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China Considering Cuts In Rare-Earth Metal Exports
SillySnake sends in a report from the Telegraph on draft plans in China to restrict exports of rare earths. "Beijing is drawing up plans to prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons. A draft report by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs."
Manufactured shortages, here we come!
Just what the world economy needs. A single-country "cartel" that will cause prices to greatly rise. This should be interesting to watch.
I guess rare-earth metals are the new "oil".
Place nail here >+
Terrorists found in Beijing and Shanghai, U.S. Troops invade.
Maybe they are already finished with those aircraft carriers I saw being built in Dalian last year.
That's ok, we still have plenty of Uranium...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I for one Welcome our new, short, communist overlords.
Let's hope that they don't stop dilithium shipments!
Looks like we have to "liberate" another country from an authoritarian regime.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
I *never* expected this would happen
Previously seen http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/05/31/022226/China-and-Japan-Covet-the-Same-Rare-Earth-Metals as well as http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/defense-geeks-fret-over-rare-earth-metal-supplies/ and http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/china-all-your-rare-earth-metals-belong-to-us/
Just what the world economy needs. A single-country "cartel" that will cause prices to greatly rise. This should be interesting to watch.
I guess rare-earth metals are the new "oil".
Some key points you may have missed from the article:
Mr Stephens said China had put global competitors out of business in the early 1990s by flooding the market, leading to the closure of the biggest US rare earth mine at Mountain Pass in California - now being revived by Molycorp Minerals.
So, if this goes through, we merely open the mine in California. I'll feel better about paying a higher price for something if it is created under tighter environmental regulations than what they have in China. Cheap labor and lack of an EPA and potential corrupted officials? Of course they can undercut California!
Secondly a rare metals dealer in Australia said
This isn't about the China holding the world to ransom. They are saying we need these resources to develop our own economy and achieve energy efficiency, so go find your own supplies.
So your analogy is lacking in many ways. We can refine the metals here and China needs them for their own growing demand.
My work here is dung.
This could increase the price of many optically pumped crystal lasers (like yag). GET THEM WHILE YOU CAN!
1064 4ever!
China sees that it can strike while the iron is hot. Without declaring war on everyone, at that. All they have to do is restrict trade while the major countries flop around with oil pains and they'll soon be the top country.
Hmm...what doomsday weapon requires mass amounts of rare earth metals?
... nano - materials!
our rescue/survival will not require any gadgets. using the creators' patentdead newclear kode base, all things are possible. see you there?
Look for "Yttrium-free" stickers on all your LED products. None of them will have red LEDs, but who cares, it's yttrium-free.
Geeks should be equally worried about indium, of which China is the main producer. So much for those cheap LCDs...
Maybe now we won't have cars with catastrophic converters messing up the air. Yeah, let's get rid of carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide, and have hydrogen sulphide instead. What could possibly go wrong?
all the nukes, tritium triggers, have to be replaced every so often, allegedly
hard to tell though, never heard of half those metals on the list.
Why are we getting an article from Aug 24 now? I though we were faster then that. Stale.
I think that if they do so they won't mind if we ( as in the other western countries) put prohibitions and restrictions of our own in other product importations. We could revive our cloth, electrodomestic, chemical, (whatever) old industries. It might be a bit expensive at first (mostly for those multinationals ) but then we can be sure of better occupation rates. I's a shame that this is only wishfull thinking...
and finally call China out on it's myriad of violations? The US and Europe seem content over bickering about Airbus and Boeing when in actuality, those two companies' violation(if any) are a real drop in the bucket compared to China's insanely flagrant violations. However, the US is an addict hooked on selling China our debt, instead of oh I don't know, not invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 we decided it was a much better idea to sell ourselves lock stock and barrel to the Chinese. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Monstar L
Sounds like we are headed for yet another trade war - China wants a tonne of wheat, they can furnish a tonne of rare-earth metals.
As much as the world's stock of precious metals is being depleted by pseudoenvironmentalist hybrid drivers there will be alternatives. Remember when we all had to change our automotive refrigerants in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Even after the air conditioners were retooled we still found an alternative compound that works with the old R12 models.
Kriston
This is why so many of the worlds worst dictators where loved by Moscow and Washington.
As long as the rare raw materials flowed, mass graves where just enemy propaganda.
