Pros and Cons of Coal

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

3 hours ago, DA? said:

I've just about most of my life when living in cold countries have had wood burners and as a plumber (qualified in UK & OZ) have worked and installed many. Even when a system is installed and working in the totally correct manor you still end up with particulates inside the house. Normally most of this will occur when opening the stove to refill or when cleaning out the ash.

I have also been trained as a fireman (when working on a nuclear plant this was my emergency job) and also as an Arborist. Both these jobs have increased my awareness of the dangers in smoke from wood, it's amazing the amount of different toxic material that is produced. Having a young son I try to reduce the risks he is exposed to.

There's wood, and then there's wood.

The traditional wood stove uses ordinary logs that are sawn up into 16-inch lengths and then split into sections, typically into one-sixth staves. But the wood from the felled tree is still "wet," with perhaps a 45% moisture content.  So you have to dry that wood, and that is typically done by racking the split pieces up into a crib and leaving it to air-dry for a year.  The final moisture content is haphazard, as you burn through that wood pile, it will vary quite a bit. 

The new approach is to convert the felled wood into wood pellets, through industrial machinery.  The pellets are small compressed pieces of wood that measure perhaps i/4-inch in diameter and 3/4-inch long.  This wood is carefully dried and will have a moisture content of less that 12%.  If the feedstock is some hardwood such as ash or hickory, it will burn very cleanly and the ash output will be about one part in 200 of the input.   A modern pellet boiler is fed automatically for the entire heating season via a huge pellet bin in the basement and a series of augurs or Archimedes screws to get the pellets into the boiler furnace in a controlled manner.  The removal of the ash can be done manually or again by automatic means, and by keeping the system contained you avoid getting particulates into the house.  These are neat systems, but tend to be expensive.  

Large subsidies are being offered in States where the forest products industry has collapsed, typically where the pulp and paper plants have closed due to the collapse of the demand for newsprint.  Using the wood, by conversion into pellets, for heating systems is a logical re-use of those forests.  The larger problem for the system purchaser is that there are few pellet manufacturers, so the price being paid for the pellets tends to be artificially propped up, leaving the buyer at the mercy of one supplier.  That is easing as more entrepreneurs are getting into the pellet manufacturing business.  And those pellet-making plants are also receiving govt subsidies. 

In rural areas of Northern New Hampshire, where you have these steep hills and valleys of the White Mountains,  split wood is very popular, as the people are poor, and the wood is basically free, all you do is go into the forest, cut down the tree, saw the sections and split it on-site.  Haul the wood home in your antique pick-up truck and you have free heat for the winter.  Without that wood, those poor folks would freeze to death.  And every year, some do.  Lack of heat material is a big problem there.  Meanwhile, due to the shape of the land, the fumes from the burning will create a heavy smog in those valleys, another big health problem.  The widespread introduction of wood pellet stoves, and subsidized pellets, will change that picture.  

And all because of the price of oil heat continuing to rise and be out of reach of the rural poor.

[Justin Thyme + 24]

On 11/10/2018 at 6:12 AM, Jan van Eck said:

 And all because of the price of oil heat continuing to rise and be out of reach of the rural poor.

Hey, I have a solution.

Why not eliminate poverty among the rural poor, as they are doing in China?

Then they no longer have to freeze in the winter, or go hungry, or even live in shacks?

[Justin Thyme + 24]

On 11/9/2018 at 7:57 PM, Jan van Eck said:

 will resort to smuggling of anthracite coal from New York State, which vendors will conveniently bag in 50-lb bags for you.  The coal will be smuggled in over the Border in vans and pick-up trucks, stuff below the weight limit that attracts inspections by the commercial motor vehicle inspectors at those highway checkpoints.  Lots and lots of coal is coming soon, it is cheap, easy to handle, and has lots of heat content. 

And that is how the ingenious and hard-working rural folks outmaneuver the socialists in the cities. They smuggle.

And why am I left with the vision of thousands of pickup trucks making the trek weekly, each with a fifty pound sack of coal, in order to meet the BTU demand for a season's heating?

And can I possibly imagine that such a conga line of pickups wouldn't be noticed?

Clandestine smuggling only works in small volumes. Large volumes are always noticeable.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

6 minutes ago, Justin Thyme said:

And why am I left with the vision of thousands of pickup trucks making the trek weekly, each with a fifty pound sack of coal, in order to meet the BTU demand for a season's heating?

 

Why on earth would anyone drive over the Border into a border community in New York State to just go fetch one 50-lb bag?  Nobody does that.  Coal retails for about $110/ton.  You would load up the pickup with at least 1,000 lbs  (half-ton small pickup). 

Larger-volume smugglers, those arbitraging between the seller in NY and locals in VT, would simply go rent a big Ryder moving truck, common enough, capable of 12 ton.  Figure the cost of the rental at 99 cents a mile, move it in to a rural barn, offload, and then goes out the door in pick-ups.  Easy to do. 

Remember also that rural policemen will be loathe to hinder the supply of heating material; the town cops will turn a blind eye, and may even become customers!

10 minutes ago, Justin Thyme said:

And can I possibly imagine that such a conga line of pickups wouldn't be noticed?

 

No conga line.  Easily half the vehicles in the rural areas are pick-ups or similar vehicles.  Most of the rest are station-wagon types, called "SUV" in the USA.  Nobody would know the difference.  Smugglers are creative enough to stay below the radar.  And since the carbon tax is so deeply unpopular in the rural areas  (it is a product of the thinking of liberal elites in the cities), it will be ignored. 

