Navel gazing with Philip Gosse

Here’s someone who thought the earth was only 6000 years old but when you studied it, it appeared  to be millions of years old!

An odd idea but often called Last Thursdayism.

Last Thursdayism always gets a wry smile. It is the claim that everything was created last thursday with the appearance of history in everything. So an eighty year old was created last thursday and implanted in his brain are the many memories. And the thousand year old yew, likewise and the wood propping it, up was created last week and recorded by the church as being put in place in 1867. Logically this position is totally irrefutable. This is just an extreme form of Creation with Apparent Age.

The classic work on this is Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse (1804-81), which was published in 1857, two years before Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Omphalos is the word for navel in Greek, and the title seems to be a reference whether Adam was created without a navel! Gosse’s argument that the whole world had been created with the appearance had been put forward before, but I don’t think Gosse knew about them as he was trying to resolve his view that the bible taught a six day creation a few thousand years ago and the pesky geologists were demanding millions of years. The ultra-reactionary French Catholic Chateaubriand argued this in 1804 and Granville Penn in the 1920s. But Gosse’s idea was ex nihilo.

One could say that Gosse was one of the last of the scientific literalists until Young Earth Creationism came in with a bang in 1961. He is a lovely example to buttress the Conflict Thesis of Science and Religion where everything is framed as conflict between belief that God created everything in six days flat and thus Archbishop Ussher was correct with his date of 4004BC and the progressive scientists who ditched God and allowed aeons of time. The Conflict Thesis has suffered mortal wounds in the last fifty years but it is still the popular belief of those who think they are well-informed! Of course, his son’s book Father and Son brings out the conflict.

Gosse was an able and unusual Victorian naturalist, who communicated with many scientists including Darwin. His life is frequently seen through the eyes of his son Edmund in the book Father and Son (Gosse, 1907, 1949), which paints and unflattering and spiteful picture of his father.

Gosse began work as a clerk and was a self-taught naturalist and thus was very able – when he kept to a limited and biblicist timeframe!

Gosse was a very competent naturalist and highly skilled with aquaria and as well as his researches wrote several popular books, especially on aquaria – a word he coined. Today we might call him a fundamentalist, but that term only came into being in about 1900. He was a devout christian and became a member of the Brethren, but I don’t know whether he belonged tot he exclusive side. The Brethren founded by J N Darby in the 1830s took the Bible literally and thus the earth cannot be more than a few thousand years old. They also had a great interest in prophecy and the Second Coming. For a time he was a preacher but for his last thirty years he was a solo Christian and did not go to church or chapel.

 See more here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Henry_Gosse

Or in his biography

or read Father and Son if you want a jaundiced account.

His most (in)famous book was Omphalos (1857), which was an attempt to get out of the logical and scientific impasse of the 1850s, when Progressive Creationism reigned supreme. In a sense Progressive Creationsits held a Prochronism but spread over aeons of time! There was a twofold theme to Omphalos. First he holds that Genesis One has to be taken to mean 144 hours of creation. Secondly this he reconciles with “science” by his principle of “Prochronism,” and criticizes  geologists because “they have not allowed for the Law of Prochronism in Creation” (p. vi). This he contrasts with “Diachronism” which allows Deep Time

I venture to suggest in the following pages an element, hitherto overlooked, which disturbs the conclusions of geologists respecting the antiquity of the earth. Their calculations are sound on the recognised premises; but they have not allowed for the Law of Prochronism in Creation.

The enunciation of this principle will lie in a nut-shell; the reader will find it at p.124; or p.347. All the rest of the book is illustration.

I do not claim originality for the thought which I have here endeavoured to work out. It was suggested to me by a Tract, which I met with some dozen years ago, or more; the title of which I have forgotten: I am pretty sure it was anonymous, but it was published by Campbell, of 1, Warwick Square. Whether it is still in print[Pg vii] I do not know; I never saw another copy. If the author is alive, and if he should happen to cast his eye on this volume, he will doubtless recognise his own bantling, and accept this my acknowledgment.

The germ of the argument, however, I have found, since these pages were written, in “The Mineral and Mosaical Geologies,” of Granville Penn (1822). The state of physical science when he wrote did not enable him to press the argument to a demonstration, as I have endeavoured to do; for he could not refer to structural peculiarities as sensible records of past processes, inseparable from newly created organisms.

I would not be considered as an opponent of geologists; but rather as a co-searcher with them after that which they value as highly as I do, Truth. The path which I have pursued has led me to a conclusion at variance with theirs. I have a right to expect that it be weighed; let it not be imputed to vanity if I hope that it may be accepted.

But what I much more ardently desire is, that[Pg viii] the thousands of thinking persons, who are scarcely satisfied with the extant reconciliations of Scriptural statements and Geological deductions,—who are silenced but not convinced,—may find, in the principle set forth in this volume, a stable resting-place. I have written it in the constant prayer that the God of Truth will deign so to use it; and if He do, to Him be all the glory!

Expounding that Law he stresses that the course of nature is a circle; for example the life cycle of a moth.  God the creator can create at any point in the life cycle. BUT that will leave the imprint of its apparent history

It is not necessary,—at least it does not seem so to me,—that all the members of this mighty commonwealth should have an actual, a diachronic existence; anymore than that, in the creation of a man, his fœtal, infantile, and adolescent stages should have an actual, diachronic existence, though these are essential to his normal life-history. Nor would their diachronism be more certainly inferrible from the physical traces of them, in the one case than in the other. In the newly-created Man, the proofs of successive processes requiring time, in the skin, hairs, nails, bones, &c. could in no respect be distinguished from the like proofs in a Man of to-day;[Pg 347] yet the developments to which they respectively testify are widely different from each other, so far as regards the element of time. Who will say that the suggestion, that the strata of the surface of the earth, with their fossil floras and faunas, may possibly belong to a prochronic development of the mighty plan of the life-history of this world,—who will dare to say that such a suggestion is a self-evident absurdity? If we had no example of such a procedure, we might be justified in dealing cavalierly with the hypothesis; but it has been shown that, without a solitary exception, the whole of the vast vegetable and animal kingdoms were created,—mark! I do not say may have been, but MUST have been created—on this principle of a prochronic development, with distinctly traceable records. It was the law of organic creation.347

Creation is God suddenly breaking into the circle, thus Adam had a navel (omphalos) but had no history though his navel gave the “appearance” of history (pp. 123–124). Thus “The strata of the surface of the earth (with fossils) may possibly belong to the prochronic development of the mighty plan of the life history of this world.” He asks “who will dare say that such a suggestion is a self-evident absurdity?” The reaction to Gosse was predictable and severe. To Charles Kingsley, Gosse made God a liar; as to create a world with such an appearance of antiquity a mere six millennia ago would be dishonest. However, there is an impeccable logic to Gosse, and Omphalosis the only consistent “anti-geology.”

Charles Kingsley wrote in a letter to the author:

“Your book is the first that ever made me doubt, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this—that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes Deus quidam deceptor [‘God who is sometimes a deceiver’]. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in the one single case of your newly created scars on the pandanus trunk, your newly created Adam’s navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here … I cannot … believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.”

His picture of breaking into the circle of life is logically no worse than Progressive Creationists, who held that at regular intervals in the words of Micron (Paradise Lost,
vii line, p. 463) “the grassy clods now calfed, now half appeared” not only “the tawny lion” but also all mammals, dinosaurs, reptiles, and amphibians at regular intervals throughout the history of the world. In a sense Progressive Creationists were having their cake and eating it, by adopting a naturalistic geology, yet on life forms were as supernaturally interventionist, that is, creationist in the strict sense as any anti-geologist. Seen in this light, the paleontology in the 1850s was crying out for Darwin to
remove the implicit absurdities. Gosse’s thesis is logically irrefutable, and unintentionally exposes the fatal flaw in pre-Darwinian Progressive Creationism. That flaw is to accept “Natural Law” for the astronomical and geological development, but to
insist on intervention or miracle for the cause of life. Darwin realized this
inconsistency both in early notebooks and in later work. Perhaps the only consistent alternative to a thoroughgoing evolution is Gosse’s Prochronism, which raises even more theological problems than does evolution.

Various modern Young Earth Creationists accept Creation with Apparent Age but do not think it through, as it is totally at variance with any kind of Flood Geology which is a lynch pin of Creationism. In practice Creationists are not Prochronists but Diachronists over a very short timescale. They are totally inconsistent unlike Gosse who carried his ideas through with remarkable consistency.

But Gosse would agree with this, from a Southern Baptist. 

Gosse was heart-broken no one accepted his ideas, but however logical and internally consistent they are, they do, as Charles Kingsley argued, make God a liar and are simply absurd.

It was a mammoth mistake

Darwin’s Hardest Rock – only a few years old

Found this on the FB page Young Earth Christian Creationists Coalition

https://www.facebook.com/groups/YoungEarth3C

One comment was;

the point of it is that we have been told that rocks take hundreds of thousands of years to form. Petrified wood takes thousands of years to form. Yet this formed in a short period of time. Also there are examples of things like spark plugs that are surrounded by Stone. I once saw a cup that was encased in some form of very hard rock. I don’t need you to believe in creationism but it’s good to think outside the box and realize scientists don’t know everything they claim to know about the universe. After all they still call it theories.

And with your silly example of mountains. If the mountains would have been formed by water flow than the mountains would be smooth and not have Jagged edges. It is obvious that mountains came up from the ground from tectonic plates and other things. But could it be possible in your mind that these mountains that Rose from the ground could have Rose and much faster in a much more forceful way than what we are told. Just a possibility

This says it all, and rapid forming stuff like this has been known fro centuries and then concreate has been made since Roman times.