National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200) - April 1974
http://www.population-security.org/28-APP2.html
"It is vital that the effort to develop and strengthen a commitment on the part of the LDC leaders not be seen by them as an industrialized country policy to keep their strength down or to reserve resources for use by the "rich" countries. Development of such a perception could create a serious backlash adverse to the cause of population stability. Thus the U.S. and other "rich" countries should take care that policies they advocate for the LDC's would be acceptable within their own countries. (This may require public debate and affirmation of our intended policies.) The "political" leadership role in developing countries should, of course, be taken whenever possible by their own leaders."
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Recycling of these metals should be the focus. Getting oil out of tar is feasable at a cost. How high do these prices have to go to make recovering these metals worth it?
Why do people think our set of rules are always the right set of rules to follow? By Chinese standard, the fact that the US has so much porn is just unheard of. Porn is not only illegal but also considered immoral. This is just a cause of different people with different views of the world. If we spent more time outside our bubble and open our eyes, we would understand their point of view. And yes sometime, in those rare cases, they might be doing something right. I am not saying this is one of them but there are things we do pretty backwards.
Can they restrict the export of the following too? Lead paint(makes kids retarded), melanine(kills cats), drywall(poisons houses), heparin(kills people dead) and keep them for their own internal market?
Or maybe someone could be held accountable.
But how will I level my blacksmithing if they stop posting mats to the auction house? guess I'll have to take up mining :-/
I thought you said "insanely fragrant violations" and I was scratching my head there for a while.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
They all seem to be key elements for crucial semiconductor, magnetical and optical (laser) components.
Of course, he meant "insanely fragrant violets". They're a big seller for FTD!
Maybe they're getting tired of exchanging their wealth for our paper. I admire the way China is focused like a laser on their infrastructure and the acquisition of raw materials, while we're busy making up new problems to solve as a way of avoiding the very serious ones we already have. Perhaps if we focused on production, rather than consumption, we might have a little extra wealth to spend on our own decaying infrastructure.
Meant to say "A trade war with China now would likely hurt the U.S. a *LOT* more than China."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
True. And actually this isn't just the case in the USA; there are virtually no new refineries anywhere in the world.
But actually the main hurdle isn't the NIMBY syndrome or over-regulation - it's a simple matter of return on investment. No-one wants to build a refinery because they take a long time to build, and a long time to recoup your investment, and the world's oil supply is known to be running out. Globally, oil-fields are now considered to be at peak production levels; that's to say, it's unlikely that there will ever be more oil being pumped than there is today. So building new refining capacity is a poor investment. Instead, people are just making do with what there is. That's why Iran is now importing refined petroleum from Venezuela.
--coolio
By Chinese standard, the fact that the US has so much porn is just unheard of. Porn is not only illegal but also considered immoral.
Hold it, I thought only right wing Christian nutjobs wanted to make porn illegal? Are you trying to tell me that the Chinese government is controlled by right wing Christian nut jobs?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Wonderful, one more incentive to fund asteroid mining.
Moves like theese shows a forward thinking that the west has tossed out the window long ago. When we moved our factories abroad we sold our butts for a fast buck and a nice swimming pool for some executives. My country happily ships all resources out instead of processing them and we loose billions in the long run on this, not to mention jobs lost and trade balance.
Keeping important natural resources inside the country and selling them highly processed (in cars, computers etc) gives much better yield than to just sell it abroad and then buy the refined products back. Im must give it to the Chinese, they are shrewd economics but the really dangerous part is that they think ten years longer ahead than most westerners do that only worry about the next quarter at most.
HTTP/1.1 400
I mean, it would be business as usual. :P
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Just because somehting was up and running once doesn't mean it is just sitting there waiting to turn on when we want ti back. Steel isn't a rare earth metal, but Geneva Steel was shut down in Utah and sold to China. We can't just turn it back on, we gave them our business and Geneva couldn't match their prices. Now instead of giving China our business, we sold them the business too.
Now for some irony, before Geneva steel went away they needed to buy new bricks to line their furnace. Only two places in the world made the brick they needed China, and Lehi Block who was just miles up the road from them. Geneva Steel bought brick from China and then complained when they shut down that too many people bought cheap steel from China.
Funny you should list those facts. "The end of the world is coming" fundamentalist Christians point to the same set of facts as partial justification for some of their beliefs about how the battle between good and evil will play out. Everyone who believes there will be a battle of Armageddon agrees that it will be a huge battle. But, depending on who you read, how do you get the 200 million-plus troops for the invasion? The only way to put that many foot soldiers on the battlefield is to get a big commitment from China. China may not be able to project much power very far across the Pacific, but they could start marching westward.