14 minutes ago, Justin Thyme said:

Clandestine smuggling only works in small volumes. Large volumes are always noticeable.

Keeping in mind that Iran is now about to go smuggle some 2 million Barrels of crude out out of the country every single day, under the noses of the US Navy and their spy planes and satellites, I would remark that one should not prudently underestimate the creative abilities of smugglers. 

[Justin Thyme + 24]

28 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Larger-volume smugglers, those arbitraging between the seller in NY and locals in VT, would simply go rent a big Ryder moving truck, common enough, capable of 12 ton.  Figure the cost of the rental at 99 cents a mile, move it in to a rural barn, offload, and then goes out the door in pick-ups.  Easy to do. 

No conga line.  Easily half the vehicles in the rural areas are pick-ups or similar vehicles.  Most of the rest are station-wagon types, called "SUV" in the USA.  Nobody would know the difference.  Smugglers are creative enough to stay below the radar.  And since the carbon tax is so deeply unpopular in the rural areas  (it is a product of the thinking of liberal elites in the cities), it will be ignored. 

Keeping in mind that Iran is now about to go smuggle some 2 million Barrels of crude out out of the country every single day, under the noses of the US Navy and their spy planes and satellites, I would remark that one should not prudently underestimate the creative abilities of smugglers. 

Make up your mind. It is either 12 ton Ryders or pick-ups or similar.

Smuggling by a nation is on a very different scale than smuggling on an individual scale. Are you saying that it will be the state itself that is smuggling coal against state legislation?

Interesting.

Incidentally, most of the 'smuggling' of Iranian oil is between two states - Iran and China. And it is hardly 'smuggling'. It is free and legal trade. The limitation on the volume of oil legally shipped has nothing to do with the sale and shipping itself, but on obtaining insurance. If China starts to self-insure the shipments, and ship in Chinese registered ships, there is no legal impediment. And there will be zero attempt to hide it. There is no need to hide it. It's more like snubbing their nose at American intelligence. The only thing America is accomplishing, is to make China greater than it currently is. And it will soon not be done by sea, but by land. There is a railway that directly links Iran to China. The current problem is a gauge change. It is being upgraded using Chinese money. In Canada, over one million barrels of oil a day are moved by train. Incidentally, China is Iran's biggest trading partner. And America has zero leverage over China.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 minute ago, Justin Thyme said:

, China is Iran's biggest trading partner. And America has zero leverage over China.

On the contrary, the USA has lots of leverage over China - just as it does over Canada.  The US will simply institute a "secondary boycott," by either placing tariffs or quota or total exclusion of Chinese goods destined for the US market.  In the extreme, the USA can sever diplomatic relations  (while I personally doubt this, it is a possibility). 

The secondary boycott is the Trump weapon of choice.  It is what gives the Europeans the heebie-jeebies.  I rather suspect you have developed your own ideological stint to all this, but don't let your antipathy towards the USA as the big elephant in the room distort your judgment.  The USA can (and in this instance under Trump, wil) do whatever it finds necessary to push the issue and isolate Iran. 

Personally, I think the Iranians will find a way to get their product out.  But, as I have said before on this Forum, they will have to leave money on the table, both as payments to the smugglers and as a discount to induce the buyers to take the risk of crossing the USA.  How big that discount will be, I dunno.  but it will definitely be out there.  And that satisfied the Trump goal: forcing Iran to in effect dump, by big discount, their oil in order to keep revenues flowing.  They sell lots, the overall market remains supplied, and Iran ends up shorted on receipts.  That is classically Trump. 

Canada has exactly the same problems.  The USA shuts down and impoverishes the entire City of Hamilton, with his 25% tariff on rolled steel.  He whacks the BC and NB lumber industries by imposing a tariff on dimensional softwood. There is nothing that Canada can do about it.  Any serious effort to apply come counter-measures and Trump whacks the Canadian auto industry with a 25% tariff.  Given that fully 85% of Canadian auto production is immediately shipped to the USA, such a tariff would be catastrophic for Canada.  Even Justin does not dare further irritating Trump.  He has to eat it. Just as China will have to eat it if they continue past the 6-month waiver period in buying Iranian oil. China cannot afford open access loss to the US market, as it has those hundreds of millions of Chinese it needs to keep employed.  It is a daunting prospect, to be sure. 

[Justin Thyme + 24]

12 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

On the contrary, the USA has lots of leverage over China - just as it does over Canada.  The US will simply institute a "secondary boycott," by either placing tariffs or quota or total exclusion of Chinese goods destined for the US market. 

You really, really need to get out more. Into the world, that is. I am constantly amazed at how little Americans know about their current position in the world, and about how piddling small it is. Either Americans are thoroughly blindly ignorant, or willfully ignoring, how seriously in trouble the American economy really is. Worse, you Americans seem to be blind to the fact that there is nothing you can do to stop the decline. That is the down side of being a narcissistic nation. You refuse to believe you are irrevocably in trouble, until it is beyond being too late. Your fate is sealed. All you can do is bluster, shout, and rampage. And all the rest of the world can do, is stay out of the way, to be as unaffected by the death rage as possible. Even your corporations are planning their exit.

America no loner has leverage over China or anywhere else, least of which is Canada. America is finished on the world stage. The world leaders are scoffing at Trump, and just about everyone outside of America is laughing at it. Trump is right. No one respects America, the Presidency, or American institutions any more, There is essentially zero respect for America anywhere in the world.