After spending some three weeks being sea-sick on the Beagle, Darwin went ashore on the Cape Verde Islands.

He set to on doing his present love of geology and set about exploring Quail Island. He was fascinated by a baobab tree and visited it twice.  He mused on it being so ancient that some think Darwin still thought the earth was a few thousand years old.

He didn’t, see; https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2023/09/03/darwin-and-ussher-meet-under-a-baobab-tree/

While there he noted all the volcanic rocks

He was particularly interested in the volcanic rocks, having learnt about them when he went round Anglesey with Sedgwick in August 1831. These were by Holyhead Mountain and also near Plas Newydd , now a National Trust property. The owner of Plas Newydd had his leg blown off at the Battle of Waterloo, and you can see his leg in the house. He then saw more of volcanic rocks at Cwm Idwal, Moel Siabod and Carreg y Fran after he left Sedgwick as he was walking from Ogwen, near Bangor, to Barmouth, via Capel Curig. The map below indicates Darwin’s route from Shrewsbury , past Llangollen to the north coast , round Anglesey, leaving Sedgwick at Bangor and then on foot to Barmouth.

Summary of the 1831 tour https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2020/07/03/just-before-the-beagle-darwin-in-wales-1831/

As they went round Anglesea Sedgwick (and Darwin) used Henslow’s 1822 geological memoir, which is an incredible piece of geology judged by today’s standards. Darwin took a copy on the Beagle and often compared the geology he saw on the Beagle voyage with the geology of Anglesey, have seen it with Sedgwick. For the previous few years while at Cambridge Darwin became Henslow’s disciple and probably spent more time with him than on his official theological studies.

In the harbour at Quail Island he found an exceedingly hard rock, which he described both in his geological notes and as a little p.s. on his volume on volcanic islands.

The best geological fact I have to notice, is the forming at the present day of a remarkably hard conglomerate. When breaking it, I was forcibly reminded of the very tough conglomerates of the Old Red sandstone formations. It occurs very commonly on different parts of the coast. the pebbles are the Augitic rocks & amigdaloid & of the superior Lava) 35 & 36, Phonolite) (75 & 76 & 195). The matrix slightly efferveces with Acids & easily melts under the blowpipe into a black glass. — From what. I could observe it is the clayey matter, resulting from the decomposition of the augitic rock mixed with Carb. of Lime perhaps from the former beach, where it is so abundant. — Would not this form a natural [illeg]stone ? — I have the clearest proof that this conglomerate is forming at the present time. since it not only contains shells

(a) If as I suppose the shells in the former beach are the same as now exist. — the superimposed lava comes under the class of formations of the present day. — D^r Daubeny states that those Lavas, which like this, are in their composition Basaltic & form fields rather than circumscribed streams were originated at the time when Tertiary formations were depositing. — does not this instance war against the rule. — but likewise pieces of brick & bolts of Iron; so the latter so firmly embedded that I could by no means detach them. 

Darwin, C. R. 1-2.1832. Geological diary: St Jago. CUL-DAR32.21-36 fol 35 + verso

Now, most geologists have come across very tough rocks when your geological hammers seems to bounce off them. If you are not careful you may hurt your arm as well.

This rock Darwin observed was forming at the present day. It was a conglomerate with lime as the cement. It also contained some bricks and nails. I can imagine Creationists making much of this. It was definitely harder than the Permo-Triassic Spearfish Formation in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which you remove with a spoon rather than a hammer! And so he described it on p22 of his book Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands 1844.

Recent conglomerate.—On the shores of Quail Island, I found fragments of brick, bolts of iron, pebbles, and large fragments of basalt, united by a scanty base of impure calcareous matter into a firm conglomerate. To show how exceedingly firm this recent conglomerate is, I may mention, that I endeavoured with a heavy geological hammer to knock out a thick bolt of iron, which was embedded a little above low-water mark, but was quite unable to succeed.

Having got a sore arm from striking tough rocks, I decided to try it. I was unable to go to the Cape Verde Islands. From my knowledge of Darwin’s geologising I knew that he hadn’t found any rocks which he could have called Old Red Sandstone in his part of Shropshire or in Wales, but Henslow has put it in his memoir and map. So I visited what Henslow described as Old Red Sandstone on Anglesea. Knowing the island and the geology I used Henslow’s geological map to find some.

This is a copy on one of the maps Henslow made in 1822 and for that time is well above excellent. What Henslow called Old Red is in fact Ordovician by today’s terms and  the pale ochre rocks in the middle of the island.

Here they are. Not very red but that is what Henslow found. I hit it with my hammer and that was painful. Concrete was soft in comparison!

This may sound like a bit of masochism, but it was part of my researching Darwin’s visit to Wales in 1831. It involved a variety of things. I got copies of his geological notes made in Shropshire and Wales in 1831 and tried to work out where he went and visited the sites. I was doing it as a hobby so I was not under pressure. Also I lived in Chirk near Llangollen so I was going to places in Shropshire and Wales most weeks and thus slowly did my fieldwork. I also read up things on the actual voyage and found various references to the trip. This incredibly hard rock made me realise that Darwin had been to Anglesey, which no one had realised before. It was then a case of looking for evidence and I found much of it. Slowly things fell into place and his best summed up in my various papers and the one dealing with the actual Sedgwick-Darwin tour, published on  darwin-online can be found in this blog; https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/the-darwin-sedgwick-geological-tour-of-north-wales-of-august-18/

It was great fun doing it, except when I twisted my ankle.

The crisis of episcopal leadership in the Church of England | Psephizo

A good analysis of the episcopal crisis in the Church of England in the light of the Post Office revelations.

Ian Paul is right to say the church is too managerial and not churchy enough

Perhaps we should go for the weirdness of Christianity!

Source: The crisis of episcopal leadership in the Church of England | Psephizo

Was Jesus actually born into a ‘poor’ family? | Psephizo

It gets tedious , especially at Christmas, to be told how poor and downtrodden the family of Jesus were.  It’s the stuff  of some Christmas Carols, which are often very fanciful.

Essentially the Holy Family weren’t skint and poor, and almost living on the breadline. Compared to us they were, but for that time they were fairly comfortable and Joseph had reliable employment.

Here as usual Ian Paul debunks the usual myths of the poverty of Jesus, who was not born in a stable.

The picture here by Millais shows a fairly comfortable home and despite some fancy stuff is better than the poverty some insist on.

Source: Was Jesus actually born into a ‘poor’ family? | Psephizo

Trigger warnings on Darwin’s letters

There are trigger warnings and trigger warnings! But I never thought that they would evolve like this.

Now clearly to any insecure Christian, Darwin is a great threat along with Marx and Freud, but I never thought the breakaway university of Cambridge would warn potential readers of Darwin’s correspondence that they might find his letters “upsetting or offensive”.

But they do, as this screenshot from the Darwin Correspondence Project makes it clear.

for example

https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8327.xml&query=j%20d%20hooker

With the correspondence now complete in 30 volumes or on line, I will admit to owning half of them and have used them extensively in my own research. I focus on the early volumes as most of my research is on Darwin’s active work in geology from 1831 to 1842 in Wales and Shropshire, but I have read many volumes especially for his comments on religion, and as a vicar they should have triggered me!

I find his correspondence fascinating whether on his geology, other sciences, the development of his ideas on evolution, his family life, his social life, relationships with others especially scientists like Sedgwick, Lyell, hooker and Huxley. In over thirty years I have never fainted in shock, or needed medication to calm me down. Often they are plain boring but like an ore body contain nuggets of pure gold. Tracing through an idea of his you can reconstruct his thoughts, and often fill in details which are not apparent from his published writings.

As well as reading them seriously, I found much to amuse me, as when he called Lyell a heretic for not believing in cleavage (that in slates and not in living apes), he once reported that he hadn’t farted for a whole day , or his delightful descriptions of his first girl-friend, Fanny Mostyn Owen, who shares a birthday with me (but not the year) and her mortal remains were six feet or so below me in the crypt of St Mary’s Chirk when I led services there whilst vicar. Here is an example

I only hope I may appease you both & excuse this scrawl but I have such a Pen and besides never could write like any thing but what I am, a Housemaid so d^r. Postillion ever y^r| F Owen

Burn this as soon as read—or tremble at my fury and revenge—

I never found anything ableist or homophobic as I don’t think either topic came up. On race he was scarcely a racist. He was an ardent abolitionist and was scathing about slavery in both Americas. On race he was ambivalent and it jars today, particularly in his expression on race. Perhaps he had a lofty and paternalistic view, but that was always with concern rather than prejudice or discrimination. It is easy to read into some of his statements.

He was hardly sexist, although his views are not the same as those today.  His jottings on whether he should get married in 1838 were more humorous than sexist, even when he wrote a wife is “better than a dog anyhow”! If Emma ever saw it I cannot see that she would have been upset. She would have given a lively response. As Edna Healey showed in her biography of Emma, Charles and Emma had a delightful relationship, despite loss of children and his illness. The Darwins and Wedgwoods were very progressive for their times.

But why is there a content warning?

I would have thought that most people referring to this site would do so out of an interest in Darwin and thus have some idea about him, whether as a scientific hero, or if a fundamentalist, the devil incarnate who gave us evilution! Unless they were motivated to learn about Darwin, they would would soon give up in boredom! Further any reader would need to have a modicum of scholarship and so should be used to ideas which they do not agree with or even find unpalatable. Apart from that everyone, unless they live in a hermetically sealed cocoon, will hear of murders and wars in the news. In fact watching the news on the fighting in Ukraine and Gaza is far more distressing than anything you can read in Darwin’s correspondence, including his horrific descriptions of slavery in Latin America.

