Interesting Links for 03-11-2017

[andrewducker]

World's most expensive dram of Scotch was a fake

(tags: scotland alcohol fraud )

MSE tells MPs of need for urgent reform to ombudsman ‘farce’

(tags: uk regulation fail )

More details on the Northern Ireland poll which showed young people would join a United Ireland

(tags: NorthernIreland ireland polls )

Lessons from Finland on Universal Basic Income

(tags: finland GuaranteedIncome )

Labour MP: Corbyn was “absolutely clear” in a meeting with Eurosceptic Labour MPs that we’re leaving the EU single market and customs union

(tags: Europe Labour uk )

Poorly drawn cats

(tags: cats fail art funny twitter )

‘Thor: Ragnarok’ Director Taika Waititi Confirms ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Sequel

(tags: movies marvel vampires funny )

Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining

(tags: training politics coal OhForFucksSake )

What are Scotland's income tax options?

(tags: tax scotland )

Absentee Dads affect how women interpret interest from men

(tags: parenting father sex women psychology )

Childhood spankings can lead to adult mental health problems

(tags: violence children mentalhealth depression )

Strava's Global Heatmap is really impressive

(tags: exercise bicycles maps visualisation )

Comments

Coal

[danieldwilliam]

Coal having a resurgance is the not the same as coal jobs having a resurgance and that is not the same as US coal jobs having a resurgance.

It is possible that over the coming 10-20 years the world actually burns more coal than it used to.

I think this is unlikely because of political pressure around global warming and local air pollution. And the cost of extracting coal.

But if it were to happen it requires coal to be cheaper than natural gas and renewables. Which will require more automation in the coal industry and fewer jobs per ton of coal dug.

The places where there is a shortage of generating capacity, India and China, there are large coal reserves ready to be exploited. These are probably the places coal burning economies would go to improve the productivity of coal mining.

Re: Coal

[andrewducker]

Yeah, no matter what, American coal jobs are gone.

It's sad that people are being conned into thinking otherwise.

Re: Coal

[nojay]

The US mines and burns about 780 million tonnes of coal as year (similar to China's per capita coal consumption of about 3 billion tonnes a year) and that amount will probably not decrease significantly in the next ten to twenty years (2018 consumption is on track to be the same as 2017, pretty much). There are about 50,000 coal mining jobs in the US, that number will probably decrease a little over the next twenty years or so.

Coal is mined predominantly in two regions-- Appalachia and the Powder River basin area in the mid-West. Roughly half of the annual output comes from each region but the mid-West does that with only ten thousand workers and heavy automation. Appalachia mostly does mountaintop removal to get at the coal reserves there, more labour intensive and thus more expensive. There are several hundred years of proven coal reserves safe within the borders of the US at that rate of consumption and it's cheap energy, a production cost of ten dollars a tonne at the minehead in South Dakota. That's why coal will not die.

Re: Coal

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah, I don't think anyone is going to be in much of a rush to close any existing coal plants over the next ten years.

I don't see many new ones opening. I think the best the US coal mining industry can expect is roughly speaking a steady state coupled with persisent pressure on labour efficiency coupled with opportunities to automate processes using robots.

My personal expectation is that in about ten years time the combination of solar PV, CCGT and fracking and battery storage is going to make life economically difficult for existing coal generators leading to a steady decline in US demand for coal.

But the best case for US coal jobs is that there will probably be fewer of them in 2027 than there are 2017.

And there are real risk of being on the wrong side of a very rapid shift in the economics of electricity generation.

If one is 50 and already working in coal getting extra training in coal extraction might make sense. If you are 21 and not already a coal miner - well I would advice any son of mine to train up in something else.

Re: Coal

[andrewducker]

A quick Google shows lots of coal plants closing.

Am I missing something?

Re: Coal

[danieldwilliam]

I should rephrase my statement.

If you have an old coal plant you are probably scheduling retirement. You are probably not about to spend lots and lots of money on upgrading it or prolonging its life. You are probably not going to replace it with a new coal plant on the same site.