Oh, and good luck to your farmers. China will never return to buying American soybeans. It seems,despite what Trump says, America needs China more than China needs America. American trade is just a piddling small part of Chinese trade. And of course, just wait until the 25% tariffs go into effect. Everything in Walmart goes up by 25%. Totally wipes out any benefits of Trump's tax concessions. By 2020, the average American will be far worse off under Trump than they have ever been.

There is NOTHING that America has, that the rest of the world needs, that the rest of the world can not work around. But if America keeps on the track it is going on, alienating the rest of the world, America will be facing a boycott by the rest of the world. Maybe world manufacturing will go down a percent or two, but not seriously enough to do any damage. The loss of the entire American market can be made up in a few years by the expansion of the market in China and India. Either America agrees to play by the new world order, or it is cut off completely. Maybe the rest of the world will allow humanitarian aid. The world will be forcing regime change in America, and America will have no friends anywhere in the world to come to its aid.

But of course, you will all wave the American flag and pretend that America is a good (forget about great, America is long past its best before date) country. Drink your weak beer and eat your junk 'comfort' food. Smoke your pot to ease the pain and make the intolerable a bit more tolerable. As you all grow more and more uneducated, unhealthy, impoverished, and fearful of sending your children to school in case they are shot, you can always reflect on your pride in your constitution. That is, if you still have a constitution that is worth the paper it is written on, given how badly Trump is ignoring it.

The Europeans are switching to the renminbi as the monetary exchange of choice. Even the Deutsche bank in Germany is using it. Europe is moving to SPVs (special payment vehicles), based on the renminbi and backed by China, for trade. Less and less trade is being conducted using the greenback, and more and more is being done in these SPVs and the renminbi. All America, and apparently you, can do is to huff and puff and waste your time trying to blow down the Chinese brick house. China produces and sells more cars than America, the middle income is larger than the entire American population, it has universal health care for everyone, and free education. When ISS is abandoned, there will only be one space station - owned by the Chinese. China, not America, is the main trading partner of almost every country in the world, except for Mexico and Canada. And Trump just threw that relation under the bus. Canada is now looking at its trade deals with Europe, the Pacific, and China because these countries are a more reliable and stable trading partner. 

Canada out-maneuvered Trump in the NAFTA negotiations, leaving Trump essentially without any net gains. The only thing Trump's tariffs have done, is to make things more expensive for the average American citizen. Oh, he 'won' a concession in the dairy market, and so now America can sell less than 1% of total  American production to Canada. That is, if Canadians want to buy the milk in the first place - something that is not guaranteed. Most Canadians do not trust American milk - it is just not up to our safety standards. Apparently, Americans will drink anything, no matter how bad it is for their health.

Incidentally, I LIVE in Hamilton, and I choked over your comment about Hamilton being an impoverished city. The unemployment rate is essentially zero. Full employment, with jobs going unfilled. And, I might add, the minimum wage is $14 an hour, with universal free health care, and no gun violence, mo mass shootings. And absolutely no police officers being killed. Oh, and no trailer park trash, because there are no trailer parks.

The only thing that the lumber tariffs have done is to shut down the American home building industry, as it is now too expensive to build a house in America. But without Canadian lumber, those thousands of homes lost in east coast storms and west coast fires, will not be rebuilt.

Incidentally, Toronto (Canada, if you did not know) has more construction cranes than the top two American cities combined, And these top two American cities are in the west, not the east. America is stagnant.

The rest of the world is passing America buy, and Americans are blissfully unaware of it.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

2 minutes ago, Justin Thyme said:

You really, really need to get out more. Into the world, that is. I am constantly amazed at how little Americans know about their current position in the world, and about how piddling small it is. Either Americans are thoroughly blindly ignorant, or willfully ignoring, how seriously in trouble the American economy really is. Worse, you Americans seem to be blind to the fact that there is nothing you can do to stop the decline. That is the down side of being a narcissistic nation. You refuse to believe you are irrevocably in trouble, until it is beyond being too late. Your fate is sealed. All you can do is bluster, shout, and rampage. And all the rest of the world can do, is stay out of the way, to be as unaffected by the death rage as possible. Even your corporations are planning their exit.

America no loner has leverage over China or anywhere else, least of which is Canada. America is finished on the world stage. The world leaders are scoffing at Trump, and just about everyone outside of America is laughing at it. Trump is right. No one respects America, the Presidency, or American institutions any more, There is essentially zero respect for America anywhere in the world.

Oh, and good luck to your farmers. China will never return to buying American soybeans. It seems,despite what Trump says, America needs China more than China needs America. American trade is just a piddling small part of Chinese trade. And of course, just wait until the 25% tariffs go into effect. Everything in Walmart goes up by 25%. Totally wipes out any benefits of Trump's tax concessions. By 2020, the average American will be far worse off under Trump than they have ever been.

There is NOTHING that America has, that the rest of the world needs, that the rest of the world can not work around. But if America keeps on the track it is going on, alienating the rest of the world, America will be facing a boycott by the rest of the world. Maybe world manufacturing will go down a percent or two, but not seriously enough to do any damage. The loss of the entire American market can be made up in a few years by the expansion of the market in China and India. Either America agrees to play by the new world order, or it is cut off completely. Maybe the rest of the world will allow humanitarian aid. The world will be forcing regime change in America, and America will have no friends anywhere in the world to come to its aid.

But of course, you will all wave the American flag and pretend that America is a good (forget about great, America is long past its best before date) country. Drink your weak beer and eat your junk 'comfort' food. Smoke your pot to ease the pain and make the intolerable a bit more tolerable. As you all grow more and more uneducated, unhealthy, impoverished, and fearful of sending your children to school in case they are shot, you can always reflect on your pride in your constitution. That is, if you still have a constitution that is worth the paper it is written on, given how badly Trump is ignoring it.