It is absolutely right to disagree, reject, or be offended by what you read, but by the age of sixteen one needs to have a certain resilience so you don’t get easily upset as the warning is concerned about. Both home and school should have developed a certain level of resilience.

To give a content warning means that the library expects many readers to be so sensitive that they will be triggered. I cannot help asking how can they be in such a vulnerable position and considering that few would not have left school.

But then there seems to be an industry of trigger warnings, be it over Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, and so many other things in the curriculum.

This warning is simply going to far and perhaps Cambridge University  need to look for offence which is truly offence………

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Greenhalgh Castle, Garstang

A local blog about our local castle.

It is possibly built on a drumlin from the Ice Age

Greenhalgh Castle

Slavery Connections in Lancaster churches

The church of St Michael’s, Cockerham near Lancaster is often called the church in the fields. Until recently it was some distance from any houses and surrounded by fields which usually had sheep or cattle. The farmland belongs to Cockerham Hall of which parts go back to the 15th century, but most is 16th century or later.

It is a church which keeps falling down! The tower is probably 16th century, but the church had to be replaced in 1814 and then by Austin and Paley in 1910-1. Its list of vicars goes back centuries, but only one concerns us – the Rev John Dodson jr who was vicar from 1835. While he was vicar, or rector then, he built the vast Cockerham vicarage/rectory out of his own pocket in 1843. Fortunately I never had to live in it!

The architect was Edmund Sharpe, who took on Edward Paley as a pupil in 1838. After Sharpe retired Paley took on Austin and the firm was known as Paley and Austin and then Austin and Paley existing until the 1930s. That firm designed a large number of churches and buildings in Lancashire.

Dodson was an evangelical, and probably a Recordite(!) and rejected any idea of regeneration in baptism. He was nearly refused ordination over this. For him matters came to a head after 1847 after Bishop Philpotts of Exeter refused to induct Gorham to a new parish on account of his views on baptism, thus giving rise to the Gorham Controversy. Thirty years earlier he stood as a candidate for the Woodwardian professor of geology at Cambridge but fellow evangelical Adam Sedgwick was elected but that is another story. Anyway Sedgwick said that Gorham’s geology was all wrong! Sedgwick’s geology was all right!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cornelius_Gorham

In 1847 Gorham was presented by the Earl of Cottenham, the Lord Chancellor, to the vicarage of Brampford Speke, a parish in a small Devon village near Exeter,^[6] which has a parish church dedicated to Saint Peter.^[7] Upon examining him, Bishop Henry Phillpotts took exception to Gorham’s view that baptismal regeneration was conditional and dependent upon a later personal adoption of promises made.^{[citation needed]} The bishop argued that Gorham’s Calvinistic view of baptism made him unsuitable for the post.^[8] Gorham appealed to the ecclesiastical Court of Arches to compel the bishop to institute him but the court confirmed the bishop’s decision and awarded costs against Gorham.^[9]

Gorham then appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which caused great controversy about whether a secular court should decide the doctrine of the Church of England.^[10] The ecclesiastical lawyer Edward Lowth Badeley, a member of the Oxford Movement, appeared before the committee to argue the bishop’s cause, but the committee (Knight Bruce, V-C dissenting)^[11] [12] eventually reversed the bishop’s and the Arches’ decision on 9 March 1850 and granted Gorham his institution.^[13]

Phillpotts repudiated the judgment and threatened to excommunicate the archbishop of Canterbury and anyone who dared to institute Gorham.^[14] Fourteen prominent Anglicans, including Badeley and^{[citation needed]} Henry Edward Manning, requested that the Church of England repudiate the opinion that the Privy Council had expressed concerning baptism.^[15] As there was not any response from the Church apart from Phillpotts’ protestations, they quit the Church of England and joined the Catholic Church.

By 1849 Dodson had left the Church of England ministry and hived off to his family lands at Littledale above the Lune Valley. He was involved in some expensive building there. He first built Littledale Hall in 1849. The family left years ago and it is now Littledale Hall Therapeutic Community.

It seems that the architect was 1849 E.G. Paley, grandson of William Paley of Natural Theology and the main architect of the design argument. Oddly Paley is not mentioned in Hartwell and Pevsner’s book  Buildings of England – North Lancashire. Thus I am not sure! Hartwell and Pevsner do not ascribe either the hall or the chapel to Paley so a doubt must remain. That year he built Littledale Chapel so he could preach without baptismal regeneration. I first came across twenty years ago while walking in the area. I think there were sheep in it. Little did I realise it was built by one of my predecessors at Cockerham. Much of the building still stands but is used by a different kind of flock! Baa. No mention is made of the architect but I would suggest Paley.

https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/threads/littledale-free-church-and-tomb.38262/

l

At about the same time Dodson’s brother in law Rev Joseph Armytage and probably his sister worked on a project to build St Thomas’s Church, Lancaster which was designed by Sharpe

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/physical/view/1995968301

New Evangelical parish church built 1840-1841, a project driven by two members of John Dodson’s family, his son-in-law Rev. Joseph Armytage and Elizabeth Dodson Salisbury, probably his sister.

Now this is a remarkable amount of building by one family, so we may ask “Where did the money come from?”

John Dodson Sr was a wealthy businessman from Lancaster and in the late 1830s he received much money form the Slave compensation Act of 1837. That notorious act was to pay off slave-owners who had lost their slaves after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833  1st August 1834. About £20 million was allocated for it. The Slavery Compensation Act can been seen as either horrendous  – paying off immoral slave-owners – or a necessary compromise to ensure the emancipation of slaves. I incline to the latter and wonder whether Abolition  would have got through parliament without it. Maybe it was the best possible solution, but very far from perfect.

Like so many rich people in Britain, Dodson Sr claimed compensation and here are the details in the University College London website on beneficiaries;

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/45433#:~:text=The%20Robert%20Dodson%20who%20had,father%20was%20John%20Dodson%2C%20Esq.

John Dodson Sr

Biography

Mortgagee of Lancaster, awarded compensation in that capacity in British Guiana, and also one of the trustees and executors of Thomas Gudgeon (q.v.) for Plantation Litchfield in Berbice.

1. Will of John Dodson Esq. proved 27/10/1842. His death was registered at Lancaster Q3 1842. He left his estate of Tongue [or Tonge] Moor in the township of Littledale and £8000 to his son John; he left £7000 each to two other sons, Thomas Gudgeon Dodson (also godson and legatee of Thomas Gudgeon) and Charles Potter Dodson in addition to the money they had already received. He left sums of £13,000, £13,000 and £15,000 on trust to his three sons and his sons-in-law John Edmondson and Joseph North Green Armytage, the first two sums to support the marriage settlements of John Dodson’s daughters Margaret and Harriet with John Edmondson and Joseph North Green Armytage respectively, and the third to be held for the benefit of his daughter Mary Ann.
2. Probably the John Dodson of Lancaster, merchant, eldest son and heir of John Dodson late of Ulverston, deceased, shown 13/02/1798 as trustee of a lease and release of Spark Bridge Ironworks in Cumbria.
3. Robert Dodson of Robert Dodson and Jacob Ridley, who were individually bankrupt in 1811, was probably John Dodson’s brother. The Robert Dodson who had been a slave-captain and slave-trader out of Lancaster 1757-1771 was probably their uncle.
4. Marriage of Harriet Dodson spinster St Leonard Gate Lancaster with Joseph North Green Armytage clerk of Castle Park, father was John Dodson, Esq. 06/12/1837.

Sources

T71/885 British Guiana claims no. 196, no. 219 (Plantation Hampshire), and no. 289. T71/1610 letters from JD Lancaster dated 18/11/1835 and 9/1/1836: setting out claims as mortgagee on British Guiana 196, 262 [?], 219 and 289.

1. PROB 11/1969/138; FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online].
2. Release of Sparkbridge Ironworks Z/70 http://www.archiveweb.cumbria.gov.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=Z%2f70&pos=71 [accessed 23/02/2014].
3. London Gazette, Issue 17540, 30/11/1819, p. 2157; www.slavevoyages.org.
4. Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Project http://www.lan-opc.org.uk/Lancaster/stmary/marriages_1837-1841.html accessed 15/11/2010.

Dodson was awarded about £25,000 which is worth about £4,000,000 today  and that was just for  about 250 slaves attached to Plantation Hampshire and Williamsburg situate on the West Sea coast of Corentyne. As Dodson was a rich businessman it was probably a fraction of  his wealth and when he died a few years later Rev John Dobson Jr Rector of Cockerham received a bequest of  £8000 (£1,250,00 today) plus the  Littledale estate above Caton in the Lune Valley. So thus when he was theologically offended by Philpotts over Gorham and baptismal regeneration he could afford to walk out of the church and settle into his lovely estate and build another lovely house.

From my sketchy researches I cannot conclude that Dodson was pro-slavery, but some in the Church of England were. An example is that in 1833 a vicar sent a pro-abolition article to the very evangelical journal The Record. It was rejected but then published in the evangelical journal The Christian Observer with a note to that effect. William Wilberforce was one of the founders of the CO thirty years previously and thus the journal was pro-abolition. It also supported the new science of geology.

However it does show how at least two churches, one thriving and one defunct, near Lancaster directly benefited from slavery and at least one fine building also.

Perhaps I can conclude with a quote from the most well-known member of a family of strong abolitionists going back to the 1780s. I absolutely agree with his last sentence.This he put at the end of the 2nd edition of The Voyage of the Beagle in  1845 as he had just had an argument with the geologist Charles Lyell over American slavery. And some even accuse him of being a racist.