Of course, I get a little tired by people who let such thoughts keep them up at night. But I did find your post interesting in that context.
After all, socialism's ideal is to control the sources of materials and production. China is a growing country and is looking ahead. Why not build a stockpile, since future economic growth will probably depend on that stockpile. They already own the US' debt anyway (the rest exists in the form of IOU's from the Federal Reserve, and any individual foolish enough to buy US treasuries nowadays). No need to play nice anymore.
Expect terms and conditions to be dictated to the world by China in 20 years or so. I expect them to play nice with the Russians/CIS because they share so much land border with them defending it wholly would bankrupt both countries - much like the US and Canada are obliged to be best friends. But the rest of the world? No one has done China any favors in the past century - expect none.
However the Chinese government has shown itself to be hugely oppressive at times, and Chinese people tend to be quite racially intolerant (we are after all the "barbarians"). Perhaps they will be the answer to islamic extremism - a Chinese bullet to the back of the head.
PS: I am not Chinese.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
How the hell did our rare earth metals end up under China?
Pathetic Americans complaining about market fixing/manipulation, that's all you do these days. You make nothing of value anymore just use the influence of achievements from days gone by to move piles of money around. Get back in school, learn some math, sweat some and maybe the world will pay attention. You are not your parents or grand parents that made great things. You are twitter addicts that enjoy abusing each other.
All this talk of green tech really translates into extracting more ore from the earth that is a) not as abundant b) more damaging since there is less of it and more earth needs to be mined and c) is no different than traditional tech aka "non green" in that access to it will be subject to manipulation, control and war
Green is the new color of the lie!
If only China *really* were the sole source of these minerals on Earth this would make a perfect business case to finally launch a moon or asteroid mining operation... Given of course that these bodies contain said minerals...
--frank[at]unternet.org
It is doubtful that China is the only viable source of anything. Any restrictions they implement will simply push mining and prospecting in other places where I'm sure the world will find abundant supplies.
In the meantime I wouldn't expect the congresses of the world and the WTO to sit idly by without imposing import restrictions on Chinese goods that offset the losses. China is playing a game that only has losers.
It will get more expensive, but we still have significant oil reserves
Rare metals, who knows. If it gets down to national survival, there's a buhzillion acres in federal land (parks and etc) that are currently off limits to mining, but that could change fast.
And we are just scratching the surface on R&D with biofuels. Corn (any cheap sugars) ethanol and soybean (and many other crops) biodiesel are mere first gen efforts, they work right now but are resource and cash expensive. Once next gen gets rolling, like with engineered algae and waste biomass conversion and so on, which could be combined with solar and wind power to run the conversion facilities, we could have liquid transportation fuels for a long time, indefinitely really, as long as we also keep working on better efficiencies and get a lot of the commuter cars running on electricity, and save the liquid fuels more for long haul trucking and ag machinery and aircraft uses etc..
Movies, education - it all adds our value to the world, and helps usually to beneficially influence those who come to live here and study. Kicking out thousands of CHinese students is like getting rid of thousands of allies.
..........FULL STOP.
China is now refusing to export a number of rare earth elements. These are ones that are currently expensive to get elsewhere. In addition, they HAVE put caps on other ones. But that is not the real problem.
The real issue is that they are running around BUYING UP all the mines in the free world. Basically, they are trying hard to make a monopoly of this. The place to watch is Australia, Canada, and America. America has the largest active RE mines and China made a bid for these last year(US gov said no). They currently are trying to buy 2 start-up mines in Australia. Finally, IIRC, they DID buy a Canadian producer (though I do not recall where mines were located).
The other day I commented about how we should be mining space, to which a fool responded that it was not practical. At that time, I pointed out that long-term countries would try to limit access to various elements/minerals. Sure enough, that day was when I found out about China thinking of limiting REM. The problem is that when items are taken off the market, it means that you limit countries capabilities. That tends to make wars happen. Imagine if another GWB gets into office in say about 2 years and REM is expensive to the west. GWB would go to war over this because CHina is building up their military and will want to stop it before they get too strong. Keep in mind that China is positioning themselves for a first strike, not for a defensive position. If we want to avoid stupid wars, we MUST get into space and locate new elements/minerals esp. REMs. They are the foundation of militaries as well as electrical systems. All of our future motors and many of the advanced electronic boards depend on these.