The Europeans are switching to the renminbi as the monetary exchange of choice. Even the Deutsche bank in Germany is using it. Europe is moving to SPVs (special payment vehicles), based on the renminbi and backed by China, for trade. Less and less trade is being conducted using the greenback, and more and more is being done in these SPVs and the renminbi. All America, and apparently you, can do is to huff and puff and waste your time trying to blow down the Chinese brick house. China produces and sells more cars than America, the middle income is larger than the entire American population, it has universal health care for everyone, and free education. When ISS is abandoned, there will only be one space station - owned by the Chinese. China, not America, is the main trading partner of almost every country in the world, except for Mexico and Canada. And Trump just threw that relation under the bus. Canada is now looking at its trade deals with Europe, the Pacific, and China because these countries are a more reliable and stable trading partner. 

Canada out-maneuvered Trump in the NAFTA negotiations, leaving Trump essentially without any net gains. The only thing Trump's tariffs have done, is to make things more expensive for the average American citizen. Oh, he 'won' a concession in the dairy market, and so now America can sell less than 1% of total  American production to Canada. That is, if Canadians want to buy the milk in the first place - something that is not guaranteed. Most Canadians do not trust American milk - it is just not up to our safety standards. Apparently, Americans will drink anything, no matter how bad it is for their health.

Incidentally, I LIVE in Hamilton, and I choked over your comment about Hamilton being an impoverished city. The unemployment rate is essentially zero. Full employment, with jobs going unfilled. And, I might add, the minimum wage is $14 an hour, with universal free health care, and no gun violence, mo mass shootings. And absolutely no police officers being killed. Oh, and no trailer park trash, because there are no trailer parks.

The only thing that the lumber tariffs have done is to shut down the American home building industry, as it is now too expensive to build a house in America. But without Canadian lumber, those thousands of homes lost in east coast storms and west coast fires, will not be rebuilt.

Incidentally, Toronto (Canada, if you did not know) has more construction cranes than the top two American cities combined, And these top two American cities are in the west, not the east. America is stagnant.

The rest of the world is passing America buy, and Americans are blissfully unaware of it.

I am not American, just for openers. 

I set up and ran two factories in Hamilton.  Not as if I don't know the place well. Stoney Creek, to be exact.  I invested 18 years of my life in Canada. It is in my view (OK, Ontario and BC, I cut some slack to the other Provinces) a ridiculous place. 

The Trump tariffs on Hamilton Steelworks, which incidentally all went under some years ago, one entire steel plant in now abandoned, the remaining two Stelco and Dofasco have been sold to offshore buyers I remind you, did employ some 10,000 men, that situation is now so dire that Justin is busy rolling into Town offering special dislocation aid.  If the tariffs do not go away, and they are not resolved, then that Hamilton output will completely shrivel.  What do you think , that Canadian rolled sheet steel can be sold somewhere else?  There is nowhere else, the world is drowning in steel products. 

I closed down my plants and moved out of Hamilton some decades ago when I saw the writing on the wall. One of the better moves I made. Those plants sold product on three continents, actually make that four when you count Australia in there, I did the sales, please do not lecture me about getting out in the world. I remind you I speak five languages and do business in my customer'language, they love that.  Look, you can be as stalwart a Hamiltonian as you please, but at this point this conversation is finished.  I am done here.  Cheers, eh?

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

1 hour ago, Justin Thyme said:

You really, really need to get out more. Into the world, that is. I am constantly amazed at how little Americans know about their current position in the world, and about how piddling small it is. Either Americans are thoroughly blindly ignorant, or willfully ignoring, how seriously in trouble the American economy really is. Worse, you Americans seem to be blind to the fact that there is nothing you can do to stop the decline. That is the down side of being a narcissistic nation. You refuse to believe you are irrevocably in trouble, until it is beyond being too late. Your fate is sealed. All you can do is bluster, shout, and rampage. And all the rest of the world can do, is stay out of the way, to be as unaffected by the death rage as possible. Even your corporations are planning their exit.

America no loner has leverage over China or anywhere else, least of which is Canada. America is finished on the world stage. The world leaders are scoffing at Trump, and just about everyone outside of America is laughing at it. Trump is right. No one respects America, the Presidency, or American institutions any more, There is essentially zero respect for America anywhere in the world.

Oh, and good luck to your farmers. China will never return to buying American soybeans. It seems,despite what Trump says, America needs China more than China needs America. American trade is just a piddling small part of Chinese trade. And of course, just wait until the 25% tariffs go into effect. Everything in Walmart goes up by 25%. Totally wipes out any benefits of Trump's tax concessions. By 2020, the average American will be far worse off under Trump than they have ever been.

There is NOTHING that America has, that the rest of the world needs, that the rest of the world can not work around. But if America keeps on the track it is going on, alienating the rest of the world, America will be facing a boycott by the rest of the world. Maybe world manufacturing will go down a percent or two, but not seriously enough to do any damage. The loss of the entire American market can be made up in a few years by the expansion of the market in China and India. Either America agrees to play by the new world order, or it is cut off completely. Maybe the rest of the world will allow humanitarian aid. The world will be forcing regime change in America, and America will have no friends anywhere in the world to come to its aid.

But of course, you will all wave the American flag and pretend that America is a good (forget about great, America is long past its best before date) country. Drink your weak beer and eat your junk 'comfort' food. Smoke your pot to ease the pain and make the intolerable a bit more tolerable. As you all grow more and more uneducated, unhealthy, impoverished, and fearful of sending your children to school in case they are shot, you can always reflect on your pride in your constitution. That is, if you still have a constitution that is worth the paper it is written on, given how badly Trump is ignoring it.

