Would buying soybeans from my mom and my cousins help them? The Trump-thing is probably my cousins' fault, but my mom is a life-long Democrat.
The whole soybean thing so incredibly stupid and Trump being so transparently manipulated that along should be grounds for impeachment. Trump: Stop stealing our industrial secrets subsidizing your own firms and inhibiting our exports in contravention of your treaty obligations. PRC: We'll buy some soybeans. Trump: Ok!
If that didn't make sense it's because I'm not following the trade news closely. And because nothing makes sense in this administration anyway. And I'm not clear who "them" refers to in 1.
Them is China. Nebraska has lots of soybeans and its cities are growing by leaps and bounds (at the expense of the rural areas).
Plus, I read that China was about to experience a shortage of pork. Soybeans are great for making a small amount of pig into a big amount of pork.
Beans flow downgullet. There's no way the Hicks in Pittsburgh can outgullet all the pigs in China.
That's why the beans go to animal feed.
At the risk of sounding like a massive procedural liberal, it's only because of boring procedural liberals in government offices that Trump can't pull this kind of shit the way China's leaders can
That's probably not bad news locally.
An end-user who had used US' Buchanan before said that it appears unlikely for Chinese end-users to buy US cargoes and take the initiative to apply for the exemptions. "I do not think that people will apply for the exemptions as there are plenty of alternatives within the domestic market," the end-user said.
10: Probably not. Lots of bituminous coal around here.
I was surprised by the distribution of coal production in the US. Pennsylvania and West Virginia combined produce 18% of US coal, while Wyoming produces a whopping 41%.
I was hoping they'd go burn it in China instead of Braddock.
Weird PRC-esque moment in SF: after the popular, elected Public Defender died in office, a police death report was leaked that made his death seem very ignominious (drugs, etc.). Then there was a police raid on the journalist who received it, ostensibly investigating the leak on the police side, but per media in unambiguous violation of the journalism shield law. The Chronicle has an article this morning about how city elected officials have been largely mealy-mouthed about this violation.
(Reaching for a connection to make that not OT. I realize the US has a long and distinguished history of harassing journalists too.)
I was surprised by the distribution of coal production in the US. Pennsylvania and West Virginia combined produce 18% of US coal, while Wyoming produces a whopping 41%.
The strip mines in Wyoming are enormous (and highly mechanized). It's really a whole different ballgame from Appalachian coal mining.
Pennsylvania's distinct anthracite coal mining industry has been a thing of the past for 60 years. What remains is all western PA strip mining producing the same product as Wyoming and the rest of the Appalachians I think.
17: Mostly. The link above has this detailed data on Pennsylvania. Bituminous is much more common than anthracite, but both kinds are still mined, both above and below ground. In fact, the ten biggest mines are all underground bituminous, mostly in Greene County.
Calculating from the first chart on this page, it appears states west of the Mississippi produce 64% of the country's coal with 28% of the workforce.
28 percent of the country's workforce mines coal?
I'm willing to believe 28% of Wyoming's workforce mines coal.
20: Yes. 3rd largest profession next to cowboy, and Presidential candidate.
Almost thirty-five people work in the Wyoming coal industry.
my understanding is that chinese are mostly cancelling the coal plants the have planned internally, but the bigger problem is their belt and suspenders foreign investment in coal plants espcially in africa.
Thanks for this Mossy, the shrinking cities being relentlessly upscaled are pretty interesting to read about especially.
Meanwhile, the US pursues greatness its own way: https://www.duffelblog.com/2019/05/pornhub-opens-first-sipr-website
Since I have never watched the show that's making Unfogged's longest thread in 2019, I'll keep going here.
Michael Young, inventor of the word "meritocracy," was engaged in dystopian satire. He is a cult favorite among television producers and multivolume fantasy writers.
"Was engaged in dystopian satire" just means conscious.
29: It's still dozens of comments behind the previous genre-fiction thread. Also popular:
The romance thread is the only one over 300. I leave it to the rest of you to use these analytics productively.
I'm just generally desperate about everything these days, but Chinese energy policy is fucking me up. They're damming the Yangtze up to Three Parallel Gorges, which is one of my favorite spots on earth. This is what the Chinese fighting climate change looks like: a piece of the world is drowned.
my understanding is that chinese are mostly cancelling the coal plants the have planned internally, but the bigger problem is their belt and suspenders foreign investment in coal plants espcially in africa.
