King Copper?
(Wired) “The battle cry of energy transition advocates is “Electrify everything.” Meaning: Let’s power cars, heating systems, industrial plants, and every other type of machine with electricity rather than fossil fuels.
To do that, we need copper. Second to silver, a rarer and far more expensive metal, copper is the best natural electrical conductor on Earth. We need it for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. (A typical EV contains as much as 175 pounds of copper.) We need it for the giant batteries that will provide power when the sun isn’t shining, and the wind isn’t blowing. We need it to massively expand and upgrade the countless miles of power cables that undergird the energy grid in practically every country.
In the United States, the capacity of the electric grid will have to grow as much as threefold to meet the expected demand. A recent report from S&P Global predicts that the amount of copper we’ll need over the next 25 years will add up to more than the human race has consumed in its entire history. “The world has never produced anywhere close to this much copper in such a short time frame,” the report notes. The world might not be up to the challenge. Analysts predict supplies will fall short by millions of tons in the coming years.
No wonder Goldman Sachs has declared “no decarbonization without copper” and called copper “the new oil.”
Band of Brothers (interview)
Bullet Points:
** No dog ever abandoned its owner because he was old and sick.
** It was more fun being 20 in the 70s than it is being 70 in the 20s.
** Time is the only currency that we spend without ever knowing the balance. Use it wisely.
** I really don’t care that Kamala Harris was a professional whore. You can argue that she performed a service to the black community by helping with male tension release. It’s that she has been nothing but a professional whore that concerns me. Now in her later years, used up, she’s an aging, barren, cat lady without the ability to express a coherent thought without reading from a teleprompter.
** On what planet should a labor union who endorses a political candidate be responsible for collecting and delivering ballots for an election?
** “The strongest economy in history” wouldn’t need price controls.
** The idea is to die young – as late as possible.
Don’t Ask for Whom the Bell Tolls
I really hate to include a regular obituary on my blog, but there is no choice. Too many of my friends are making that trip to the corpse hall. MikeW, whom many of you know by reputation, advised me of the passing of our mutual good friend (and a participant in this blog in days past), known as WoFat.
John “Jack” (WoFat) Willoughby was a man among men. He passed away on Friday, June 28, 2024, and MikeW and I just learned of it. I let the mysterious PersonX (aka The Prince of Darkness) know of his passing, and it’s sad. People like WoFat can’t be replaced. PersonX and MikeW are Buddhists, and they are of the opinion that he’ll be reborn here on the Third Rock. I’m not arguing, but he’s too good for the Third Rock.
Jack served in the US Army during the Vietnam War and worked for the Army Security Agency (forerunner of the National Security Agency) in Thailand and Laos. He served with the New Orleans Police Department for thirty years, commanding the sex crimes, homicide and vice units. His work took him to sixteen different countries, where he learned to order beer in six languages and say “I love you” in Chinese.
Jack wrote three novels based on his experiences at the New Orleans Police Department.
Judy, his wife of many years, died about a year before he did, and her loss was the proximate cause of his death.
Take no prisoner’s indeed. Where are the Ronald Speirs going to come from as we move forward into our distortion future? The light at the end of the tunnel appears to be a 200 car banana train headed our direction at a high rate of speed. We can’t outrun it, but we need to be smart enough to sidestep out of its way.
Don’t accept the invitation if somebody invites you to ride in a boxcar.
Since trains aren’t as important to travel as they used to be, we probably need to add don’t accept a ride in a semi trailer, also.
Yes, Pro-Tip – don’t accept the ride in the semi-trailer with 200 other people even if they’re offering good FEMA food at the other end of the trip.
X2 all. Prudence stemming from pure observation coupled to Occam’s Razor is the rule of the day. Hardly anyone can be trusted to have “your best interests at heart”, and the “hardly anyone” is dwindling fast.
When I was in high school in the ’60s I worked with a man who was a WWII paratrooper and D-Day vet. He told me they had orders to take no prisoners. He related a story that when they were running through some small town a German soldier came out and dropped to his knees in front of him, obviously begging him to not kill him.