The Europeans are switching to the renminbi as the monetary exchange of choice. Even the Deutsche bank in Germany is using it. Europe is moving to SPVs (special payment vehicles), based on the renminbi and backed by China, for trade. Less and less trade is being conducted using the greenback, and more and more is being done in these SPVs and the renminbi. All America, and apparently you, can do is to huff and puff and waste your time trying to blow down the Chinese brick house. China produces and sells more cars than America, the middle income is larger than the entire American population, it has universal health care for everyone, and free education. When ISS is abandoned, there will only be one space station - owned by the Chinese. China, not America, is the main trading partner of almost every country in the world, except for Mexico and Canada. And Trump just threw that relation under the bus. Canada is now looking at its trade deals with Europe, the Pacific, and China because these countries are a more reliable and stable trading partner. 

Canada out-maneuvered Trump in the NAFTA negotiations, leaving Trump essentially without any net gains. The only thing Trump's tariffs have done, is to make things more expensive for the average American citizen. Oh, he 'won' a concession in the dairy market, and so now America can sell less than 1% of total  American production to Canada. That is, if Canadians want to buy the milk in the first place - something that is not guaranteed. Most Canadians do not trust American milk - it is just not up to our safety standards. Apparently, Americans will drink anything, no matter how bad it is for their health.

Incidentally, I LIVE in Hamilton, and I choked over your comment about Hamilton being an impoverished city. The unemployment rate is essentially zero. Full employment, with jobs going unfilled. And, I might add, the minimum wage is $14 an hour, with universal free health care, and no gun violence, mo mass shootings. And absolutely no police officers being killed. Oh, and no trailer park trash, because there are no trailer parks.

The only thing that the lumber tariffs have done is to shut down the American home building industry, as it is now too expensive to build a house in America. But without Canadian lumber, those thousands of homes lost in east coast storms and west coast fires, will not be rebuilt.

Incidentally, Toronto (Canada, if you did not know) has more construction cranes than the top two American cities combined, And these top two American cities are in the west, not the east. America is stagnant.

The rest of the world is passing America buy, and Americans are blissfully unaware of it.

 

[Justin Thyme + 24]

1 hour ago, Jan van Eck said:

I am not American, just for openers. 

I set up and ran two factories in Hamilton.  Not as if I don't know the place well. Stoney Creek, to be exact.  I invested 18 years of my life in Canada. It is in my view (OK, Ontario and BC, I cut some slack to the other Provinces) a ridiculous place. 

 

Some fascinating facts.

The steel industry in Hamilton did not suffer from tariffs. Stelco suffered from being sold to an American company, who bought it exclusively for the coke ovens. They had every intention of shutting it down, except for the coke ovens, and shipping the coke to their US operations. They were buying market share, not production. It was widely known that Stelco in Hamilton was a zombie plant, It was old and obsolete. However, it is still a functioning plant.  Money is now being invested in it, to prepare for a return to steel making. A replacement had already been built in Nanticoke, one hour south of Hamilton, and it is still operating. Stelco lake Erie Works. However, automation at Stelco had already reduced the work force from about 30,000 down to around 5,000. Hamilton was no longer reliant on Stelco for employment, The University employed more people. The other steel company, Dofasco, was bought out by a European-Russian company,. it is still operating as ArcelorMittal Dofasco, with five thousand or so employees, as a fully functioning steel mill.  It too has had a drastic reduction in its work force, due to automation., not tariffs None of these plants have suffered layoffs due to Trump's tariffs,. 

Your knowledge of Hamilton is abysmal, it does not support your contention that you ever had any serious connection to it, if any at all. I call your bluff.You are using some superficial googled facts, which do not fit with reality. Like I said, all huffing and puffing and bluffing, No substance. 

The only reason for a manufacturing plant to not do well in Hamilton is management incompetence. Just like Trump, you seem to be blaming someone else for your own failures.

[Justin Thyme + 24]

2 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

 

Not in the least.

Just stating the facts.

Actually, it is more like frustration, that a nation that had so much potential, and our neighbor, could self-destruct so thoroughly,

America is going in the wrong direction, has been since the Vietnam war, and the rest of the world can only look on as a spectator. If America had stuck to the space race, instead of diverting the percentage of GDP it was spending on NASA to the war department in order to win an unwinnable war, we would all have won. Spending on NASA peaked in 1966 at 4,41% of spending and 0.8% of GDP.. We would be on Mars by now, and the moon would have been colonized. But America is too narcissistic to even listen to any advice, let alone act on it.

We in Canada watched in horror, impotent to do anything about it, as the American Dream became the American Nightmare.

Now, we have to look to China. We have no other choice. America has left the scene, Maybe if California separates, we can look to it.

Fortunately, China is looking good, showing a lot of the promise that we used to look for in America. Mars, the moon, nuclear fusion, unlimited energy, electric cars, a permanent solution to pollution, even flying cars, All the things Kennedy promised us. I know, I was there. A teenager in the 60's. Instead America gave the world global warming, the cold war, the nuclear arms race, the catastrophe in Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, and body bag after body bag after body bag. Europe pretty much feels the same,  America turned out to be such a huge disappointment.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Justin Thyme

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

4 minutes ago, Justin Thyme said:

Fortunately, China is looking good, showing a lot of the promise that we used to look for in America. Mars, the moon, nuclear fusion, unlimited energy, even flying cars, Europe pretty much feels the same,  America turned out to be such a huge disappointment.