On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye. These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of;—nor would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited at the houses of the upper classes, where the domestic slaves are usually well treated, and they have not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate on the chance of his answer reaching his master’s ears.

It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified, by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.

Was Darwin right is saying expiation has been made?

Am I not a man and a brother

Grandpa Josiah Wedgwood

Just stop unholy oil at Rosebank; is this the voice of the church?

It is hard to believe now that until recently the churches said nothing about environmental concerns, but today it seems that if you are not opposed to fossil fuels and don’t protest with Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion then you are not a proper Christian.

The General Synod wants the Church of England to reach Net Zero by 2030 and one serious solution is to use battery-heated cushions in church. That will make the pew the hot seat!

Twice before, groups of church leaders – with Rowan Williams heading the signatories, have written to the Prime Minister demanding no new oil in or on British land or sea.

On 5th October 2023 400+ Christian Leaders Called on Prime Minister to Stop Rosebank Oil Field. This was an open letter organised by Operation Noah which has pursued a policy of seeking to curtail fossil fuels for over a decade, which came to the for in its Bright Now campaign of 2013. That was very one-sided and also included a rather inaccurate presentation of fracking! Incidentally, or not, I cannot find out who is funding Operation Noah, or what qualifications they have to pronounce on energy issues.

Rosebank is a relatively small oil and gas field to the west of the Shetland Islands, which would produce a moderate amount of oil and gas. As the Gaurdian says;

Rosebank could produce 69,000 barrels of oil a day – about 8% of the UK’s projected daily output between 2026 and 2030 – and could also produce 44m cubic feet of gas every day [ed. a few per cent of UK consumption], according to Equinor.

The letter had a simple focus; – Just Stop Oil at Rosebank. But, and this is absolutely vital. But, and a big but, they do not consider three basic necessities of life

Heating, eating and meeting

or if you prefer  – living in a warm home, having enough food and being able to travel to meet whether for friends , family or work – and be able to afford it. All three use prodigious amounts of energy and if too costly pushes people into poverty. That has happened in the last few years over the cost of gas for heating and also petrol for transport.

https://operationnoah.org/news-events/400-christian-leaders-call-on-prime-minister-to-stop-rosebank/?fbclid=IwAR24nK1qfst55vSZXEj95lzotX28PYPNHk355NdUwryqrHZs59k1vVBKY3g

PRESS RELEASE: 400+ Christian Leaders Call on Prime Minister to Stop Rosebank Oil Field

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kvyjiS75fY6eLSg1jKrzmQVrnFYzevNcGNiOt42rp7w/edit

Here is the open letter and you can find all those who signed on the url above.

Dear Prime Minister,

As Christian leaders from around the UK, we call on you to stop the Rosebank oil field, which will not lower energy bills, provide energy security, uphold our obligations to care for our global neighbours or create sustainable jobs fit for the green energy future we need. 1

Your government will know that both the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been clear that we cannot afford to burn all the oil and gas from existing fossil fuel developments, let alone from new ones, and still limit global heating to 1.5°C. 2

We have already seen the incredible damage that human-driven climate change has caused around the world; sadly, these impacts will only accelerate as we burn more oil, gas and coal. 3

Rosebank could produce more than 300m barrels of oil, which, when burned, will emit the same amount of CO2 as the annual emissions of the world’s 28 lowest-income countries combined – countries disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis with limited ability to adapt. 4

Yet according to the UN, every dollar invested in renewables creates three times more jobs than if that same amount were invested in fossil fuels. 

Why then does your government refuse to commit to supporting a just transition – one that prioritises workers and their communities, and recognises that the fossil fuel era is rapidly coming to a close 5– in favour of an industry that will cost UK taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds, will produce oil that even its Norwegian owners acknowledge will be sold on the international market at international prices, and will ultimately contribute to climate chaos? 6

We already have most of the solutions we need to transition to 100% renewable energy.7 What we lack is the political will – and the moral conviction to do what is best for people and the planet. As Christian leaders from around the UK, we do not take a partisan view on Rosebank, we take a moral view. It’s time to show international and moral leadership – and stop Rosebank. 8

The content of the letter is similar to previous letters to the Prime Minister and give a summary of the dominant narrative on fossils fuels within the churches today. I say “dominant” but could say “exclusive” as alternative voices are all but ignored in today’s churches. It is also very closely aligned with various green NGOs eg Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. The whole tenor is to disinvest and stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible and it is not surprising that some of the better known signatories Are involved in Extinction Rebellion and have been involved in protests like stopping commuters getting to work by train or occupying business premises.

On the surface it seems a reasonable appeal but the letter does not acknowledge that fossil fuels will be used for several decades, owing to a time lag of introducing alternatives. Neither does it acknowledge that petroleum is used for a vast number of products – and not only plastic bags! These include artificial fertiliser and many everyday and specialist products. It also overlooks the whole question of metals and minerals needed for a transition to electrification which requires astronomical amounts of various metals like copper.

The letter is written with strong moral force but suffers from the unrealistic idealism of so much environmental activism of today. They seem to assume that we can rapidly get rid of fossil fuels and do not see that any transition from them will take decades and not years.

The range of opinion over fossil fuels and Net Zero, whether in 2030 or 2050, is vast. Often those who have the most extreme views shout the loudest, whether those who want Net Zero last week or those who think there is no problem and the more fuel we burn the better. I reject both!

It may seem most unreasonable to criticise such a morally charged letter by 400 well-meaning church leaders, but I do so as it has several deficiencies caused by an inadequate grasp of the technicalities of delivering the vast amount of energy needed in our world today and the mineral resources needed to do it.

What I have done is to number each section and make what I think a pertinent comments and point out serious weaknesses. The letter seems unaware how much the electrical grid needs expanding and that this cannot occur overnight. The expansion will be due to the number of EVs and the transfer of heating from gas to electricity. That would mean that transmission lines would have to carry several times the present amount. That in itself is a massive undertaking. It is is also unaware of the problem of sufficient mineral resources, like Copper and other metals, to make that transition.

The letter is totally silent about nuclear energy, which is probably the cleanest and safest of all energy sources and has the least impact on the environment. My statement here goes against the policies of many green NGOs which are implacably opposed to nuclear energy and to GMOs. At best Christian green groups are very iffy to nuclear energy and GMOs, but the latter is another, though related, story.

I get the impression that there hadn’t been very much delving into the issues from every side. I would have thought church leaders would have examined things thoroughly and found out the “other side”, or, at least, taken advice from experts who are conversant with the technology. The letter seems to echo this article.

https://www.stopcambo.org.uk/updates/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-rosebank-oil-field

And so to my seven points;

 1. Rosebank oil field, which will not lower energy bills, provide energy security, uphold our obligations to care for our global neighbours or create sustainable jobs fit for the green energy future we need. 

This is the standard criticism of Rosebank and any new petroleum from almost all green groups.

There are mixed views on whether Rosebank would actually lower bills, but in the form of taxes it would boost treasury finances and thus the wealth of each of us. Since the latter was sent Hamas has let violence loose in the Middle East, which may cause energy insecurity, thus a local British source would be of great benefit.

This would give some energy security, which seems more necessary now. Further a local source results in few emissions from transportation and loss in transport (this is especially for gas).

The concern for global neighbours is probably a concern of raised emissions, but in fact using Rosebank would make no difference. Britain would either use Rosebank or import.

I am baffled why sustainable jobs  would be excluded, but the word sustainable is overused. Varieties of energy are being developed and pursued – oil, nuclear and renewable. there is a question Renewables are sustainable in light of mineral demands.

2. 1.5 degree limit

The 1.5 deg limit was introduced by the IPCC, and is suggesting temperatures must not rise more than 1.5 deg higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. That period in the 18th century was in the middle of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures were at their lowest for a thousand years with intervening Mediaeval Warm Period, which began after a sudden climate collapse after 1314. Glaciers were in full retreat in the Mediaeval Warm Period and then in full advance up to about 1850 and have been in retreat since.

Some in the IPCC have tried to smooth out the LIA and MWP and argue the LIA was  confined to the Northern Hemisphere and was thus local. In the LIA glaciers surged in the Alps and I found moraines from a little LIA glacier in the Savoie Alpes,and possibly in New Mexico.  In fact, moraines give evidence for the furthest extent of glaciation. There were probably small glaciers in Scotland. Glaciers also advanced in the Ruwenzori Mountains bang on the equator, as they did in New Zealand and South America. Yes, it was not confined to the northern hemisphere.

(BTW I worked on Precambrian glaciation in South Africa  and then on the discovery of glaciation in North Wales in 1841/2, where I visited many glacial sites, both in the mountains and elsewhere.). Here’s Buckland in 1841 at Rhyd Ddu, below Snowdon. He thought coal was God’s blessing to Britain.

In fact, now many climate scientists reckon the 1.5 deg limit has or will be exceeded and so what is needed is mitigation not limiting the actual temperature. Before anyone concludes I am not concerned, I am, but ditching Rosebank won’t make any difference. Even so the aim must be to reduce fossil fuels, and use every form of mitigation.

Though the IEA wish to see fossil fuels reduced ASAP, they are realists and know that they will be used in 2050 and beyond. They also recognise new sources must be found – especially in regard to unstable source areas.

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2022/executive-summary

This diagram from their report shows how fossil fuels are expected to be used until 2050. There is no possibility of an imminent transition, and despite concerns of 1.5 deg they are still needed.

3 Incredible damage

The letter seems to assume all recent disasters eg floods and fires are caused  by Climate Change. That is questionable and expert scientists are very reticent on this. It is scaremongering to appeal to climate change whenever there is a flood or wildfire. They have always occurred.

