this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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For clean energy, miners want a road in one of the most remote national parks (wapo.st)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A proposed copper mine near two national parks is turning into a test of values

how to protect wilderness while supplying critical minerals

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The cost to bore tunnels would be extreme, and likely would deter investors. On top of that, where do you put the waste rock, which can be metal leaching or acid generating.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The cost to bore tunnels would be extreme, and likely would deter investors.

I don't have an obvious solution for that, but no one said park preservation and tackling global warming would come cheap.

On top of that, where do you put the waste rock, which can be metal leaching or acid generating.

I don't know much about this, but as the tunnel is built, use it to truck out the waste rock, which can then be shipped outside of Alaska to be processed and handled in the usual processing plants in the US (or even pay to handle it overseas). Again, costs, but same answer as above.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Re: waste rock. Usually waste rock is placed in piles. During operations, they have a series of collection ditches to manage contact water and pump it to the tailings pond or an exhausted pit, until an impermeable cover and growth media are placed over top. The cover prevents aeration, which causes the ML/ARD issues I mentioned in the other post. 211 km of waste rock is a lot of additional cost and env risk, and work to offset that risk. I'm not saying we shouldn't do this, but I'm saying it isn't likely unless they are mandated to do it and have a well developed plan to do so (more time delays and cost)

They are doing underground hauling of waste rock at one mine I know about, but it's because the mine is already underground and they have the route established, and the mine itself is expanding.

There is so much to consider in mining if you want to do it the right way