China is not about playing fair. They are very much in a cold war with the west, whether we like it or now. If we want to prevent a hot war, we will have to prevent them from limiting our access to resources (either by war or by finding new cheap mines) and will have to bring back manufacturing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
With the sudden shift in TV and monitor designs to using LCD panels rather than CRTs, old glass TVs and monitors are being junked by the tonne. There's rare earths in them thar CRTs! The cathode coatings and the phosphors themselves are full of 'em.
OK, so only a small amount per CRT, but it all adds up when you've got millions being dumped. In the EU this is probably made easier because the rules concerning disposal of electronic goods are fairly well defined, in some countries you might have to start digging up landfills.
The ones in there are the ones that China is limiting to increase the price. The ones that we want (that china has not prevented from being sold), are NOT in our landfills. They are in fairly new use on permanent magnet motors as well as high-end circuitry's. In addition, these require MINUTE amounts on these (the world uses several tons a year on a few of these, but are hard to obtain).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and it's people like you who keep feeding the trolls.
It's only fair.
Nobody can force the chinese or any other country to export anything.
What DOES America export?
Things I can think of: Microsoft, Hollywood-stuff, Weapons, McDonalds, patents, death of popstars, hmmm...
Come to think of it, it's been ages since I've seen "Made in America" anywhere except on TV.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Quickly United States! You need to go and liberate the Chinese people!
Your one of the few that pointed out that there are vast rare earth sources outside of China - one of the largest being in California.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Fine, this will just push us into that Turbidium mining project on Mars a few years sooner.
Lurking in the desert
Another big source of uncommon metals is sub-Saharan Africa - for example, something like 80% of the world's supply of either Cobalt or Coltan comes from mines in the Congo. And China has been making big inroads into that region too, in terms of international aid and trade.
There are times that being an officially godless commie state comes in handy, really. US shows up and says "we'll give you aid money as long as you don't promote safe sex, and oh, sorry, our business community is a little too nervous to really trade with you." China shows up and just says "look, we want to do business; you have resources we need."
Unsurprisingly, African governments are talking more to China these days.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I TRUST that you are kidding about tariffs, yes? They do not work. The issue is that China was given MFN and into WTO by promising to open their borders and to free their money. All good. Problem is that China has not LIVED up to their word. They still have barriers up and most of all, the money is not traded freely. It is in a "basket" that is controlled by their gov. In addition, they allow pollution (co2 and other ) to be emitted in large amounts to give an even larger boost to low costs. Our energy bill is going to be a disaster and will encourage China,India,Mexico, etc to pollute more to take more jobs.
So, here is my solution:
If we do the above, then there will be no real need for free trade acts. What is really needed is to make certain that we avoid exceptions. There are a number of countries that we allow to have one-way trade with us and do little to nothing to help those countries.
If the above is done by the west, it would bring up conditions all over the world. EU has talked about doing Free Trade agreements with Latin America, but they want to use it to push better conditions for the citizens. I have to say that it is not a bad idea, but I think the above is even better.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not really, nor is it a manufactured shortage, but it is another shot in their ongoing half-assed trade war. I say half-assed becasue while there is a definite nationalistic bent to this, China is also trying to develop it's own industries.
So, China started out dumping rare earths on the global market (find your own darn citations you needy buggers), but as they see their own internal demand ramping up, they are going to divert more of their production to their own use. Of course some of that internal use will be for exportable products. Remember that they are making big investments in battery technology. I expect they plan on having an electric car that will need the rare earths currently going into Prius motors. Expect that car to be a big export item. And it will be aimed directly at hybrids and electrics and priced low enough that their competitors will have to sell at a loss to compete on price - at least until China needs them for internal consumption.
Before China started dumping (look up your own darn citations) rare earths on the world market, the US was the major producer worldwide. The US firms that used to supply the vast majority of our needs (from our own resources) have shut down most of their production. It is very hard to compete with the combination of slave labor and non-existent safety and environmental regulations. It was a series of environmental violations given as the reason for the shutdown of one of the biggest US mines, but it may have really been related to a ability to see the handwriting on the wall regarding Chinese imports as well.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
China has also attempted to control the copper production in Chile and also drove the price up when it began buying huge amounts of it. Depriving other countries of strategic materials has always been a precursor to armed confrontation.
Yes because Muslim fundamentalists love the porn, that's why they make their women wear no clothes when they go outside.
“When goods cannot cross borders, armies will.” — Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850)
... says the racist.
Until about 10 years ago, there were many magnesium manufacturers around the world, including one in my home town of Porsgrunn (in Norway).
