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Meredith Trimble's avatar

Ever wonder why major aluminum companies moved ore smelting to Iceland? After shipping ore from, say, Jamaica, the cost of smelting was still lower than using fossil fueled generation, Iceland sits on top of a “super volcano” and has fully developed geothermal energy. Smaller geothermal energy is slowly developing in Central America near volcanoes. Where is the development money? Perhaps this is the best way to keep the people from migrating away from the area.

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Barry Butterfield's avatar

Nicely done, thank you. I am new to your substack, but was drawn by a reference from Rolling and Orr, and your WSJ op-ed you reference here. That too, was nicely done. In the comment thread to that essay, I said that a better question is, is warming a bad thing? It always amuses me when greens are asked how much this program or that program will lower temperatures, and they cannot answer. Best answer I've seen is from a paper by Lindzen and Happer (2024) that said if the entire world forced net zero CO emissions by the year 2050, a warming of only 0.07 deg C (0.13 deg. F) would be averted. Let's see - tens of trillions of dollars to stop 0.07 degrees of warming. Consider that since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1600s, the earth has warmed 4 degrees. Those four degrees have seen remarkable grow and improvement in human flourishing. Makes me wonder why people think another four is a bad thing.

Regarding your current essay about aluminum, you mention that the new smelter will produce about 550,000 tons of aluminum per year. Have you, or anyone else reading this, estimated the number of tons of aluminum needed to build and maintain a solar or wind farm of the size needed to power the facility? Asking for a friend, so to speak...

Thank you for your good work. I look forward to future essays.

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