The fact of the matter is that the IPCC has concluded that connections of carbon dioxide emissions and most types of extreme weather are “in a state of high uncertainty, doubt, or incompleteness.” Further decisions may be made by intuition rather than evidence.

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter2.pdf

A greater consideration of various factors is needed and there are many possible ones apart from Climate Change. Deforestation and human development are major ones, along with streamlining of rivers rather than allowing natural ways of slowing the flow.

In Britain some of the factors are draining moorland peatbogs with loss of CO2

, excess removal of trees (and replacement by non-native trees), some farming practices, and channeling rivers. In recent years there has been sterling work by various rivers trusts. Iconically this can be seen in the re-introduction of beavers, but more mundanely in the work of peat restoration, both in uplands and lowlands, leaky dams, tree-planting and the use of wild horses and rugged cattle, like Belted Galloways. The problems pre-date fossil fuels and is in part due to excess sheep-rearing. The Howgill Fells are just one example, where problems date back to the Vikings!!. This was brought home to me when I reviewed a field guide to the geomorphology of the Howgill Fells;

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2021/09/28/the-howgill-fells-sheep-and-geomorphology/

To move to Uganda where I worked for a year. In S W Uganda, close to the Virunga volcanoes, deforestation is running at a rate of 2% p.a. This is mostly for firewood for cooking, but much of BBQ charcoal comes from Africa. Fifty miles to the north in the Ruwenzori at Kilembe Mines, where I worked, there have been several serious floods in recent years, which nearly washed away the bungalows I lived in. These did not occur 50 years ago, but there has been a massive increase of population including on the surrounding steep hillsides which had only a few houses and shambas 50 years ago with no roads. Now there are roads a plenty and lots of building. That and deforestation is a recipe for flooding before Global Warming is invoked as the explain-all.

There are similar stories from elsewhere and warn against simplistic appeals to Global Warming and then to Just Stop Oil.

It is very superficial thinking to put it all down to Climate Change and the burning of fossil fuels and to ignore the massive increase in population, deforestation, re-ordering rivers, loss of wetlands, and unsustainable farming practices. Here one needs to consider each and every one of the causes of flooding and wildfires, first in Britain (because we live here) and then in the rest of the world.

As Philip Fletcher from Church House pointed out a decade ago, we should not see everything through the lens of climate change, as too many within the churches tend to do.

4 Rosebank could produce more than 300m barrels of oil,

That sounds like an incredible amount (and is 13 billion gallons) but it is about the annual usage of oil in Britain, which is 500 million barrels and declining. In other words a years supply. The reference to the 28 lowest income countries is an emotive rather than a reasoned argument.

To be hard-headed that amount will be used in Britain anyway, so opening Rosebank will have little global effect on emissions. In fact, to import petroleum would result in greater emissions due to transport and loss in transit. Somehow that is never considered.

If it is not used immediately by Britain, it will be used in the rest of Europe and thus reduce imports from other parts of the world, which would result in greater emissions due to transporting the oil.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-06-28/debates/BFB69676-9E1C-4899-876B-A80C34FD8450/RosebankOilfieldEnvironmentalImpacts

5 the fossil fuel era is rapidly coming to a close

The question is “How rapidly?” Listening to activists it seems to be a few years or even a matter of months. I discuss this on renewables a little further on. Most scenarios recognise that fossil fuels with be with us for decades rather than years, and it is unlikely they will be phased out by 2050. The challenges of Net Zero 2050 are superbly explained in Dieter Helm’s  Net Zero; how we stop causing climate change. He rightly sees that the issue is with you and me and not only Big Oil. He notes (pxi) “net zero does not actually mean reducing emissions to zero.’ Net Zero means natural and industrial sequestration must be equal or less than carbon emissions by 2050.

Two main natural sequestrators are restoring peatland and planting trees (but right trees in the right places!). Both are very long term projects as they sequester very little in the early stages. Here is a calculator for trees;

https://naturalresources.wales/media/687190/eng-worksheet-carbon-storage-calculator.pdf

From this I can work out that two rowans of 23 years old I planted in my old vicarage have so far sequestered 30 kg of carbon! I also grow rowans from seed and have given away thirty in the last few years – with more in the offing. So far they have sequestered 3 kg of carbon between them, but that will increase rapidly each year. In about 30 years time each will have sequestered some 150 kg. This is a bit of a tangent but is a reminder how glacially slow natural sequestration is, but also how long-lived it is.

To get back to oil, we cannot get rid of oil until we have replacement sources of energy – see below. To illustrate the size of the problem about 80% of UK energy comes from fossil fuels and that will not reduce as rapidly as the letter seems to require. A very useful twitter account for any following energy in Britain is British Electricity Tracker (by Andrew Crossland) @myGridGB. He records how electricity is being produced at various times of the day – and gives it without comment. At 6pm on 31/10/23 it was;

Gas 38.0% Biomass 6.6% Coal 4.0% Wind 17.7% Solar 0.0% Hydro 2.1% Nuclear 13.2% Imports 13.5% Other 1.7% Storage 3.2%

Generation 36GW Carbon intensity 255 gCO2e/kWh

Renewables i.e. wind and solar varies from 1% to 70%, and to fulfil demand gas has to be ramped up and possibly coal. With such variability there has to be back-up and at present that is gas. And it will remain gas for many many years. further electricity is only 20% of the energy we use . The rest are fossil fuels. I.e. fossil fuels are well over 80% of the energy we use and a transition away from them is not on the horizon.

The letter should have been more honest and stated that the Transition will be decades not years. On top of that energy is only part of the use of fossil fuels as these illustrations show;

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/can-made-one-barrel-oil/

Before we can get rid of oil we must find suitable materials to make all these from.

A different way of putting it!

Where are we going to get all our medical equipment, drugs, fertilisers etc from?

This rather dark annotated photo of an Extinction Rebellion founder makes the point about medicine

EVs and bicycles both rely on oil in their manufacture (even the leather saddles on my bikes). Not to mention the construction for renewable energy.

Until alternatives are found AND in production we are tied to oil, whether we like it or not. This inevitably delays any stopping of oil. But if oil was simply stopped – as many of the signatories seem to think – there would be widespread hunger and famine in every continent.

Artificial fertilisers are made by capturing nitrogen from the atmosphere and by the Haber-Bosch process utilising natural gas. Nearly half the world is dependant on using artificial fertiliser, which cannot be replaced in a short timescale – however desirable. Much grain production, along with sheep and cattle, is totally dependant on artificial fertiliser. The fertiliser is to make rye grass grow for grazing and can put farmers into a viscous circle, where to stop using fertiliser and rye grass would mean bankruptcy and less food available. Though more sustainable agriculture is being developed, it will take decades not years to put into effect. The books by James Rebanks and Lee Schofield shows what is being done in the Lake District, but that is small beer.  To effect  immediate change is famine and death worse than Extinction Rebellion’s wildest dreams of climate chaos. The change is slow for many reasons.

There will probably a slow steady decline in oil usage unless there is a sudden  breakthrough in technology. But even that would take decades.

6 Climate chaos

I think the worst case of climate chaos was in the 1310s!! Compared to that decade our present climatic woes are minor. The cause of it was probably a volcanic eruption.

However all the coverage on Climate Chaos and Climate Grief helps nobody. It can lead to having  despair and no hope. It can cause stress and even mental illness and some psychologists say their research indicates that this is having an effect on the young.

To deny that there is a serious issue over the climate (and the environment in general) is both wrong and misguided, but a focus on a climate apocalypse results in despair, mental illness and inaction, though some think protests are the solution.

What is needed is HOPE in a difficult but not apocalyptic situation, so that the HOPE in the future leads to positive action starting at the personal and local level. Many more need to follow Norman Tebbit’s advice of forty years ago  – On yer bike – and use the car less – and that is just for starters.

The churches should have great responsibility  and encourage hope in the time of environmental concern and then suggest action. Those actions will normally be very small and local, but cumulative.

7 We already have most of the solutions we need to transition to 100% renewable energy

This statement is too naive and inaccurate. To transition to 100% renewable there must be a 24/7/365 supply of power which is not subject to intermittency AND IS AVAILABLE NOW. The only sources which can do that at present are fossil fuels and nuclear.

Hydro is sparse in the UK as our topography does not lend itself to developing as much as Switzerland or Norway. There are two pump storage sites in North Wales, and there could not be many more. There are far more in Scotland, but again environmental reasons could be limiting. However, at present, hydro produces 2.2% of UK electricity and does not have the potential of much more.

Both solar and wind energy are intermittent and if you follow Grid watch on twitter https://twitter.com/myGridGB https://twitter.com/myGridGB  , you will find that solar and wind make a contribution of  0 to 70 % of electrical power at a given time. Nuclear makes up some of the shortfall with a steady 15 to 20% and then the slack of up to 80% is made up from gas power stations and imports – and even coal!

Battery storage is very expensive and limited at present and the technology needs greatly improving.

It is totally wrong to say we have most of the solutions. Assuming that the present techniques are suitable it would still take decades rather than years to implement. Battery storage would have to be increased from near zero to being able to provide power for several weeks as in a dunkelflaute. Both solar and wind must be increased several fold and so must the electric grid. None can be done in a few years by which time Rosebank would be exhausted!!

Far too much hope is put on EVs and some virtually virtue signal by being proud owners of an EV! As if that is a solution! The problem over EVs is also severe as mining experts speak out about as the minerals needed are not as plentiful as a transfer to EVs requires. Further EVs increase the demand for electricity, possibly doubling or more the demand. The demand of EVs on mineral resources is mind-boggling.