When China decided that light metals was a crucial market for them, they started a bunch of very low-tech/high-pollusion magnesium smelters, and many/most Western competitors folded.
In the latest (for the year 1998) SFT (Norwegian EPA) regulations for the Porsgrunn factory (in norwegian), the limit on some pollutants was set to maximum 1 gram/year, I suspect the Chinese smelters are many orders of magnitude above this level.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
If this pushes the world towards sustainable hardware production as much as the OPEC pushed it towards sustainable energies, I'm all for it. (I'm serious.)
"I miss the days of over-engineered machines built of inferior materials." ... "Funny thing is, they still work. Like new."
:(
Sadly thank the Gillette razor manufacturer for creating the tread with their idea of the disposable blades, just over a hundred years ago. Since then ever more products have been designed to wear out and fail. Its the whole concept of planned obsolescence which is a big marketing tactic. (So much for conserving and using earth resources responsibly. These companies are far more (self-)interested in profit). Its disturbing how much thought goes into planned obsolescence, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Here's an eye opening discussion about the idea of "Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence" back in 1932.
https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/consumer_society_made_break.html
Its a tactical move by companies. No wonder we have such problems now with everyone consuming earth's resources after decades of companies behaving like this.
But I don't know how it'll ever be stopped. For decades everyone has been led to believe in the idea of getting things ever cheaper, but that quietly assumes the product will fail sooner and so need replacing sooner and so in the long run, it'll end up working out more expensive. But then everyone has been also led to believe almost everything is out of fashion and so needs to be replaced regularly. While thats true of some things (especially technology due to improvements) it doesn't apply to everything we buy.
Another problem is it costs more to produce something well rather than cheaply. So the cheap companies win and the well produced product companies end up going out of business. So we are rushing towards a world that produces ever more cheap rubbish that keeps needing to be thrown away and each time its thrown away someone profits from replacing what was thrown away. So we have ever growing rubbish mountains all around the world, which is also causing ever more environmental damage.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Are belongs to us!
Everyone in power always wants to make everything illegal since telling other people what to do is what power is.
Today China announced its plan on building a moon base to extract helium-3 by 2050. In other news law makers in the house passed a bill okaying a 100 billion dollar package to promote more liberal arts and business degrees.....
See http://www.bis.doc.gov/licensing/exportingbasics.htm
As usual, the Chinese are stealing ideas from us (government interference in free enterprise, that is).
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Countries talk, we talk, yadda yadda.
2 Words:
"Ohio Class"
If it REALLY came down to it(serious threat of invasion), one of these(which I'm sure is within spitting distance of the South China Sea) could have 192 Acme Brand Parking Lot Makers on the scene, paving and laying asphalt in 2 minutes or less....
Yeah, they're all a bunch of homophones.
The US consumes 20.8 million barrels of oil per day.
The Bakken Formation holds 3.65 billion barrels of oil.
That's a little over 3.5 years worth. Nothing to sneeze at, but not a panacea.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
News flash, the Chinese government serves the interests of the Chinese people, not yours. The governments of other countries around the world exist to serve and protect their own people, not to serve and protect American interests. It seems that most American have forgotten that and expect every government to be an American shill. We refuse to be your shill.
Speaking of capitalism and free trade, you're all for it when you are crushing nascent industries in underdeveloped regions like Africa to ensure that your industries will have free reign to sell stuff there, but when a country like us can actually compete with you, or possibly even out-compete you, you cry foul and demand protectionism. Free trade is only good when America gets the advantage, it seems.
Speaking of corrupt and autocratic governments, your government is nowhere near clean of corruption, and you have never shown any compunction to support autocratic and corrupt governments when they serve your interests; I don't think I need to bring up all the Cold War examples but if you want an example of today, look no further than the PLO Palestinian authority government and Karzai's Afghan government.
American imperialism and hypocrisy is on full display in this thread.
...rumors that they were going to save on export costs by slipping the metals into the food they export... :D
At current recovery rates and tech level, yes, but that will get better, there's more there, and they are still finding big fields elsewhere, like the recent big gulf discovery..and who knows what they have squirreled away in the arctic, either known about and kept secret, or still to be found.
Combined with more efficient vehicles,(a LOT more efficient, it's possible today with bog standard today's tech, every place BUT the US has a much wider choice of better mileage vehicles) and electric vehicles, and using what petroleum we have in blends with advanced biofuels, we could get by on a reduced petroleum supply load for even longer.