He shot the man. Then he said he thought ‘maybe I didn’t kill him.’ So he went back and shot him again. So it wasn’t an isolated occurrence, they had orders to reach their objective no matter what and prisoners couldn’t be allowed to slow them down.
War is hell.
X2
He also said that for many years he could see that man’s face at night.
“It was Sam [Gamgee]’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would rather have stayed there in peace.”
<The Two Towers
Book 4, Chapter 4: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
“You shoot a person, it’s not like the movies, it stays with you.” Jesse Stone.
—
Now multiply that by a 10/50/100. Can’t imagine.
I am still haunted by my time in Bosnia. So many faces and no names. No, it doesn’t leave you when you come home. I am fighting a far greater battle at home. With a Civil War looming over us, this time it is home.
It was, at one time, acceptable to shoot surrendering soldiers if you couldn’t ‘keep’ them. And you won. Things like the Malmedy Massacre wouldn’t have been a war crime if the Germans won, or pulled a stalemate.
Seriously, what are you going to do? Reduce your own numbers at a critical time to watch over surrendered soldiers? Nobody’s got time for that.
Nowadays, with the current rules of engagement, we have to take our enemies prisoner, and the enemies know it. World Cop crap. Sad. It’s not like our enemies aren’t going to abuse and kill our people who are captured. So, well, screw them all, God will know his own.
X2
* question is:
are we now under Euro-rules? how did we get there?
* question is:
is shooting a surrendering soldier a legal order? (agreed who’s gonna guard him?)
* question is:
and if you were surrendering soldier? if it were your son? if it were your daughter?
We are willing to artillery shell, or drop bombs on, distant targets armed or unarmed, even fire bomb civilian targets to advance the effort.
I am a retired Electrical Engineer and my field was in telecom. This included all areas of telecom: switching (including installing sites, power, backup power), transmission (original cabling, fiber, microwave), and other issues. Copper is critical to power. The US Electrical Grid needs to be updated in many areas. In many place thieves take copper for money and this can be done at EV charging stations or anyplace that provides power.
The increase use of computers, cell phones, large TVs, EVs, and more electric items by the US people is causing heavy use of electricity on the grid but the push of “Green Power” is causing a problem. The Green Power is using Wind Farms and Solar Farms vs Coal, Oil, Natural Gas Plants, Nuclear, or Hydroelectric. Green Power cannot generate the power that the other plants can and they ultimately will cause problems. Environmentalist Groups always push toward Green Power and other “Green” so called ideas but they are not necessarily safe for the environment in the long run.
Urban mining to support the drug habit. Power system upgrades won’t happen until the environmentalists and all their regulations are beaten.
Environmentalists and coastal elites don’t understand that mining, farming, fishing, manufacturing, etc., are difficult businesses that create pollution of different sorts. It’s not all working in an office (sort of a meerkat farm for humans) where you pull down a big salary and then go out for lunch in your electric car. The power magically arrives, as does the food. University professors are the worst. Then they conflate the weather with broad climate changes, oceans rising, etc. without having ever looked closely at a tree rings from a very old tree.
If the goal is a very comfortable electric powered life the present realities of farming, fishing, manufacturing, etc. are going to interfere with that. However if the population in the world was significantly reduced the elites could have their comfortable life with much smaller demands on the environment.
If the jab was an experiment at population reduction we’ll know in couple of generations…
That’s the thing about history. You have to live through it before you know how it will come out.
Current elites won’t like the lead poisoning epidemic coming their way if the jab experiment goes wrong too soon.
Sorry for your loss LL. Maybe WoFat will spring off that third rock into the heavens to be with his wife. I always enjoyed reading his posts. He will be missed in the VM community and others I’m sure. RIP
-HogSS
Consider for a moment, if you will, Mr. Kamala Harris, his life and times and eventual place in history.
.
Sorry for your loss, L-L. I’ll get into his novels directly.
