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Comment by ciconia | Hacker News Reader

> "This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate...

No, this is not good news. Mining is one of the most polluting human activities there is. In addition, all those machines used for digging and pulverizing the minerals, they run on petrol.

In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the latest iPhone, is totally dependent on fossil fuels: coal for making steel, petrol for the all the rest: mining, refining, transporting, installing.

This is the hard truth about so called "renewables" - they would not have existed without the use of fossil fuels. Anyone telling you otherwise is simply greenwashing. If we really care about our future a whole different approach is needed.

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Almost none of that is correct, except in the specious sense that most of those technologies run on electricity and electricity is still made from fossil sources in most areas. In some cases it's sort of laughable: solar panels are just semiconductors, everything about that industry is electrified (most of the power input is in growing the wafer out of molten silicon).

Basically your argument is circular: you're saying that renewable electrification can't happen because electricity is made from carbon. But as electrification proceeds that becomes untrue by definition.

But isn’t this a feature of every technological improvement? You need fossil fuel energy to be able to extract renewable energy, yes, but there’s no reason to believe you couldn’t replace it with renewable energy down the line.

It’s sort of like how you bootstrap a compiler: the first version of a new language tool chain needs to be implemented in some other language. But then you can make it “self-hosted” by implementing it in itself.

> yes, but there’s no reason to believe you couldn’t replace it with renewable energy down the line.

Is there any chance of this happening by, say, 2050? I don't think so. The whole "energy transition" idea is a fallacy. Today we burn more coal, petrol and gas than ever before. We simply don't know how to manufacture solar panels and wine turbines without fossil fuels.

"If we really care about our future a whole different approach is needed."

Well yes, the current econony (and mining) mostly runs on fossil fuels, that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2290944-how-electrifica...

But since there is no magic spell bringing them into existence just like that, yes, the transition is powered by fossil fuels. How else could it work?

> In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the latest iPhone, is totally dependent on fossil fuels: coal for making steel, petrol for the all the rest: mining, refining, transporting, installing.

Well, LKAB has partnered with some other local industrial giants to make the steel making process fossil free, called project HYBRIT. It will just take some 20 years. :)

> a whole different approach is needed

I would like to know more about this different approach. I don't think we can make a change that doesn't involve using what we are currently using (fossil fuels) but diminishing over time.

In my mind the only thing that can work to mitigate climate change (any way we cannot reverse it) and stop damaging our ecosystem, the planet earth, is to practice sobriety, reduce our economic activity voluntarily, and thus reduce the burning of fossil fuels and emissions in general. This is the hard truth, but how many of us are ready to do this? How many of the people reading this are ready to make a material sacrifice in order to ensure the future of their offspring?

With that logic anything we do for the climate is green washing. While your thoughts are catching on, Sweden has always been a nation of mining.

> With that logic anything we do for the climate is green washing

If the goal is to stay in our "growth forever and ever and ever" scheme then yes

A friend mine is doing research in solar to simplify production and making parts more green so to rely less on these practices. Each component is being intensely studied. Just adding this to the conversation. Also by upping the yield and longevity, costs go down.

> a whole different approach is needed Why not tell us something about this approach ?

Unless it's doing nothing.

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