Who Looks Forward more Environmentally: U.S. or China?

:doh:

 

The article link provided by PriuStorm confused me a bit. It says

"...A new study argues that areas where natural forests are replaced by reforestation – called plantations – do not actually help control carbon emissions, and that converting farmland to forests decreases the amount of carbon absorbed by the soil..."

The study mentioned here is (or seems to be)
"Ecosystem Carbon Stock Influenced by Plantation

Practice: Implications for Planting Forests as a Measure​

of Climate Change Mitigation" in PLos ONE.

Free to D/L (if interested) use DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0010867

That study compared monspecies plantations with natural forests, and liked the latter better. It did not compare any type of forest with agricultural land use. I have yet to see a study that does so, and finding forect carbon less than ag-land carbon over appropriate time scales.

Not that anyone asked here, of course.

China's anti-desertification has been going for a long time and not with great success as yet. But I have not yet had a chance to visit the areas, so not in a position to tell them how to do it better. African countries are also interested in building a green wall

Stopping Desertification in Africa With a 'Great Green Wall' : Discovery News

One would hope that different countries planning similar projects would put their heads together and talk about what works and what doesn't.

OK, that's it, back to the discussion of pants...

 

Most of these are easily disproven on the Internet. TV is the only one that I couldn't find (Vizio is designed in US, but appears to be assembled in Taiwan).

Parkdale is a US yarn company with several mills in the US. Whirlpool has a plant in Cleveland, and just announced they will build a new plant in the city. 3M has many US manufacturing locations.. too many for me to go through and see if PTFE tape was listed: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/about-3M/information/more-info/locations/

As I said above, it is an exaggeration that we don't make anything anymore.

 

an excerpt from an interview with Bruce Springsteen seen on NBC Nightly News that will air tonight. he was asked what he thought the biggest problem we faced today. his response was when we traded jobs that produced goods for sale to building casinos that only provide services.

in the not so distant past; manufacturers in order to become more profitable went to "just in time" manufacturing under the premise that having unused inventory was a financial liability. back when inflation was a consideration that was true.

some determined it was cheaper to contract the actual production of the goods but that was too expensive an option to contract the manufacturing to an American company especially when hundreds of foreign companies were bidding jobs at 30 cents on the dollar.

so we closed our factories; dispersed our trained workforce. now that interest rates have become relatively static and inflation is only prevalent in necessities (figures only what we have to have is continuing to go up) exchange rates suck; goods have become less affordable.

but we eliminated competition so we are forced to pay status quo. now we equate the advance of technology as meaning we are getting a good deal. after all, top of the line cellphones can be had for $100 at the contract price when previously smartphones went for $300 so we think we are getting over. hmmm, my bottom line states that i am paying more.

 

That doesn't always work out either

Evergreen Solar To Move Jobs To China | WBUR

This is driven not just by vast differences in labour markets, eg much cheaper to produce in China. PV is a "dirty" industry with toxic heavy metals, much as IC manufacturing.

The most likely byproducts are arsenic and chromate. Cadmium also factors in. Until recently, the solvents were worse than the heavy metals, eg xylene, carbon tetrachloride, etc

The differences in environmental regulations makes it a no-brainer to shift production to China. Most of the legacy IC plants in the US, especially the Silicon Valley area, are now SuperFund sites

Turkey would be another good location for a PV cell plant.

Hungary: Toxic red sludge has reached the Danube - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

 

but its still a product that needs to be installed EXTENSIVELY thru-out the US. and will still GREATLY benefit the US as far as reducing the outpouring of cash to foreign countries in exchange for oil.

foreign made PV cells still require American distributors, American installers and most importantly of all, AMERICAN SUNSHINE!!

its simply a no-brainer solution for a huge part of the country and the only real obstacle is the perceived cost of the technology which is obscured by our utter lack of comprehension as to the true cost of imported oil

 

Hi FT,

I wonder what the Particulate Emissions per capita rating would put the US? Certainly well below Europe, and probably China too (unless they now have Natural Gas out in the rural areas too now)....

 

I agree with that part

However, it was sold on manufacturing jobs too. Which due to much lower wages and all but non-existent emissions standards, are now done in China

When you consider that 50% of the passenger transport fleet in the EU is diesel powered, the PM answer is quite obvious

In China the big factor is all the coal power plants they are opening monthly.

 

when unemployment is low, (4-5%) no one complains about jobs going overseas. this is a political hot button, but not a real issue. eventually, unemployment will go down as new jobs and new industries are created. and then, 20 years later, we will have another recession and everyone will start moaning about manufacturing again. our standard of living would be a lot lower if we had to pay for products made here.

 

Well it's hard to find an unemployment figure that's that low within the average unemployment rates in the US. I think it's a given that manufacturing in the US has been steadily going down since the 50s. My grandmother remembers when US manufacturing first went to Japan for cheaper overhead (and back then, "made in Japan" was considered a "cheap" product). There are still a few industries where either certain components or goods are put together here. But one new thing about globalization is that absolutely no electrical unit or car is completely manufactured in one country. TVs are a case in point. The US did use to manufacture whole TVs...as I remember the last plant in existance (I don't know if they're still around) was still able to manufacture picture tubes for Asia (since tubes are obsolete, that probably means they're gone). The cost of shipping is always staying competitive enough that I think final assembly is going to be at the country of origin that is most cost effective (for electronics, that seems to be China right now...with tariffs and everything, cars are more likely to be manufactured in the US for the US market). In short, I think for the US to stay competitive....more people have to consider going into other industries besides manufacturing.

 

Wait til the next election cycle...especially after the last disaster of the BP rig explosion. Political talking points always seem to be transitionary....I think "drill, baby, drill" isn't going to be used for at least 10 years. But given enough time, it will be a "politcal" issue again (they'll just be drilling as status quo without the public limelight all throughout).

 

Yes, I agree with that statement.

However, one cannot pretend that there are no toxins involved in the manufacture of integrated circuits and/or PV's. One must plan a process system that accounts for that

WHich is very expensive. Hence the shift in manufacture to other countries where they can just dump it in the nearest convenient river/lake

Why do you think we routinely explore for oil in South American and African nations? There are routine spills there that make what happened in the Gulf rather normal.

Out of sight, out of mind

Much like how we think we're such "responsible" citizens when we "recycle" our obsolete electronics

Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste - 60 Minutes - CBS News

Elevated Concentrations Of Toxic Metals In China's E-waste Recycling Workshops

This briefly made the news, everybody forgot about it, and it continues

 

Uh, not if you have solar.

 

or geothermal, or hydroelectric, or even natural gas.

Not that I have been plugging in my Prius.

 

Even without solar, a plug in is still far better than a diesel, is it not? I would imagine an immense amount of electricity is involved in the refinement of diesel fuel. Then there's the additional resources to transport that refined product to a fuel station and then you have to burn fuel getting there to fuel up. Plug in a car and get from source to point.

 

I think as far as costs go, a conventional hybrid or an electric car would be more cost effective in the states. In Europe, diesel cars are more feasible since they don't have as large as a diesel trucking fleet (where in the states, most of the demand for diesel is carried over towards commercial trucking...and with any barrel of oil, it yeilds a certain percentage as conventional or diesel). I think conventionally powered hybrids like the Prius are a good solution for most of the US. The US is also abundant in coal, but one thing I've always wondered is how air polution is with that power source. It must be better now that coal plants are required to have scrubbers....but does anyone actually know how much air polution is created? That's one answer I'd be interested in.

 

No problem - Suntech just opened a new plan in Arizona and is already planning on expanding it.

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