Just going to take a wild guess here... are you a strong supporter of Trudeau?

[Justin Thyme + 24]

7 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Just going to take a wild guess here... are you a strong supporter of Trudeau?

I am a strong supporter of socially responsible government. Government of the people, by the people, for the people.

I am against government of the people, by the corporations, for the corporations. 

Any leader that supports these goals, I am in support of. 

jack Layton hit the nail on the head. Obama came close. Bernie Sanders went overboard. Joe Clark would have been good. Jean Chretien turned Canada around, set it on the right path. I think of all the 2016 presidential candidates, John Kasich would perhaps have been able to turn America around, before it was too late, but it would be a long process.  But he would have had to acted quickly, bringing in solid regulatory policies against the financialization of America. Not sure if he could have saved America, but it would have lessened the pain, softened the landing. Good sound centrist socially responsible policies, but fiscally responsible, following up on the progress Obama made. Bipartisan by nature. Americans were stupid to not have made him POTUS. He was the only credible candidate.

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

Justin, your spelling, grammar and punctuation are very good.  All signs of an otherwise well educated person.

I was going to start quoting facts that would indicate you are mistaken on some things, but then I kept on reading the exchange.  Then I realized that any endeavor to counter all of the things that you have so patently wrong would not only take an inordinate amount of time, it would be useless as well because it is obvious that your worldview is the only worldview.  Upon reading to the end I found the perfect solution to my reply conundrum: On almost all of your points above, offered after you became triggered by Jan's comments about Hamilton and Canada, my understanding of the facts is the opposite.  There, I have responded to all of your points.

I propose we freeze this thread and revisit it every six months to gauge what you say to be the facts of the world, and what I argue are the opposite, and see where we stand, every 6 months or so. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

Justin, your spelling, grammar and punctuation are very good.  All signs of an otherwise well educated person.

 

That area has a number of quite good universities.  McMaster in Hamilton, then down the road is the University of Waterloo, and of course UofT in Toronto, which is Toronto's answer to McGill.  Incidentally he is right to note that the staff numbers at McMaster are now greater than the employment in the steel mills.  What that reflects is the collapse of local steel demand.  Just about all of the mills' output is now sent to the USA, and of that, most goes directly to the auto industry.  The Hamilton rolled sheet is specifically formulated for auto-body stampings. 

At one time the mills were booming and heavy plate was rolled in Hamilton.  Some of it went to the EMD  (Electro-motive Diesel) railroad locomotive plant in London, Ontario, the mill would load the plate onto flatcars and it got hauled some thirty miles to the EMD plant and formed into those big heavy locomotives.  EMD had roughly 50% of the North American loco building business, the balance was GE in New York State.  That plant, which has some 18 tracks running into the building, ended up bought by Caterpillar, which got into a shouting match with the union of pay scales, and CAT closed the plant, pulling out the machinery and setting up a new plant in Indiana (Mike Pence's stomping grounds). The other buyer of plate was the shipbuilding industry; however, govt dithering over fleet rebuilding ended up with that collapse, and the plate being used in the new supply ship being built in Vancouver is being sourced from Mobile, Alabama (!).  The only place left in North America where you can get marine-grade flat plate steel. Amazing.

Meanwhile the closing of some massive Canadian auto plants, including GM-Ste.Therese, and Ford Oakville, and I think that plant on the other side of Toronto in Scarborough, and some assembly plant down on Lake Erie, and everything across from Detroit in Windsor, pretty much wrecked the steel demand for rolled product. These collapses were the result of poor govt decisions on costing inputs in Canada, specifically Ontario, and those US-owned plants ended up being dismantled and moved to the USA.  Mr. Thyme is correct in saying that that all pre-dated the tariff issues, although it should be noted that the plants only existed in the first place due to a Canadian ban on used cars being imported, and on a 17-1/2% tariff on new cars from the USA, so it ended up as what was called the "branch-plant economy," a deal which effectively required local assembly inside Canada to be sold in Canada.  Now that all shifted with the abolition of hefty tariffs, and the Canadian plants were, for a time, able to sell into the USA as long as their input value streams were competitive.  When that died, got over-priced, the plants died with them. 

The monster GM- Ste.Therese plant has been demolished, some shopping center being put up in its place.  It is just North of Montreal and employed thousands.  The PQ govt reacted by expanding Bombardier rail production, by subsidizing Bombardier to the tune of many many billions.  That is what happens when multi-plant operations have a local operation wrecked by input-stream cost increases. 

5 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

  Then I realized that any endeavor to counter all of the things that you have so patently wrong would not only take an inordinate amount of time, it would be useless as well because it is obvious that your worldview is the only worldview.  

 

That is actually very Canadian of him.  You get that attitude in most of the industrialized parts of Canada and I would suggest is the proximate cause of the de-industrialization of the place.  It is not a nuanced society.  One result was the catastrophic result of dismantling Ontario Hydro. That ended up putting the costs of electricity up through the roof and led to closing of the energy-intensive sector, including plastics converter plants.  And that in turn let to the closing of the manufacturers of the machinery used in that, including the highly advanced plant in Guelph  (Ludwig Engel Canada). The Engel operation then consolidated in York, Pennsylvania, where previously they built the heavy-tonnage machines used in the appliance industry.  even with the enormous skill sets built up with the expenditure of millions of dollars, the Engel operation could not be competitive and closed it, walking away from that investment.  So did their customers. And that is what happens when incompetent governments, in the case of Ontario the Liberals under Kathleen Wynne, run things. 