And telecommuting, a few tens of billion in better data infrastructure could eliminate the need for hundreds of billions worth in commuting costs and pollution., which is cheaper and easier, transporting some electrons, or millions of meat sacks in heavy steel boxes twice a day?
Giant office towers that are there just so folks can sit in front of a computer screen are *rather wasteful*, when folks can stay home and sit in front of a computer screen. All that commuting and having to keep those huge buildings running, proly 3/4ths wasted right there just because a lot of these companies haven't had the right incentive (that would be clubs to the head to get them to wake up) and cut loose from the Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchitt 1700s mentality of the necessity of BEING at the office all the time, and make better use of the tech we have now and enter the 21st century. Plus think of the sheer millions of man hours that could be saved not riding in a car or bus or train or even a dang bicycle back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to work.
We can go a long ways to dropping petroleum (and coal and natgas and..) demand without sacrificing any cool modern way of life, just by doing things smarter instead oif perpetuating obsolete tech because a few already rich people can skim so much profit from it. Heck, we could probably get by with very few new powerplants if they adjusted building codes (and mortgage loan approvals) to require a lot more insulation. The bulk of our electricity use is heating and cooling, and I know that this demand/requirement level can be dropped drastically, I used to be in that biz for a while, retrofitting for more energy efficiency.
You can read a scosh about it here, superinsulation. It's amazing, you got to see it to believe it almost. You can get some serious savings by just *using* tech that has already been developed decades ago. It ain't sexy for wallstreet skimmers and gamblers that much, so it isn't pushed "in the market" as it could be, or for academic wanking research, but it IS possible. No new nuthin needs to be invented or funded by vulture capitalists or needs "government studies". Just double or triple our generic 50s and 60s level insulation that exists in millions of homes and buildings, along with a few other tweaks like better windows and doors and so on, and you'd be surprised how that works out for the electric bill.
Easy enough done with a simple one page legislative bill and decent and credible sized tax credits, extended for some years. It could create a million new and actually *useful* jobs and save hundreds of billions in energy costs and dramatically reduce air pollution. But no one big company could get a monopoly on it, not a lot of patents to troll with, etc, so it ain't pushed, and dang sure the energy companies don't push it, cuts directly into the ole bottom line there. Lip service at best, they push what I would term 1/4 ass efforts, not even half assed. And they call that "good cents". I call it deliberate misdirection and marketing propaganda.
You want to see what really could be accomplished today, with both housing and transportation, check out some of the designs at the solar decathlon competition.
Cue the hissy fit from a bunch of undereducated yanks about how they have a RIGHT goddammit, to buy anything they want from anybody, and if those little yellow fuckers won't sell, well we'll just go over there and take it from them. But the free market is still our God. Not quite so free is it ?
Chinese standards change daily.
Actually, they change 15 minutes after they say they do, by law.
Shut the fuck up tard and get back to your communist marxist socialist economic slave state until the time comes for them to deem your at the end of your useful life in some Logans Run scenario only lemmings like you and the rest of your ilk so readily agree to while you take it up the ass. You want to talk of imperialism, are you that fucking clueless or still on your knees in front of your hung like a pimple emperor. Has your miserable history not taught you a fucking thing, your being pacified with so called "properity" while in the background your Orwellian 1984'ish scenario plays out but its ok, as long as you can pirate american intellectual property and make substandard products otherwise, your happy right. Thats progress and yet, its really not. You will never attain what we have as long as you bow like the subservient slave you all are, 1 billion slaves!
The good news is that there are so many of you fuckers, there will be plenty of organs to harvest for us in our time of need lol!
Well nuke the living daylights out of em lets see them stop anything then or better still some nasty little virus to clean the place out in a few weeks then it dies off and leaves it all squeaky clean then the rest of the world stomps in and does the proper thing
China obviously intends to go nuclear. Their current generation of warheads that they are building are neutrons, not normal hydrogen bombs. The have a new ICBM that they have been trying to keep quiet; the DF-41. It will (does?) carry 10 MIRV and will be both vehicle and sub launched. They currently have 10 boomers with apparently more in the works, but are trying hard to hide them. That is why they built their new island which is a sub base and why they are fighting against the west monitoring even the edge of their 200 mile border. They do not want the rest of the world to know what is coming. Finally, they have been working towards taking out sats with simple anti-sat tech, but have been quietly working on lasers. The lasers are expected to be part of their many new manned space stations.
