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Daily Mail switches to China

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by bwilson4web, Jan 11, 2010.

  1. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    The Daily/Sunday Mail was embarrassed three years ago when a hacked article about Sudbury nickel was shown to be false. This time they went after the Chinese rare-earth mining and manufacturing:
    EXCLUSIVE: Inside China's secret toxic unobtainium mine | Mail Online
    Understand I have sympathy for the challenges China faces converting raw resources to useable products. But we've seen a pattern of hybrid skeptics trying to inflate such claims. This one has some traction since it is contemporary.

    Bob Wilson
     
    #1 bwilson4web, Jan 11, 2010
  2. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    What you might not realise over in the US is that the Daily Mail writes articles for a certain type of person. Whether these articles are true or whether they are loosely based on fact doesn't seem to matter, just so long as their readership are happy.

    I know it could be said that all papers could be guilty of that to some degree, but the Daily Mail is renowned for it over here.
     
    #2 GrumpyCabbie, Jan 11, 2010
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  3. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    That makes a lot of sense after reading many of the unthinking comments. I had seen similar comments in the Sudbury article but when it was withdrawn, the comments also disappeared. Regardless, we are likely to see our own skeptics pickup this article and:

    • misquote - by trimming every benefit, they will attempt to show rare earths used for hybrids are the only product of this mining operation. For example, expect to see ". . . turning the town and the surrounding areas into a poisoned, arid wasteland . . ." is likely to show up and relatively low wages compared to Japanese, USA and Europeans yet are five times the local wages.
    • invent facts not in evidence - strange as this may seem, our skeptics are willing to attribute to this article things never stated. Tailings are common to all mining operations and this article mentions them but without pointing out how common tailings piles and pools are in all mining. For example, cyanide is used to extract gold yet as recently as 2000, a Romanian tailings pool released "120 tons of cyanide into the rivers of Tisza." (Wikipedia, "Gold Mining".)
    By having a ready copy of the article, we can have the facts and data as well as accurate answers. For example:

    • neodymium magnets are critical to disk drives - so please remove your disk drive and computer ICs made by neodymium stepper motors from your computer and try to post that comment again!
    • terbium mostly used for natural light florescent tubes - replace office and shopping lights so all prices go up by the higher cost of electricity.
    • lanthanum is used in studio, "Carbon lighting" - the basis of many films and studios.
    What I've found is early application of the facts and data tends to promote healing from festering sores of misinformation. The throws the disseminator (aka., propagandist) off their stride. So when such articles show up, we are prepared with a pointy truth to deflate their false claims.

    Bob Wilson
     
    #3 bwilson4web, Jan 11, 2010
  4. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

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    The more important question: Do they have page 3 girls?

    Tom
     
    #4 qbee42, Jan 11, 2010
  5. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    Nah, that's The Sun. And a good read it is too :D

    It's my paper of choice - not because of page 3, but because they are independently minded to print page 3 and not bow to those who claim it's sexist.

    The Sun also happens to be the biggest selling paper in the UK. No idea why :rolleyes:
     
    #5 GrumpyCabbie, Jan 11, 2010
  6. JimN

    JimN Let the games begin!

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    Here it's Page 6 in The Trentonian. I think they overlooked the dilithium China is mining & stockpiling.
     
    #6 JimN, Jan 11, 2010
  7. clett

    clett New Member

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    They've got a good point though, all of Toyota's hybrids are completely and utterly dependent on freely available supplies of lanthanum (for the battery) and neodymium (1 kg for each motor).

    If China stops supplies of these two elements, and they are currently suggesting that they will, Toyota won't be able to make any more hybrids of any type, let alone the Prius.

    This is why senior management at Toyota are desperate to develop the Toyota "Sakichi" battery which is planned to circumvent the rare-earth problem, but as far as I've heard, progress is slow so far.
     
    #7 clett, Jan 12, 2010
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