The demand gives mind-boggling figures. There are 35 million ICEs in the UK to be replaced by EV’s over the next ten to fifteen years.  Then think of the numbers worldwide! To produce just the copper for British vehicles alone, you would need to mine 200 million tons of copper ore at 0.4% copper. (based on 20kg of Cu needed for each EV.)  To consider only copper; a tiny copper mine is 2 million tons of ore at 2% copper. but for one EV you need 1 ton of copper ore if a rich mine of 2% copper. Many decades ago I assessed an tiny old working for potential.  The minimum target was 2 million tons at 2%. That would give copper for two million EVS. In present mines you need 5 tons of ore for each EV, as the grade is much lower at 0.4% . So how much copper ore do you need for the 35 million EVS to replace ICEs in Britain alone? And then the Li, Co, Ni, graphite. This blogs deals with the problem

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2023/09/27/why-sunaks-delay-of-banning-petrol-cars-until-2035-is-more-than-copper-bottomed/

Where is all the copper  (and other minerals) going to come from? I can assure you it is a bigger headache than a headache from CO poisoning which I got while working in a copper mine. An unforgettable experience! This is a vital consideration for the practicality of transition away from oil. It was not even mentioned  – but then it is not mentioned by most Christian environmentalism. Why not?

Yes, renewables and batteries are already here, but only a fraction of what is needed for a transition to 100% renewables. It is completely misleading to give the impression that it is achievable in the near future. This is a major example why Christian green groups have not understood the nature of transition and the vast amounts of new infrastructure and minerals needed.

Any equally serious problem is that nuclear energy is simply not mentioned. It ought to be as it is a cleaner energy than any other. There has long been opposition to nuclear energy especially by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and this is shared by many Green Christians. It is a very serious omission not to encourage nuclear energy which has been stymied and throttled by green propaganda for half a century. The silence from this letter is very telling.

Conclusion

Like the two previous letters of oil from church leaders, this letter has many deficiencies, bias and omissions. It is very one sided and only reflects a portion of Christian opinion, though their view tends to have the upper hand at present. There is little awareness of the technological challenges of going green and clean and has a dangerously optimistic view of the readiness of renewables.

They also ignored the issues of heating, eating and meeting thus ignoring the enormous costs inflicted on people along with insecurity. Too rapid a rejection of oil will have serious consequences of hunger and energy poverty. Food banks will not be able to cope.

The letter was organised by Operation Noah which has single-mindedly pushed for divestment and the ridding of fossil fuels for many years. This may explain the limited vision of the letter which ignores so many things – the need to use fossil fuels for at least a few decades, the use of fossil fuels in artificial fertilisers and many manufactured “things”, the ignoring of nuclear energy, the over-looking of the astronomical demand for minerals for “green energy”, the inevitable slow development of electric grids etc. Ignoring them them may be good rhetoric but it is not realistic – not that a pragmatic outlook is essential to avoid suffering!

In fact it is singing to the same song sheet as many green groups, including Extinction Rebellion and their exaggerations,. But then some bishops went to ER demonstrations/disruptions…….

https://viamedia.news/2019/10/18/the-rainbow-of-non-violent-advocacy/?fbclid=IwAR176P4KmtTPtJG7ojL2cax2fYTKyYHcgckbLTWYdpKmj-Dhb2alFSVf-Bo

And then Christian Climate Action;

This seems an odd way to mark Good Friday! Does it say it all?

Christian Climate Action posted this on Facebook on 20th October 2023

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/tyres-deflated-more-100-suvs-8845965

With the only comment being the emojis

I wonder what the owners’ felt. As much as I dislike Chelsea tractors this is not a good or wise action, and hardly in accord with the love of Christ.

I could say a lot more but the “letter” and its predecessors seem to ignore a variety of informed opinion and only go for the most extreme action without considering the results of rapid elimination of oil.

This boils down to one thing;

What can oil be replaced with if oil is got rid of in a few years?

In a ideal world we would get rid of oil yesterday, but cannot do so until there are replacements, which are not yet present. Until then, which will be several decades, we are stuck with oil.

The whole world needs look for new energy sources,  a greater economy of use, mitigation (especially natural)  and insulation. But that is less exciting and won’t grab the headlines like getting arrested at an ER demonstration or climbing onto a railway carriage.

What should church be doing

Apart from firstly doing its primary task, it needs to be well-informed and not partisan. If it is partisan then it will push away many, both within and without the fold.

There is a danger in  polarising opinion to be utterly for or against rather than slowly encouraging people to at least a partial acceptance of the need for environmental renewal.

Just consider two examples from the hills of the north where I wander around! There is a tremendous amount of work going on which is often unnoticed. There is peat restoration galore, river repair, tree planting, leaky dams, change in sheep and cattle farming etc. I have done my bit having re-introduced sphagnum over the last ten years to a square kilometre of moorland where the old drainage channels were blocked but then no peat planted. Sphagnum is now beginning to thrive. It will slowly become a carbon store.

In one area of upland farms local to me there is much hedgerow repair and other things, but few notice. Many of the farmers were appreciative of the work but one was scathing. He now wants a few things done on his land. He is very much a partial convert but that is a step in the right direction. One of the things that gives me hope are people, not only farmers, who are beginning to have a green tinge!

A recent best-seller is Lee Schofield’s Wild Fell on the work on the RSPB estate at Haweswater in the Lakes. The last eagle has gone but more wildlife is coming back, and most recently a Great Egret. Not all local farmers like the RSPB work and some are antagonistic, but Lee works at it slowly and partially wins some round. More and more hill farmers are adopting the approach at Haweswater and of James Rebanks, whose English Pastoral recounts a gradual change in shepherding to the great benefit of the fells. I think Monbiot would simply retort by saying the maggots aka sheep should just go – and that is the approach of this letter. When on the fells I rejoice when I see peat restoration, tree-planting and Belted Galloway cattle.

Today all churches need to have an environmental concern with action, but that is easier said than done. I have seen churchwardens spray wildflowers with glyphosate in a churchyard for tidiness sake and elsewhere the grass is mown to bowling green standard to the exclusion of wild flowers. To move forward the church leaders need the wisdom of Solomon and great patience. But slowly things are happening despite the pressures of paying diocesan dues (parish share) and bricks and mortar. Things are changing – and ever more rapidly.

Yes it is slow, and there is urgency, but as a geologist and glaciologist, I go for the slow, inexorable approach on creation care.

The Bishop and his pet dinosaur

I love the idea of a bishop having a pet dinosaur. Can you imagine the bishop taking his dino for a walk on lead? But he would have to live in a very big house or even a castle. Perhaps to be safe the bishop lived in a house like this;

This is Rose Castle where the Bishops of Carlisle lived from 1230 to 2009. It would have space for a dinosaur. It seems reasonable as there are dinosaurs on the tomb of Bishop Bell who died in 1496 and was buried in Carlisle Cathedral.

Some may scoff at this but it has been put forward in all seriousness. So let’s consider it very carefully, and claims of dinosaur petroglyphs in Utah, which a science professor at Leeds University visited and wrote about..  

Every child loves dinosaurs and some people never grow out of it. Ever since they were first discovered over 200 years ago they have held a fascination for so many. For over 200 years all geologists have been aware that they went extinct millions of years before humans appeared on the scene. One of the most notable dinosaur hunters was Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, who was held in very high esteem by geologists like Murchison and the Revs William Conybeare and William Buckland. It was Richard Owen who dubbed them dinosaurs or terrible lizards in 1841, the year before Darwin wrote his first essay on evolution.

Roll on 150 years and it is clear that dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, most probably due to a meteor going splat in Mexico. Some suggested they got over-constipated! For two hundred years it has been well-known and beyond doubt that dinosaurs went extinct ant the end of the Cretaceous period, but Young earth Creationists insist that they not, and the Bishop’s dinosaur is part of that story.

Young Earth Creationists insist that the earth is only a few thousand years old and all these geologists have simply got it wrong! They hold that dinosaurs lived alongside humans and were probably present on Noah’s Ark.  This is repeated time and again in creationist books and websites.me across when I read The Genesis Flood, the book that launched creationism in 1961. There was a long section on alleged human footprints alongside those of dinosaurs at Paluxy in Texas. In fact the human-looking footprints were embellished by some in the 1930s. Most creationists have since rejected the claims but they still crop up like a bad penny.

However Creationists insist humans lived with dinosaurs and were even on the Ark. For size considerations Noah only took a pair of baby diplodicuses. Ken Ham wrote a book about them living in the Garden of Eden. Poor Adam must have had fun naming them.

Some tens years ago a creationist church distributed books to a primary school in Scotland with pictures of triceratops towing a cart! The second photo is of an exhibit at the Creation Museum!

This is the nearest we have on contemporary life forms co-existing with ancient life. A rabbit in the Cambrian Burgess Shale!!!!!!!!  It this were so geology and evolution are dead!!

[Two articles on the Paluxy footprints] 

https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1988/PSCF9-88Hastings.html

https://ncse.ngo/paluxy-man-creationist-piltdown

So far my examples have been American, but now for two British ones. Creationism is not as strong in Britain as in USA, but it is common among evangelicals, especially of those outside “older” denominations and in “evangelical” denominations. They form a small minority in the Church of England. Some are university lecturers in engineering or science. I will consider two creationists. The first is Phillip Bell, who is a biology graduate and works for CMI (Creation Ministries International) who claimed that Bishop Bell’s 1496 tomb at Carlisle cathedral has dinosaurs on it. The other is Prof Andy McIntosh D.Sc of Leeds university who claims some petroglyphs in Utah are of dinosaurs.