I am sorry to hear of WoFat’s passing. My condolences to you and MikeW on the loss of your friend.
It’s getting to the point where I know more dead people than living people. I’m reminded of the film “Kingdom of Heaven – Director’s Cut” where the character Balien looks at the wall of his new castle and there are skeletons having a party. The quote on the wall is “Quad sumus hoc eritis” (such as we are, you will be). It is the condition of mankind that we are here but for a moment. For those of you who read my novel, “White Powder: A Novel of the CIA and the Secret War in Laos,” WoFat was a character (with permission) in the story. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The other day a young (to me) person needed some information about a deceased friend and colleague (an address or something, I forget). I pulled it up on my phone. YP was surprised. “You didn’t remove him from your contact list?” Of course not. Why would I do that? “Well, he’s … uh, dead.” Fair enough. But having his info was useful just now, yeah? “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
—
I could see there was no point in trying to explain to YP so I just brushed it off as a utilitarian thing. Maybe she’ll understand one day. Or not. But that sent me down a bit of a morbid path and I counted up the number of dead people on my phone. Sigh. Or maybe I’m just a sentimental idiot. For possibly-strange values of “sentiment” but I don’t think I’m alone. (And if I am, so what?)
—
From The Lost Stars: Shattered Spear by Jack Campbell:
“Like anyone else, Drakon had a hierarchy of callers loaded into his private comm. The tones assigned told him instantly [the origin of the call]. He had kept some tones even after the people they were assigned to had died or apparently died, though. Drakon would never delete the tone he had assigned to Conner Gaiene. Nor had he deleted the tone assigned to Morgan despite all of the evidence pointing to her death on Ulindi.”
Exactly…I have a few still in Contacts for some reason…just in case I suppose…or more likely…to keep their memory alive while erasing their inof would put the final nail into the proverbial coffin.
I scroll through contacts and rarely prune.
It brings reminders of friends and acquaintances (some not so friendly).
My condolences on the loss of your friend. When an old man passes, somewhere a library burns. We are diminished.
—–
Band of Brothers. Funny you should mention, I happened to watch that clip a few days ago. When I was stationed in the suburbs of Nürnberg, I made it a point to stand on the podium where Hitler spoke at the rallies. Among other reasons, I felt I owed it to those who came before me. And yeah, while I was 20-something in the 70’s.
We are all diminished with the passing of friends and family.
When I was in Afghanistan there was a copper mountain in the south central part of the country. It caused problems with the commo gear, Blue Force Tracker, and GPS equipment in the valley.
We should re-invade, mine it, take the copper and go home (before the Chinese get it).
Of passing note: In Jack Willoughby’s novel, “Murder: For the Hell of it” my daughter, Heather’s picture is on the cover of the book. She’s holding my Colt Python blue steel 4″ revolver.
Cool…a legacy.
Thats pretty cool i had to look it up. Is she a lefty or just a pose?
LL, my sincere condolences, it always hurts when you lose friends. You would think it would get easier over the years but it never does.
/
It was more fun being 20 in the 70s than it is being 70 in the 20s. Very profound. I moved about a cord of firewood yesterday and I can definitely feel it ths morning. That did not use to happen darn it.
/
Electrical power. Increased demand+no additional infrastructure=decreased reliability. Hence me looking into transfer switches and backup generators for the house. Leaning toward diesel since propane is almost out of sight in my neck of the woods.
I use propane as my backup fuel and a Generac electric generator for home use. The APS Electric grid in Arizona is quite robust, and though there are occasional outages, they’re rare. I still want my crack (electricity), though, and thus the generator. I pre-buy propane for home use to lock in a lower pricing structure. I’m preparing to write a $2,500 check to Griffin’s Propane for the ’24-’25 pre-buy. I thought about going diesel but didn’t when I built the hovel at the White Wolf Mine. In hindsight, I don’t know. Propane has worked out though it’s not inexpensive.
