Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, I was reading some articles in I don’t remember whether it was The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Free Beacon, might have been Western Journal, might have even been The Epoch Times. They connected me to a site called cfa.org.
And the question on the headline is, is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery to power an EV?
And here are some interesting little factoids about lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are 1,000 pounds. A typical lithium battery for an EV is 1,000 pounds.
It has to have, obviously, lithium. But of the 1,000 pounds of that is lithium. A lithium mine uses these big caterpillar hauling trucks called 797s. Each one of those trucks burns 500,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year. A typical mine will have 35 of them.
So in order to mine lithium from a single mine, these trucks are burning 17.5 million gallons of diesel. Now, here are some other little interesting facts. As I said earlier, a lithium battery is a 1,000-pound battery.
A typical EV battery is 1,000 pounds. Sixty pounds of that is nickel, 44 pounds is magnesium, and 30 pounds is cobalt. Two hundred pounds is copper, and 400 pounds is aluminum and steel.
To mine the materials, you have to use 25,000 of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of the ore for the cobalt, 5,000 for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of the ore for the copper.
All toll for one car battery, you have to have 500,000 of earth. It has to be mined. And that doesn’t even get into that’s for the manufacturing of the battery.
That doesn’t get into the disposal of the battery, which is a whole nother subject. But the research that I’m beginning to find is that from a purely environmental standpoint, lithium car batteries are far worse for the environment as a whole, taking into account the mining to produce them, and then the disposal, which we haven’t gotten into yet.
But just the mining, is terrible for the environment. And in fact, it’s virtually impossible to get one of these mines permitted in the United States because of environmental reasons.
And so what these mines, where these mines are in third-world countries, where the white elitists in this country don’t have to see or experience the terrible conditions at these mines and the terrible destruction that it’s doing to the earth. But they can certainly feel happy driving around in their $100,000 EV.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
I am totally impressed with the information that Crom has put forth and especially his way of condensing it so it’s understandable . I like all of his commentaries as well as the whole program with Mr. Leahy, (except the Friday sports report – I generally turn to 997, when that comes on).
An “inconvenient truth”.
Yes, and one that will not be covered by main stream media nor nor understood by the environmentalist lemmings.