If you own a middle aged coal plant you are probably indicating that you will retire it in 203X or 204X. You are unlikely to close it early because of renewables but you are probably going to run down the asset and save on Opex whereever you can.

If you own a youngish coal plant you will probably run it for the foreseable future. You are probably worried. Or your bankers are probably worried.

[danieldwilliam]

I wonder at the effect that a re-unification referendum would have on the UK. Just the simple fact that Northern Ireland leaving the UK would be profound.

[andrewducker]

I wonder if losing NI and Scotland would persuade England that maybe the problem was them.

[theandrewhickey]

Only those of us who are already persuaded :-/

[danieldwilliam]

I think that part of the problem is that they don't think they are part of the problem.

And the power structures are designed to keep those in power, in power and once you go from being an outsider to an insider (like the Blair government) it's very, very easy to forget that you need to make more changes.

[calimac]

Only yuppies with too much money need to be told this, but here goes:

Don't buy ridiculously expensive Scotch.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. Even if it was real it wouldn't be worth that much.

[danieldwilliam]

Quite a lot of the cost of producing Scotch is related to its age. You lose about 2% of the volume each year the Scotch is in a barrel to evaporation. That 2% by volume is proportionately more alcohol than water so the remaining whisky is less strong. This means you, when you cut the whisky at bottling to 40% ABV you can add less water and your final number of bottles is reduced. You obviously need to store the whisky which is not free. You have a time value of money effect.

The actual quality of the whisky is not necessarily enhanced by more time in a barrel. Being in a barrel removes some chemicals from the whisky spirit and adds some flavours. Generally speaking it takes harsh, unpleasant flavours out preferentially and adds interesting nice flavours preferentially. It takes more flavour out than it puts in. After a while the barrel starts to draw out flavours you want left in and put in flavours you want left out.

How long is the right amount of time to leave whisky in the barrel depends on the composition of the base whisky spirit (is it already full of raucous flavours or is it a little bland), the taste and expectation of your audience and how big the barrel is and therefore the proportion of volume of whisky to area of barrel.

If you imagine a chart, flavour intensity on the y-axis and time on the X-axis.

Base flavour of the whisky is a horizontal line across the middle of the chart.

Net Bad Things going To the wood is a curve that slopes down from T=Z at the top of the y-axis. Net Good Things Coming From the Wood is a curve that slopes up from T=0 from the bottom of the y-axis. They will form a triangular shape in the middle of your chart. This is when the whisky is at its best. This may be quite a long period or quite a short period. You might get very different flavour profiles from one end of that triangle or not much difference. All depends on the slope.

More wood is not necessarily better. If you leave a decent whisky in a barrel for 50 years what you have left is a puddle of whisky that tastes of the barrel you put it in an not much else. However, it will cost a lot, lot more than the same whisky which has been in a barrel for 10 or 20 years. Which is where the marketing flim flam comes in. I think the whisky industry is a little disengenious when it sells old whisky to punters. Age is a cost driver. It's not a quality driver of the taste. If, as a whisky seller, you want to recover the extra cost of over-aging your whisky then you have to create some other measure of quality (romance, mistaken assumptions about what aging does, snob value,).

Meanwhile, the same industry is happy to sell people like me inside knowledge about the production process that lets me bet that any whisky over a certain age (say 30) is likely to be actively worse than the same whisky bottle at 10 or 20 years.

[andrewducker]

It's more that, to me, no alcoholic drink can be worth that much - because the experience that I'd get wouldn't be worth what I could get for the same money spent elsewhere.

The value at that level is largely in showing off, and that just doesn't interest me.

[danieldwilliam]

I entirely agree.

Even if whisky improved with additional aging I struggle to see how someone can derive several thousand more pounds worth of enjoyment from a 50 year old bottle than a 20 year old bottle. And if so, then I would be very interested in a) finding out if their taste preferences were consistent across other food stuffs and b) inviting them to be a client of a new restaurant I am opening.