Propane makes sense since it is so storage stable but the cost is a factor. Also I can use diesel in my tractor so that is a plus; or an excuse, I am not sure which. It’s really almost a tossup to me. My electrical grid, Inland Power, has been great but it does seem like the number of outages is increasing over the years as more people move in.
Propane is more economical when you pre-buy, especially over diesel if you don’t have the farm/ranch bulk tank. We have two generators, not the whole house 15KW (or more) Generac, but we can operate specific circuits for weeks without power if need be…and heat the place with wood. Propane is a 500gal tank, 80% full (typ) is plenty for our range and would last a year or more.
In the 70’s my dad switched to propane from fuel oil and came to regret it almost instantly with the Arab Oil Embargo.
* The great cat lady (AKA Kamala) when advised that industry was running our of copper was understood tp have said,” Qu’ils utilisent de l’or.”
* My French is terrible, but my Latin may still hold. I think it’s “Quod Sumus Hoc Eritis”
* Totally off topic, a friend, a retired conservative MD, brought this to my attention:
“The terms ‘live,’ ‘living,’ and ‘viable’ have been used frequently to refer to any pregnancy with cardiac activity. We recommend against the use of all these terms in the first trimester. ‘Live’ and ‘living’ are best avoided because these terms may be appropriated by people outside of the field of medicine to support political rhetoric and proscriptive legislation. In addition, these terms may raise unrealistic expectations for patients facing potential pregnancy loss or EPs.”
A Lexicon for First-Trimester US: Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound Consensus Conference Recommendations
https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.240122
for any who might be interested in the ongoing Orwelliazation of Medical Terms – or “How the physician must now speak to ‘their’ patient.”
I found it weird once I began to see people younger than I (that were nominally ‘healthy’) die of ‘natural causes.’ You know, normal non-covid vax death. Random heart attack, cancer, just went to sleep and didn’t wake up, that type of stuff. Very weird. Especially since there’s no way to classify me or my wife as nominally healthy, yet we keep on ticking. Very weird.
–
Heck, my oldest brother has now outlived my father. And my mother is closing in on outliving her mother (grandma lived to 96, ma is 94.) So, well, weird. More touched by death from friends and acquaintances than family deaths.
–
Dark subject.
Who needs copper when we have aluminum? That worked so well with mobile homes in the 1970’s.
Many a home went aluminum per the enviro/code geniuses, not a good move as stuff caught fire when the connections oxidized. My guess those same [new gen] geniuses believe electricity can power everything via mag waves because their $1200 iPhone can cord-free charge. (not that I wouln’t love the no wire charge/electricity capability – be kinda cool – modern physics as we understand it isn’t capable without giving everyone a constant MRI enema.
Didn’t the original Tesla (Nicolai) experiment with that back at the turn of last century – the Wardenclyffe Tower?
He did. As my dad would say, “Things are rarely invented anymore, but many are redesigned from old concepts using new technology.”
—
Then there’s the Coral Castle (FL) guy who seemingly/secretly moved large limestone/coral blocks with ease, to this day no one knows how he did it, and he’s not talking anymore.
Michigan guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P4HwmmhykI
Wally is great…haven’t seen that in years. Good one. Methodical patience.
as I recall (not being an electrician, but…) connections with copper wire use to end in a loop until the push-in-lock-in type of connection. copper, when bent sharply into a loop, flows more easily and even when micro-crevices form and copper oxide results, CuO is a conductor (not a great one, but it does conduct electricity) and copper itself is a great heat dissipator conducting almost all heat very rapidly away from a micro-location: aluminum, OTOH, when bent sharply into a loop will also form (more) tiny crevices (not being as ductile) in which Aluminum Oxide, which is a high resistance insulator would produce and not dissipate the heat allowing extremely high temperatures to result and concentrate in a micro-location – and if anything flammble was nearby, including insulating material, fires.
the push-in-lock-in connections still produce Al₂O₃ which generate far more heat than CuO, but the amount of heat generated stays within a tolerable range.