My vague unsourced understanding is that the great bulk of external plants are in Asia, not Africa. (Bearing in mind always that BRI in fact consists mostly of MOUs which experience suggests will never materialize.)
My focus here was the financial problem, not the environmental one. I assume the third-country plants are mostly viable investments, since unlike PRC those countries actually need more electricity. For scale, I don't have commensurable figures handy. The OP coal link gives 259GW of internal projects, with cancellation cost of US$210bn. Externally, this gives:
251 gigawatts of capacity in 65 BRI countries in the 15-year period to 2016So the environmental problem appears to be similar. Financially, a different study in that link gives
U.S. $35.9 billion (244.4 billion yuan) of funding for current coal power projects in 27 countriesLike I say, incommensurable; evidently totally different methodology was used to get the US$210bn figure.
32. Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the most wonderful places I've ever been.
Don't worry guys! The gorges will be perfectly preserved under hundreds of meters of mud and heavy metal pollution, to be enjoyed by future generations once the dams collapse.
They should inter him in the Louvre, under his pyramids.
It's been a bad week for iconic figures, what with him, Doris Day, and Tim Conway.
wouldn't that be great if they rigged up a Dorf On Caskets situation at Tim Conway's funeral?
It would be even better if they did that at Pei's funeral.
I'm not going to be able to make Conway's.
Pich Samod, a farmer who refused terms of resettlement offered by Chinese corporation Shukaku filling Boueng Khak lake, near Phomh Penh. The lake was Samod's home and source of income. No matter, representatives went to his hospital bed, dipped his unconscious finger in ink and applied it to the approval document.
«the current nominal size of the economy is about 18 per cent lower than the official level»
Looking at figures by the World Bank on per capita electricity consumption, which have collapsed in the "first-world" since 2005 (and have been closely related to increasing GDI per a century), my guess is that nominal GDI is around 30-35% lower than the official figures in countries like the UK, Spain, Greece, Italy, and around 20-25% lower in the USA, look at this very amazing graph:
per capita electricity consumption, which have collapsed in the "first-world" since 2005 (and have been closely related to increasing GDI per a century)
Generally, I don't know much about economic stats. But you are describing a period where there's been an active effort to increase energy efficiency -- assuming that the relationship between per capita energy use and GDI was stable over that period seems like something that might easily be untrue and that you would want to at least confirm.
We put in new windows and replaced a very inefficient dehumidifier.
"my guess is that nominal GDI is around 30-35% lower than the official figures in countries like the UK"
Highly unlikely.
I mean, when do you think official figures started to be wrong?
That's just a great tool. I never knew it was so easy to graph that stuff.
I wonder why America sucks so much at not using electricity. Other than the mostly not even trying thing.
Anybody know what happened to cereal production in China around 2003-4?
Probably people eating less Cap'n Crunch because of the mouth-cutting thing.
You just need to let it soak in the bowl for a minute.
«But you are describing a period where there's been an active effort to increase energy efficiency -- assuming that the relationship between per capita energy use and GDI was stable over that period seems like something that might easily be untrue»
The energy efficiency argument does not explain why "energy efficiency", that is the fall in consumption per head, has increased most in poorer countries, and why it has happened in first-world countries while "energy efficiency" has so dramatically fallen in Malaysia, south Korea, China and other offshore locations, where electricity consumption per head has risen fast in the same period, as the graph shows.
Then there is the breathtakingly fantastic assumption in the "energy efficiency" idea that up to 2003-2005 devices that consumed electricity (motors, cookers, smelters, solderers, ...) never became more efficient: actually they became dramatically more efficient, and the pace of improvement has slowed down, like it always happens in mature industries, where the easy and big efficiency improvements happen at the beginning.
Then there is the small matter of Jevon's Effect, which is the observation that as the use of a type of energy becomes more efficient, its absolute consumption increases as it becomes more affordable.
I know that in international political economy, they used to approximate economic power with coal production/consumption and iron/steel production. This seems similar. But googling around about the U.S., it looks like it's really mostly just the new light bulbs replacing incandescent bulbs.
Also, thank you for pointing out that link. It's great.