 Phillip Bell and the Bishop’s Dinosaur

Bishop Bell was bishop of Carlisle  and died in 1496 at the age of 86. He was buried in the cathedral. He is buried in a magnificent tomb with unusual brass plates. These Bell thinks are dinosaurs

Actually, several Old Testament writers were inspired to mention dragons¹² and the book of Job (chapters 40 and 41) describes two impressive creatures—behemoth and leviathan—which are unlike any living creatures today, but sound very like dinosaurs. What is more, stories of large and/or frightening reptilian creatures (often referred to as dragons) abound from cultures all over the world.¹³

Today, due to the modern evolutionary belief that no dinosaurs survived beyond the so-called Cretaceous (an alleged 65 million years ago), most people disregard all of this evidence as mere myths and legends, while ignoring the clear teaching of the Bible. To the unprejudiced mind, however, Bishop Bell’s ‘brass behemoths’ suggest that at least some such creatures were alive and well in the Middle Ages.

However, the existence of dinosaur motifs from this period presents no problem to the person who accepts what the Bible clearly implies—that people were once contemporary with dinosaurs. No doubt many would have us believe that the Renaissance artisan made up a beast that, by pure coincidence, just happens to look like a dinosaur.

Unless this is an elaborate forgery¹⁷ (which is highly unlikely, considering its location!), it represents further evidence that the standard evolutionary dogma concerning dinosaurs and their supposed 65-million-year-old extinction is just plain wrong.

https://creation.com/bishop-bells-brass-behemoths

We cannot say that these are definitely dinosaurs as they are too vague. I suppose a good imagination and sound teaching in a church might persuade you otherwise. Bell uses an argument from special pleading. He writes”Today, due to the modern evolutionary belief that no dinosaurs survived beyond the so-called Cretaceous (an alleged 65 million years ago),…” This is aimed at his readers and has no scientific content. It is not due to “modern evolutionary belief” as geologists were aware long before Darwin in 1859 that dinosaurs were long extinct and had been since the end of the Cretaceous, later dated at 65 my. We just need to consider the fossils found by Mary Anning in Dorset in the 1820s. They were studied by such geologists as Murchison, Cuvier and the Revs William Conybeare and William Buckland. None of those four accepted evolution. and are better described as creationists and old earth. This is rather misleading of Bell. 

His use of the poetry of Job is simply bad interpretation. The poetic description could be any large animal or none. The tail may not be a tail but an item of male anatomy!

Bell dismisses it being a forgery. Rightly so as it is simply the imagination of the artist, but it was a time of belief in dragons. To claim this is further evidence against evolutionary dogma is simply risible.

 

Andy McIntosh D.Sc and dinosaur petroglyphs in Utah

My other example is from a science professor at a leading university. McIntosh was a Professor of Thermodynamics and  Combustion Theory (hot air?) at Leeds University until 2014 and has had a distinguished career in that field. He is a Young Earth Creationist and has written widely on the subject

He wrote Genesis for Today, an exposition of early Genesis, with some “scientific” appendices striving to show how real science supports a literal Genesis. It was first published in 1997 and has gone through six editions. His treatment of geology leaves much to be desired and is simply inaccurate and full of misrepresentation. This is not what one would expect from a science professor. His treatment of geology includes many howlers and whoppers, which might be acceptable for a teenager but not a leading science professor. I would like to know how he made them. He told me he rejects my charges.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/creationist-nonsense-on-geology-the-odd-case-of-prof-mcintosh-d-sc/

 In 2006 McIntosh visited the fantastic parks in Utah as we also did in 2013. He, like us, visited Kachina Natural Bridge and Bryce Canyon. At Kachina Bridge he saw the “dinosaur” petroglyph, which is faint in this photo.

https://answersingenesis.org/geology/natural-features/utahs-testimony-to-catastrophe/

He wrote “The petroglyph of a sauropod dinosaur clearly has important implications—indicating that dinosaurs were indeed known to men after the Flood until they eventually died out and became (apparently) extinct.” and then puts it on a par with Bishop Bell’s dinos. He concluded;

This evidence of dinosaurs with man in relatively recent times is indirect evidence of the Flood, as it shows the fallacy of millions of years of gradual geological change being responsible for the rock record. The Flood explains the rocks and the fossil dinosaurs much better, and the Bible‘s history explains the existence of men and dinosaurs at the same time.

This is face-palmingly daft! Neither give any evidence whatsoever. Further as I wrote above his understanding of geology is dire. I am baffled how someone with a D.Sc. can believe such things.

His university published an understated disclaimer of his views in 2006, reported in the Guardian, during the brouhaha over Truth in Science;

Not surprisingly, therefore, the university has issued an official disclaimer: “Professor Andrew McIntosh’s directorship of Truth in Science, and his promotion of that organisation’s views, are unconnected to his teaching or research [here]… The university wishes to distance itself publicly from theories of creationism and so-called intelligent design, which cannot be verified by evidence.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/dec/19/schools.education

I am willing to say that some bishops are dinosaurs but not that any bishop had a pet dinosaur or ever saw a living one. All this is fantabulising by Young Earth Creationists and brings ridicule on themselves and sadly on all Christians.

l

The rush to electric cars will founder on Copper

In late September 2023 Rishi Sunak, Prime minister of the UK, put forward several measures relating to Net Zero. Not all were happy! Among other things he pushed the cessation of petrol vehicles from 2030 to 2035.

One cannot say that this was not controversial but several things need considering, such as technical issues and the affordability of EVs.

To be truly green you must have an EV – electrical vehicle – rather than a petrol or diesel one. Assuming you have £70K to buy one!!   The cheapest small, but not tiny EV is about  £25,000  whereas some petrol cars less than 15K, but there are few below 13K. An obvious concern is who can afford an EV. At present you can buy a reasonable petrol car for a few thousand, which is often reliable, cheap to maintain and does 50 mpg. You can also buy a 2015 Leaf for about 5K, but I wonder about the battery. With battery replacements at £5000 (or sometimes £2500 refurbished) every few years that makes an older EV more expensive. Range and cost are improving but are still issues. I would suggest that EVs will be beyond some who can afford a petrol car at present. Without decent public transport that will be a serious problem for many outside big cities. Most small towns have no railway connection and poor public transport and thus cars are almost essential. Thus getting to my daughter’s house ten miles away is not easy; 25 minutes by car, 50 minutes by bike (but I am in my 70s), a good two hours by bus and four hours on foot. I usually go by bike.

EVs are often portrayed as Zero Emissions, but that is only point of delivery and thus a misleading claim. It does not consider the source of the electricity or fossil fuels used in making the cars.. Many countries are aiming to be EV within a decade and phase out petrol and diesel vehicles. That sounds excellent but one or two things have not been thought through.

Perhaps, EV stands for Extractivist Vehicle as we will see here, as there are obstacles to a rapid transition to EVs in respect of all the minerals (metals and graphite) needed for the battery and the expansion of the national grid.

First, electrification  of vehicles and other things, including heating, means that the present grid needs to be expanded to cope with a vastly increased use of electricity. I won’t discuss that but consider the extra requirements of EVs. The grid in Britain is under severe strain already.

EVs seem to be an attractive alternative and from the number of Teslas running around they are gaining in popularity.  But Teslas are expensive starting at £40K. They are billed as cheaper and emissions free. The latter is possibly true at the point of use, but depends on the source of electricity.  Except when they catch fire, they emit no gases. Anyone who has followed a badly tuned diesel or stood next to a idling car (Chelsea tractor?) outside a school will  know how bad emissions can be. (I cannot understand why some drivers sit in stationary cars with the engines on!)

Secondly, EVs need a vast amount of additional metals. Cars are mostly steel and/or aluminium and relatively small amounts of other metals – mostly for electrical systems and the catalytic converter. An EV needs all that PLUS the materials, mostly metals in a heavy battery . This diagram shows what is else is needed for an EV battery.

 

 

 

Pinched with permission from B F Randall!

https://bfrandall.substack.com/p/the-recyclable-lion-and-other-bedtime?r=1rapbo&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

(This article deals with the problems of lithium and its recycling)

This anti-renewable meme sums it up.

That is an additional 185kg of metals (including the graphite)  or for pre-metric dinosaurs like me – about 4 cwt – which vastly adds to the cars weight. A lot of these metals are needed; Copper, Aluminium, Steel, Lithium, Cobalt, Manganese, Nickel and Graphite – though the last is not a metal. The quantities needed is vast and mining of these minerals needs to be vastly expanded if EVs are going to replace ICEVs.

Another list of metals needed https://www.mining.com/web/the-key-minerals-in-an-ev-battery/ which is in the same order.

However it is an issue ignored, avoided or evaded by many supporters of EVs and particularly among green groups. Aims of a rapid transition to EVs will founder on a shortage of these minerals as several groups have expounded.

One is a group is from the British Museum of Natural History who consider it from the position of mining in the UK. Relatively little of these are mined in the UK, but old copper mines in Cornwall and Anglesey show promise with moderate reserves. There is also the potential for two vast opencast copper mines in Snowdonia…………….

Natural History Museum experts make case for mining in UK

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/natural-history-museum-experts-make-case-for-mining-in-uk.html

In a brief non-technical article they discuss the issues and the challenge. I quote;

The UK has just announced an intent to speed up its reduction of carbon emissions with the new plan set to cut them 78% by 2035. The biggest obstacle to this is internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) which are the greatest contributors to carbon emissions within the UK.

To switch the UK’s fleet of 31.5 million ICEVs to battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) would take an estimated 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes lithium carbonate, 7,200 tonnes neodymium and dysprosium and 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This is twice the current annual world production of cobalt, an entire year’s world production of neodymium and three quarters of the world production of lithium. To do the same worldwide would need forty times these amounts.