Personally I always use copper wiring, no matter what the cost and even if Code allows aluminum
Nowadays most devices are CU/AL compatible, eliminating the problems for remodeler’s. Like you I prefer copper. Had a systems engineer insist on cast iron waste, no PVC. He also didn’t believe in Pro-Press for copper piping, demanded we sweat all copper joints. Also hated PEX. Some people can’t switch gears when the technology exists.
RIP your friend and clearly a SISU Warrior. “Death smiles on us all…all we can do is smile back.” (Maximus)
Sorry to hear about WoFat. Some days are bad ones.
*
– Kle.
His wife was his reason for living. He planned on going first but that’s not how it happened. When she past he lost his resolve to live.
Propane is a refinery product of a specific organic carbon chain length. Diesel is natural component of the natural mixture that we call “crude oil”. It can be drained off from a settled stack of ‘crude’ like the oil companies did before the discovery of ‘cracking tower’ technique that led to all substances of the modern refinery process. Of course you do require the correct type of ‘crude oil’ that you begin with! I prefer “Light Sweet Texas” or “Graphite Rocky Mountain” and hate “Pennsylvania Asphalt” (Coal Tar).
It’s raining on the Mogollon Rim. It has rained almost every day since early July and today is the same. Monsoon still rages in Northern Arizona. It keeps the temperatures down, clears the already clean mountain air, and, in this case, keeps the campers in their expensive RVs, sucking down the bandwidth that I usually would use. Some Greyhound-style RVs are as large as homes, and the swells will have three TVs surfing the net as they view Netflix. I’m texting HogsbreathSS, who can listen to EdB’s radio show on WAAM 92.7 FM- Detroit. Such are the workarounds.
**
OK, I got on live to listen to EdB – Almost live with the delay…
**
The political prisoners who were arrested after January 6, many of whom still await trial or are on appeal three years later, are largely forgotten. EdB and crew are keeping the word out there and deserve your support.
**
Jeremy Brown, retired USA SFG/ODA MSG – 1066 Days in Prison today
**
http://www.Jeremybrowndefense.com
http://www.magamouse.com
EdB is a very good man. Awaiting the new Starlink so I can get off my spotty cellphone lousy bandwidth hotspot.
Thank you sir for boosting the signal!
The conversation concerning MSgt Ret’d Brown is here.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/04jOxdHACYn8B6XhbeHM1n?si=ba2790b366c94f50
Good show today, Ed.
Condolences on the passing of WoFat.
*
The book “White Powder”was excellent. It would make a really good movie. It’s available on Amazon folks.
*
Copper = urban mining.
*
You noted two friends are Buddhists, there is a story there. It would be interesting to know the back story.
If he’s inclined, I’ll let MikeW comment on his Buddhist faith here.
**
The best copper mining I know of is available at EV recharging stations if at-risk inner-city youth activity indicates the money to be made in the harvest. They could be selling crack on the streets, yet they will take time out of their busy days to visit the EV recharging stations.
again totally off-topic:
https://vot-er.org/
go to your ER and have your physician more concerned with registering you to vote than what shows up on the MRI
It warms my heart that they care so deeply about your political welfare. When I go to my doctor, we talk about gold mining while he does his witch-doctor thing, ordering blood tests and such. We haven’t discussed Donald Trump, Buddha, or Jesus – generally sticking to mining. I’ve given him some tips on where to find pay in Western Arizona. Mining is his avocation, and he does it on the weekends. When he retires from medicine, he wants to do it full-time. I can keep him in claims to work. Doctors get to talk about those things. Dentists are too busy drilling, filling and billing to get mining tips. As a result, I’m one of his favorite patients.
Aah – we used to mine for gold and silver – before the plastic/white fillings became a “thing”
now, we just mine for green
“It was more fun being 20 in the 70s than it is being 70 in the 20s.”
and I imagine the same to be true compared to being 20 in the 20s as well
RIP, WOFAT.
And are you telling us to invest in copper, silver or both?