalism sources on the planet (though this article swings a bit between euphoria and impossibility of energy storage). But the paper's "comment trolls" are rabid, anything which is pro-solar gets savaged.

Long known, but seldom reported. The worst recycling programs ever photographed are better environmentally than the best metal ore mining. Unfortunately, because recycling takes place in cities (urban ore) reporters for the Guardian will run 10 times more anti-recycling stories (because it's easier to fly into a city like Accra, book at a hotel, and take a cab to the city junkyard) than mining stories - which are usually in very remote places (in part because the pollution is too much to operate a cobalt mine near a city).

For some reason, USA and EU law have a fetish over secondhand markets. You can legally procure something made from baby seal teeth (or some other unethical environmental source) unless a specific law is passed stopping you from procuring THAT thing. But anything you sell could come back to bite you. This drives a lot of secondhand sales to places like Africa (where my recycling company operates). We see items that look brand new, pulled from shelves at Walmart or Auchon because of too many complaints / returns, which are sent back to the (often Chinese) manufacturer, who then sends the container to Africa. It has given "new" devices a very bad reputation in Africa, which drives purchases of secondhand "solid state" electronics. Which Europe bans Africans from purchasing, and sentences Africans who buy the use devices for reuse or repair to prison. See UK sentencing of Joseph "Hurricane" Benson in 2014. So more working secondhand goes to scrap as well. See Chapter 3 in Reassembling Rubbish (Dr. Josh Lepawsky) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books...

The environmental LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) does indeed rank original mining and extraction as the highest cost, and the original paper helped us keep this in mind.

The update does re-incorporate the recycling opportunities for the older batteries. As a previous post mentioned, automobiles now have approximately 85% capture and recycling rate of old lead acid batteries, which greatly reduces the mining and extraction impacts.

What is still missing, I believe, is the reuse market for EV batteries which are pulled because they become too inefficient for a car (which always wants 150km per charge). My company is repurposing 50% efficiency batteries to support solar panel markets in West Africa.

Before the "primitive recycling profiles" erupt, Africa probably has far higher lead acid battery recovery and recycling rates than anywhere else. In Ghana, they are refined and then exported out to the port of Tema, where raw lead ore is also shipped to refineries in India and China. EV batteries will follow the same cycle, we can hope. A slightly dated Lifecycycle Analysis Mining Factsheet (2003) makes the case. https://retroworks.blogspot.co...

Article and many comments fail to weigh the meaning of epoch. We congratulate ourselves for translating between Egyptians and Greeks. That's a fart in geologic time.

The insurance industry does this very thing. When you require automobile owners to hold liability insurance, the driver winds up paying a lot to be a high risk (multiple DUI, multiple accident). If all gun owners are required to purchase similar liability insurance, the insurers will track 8Chan and high risk individuals rates wil go up. Then the high risk individuals will try not insuring their guns. That creates a pre-crime, someone could be arrested for owning an uninsured gun the same as a drunk who doesn't insure his car can be pulled over. Not perfect, but it would be self funding, somewhat self regulating, and probably work better than anything else I've seen proposed.