The quantities are mind-boggling and these are just for the UK. These figures are not quite the same as Randall’s but his diagram would still require  O.64 million tons of copper (32 million vehicles x 0.02 tonnes of copper per EV). His diagram does not include copper needed for components or transmission outside the battery.

In my young years I worked for a mining company in Africa. In Uganda I surveyed two areas for the presence of copper but there was very little. I worked underground as a section geologist for four months. In South Africa I assessed some old mine workings from the 1840s. I made a very detailed geological map and sampled the ore in the adits of the mine. I chipped samples off the roof using a Calcium Carbide lamp for light!  Initially it looked promising but the one diamond drill core going down 700 ft  showed there was probably insufficient ore for a mine. I worked on a ballpark figure of 2 million tons of ore at 2% Cu, which would have given 40,000 tonnes of Cu. That would be less than 2% of the Copper needed for the UK to go EV!!!! As I could only demonstrate half a million tons, that was that!. I also made a I:60000 geological map of about 2000 sq km, and noted all the visible mineralisation. I also superficially looked over a larger area. The area looked promising but nothing has come to light in the last fifty years! During that time copper production in South Africa has collapsed. Most of the time an exploration geologist enjoys making a geological map, but proves there is nothing there. None of my colleagues had any more success.

2.4 million tonnes of Copper is a heck of a lot of the metal and even more of a heck of a lot of copper ore.

If you got copper from a rich ore of 2%, then 120 million tones of Cu ore are needed, but much ore is only 0.3% Cu which would require nearly a billion tonnes of ore. 

Note you need to mine between 1 (grade 2%) and 7 (grade 0.3%) tonnes of Cu ore for each EV, which requires 20kg of Copper.

As well as copper for each vehicle Copper is needed for the grid. 

Could we get the copper from the UK? There are two promising mines in Cornwall and Anglesey  (re-opening the 3000 year old Parys Mountain mine). Between them they seem to have 16 million tonnes at a bit below 2%.

Now that would give 320,000 tonnes of Copper. 

There are two porphyry copper deposits in Snowdonia, one north of Dolgellau and the other at Betws y Coed, but it would transform the area from this at the idyllic Llyn Crafnant

to this;

That would be the new view of the Carneddau! It looks like Carnedd Llewelyn in the distance!!

I think I prefer this kind of Snowdonia. The mine would be in the middle distance and would swallow up Llyn Crafnant. Perhaps the contrast of idylllic lake and opencast mining illustrates the environmental dilemmas. Yet to refuse to open these two places as mines to provide for British EVs means that some other peoples (voiceless indigenous?) will have to suffer the mine while the affluent in the west drive around in Teslas. Is that moral?

The amount of copper needed for Britain to go EV is staggering, but for the whole world it is 40 times as much as it would require

100 million tonnes of Copper

which  needs between 5 and 30 billion tonnes of ore.

It is also  4 times the present annual production of copper.

The amount of copper needed is mind-boggling and unless every country was prepared to ditch their environmental standards is simply unachievable. This is just for copper and the scenario is repeated for each of the metals and graphite.

For the UK the tonnage of copper ore needed is 

   118,125,000tonnes of 2% copper ore, (cooper is rarely that rich today)

 787,500,000 tonnes at 0.3 % copper ore which is the norm.

One billion tonnes of copper ore

 

It does seem that costs of these ores are rising for EVs

There is a diversity of minerals needed but I will focus on one;  COPPER. The annual consumption in UK is about 150,000 tonnes, of which 30,000 tonnes are recycle.

https://www.copper.org/resources/market_data/pdfs/annual-data-book-2021_final.pdf

About 23 million tonnes of Copper are produced each year with over 6 million from Chile alone. China uses 50% of refined copper and Europe a mere 13%..

https://www.statista.com/statistics/470246/copper-consumption-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

About 1.5  Million new vehicles are registered each year.  If 20kg of copper is needed for the battery then there needed to be increase of consumption of 30,000 tonnes – a 20% increase. That excludes copper needed for other aspects of electrification. These are my estimates and are probably underestimates. There will be little scope for extra recycling as these represent new uses.

  Thus there will need to be an annual  20% increase of copper consumption- excluding copper needed for increased electification

4 million tons Cu at about 1.5 to 1.9 % 60,000 tons of Cu 

at 20kg ie 50 cars per ton   that is 60,000 x50 = 3 million cars less if use BMNH figures

Note that you need to mine between 1 (grade 2%) and 7 (grade 0.3%) tonnes of Cu ore for each EV, which requires 20kg.

For the UK for one and a half million EVs annually that would require between ONE POINT FIVE and TEN POINT FIVE million tonnes of Copper ore annually.

 

For rich copper ore 2% Cu 30k x 50 tonnes of ore are needed i.e    1.5 million tonnes p.a.

 

Or for most ores at about 0.4%                 7.5 million tonnes p.a are needed

 

 

Probably an average grade of 0.4% is reasonable, which means FIVE tonnes of ore must be mined for each EV

These are mind-boggling figures and my rough, back of the envelope calculations only give the right order but will not be out by anywhere like a factor of ten

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/14/copper-is-key-to-electric-vehicles-wind-and-solar-power-were-short-supply.html

The  BMNH article cited earlier makes similar points as does the following

https://aheadoftheherd.com/copper-mines-becoming-more-capital-intensive-and-costly-to-run/

Outside mining circles these issues are rarely mentioned as if the ease of electrification is straightforward. It is not and is constrained by the availability of Copper and other materials. There are probably several reasons for this. Most people simply use metals without considering the mining of them and have little concept of the vast quantities needed, when spread over millions of vehicles. Of energy commentators and “experts” few have any mining experience and thus don’t consider all the problems of mining with the costs both financial and environmental. Many, especially in our ubiquitous green NGOs (and green Christians!!) have little technical expertise and rely on a green ideology and a love of a non-industrial world. Too many have arts degrees, which cannot serve them well. That will not provide for 8 billion people. Note that miners deal as casually with millions of tons of ore as geologists do of millions of years!!  The potential mines in Cornwall and Anglesey  with 16 million tones of ore are simply diddy mines!!

Thus changing to renewables and EVs seems very attractive until the question of mineral resources is raised and so often transition to EVs is seen as a done deal and no comment made of metals needed for the vehicles  or the expansion of the grid.

Issues of going EV

There has been some focus on charging points as this directly affects EV drivers now, but it is the least of the long-term issues. 

Again there is a  little on the expansion of the grid. With the grid creaking when under high demand, especially during winter it is clear that the present grid needs updating and expanding to cope with the demand for EVs. This probably could not be done by 2030. This will involve a massive use of materials and, of course, more generation of electricity. It is questionable whether renewables can keep up with increased demand, thus ensuring that fossil fuels will continue to be needed. And then the dunkelflaute can strike on a cold windless night!

The greatest missing element in all discussions (except among some “climate deniers”!!!!) is the incredible amount of mining needed to provide all the metals needed for the electric revolution. This blog has indicated just how much one metal – copper – is needed. My reasons for choosing copper is first because I worked as a mining and exploration geologist in copper and secondly it is a good example for all the other metals needed, as to cover them would require a lot more information saying about the same thing about Co, Ni, Graphite etc. I am aware that I am commenting more as an amateur but I take heart from Oscar Wilde who said “if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” 

Two other major issues of the increase in mining is first the energy required, which in the foreseeable  future will be fossil dependant. and secondly mining inevitably causes environmental problems, which may or may not be dealt with responsibly. It is more than the problems with tailings dams.

But mining is a dirty process.  It cannot be anything else with removal of top-soil, then overlying rock, then removal of ore for opencast mining and for underground mines the removal of rock to get access to the ore, then the removal of ore, and all the dirty refining, which uses vast amounts of energy and produces waste and other pollution. Shiny copper looks pristine and clean but has a dirty history of pollution and high energy usage.

The energy usage in mining can be seen in the trucks used in opencast mines. Underground mines often have electrified underground railways, but others use diesel trucks to haul out the ore. I passed these in action in an underground mine in Namibia, but they were no larger than trucks used on our roads. Trucks in large opencast mines are of another magnitude of size and can carry several hundred tons of ore. Consider this little monster;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haul_truck#:~:text=Haul%20trucks%20are%20off%2Dhighway,job%20site%20to%20job%20site.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haul_truck#:~:text=Haul%20trucks%20are%20off%2Dhighway,job%20site%20to%20job%20site.

Some are now electrified but that will make little environmental impact. (But it looks good!!)

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The aim of stopping ICEs in 2030 seems a laudable aim but is dependant on many factors as I describe above. I wonder whether the rush to EVs will hit a brick wall soon, with struggles with charging the least of the problems.

The major limiting factors will be an over-stretched grid and a major shortage of metals needed.

Perhaps the Prime Minister was right! I think he was, and so will most people in a few years time.

**********

But don’t worry the rich will carry on and us plebs will be reduced to walking and huddling up with blankets! If lucky we may have a bike.

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Just a little warning!!

28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?

29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him,

30 saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?

32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.

Luke 14

 

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This is a recent book on the topic, available free on Kindle. As there was no preview I cannot comment on its quality

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-energy-ready-dig-Environmental-ebook/dp/B0CJMKLNSB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3MPMEPZ8Y8SUA&keywords=get+ready+to+dig&qid=1695624618&sprefix=get+ready+to+dig%2Caps%2C85&sr=8-1

Here is a recent video of Kilembe mine in Uganda which was closed by courtesy of Amin and is now being reopened by Chinese. It is a smallish mine. I enjoyed working in the mine except when I got CO poisoning.