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A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

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Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#91

Post by mjevans »

losteric wrote: post #88
loceng wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is the seed clouding that's occurring globally impacting this [it's very obvious now, for those unaware, there is GeoengineeringWatch.org and their documentary free on YouTube called "The Dimming"], as well as perhaps hurting crops and those local economies enough to shift power-buying power away from those food producers?

There are no "global cloud seeding" projects. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/02/28/fac... anything like that would be trivially observed by layperson scientists. (Also cloud seeding = more rain, drought = less rain)

Water is, mostly, only added to the atmosphere by evaporation. This is mostly solar, but can include indirect solar (wind) and industrial processes.

Rain 'seeding' can be thought of as offering water already in the atmosphere an excuse to form rain and drop out of the atmosphere. It's about controlling where it rains rather than if it rains.

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#92

Post by bobthepanda »

alephnerd wrote: post #67
bombcar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take all the goods at Walmart. Find the cheapest largest ones - eg, the ones that fill a container with the least dollar amount. You’ll find that many of those are already made in the USA, especially if they can be made by robots. Here’s one now! https://www.walmart.com/ip/Hyper-Tough-32-Gallon-Heavy-Duty-... China will end up making high value items where shipping is a small fraction of the cost (Apple already flies…

> high value items Medium value parts actually (eg. OEM). And it's the same specialization that Mexico has had since the late 1990s and early 2000s when their factories left for China [0][1][2]. That's why Mexican manufacturing has started growing again - costs have equalized between CN and MX manufacturing for intermediate parts. For example, take apart a Sony PS2, Compaq workstation, or a Toshiba DVD Player from th…

IIRC the big anxiety in China is not really that manufacturing is disappearing, but it’s not clear what comes next.

China has started running into the problems that South Korea and Japan have, where they produce a large amount of university graduates not willing to do blue collar work.

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#93

Post by [deleted] »

rtpg wrote: post #49
actionfromafar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry, how?!

Gravity is a conservative force, so if you raise something up really high, dropping it will recover the energy used to pull it up. Of course in practice there's a lot of other things that cause energy loss, but there are lot of dams in the world that exist as "stored power", by pumping water uphill, then getting energy back as the water goes through the dam later. Big bucket high up is basically a battery. The questi…

[deleted]

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#94

Post by biotopia »

djbusby wrote: post #86
cma256 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A canal on one side of the planet is broken? Just use the canal on the other side of the planet." I'm enjoying that sentiment very much. I wonder if there's a mileage breakdown of China -> US (around South America) versus China -> US (through the Suez Canal).

Today it might be China -> USA via Cape - which is a long way.

This is going to speed up the export decline from China to US.

In 2023, among key trading partners, exports to the U.S. led the decline, down 13% from the previous year.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/China-s-annual-exports...

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#95

Post by biotopia »

bobthepanda wrote: post #92
alephnerd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> high value items Medium value parts actually (eg. OEM). And it's the same specialization that Mexico has had since the late 1990s and early 2000s when their factories left for China [0][1][2]. That's why Mexican manufacturing has started growing again - costs have equalized between CN and MX manufacturing for intermediate parts. For example, take apart a Sony PS2, Compaq workstation, or a Toshiba DVD Player from th…

IIRC the big anxiety in China is not really that manufacturing is disappearing, but it’s not clear what comes next. China has started running into the problems that South Korea and Japan have, where they produce a large amount of university graduates not willing to do blue collar work.

No, the big anxiety in China is that the manufacturing is disappearing, especially to developed world like Europe and US. With real estate and consumer spending - the 2 of 3 economic engines - in the dumps, China has switched focus back to manufacturing - the other engine. However...

China's annual exports drop for first time in seven years.

Among key trading partners, exports to the U.S. led the decline, down 13% from the previous year. Demand from the European Union and Southeast Asian countries also shrank.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/China-s-annual-exports...