I would suggest that none of this would have happened if the Canadians themselves, here the Ontarians, had a broader world-view.  But they don't.  It tends to be a very narrow-minded society.  For the longest time nobody in Ontario even spoke any French, and viewed Quebec as some foreign country; it was there, but you avoided it.  They have no real understanding of where the country sits on the world scale.  You see that now in the oil industry were the govt policy is to continue to try to ship Alberta oil out, even though there is no real demand for the stuff, so the stuff gets dumped at $20/bbl.  Ultimately it will be shut out of world markets, a fate that Canadians are unable to grasp.  Thus I predict that the govt response is to build domestic refineries at huge expense to consume that heavy oil and stop buying refined product from US refineries.  Oil consumption in Ontario and Quebec will be where auto sales were in 1970; you buy it Canadian-made or you go without, no matter what the price. Don't like it, take the train. 

Interestingly, the other big country where I see that sort of worldview is in Russia.  Although I cannot speak for the countries of South America as I have no real experience with it there; at one time Mexico demanded "If you sell it here, you make it here," forcing branch-plant economics on the country, but that seems to have dissipated with NAFTA.  It is an interesting mentality.

5 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

 

I propose we freeze this thread and revisit it every six months to gauge what you say to be the facts of the world, and what I argue are the opposite, and see where we stand, every 6 months or so. 

Actually I would disagree.  I think it is important that the readership here, which is so multi-national, be exposed to Canadian thinking.  Mr. Thyme represents, and presents, an interesting insight into the Canadian mind-set, a good chunk of which is and revolves around anti-Americanism.  You don't see that in the Maritime Provinces, places such as Halifax, incidentally.  And you don't see that in  Quebec, where so many Quebeckers have historically migrated to and inter-married with Americans in Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine  (and today, even further South, to Connecticut and New York).  Those folks seek out American customers and industrial suppliers, and encourage the US tourist trade. Not so in the de-industrialized parts of Ontario. 

Lastly, I really don't mind that Mr. Thyme calls me an incompetent manager.  I view that as classically Canadian. As you can see from the thread, they (and he) really don't like Americans. Mr. Thyme calls Americans "trailer park trash."  I really don't mind that he refers to his neighbors to the South that way, I suggest it reveals his true thinking, and also that of an inordinately large number of other Canadians, especially those living in Ontario. He probably includes me in that categorization, and I really don't mind him doing that either.  That I don't happen to be American is not the relevant issue. All Americans are incompetent, so goes the narrative.  and by Canadian standards, that is probably true enough. Cheers.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Jan van Eck

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

11 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

 

Now THAT is totally funny!

Actually, as rants go, Mr. Thyme's was spectacular.  I will have to be much more circumspect in what I write here, not be provocative.  Grant Mr. Thyme some debating points, it is a demonstration of my managerial incompetence, not to recognize the consequences of penning thoughts without careful study. Oh, well. 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

3 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Actually, as rants go, Mr. Thyme's was spectacular. 

Yep, agreed.  I encourage everyone to speak their mind, and Mr. Thyme certainly delivered  : )

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

6 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Actually, as rants go, Mr. Thyme's was spectacular. 

You can say that again!  He must have felt a tremendous weight off his shoulders when he was done typing, eh?  Or not.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

2 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

You can say that again!  He must have felt a tremendous weight off his shoulders when he was done typing, eh?  Or not.

It was that part about the Chinese colonizing the Moon and being on Mars that got me.  Oh, and that part about Canadians refusing to drink American milk because it was such rotten stuff, but Americans drink whatever swill is put in front of them.  Pretty much sums up the whole discourse on Canadian dairy supply management, right there!  

The suggestion that Stelco (Steel Company of Canada) gets bought by US Steel for the coke ovens, the rest to be abandoned, is an interesting concept. Ontario has no local coal. The idea that coal is going to be shipped in just to be turned into coke, then the coke re-loaded onto ships and shipped out, then unloaded somewhere else and converted into steel-making,  must flow from some American manager showing up and demonstrating more "managerial incompetence."  Nope; rather, US Steel tried to do a re-start, and went cap in hand to the Provincial and Federal (Ottawa) govts for big bundles of taxpayer cash, and even with that could not make a go of it.  

The idea that the lumber tariffs will cause the damaged houses along the US Eastern seaboard to not be rebuilt is an interesting notion. The concept of casualty insurance picking up the tab to repair and rebuild seems not to have percolated. 

The lumber tariff dispute goes back for many decades, at least back to 1960, if not earlier.  What happens is that Canadian mills source their wood from "Crown lands," the forests being Government owned, while US trees are grown on private land.  Now the Canadians charge a so-called "stumpage fee" to harvest on Crown land, but that fee is set quite low; the US landowners charge a private fee to cut trees on teir private lands, and that is a market rate, which is much higher than the stumpage fee.  So the dispute centers on what is in effect a big govt subsidy granted to the Canadian mills - which translates into a comparative advantage for selling the final product, dimensional lumber.  And the US market is the big consumer of all of it.

The dispute over the stumpage fee has led to this grant of US market access for some 1/3 of the total US market to the Canadians, and there was this uneasy peace on the issue, although it would flare up now and then.  It is a larger version of the dispute over Canadian lobster and Canadian paper having access to the US market.  Mr. Trump finally blew it up with his hefty lumber tariffs, dramatically reducing the flow of Canadian wood into the USA.  That in turn has wrecked the lumber towns in the interior of British Columbia (BC), and to some extent also in New Brunswick, the historical centers of sawmills oriented towards export to the USA. The big gainers have been mills in the Deep South, where tree farms grow Southern pine rapidly:  Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia.  Donald is currying votes, of course, when he does that.  