Worse of all, their focus is on first strike, not defensive. When USSR and the west were in a cold war, neither side was focused on first strike, but strictly on Defensive. reagan did few things right, but he did have it right about dealing with USSR (and vice-versa); Trust, but verify. In doing that, it allows both sides to build up common ground. China is not interested in that. They are strictly gearing up for a nuclear war against the west. And we almost appear to be helping them by not holding CHina to 2 way trade and free money exchange. Add to that the insane invasion/occupation that the neo-cons did of Iraq, while ignoring the real issue of AQ (which could and should have been solved in the first year or two). Unless we change our way, China will soon feel that they can win a nuclear war. I spent my childhood being under desks, with my father ready to fly fatmen into the middle of Russia, and later, my young adulthood researching the USSR's biological weapons as well as working on defenses against them (they had some pretty "interesting" items). Back in the 60's, I was concerned esp. when my dad was gone for a week in late oct. 1962 (found out later that he was on end of runway ready and fueled to go). But it was obvious by mid/late 70's, that USSR was going to go under. Now, I look at CHina and KNOW that they are gearing up to do what all of us in the 60's did not want. The next decade will be interesting. Hopefully, this does not come to be.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hello all you steel workers who shop in Wal-Mart! China has been buying America's (and everyone else's) resources as fast as the money classes of those countries will sell them. They've been buying because they always knew there would be a shortage in the future, which would allow them to either corner the market or possess industrial resources everyone else had run out of.
Porn in China is illegal but hardly considered immoral. In fact, even mainstream websites are not above putting some flesh on them to help attract more viewers.
This is a country where mistresses are so commonplace among people who have extra money, that its almost accepted.
I am not familiar with this "nut job".
Are these legal in the US?
Your thinking about using a rather technical domestically applied VAT or sales tax reminds me of some of the ideas raised in Paul Samuelson's "The Great Inflation and it's Aftermath".
"The Great Inflation..." is actually quoting some other writer, but the essential proposal put forth is: At some level in the United States, we should move to a "consumption tax". Some European countries have a tax like this, called a VAT and the tax is around 20%.
Regarding your thought about creating a new kind of MFN status, your thinking reminds me of Thomas P.M. Barnett's book "The Pentagon's New Map".
His book is about the strategy of recognizing which nations are relatively civil places ready to engage in trade. Then there is a boundary and large areas of extreme instability. When drawn on a globe, that is the eponymous map of the book's title.
I thought that came from Europe.
Orwell was a Socialist.
Your obsession with gay sex speaks volumes.
Funny, your the one who mentioned "gay sex" probably because its fresh on your mind from last night, tard. Socialism, Facism, Communism, the three brothers of oppression and control you fucking dope. Now get back to work before the death van arrives to harvest your organs dumbass
(dislaimer: I am both a commercial farmer, a long time private organic gardener-since the 50s-, and also a long time alternate energy enthusiast and experimenter and user-since the 60s-, that's why I chime in on these topics and threads. I am not a software programmer, so I don't comment there much...although I do read some of those threads for funzies and to see if a little of that knowledge can slop over easy.. I do not profess to be the ultimate expert, I learn new stuff every single day, but I have more than a passing level of knowledge on these various subjects I comment on here..else I wouldn't, there wouldn't be any point to it.)
*Some* of that waste ag biomatter is plowed in, but a lot of it is ground up now and used for inexpensive and barely functional alleged "nutritional" bulk roughage in animal feed. They DON'T plow it under in a lot of cases because it is a tradeoff, they found they have less diseases that way, and if you go two years in a row with your big commercial crop and it gets wiped out from diseases and/or pests, etc, sorry, you are now in debt and seriously bankrupt and ain't gonna be farmin no mo.
Right now on this farm, I mean this experiment starts next week with the next flock "right now", we are using a form of really cheap to get waste biomass-sunflower seed hulls- that normally just get more or less tossed into animal feed just to get rid of them or dumped on hillsides for erosion control or something- in an authorized by our upstream company experiment to replace/augment some normally much more expensive and getting harder to get wood shavings we use for absorbent bedding in the poultry houses. It could just as easily go into making ethanol when they get that rough cellulose enzymes and bioreactive agents tech down better (said research going on in dozens of labs right now). Then it very well could be put to fuel use instead, as it would be worth more for that.