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#96

Post by bobthepanda »

biotopia wrote: post #95
bobthepanda wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the big anxiety in China is not really that manufacturing is disappearing, but it’s not clear what comes next. China has started running into the problems that South Korea and Japan have, where they produce a large amount of university graduates not willing to do blue collar work.

No, the big anxiety in China is that the manufacturing is disappearing, especially to developed world like Europe and US. With real estate and consumer spending - the 2 of 3 economic engines - in the dumps, China has switched focus back to manufacturing - the other engine. However... China's annual exports drop for first time in seven years. Among key trading partners, exports to the U.S. led the decline, down 13% fr…

China has always talked a big game about rebalancing without actually making the changes to do so. At some point they were going to run out of export growth as they got richer.

What they need to do, and probably won’t, is stop devaluing the yuan and relax capital controls so that Chinese consumers can invest and spend in something that isn’t housing, and finally fuel consumption growth. The current situation essentially results in Chinese being underpaid.

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#97

Post by biotopia »

bobthepanda wrote: post #96
biotopia wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the big anxiety in China is that the manufacturing is disappearing, especially to developed world like Europe and US. With real estate and consumer spending - the 2 of 3 economic engines - in the dumps, China has switched focus back to manufacturing - the other engine. However... China's annual exports drop for first time in seven years. Among key trading partners, exports to the U.S. led the decline, down 13% fr…

China has always talked a big game about rebalancing without actually making the changes to do so. At some point they were going to run out of export growth as they got richer. What they need to do, and probably won’t, is stop devaluing the yuan and relax capital controls so that Chinese consumers can invest and spend in something that isn’t housing, and finally fuel consumption growth. The current situation essentia…

The problem with China is that they got old and demographically smaller, and decided to pick a fight alongside Russia against Europe and US, before they got rich or at least above poverty level.

China Tries To Censor Data About Nearly 1 Billion People in Poverty

In his article for the business outlet Yicai, Li cited data from a 2021 research paper by the China Institute of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, which placed the number of people living on less than 2,000 yuan ($300) a month at 964 million, or nearly 70 percent of the population.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-...

China's population drops for second year, with record low birth rate

The National Bureau of Statistics said the total number of people in China dropped by 2.08 million, or 0.15%, to 1.409 billion in 2023. New births fell 5.7% to 9.02 million and the birth rate was a record low 6.39 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 6.77 births in 2022.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-population-drops-...

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#98

Post by Fatnino »

cma256 wrote: post #80
p1mrx wrote: post #3

https://www.dw.com/en/will-climate-change-cut-off-the-panama... discusses some possible solutions: > solutions [...] include water-saving sluices that would collect freshwater in basins so it can be reused. To this end, possibilities are being examined to develop and exploit other water sources near the canal. The construction of reservoirs and saltwater desalination plants are also being considered. There's also: >…

"A canal on one side of the planet is broken? Just use the canal on the other side of the planet." I'm enjoying that sentiment very much. I wonder if there's a mileage breakdown of China -> US (around South America) versus China -> US (through the Suez Canal).

Very roughly, it's the same distance from Hong Kong to New York through either Panama or Suez.

Like if one raises transit tolls the ships can immediately chose to go through the other.

But to directly answer your wish, this site does exactly what you want https://sea-distances.org/

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#99

Post by sethrin »

brianbreslin wrote: post #71
myself248 wrote: post #6

Done to death in this other thread 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38991317

There was another nicaraguan canal project that was floated maybe 10 years ago and supposedly financed by the Chinese government. The government officials involved all ended up charged with an assortment of graft surrounding the project.

At the time it was seen as extremely dubious; the criminal charges are the least surprising outcome.

Re: A drought has forced authorities to further slash traffic in Panama Canal

#100

Post by pi-e-sigma »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #72
rtpg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aside because everyone who makes that comment seems to get it wrong: 50% of the population has less than the median IQ, not the average!

> because everyone who makes that comment seems to get it wrong: 50% of the population has less than the median IQ, not the average! What's the mistake? It's a normal distribution; the average is equal to the median.

The median itself is a type of an average, too, regardless of the distribution. We have many averages to choose from
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