It is true that US building prices have gone up as a result.  My guess is that US housing construction costs have gone up by 10%.  That is a wealth exchange from homebuyers to the pockets of sawmills in the South. But it also has the effect of increasing employment and general societal wealth in the producing States. With US interest rates at historical lows, it does not impact the overall historical payment for a US home mortgage, what it really does is gore the Canadian ox and fatten the US cow.  Such is life.

As far as NASA or the Chinese colonizing Mars goes, I am going to leave that one alone. I'll stick with cheering the Montreal Canadiens at the stadium down on DeMaissoneuve and Guy, eh?  Yvon Cournoyer was the greatest; he ran this water-ski school on Lac St.Pierre in the summer, I remember rebuilding that ski-boat engine, it was a big Oldsmobile 455 cu. inch monster hooked to a jet drive.  When I was through blueprinting it, he got 62 mph out of it.  Man, that thing flew!  Gotta love those Quebeckers, they know how to really live!  Cheers. 

[Outlaw Jackie + 78]

As I recall, this thread was a posting about the pros/cons of coal... anyone remember that? 

[John N Denver + 25]

On 11/9/2018 at 3:28 PM, Justin Thyme said:

America tried to kill off the EV, and so now China and Europe are far ahead of it. America is being left behind at a faster and faster pace.

 

I'm wondering just what Chinese and European companies are "far ahead" of America in EVs?

China has a lot of EV manufacturers, but I doubt their tech is even close to Tesla's EV tech.

And, Europe, please.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

On 11/9/2018 at 5:57 PM, Jan van Eck said:

 

And that is how the ingenious and hard-working rural folks outmaneuver the socialists in the cities. They smuggle.

Breaking laws for money isn't really ingenious... 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

On 11/9/2018 at 10:45 AM, Justin Thyme said:

Answers here are so last century. Very myopic. Like looking at the future by looking in the rear view mirror.

Everyone is thinking in terms of BURNING coal. So old school.

The future of coal rests in developing the new coal-to-energy processes that bypass burning and combustion altogether. All CO2 is captured in the process. No emissions. Once this technology is mature, coal will once again become an environmentally clean plentiful energy source.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/510736/a-cleaner-way-to-use-coal/ for instance.

The future of coal is in the future, not in the past. It will be re-commercialized using completely new and different technologies, not 'modernizing' technological relics from the past.

Stop thinking 'old technology' for 'new answers'. Otherwise, you end up with zombie industries, and the rest of the world just passes you by. Stop trying to transform the 'old way', or 'the way things were done', into the way of the future. Progress doesn't work that way. Otherwise our cars would still have wooden wheels as relics from the carriage days.

Yet even when the ICE started to dominate, the carriage manufacturers continued to fight back, making better and better carriages on their assembly lines (yes, the carriages were mass produced on simplified assembly lines with interchangeable parts before Ford made his cars on one).

I'm a chemist and the main problem with these types of reactions is that they tend to need expensive catalysts that foul quickly in the presence of sulfur, heavy metals, and other impurities found in coal.  It's simply too dirty of a feed-stock and can't be purified nearly as easily as liquids or gases. 

That said syngas can be made from coal and can be used to create high-value chemicals. 

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

Fossil "fuels" are great stuff - the real shame is we burn the damn stuff for energy...

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

22 hours ago, Justin Thyme said:

 

jack Layton hit the nail on the head.

He would have made a great PM - too bad he got sick.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

10 hours ago, Outlaw Jackie said:

As I recall, this thread was a posting about the pros/cons of coal... anyone remember that? 

Coal for what?  Coal for heating?  The big pro is that is can be easily smuggled, thus a retail heating fuel that is cheap, when confronted with leftists that seek to impose a "carbon tax" on it, and oil of course. And even propane,just to round it out.  It is a dense material that contains quite a lot of heat potential - more than any other material. 

Coal for electricity?  Nobody seems to want to do that any more, in part due to the "con" of particulates and smog components of combustion. And there's your con: components of direct burning.  But then again, the same people that seek to effectively outlaw coal flatly refuse to let engineers develop nuclear plants for electricity.  A molten-salt plant that burns old contaminated nuclear material and the stuff from military warheads will remove the nuclear waste and provide free fuel, but the leftists don't want to do that.  So you are back to coal.  There is a lot of coal out there, and it is cheap enough, and it contains lots of potential heat energy in rock form. 

Coal for oil?  That technology is cheap enough, very mature technology, so coal is a great source for diesel fuel or gasoline. And there is your (another) "pro" for coal. But nobody wants to do that, except the Governor of Montana.  He has lots of coal.

Coal for steelmaking?  Sure, coal is used both for the heat, and for the addition of pure carbon into various grades of steel.  If what you are doing is re-using old scrap steel, you can do that electrically, with an electric-arc reduction furnace, if you can afford the electricity.  But if you don't have nuke plants and there is not enough hydro out there, and the idea of using windmills is faintly silly, then you are left with using coal, nice hot coal, gets you where you want to go. Of course, you can also go without steel, apparently the end product of leftist thinking. 

So you see that the use of coal is controlled more by leftist thinking than any technical aspect of the material.  The thread developed into discussions of Hamilton and its generation of coke from coal, and its use (and the future of) in steelmaking, a large consumer of the product.  Can baghouse filters remove the particulates from the burn outflow gases of burning coal?  Of course they can. Does that resolve the leftist problem?  Nope. 

This thread ran through these topics.  Does this summarize for you?  Cheers.