Dekster, I didn't know that about our lost mills, but I know the Michigan plants were growing old and outdated, so the story is similar for autos. It is cheaper to build anew than to upgrade, and the plants were used up. New and robotic became the future...elsewhere. But I would nuance your statement about the folly of the theory that man caused it and can stop it. Seems like the pressure is to quit exacerbating it. There is irrefutable evidence that these cycles have happened Earthwide for millennia and recovered naturally. But this time, the balance is more in our hands. The Earth always heals. And it will heal itself after we are gone. The trick is to keep us here and healthy enough to be able to keep it habitable for our kind.Yep, Dekster! I have an analogy. I'm from Michigan. Years back when the NE canneries closed due to European products, I didn't pay attention. And when the textile mills of the Carolinas closed as businesses moved off-shore, it mattered little to me. But when Lee Iaccoca traveled to Japan because of the Toyota car sales in the USA, I did sit up and take notice. And it was already too late! I still chuckle at the news report, by Frank Reynolds I think, when he said Iaccoca was upset because Japan sold over 100,000 cars in the USA in the last year (I forget what year). Anyway I remember thinking.."No, 100,000 Americans BOUGHT Japanese cars last year!" They couldn't sell them if we didn't buy them. So with this in mind..this link is for the nayy-sayers. I think the deniers think this stuff happens overnight or something.Until global warming knocks out the internet, what does it matter really.
Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun
The textile mills closed in no small part to the facts that "Made in the USA" wasn't enough of a motivator to get people to pay twice as much for towels, and that the Mills were old using old technology and unable to compete with new mills with high speed looms that were far less labor intensive than the American looms and produced far more yards of cloth an hour than the American looms. Textiles could possibly have been saved in a much different form, but the writing was on the wall, One of the few areas of textile manufacturing that was still profitable were custom design fabrics like used to make Disney "Little Mermaid" sheets and the like as American textiles finishing was still much better than the weaving and people were willing to pay a premium for kids' merchandising products. I think I read somewhere that Disney, Martha Stewart, and a hand-full of very high-end interior designers were the only ones who required their products be finished in the US because of the superior American quality control in that last step. .
And the problem with Global Warming isn't that there is global warming. It is that the theory that man caused it and man can stop it is where the folly lies.
It isn't cheaper necessarily to build new. It makes sense. If you shut a plant down to refurb/renovate, then the plant is not making anything at all and you are hemorrhaging cash and workers are going other places, and your competition is eating up your market share and taking over your contracts.. Instead, you build a new factory while keeping the old one running, and then move your production into the new factory and close the old one you don't need any more. The 100 year old factory then can be either sold to someone else, or in the case of our mill, it was disassembled and recycled. The old machinery went into metals recycling, and the bricks and old wood were reclaimed for construction projects. In our case, it got worse because the new factory in Mexico was a failure, the company went bankrupt, and someone bought up the name and the intellectual property of the company and it continues on in Pakastani mills. As for Global Warming, it favors humans. If the temps were going the other way, that is when we would have to worry, but we wouldn't be able to do anything about that either.
Very good points to ponder, dekster. But the problem with the warming favoring humans IMHO is WHERE it favors humans, and where the water is. The Sahara is an example. It is said the area was once a garden. And it is rumored the Oglalla aquifer is about 50% deleted again after recovering from the overuse of the early 20th century. I also read that the coast of California was once a good 375' further into the Pacific not too long ago (about 9500 years or so) until the so-called 'alti-thermal' epoch hit re-arranged the shoreline further inland. I fear I have that 'little bit of knowledge' and am mostly ignorant....but I DO recycle and try to use energy wisely.
Humans weren't driving cars for most of those 9500 years so if you want to blame coastal erosion on human activity, then you would be hard pressed to do it, specifically the use of fossil fuels which is the crux of the AGW argument. As for the rest, I grow as much food as I can, eat not a lot of red meat, recycle the items for which there is a market based on what the local government says does not end up in the landfill anyway, reusue, repurporse. I have a clothesline I use instead of the dryer on fair weather days. My house, car, most of my furniture, many of my clothes, and even my dog are used. I have high efficiency appliances and use low wattage bulbs--most being LED's.. I turn off lights when not in the room, unplug my chargers when not in use, I arrange my errands and such that I only need to fill up a 14 gal gas tank about twice a month. When I cut down trees, I use them for landscaping borders or for erosion control barriers; I compost; I harvest my own seeds; I harvest rainwater; and control run off; I use high density planting to reduce water loss and the need for herbicides in my garden; most of my landscaping is propagated plants or salvaged from other properties. Most of my tools that would be gas powered except the riding mower are electric--hedgetrimmers, weedeater, blower, and chainsaw. None of this, however, has anything to do with Global Warming. It means I inherited a lot of crap from dead relatives and am a cheapskate who happens to want to be a good steward for their property; do so on a very tight budget; and think it is wasteful to throw out things that are still perfectly usable. These are the reason I am buying a house in my early 20's when most of my friends are living cramped in apartments or off their parents. Yes my family helps me along, but I also help them along in different ways. I dare say I do more for the environment than most of the people I encounter on the internet bemoaning global warming.