Really big farms (such as where we sourced those hulls from) now have gone to "no till", they rarely if ever plow anymore, at most they use a very little fast surface cultivation, and a lot of them don't even do that, they just spray various chemicals and fertilizers and rotate crops. Plant, spray, harvest, do it again. And that's in transition as well, ag industry evolves as it needs to. Now some of the newer tech I like, some I don't, but it is way too varied to comment on in a single thread, and this will be long enough as it is.
Biofuel tech is exploding, it is going in several different directions right now, and a lot of it is quite promising, so I will have to just 100% disagree with your dismissal of biofuels for the future, just to get that out of the way.
Biofuels are quite practical solar fusion power.
These biofuels and solar PV and solar thermal are the ONLY forms of practical fusion power we have now, or are *likely* to have in the next buncha decades given the status of the results of the last several decades on man made fusion power, like with magnetic and plasma and laser whatever gee whizz sci fi containment bubbles and so on.
As such, they really are our best hope right now for developing affordable-enough and sustainable and carbon neutral liquid transportation fuels that can be introduced easily full strength or in blends into our already existing and extremely expensive to replace right now liquid fuel based entire "transportation stack"
. So that's why I disagree with you so much. They *are* working so far, and it shows more promise, and just thousands of dedicated scientists and technicians are working on it to get it better, and it will continue to get better because of that.
Here's an example right now where it is going good and expanding, jatropha seed oil for biodiesel in India. It's just a fast growing weed, it grows readily in scrub land they have there in abundance where you really can't grow anything with any food value, especially if you can't irrigate, yet it thri
I understand and we do that with composted manure here (chicken litter), huge mass quantities of it. We have a dedicated custom spreader truck for that. This is what we do on our both our pastures and our hayfields. I also use some in my personal garden. I also understand about the petrochemicals, and I agree with you long term it's nuts, but short term it is what we have. I support people buying more locally and more sustainable from organic farmers.
I am way more in favor of biochar production and getting that down into the soil to develop tilth though. It lasts longer (centuries quite literally), remains stable longer, works better, etc than just cultivation, although I am in favor of light surface cultivation, for seasonal weed control, with the crops that you can do that with during the season, row crops. Freaking wheat, stuff like that, I have no idea how to do that, never investigated how organic wheat guys keep weeds under control...have to find out because I am cluless there. I tried to grow a little, just for a hoot, it greew quite well, but man it gets weedy fast, then when it comes to harvest you get way too much weeds mixed in with it to make it worthwhile to separate.
Anyway, just for soil tilth, the biochar as the next "green revolution step" is what I would like to see done with all that huge cubic miles of wood and brush that burns up all the time out west. It also helps better than anything else to help maintain soil moisture, another critical aspect out there and most every place else. They can do *small controlled burns* after harvest to improve the soil and kill off diseases and repleish those things that need to burn to reproduce, and also allow continuous rotating thinning with the goat herds, just expand that practice as well, it's already being done.
As to energy, have to disagree on this topic as pertains to nuclear fission. I am in favor of nuclear energy-fusion, but not fission, except for a very few really restricted niche applications (submarines, spacecraft, etc). Fission has too many unsolvable problems and is a leading source of some really bad geopolitical tensions that could, and quite very well *might*, lead to global war, which then could..well..you know. Just ain't worth it to me to chance that..
I also like our practical nuclear fusion conversion tech, because it scales from massive baseload sized all the way down to joe homeowner size, and he can OWN his own means of production, get it *paid off*, not be in thrall and servitude forever and two days to BIG Corrupt Co., and have both future economic security along with future production security, that can't be mucked around wuth by forces outside his control.
To that end, I have started true "investing" in my own sources, we now have both solar PV and a small wind genny. The genny is currently not being used, but I retain it as an emergency backup. Where we lived previously it was practical, higher elevation in the mountains, but were we are now solar PV is where it is at. That and we use sustainable biofuel, our home heating is primarily wood now, where previously it was a combo of electric and propane. I have to do maintenance all the time, fix fences, clean the creek, etc, where falling trees and branches break stuff or could interfere with the cross creek barricade fence thing I made to keep the beefers in and not wandering around the neighbors yards eating their flowers and stuff (happened before..most embarrassing and hard to get them back in), so I thought might as well use the stuff as long as I have to cut big amounts of it all the time. Works quite well, and is very comfortable and cozy and I do not have to rely on some local energy monopoly for my supply, plus frees up loads of cash. win/win/win for me and is carbon neutral, plus nice healthy exercise with a lot of "resistance training" HAHAH! Big tree trunk chunks get pretty hea
It sounds like there is money to be made out there for the innovative alchemist.