Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Sunday, December 17, 2023
Monday, December 17, 1923. Closing in on Mexico City.
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Monday, December 10, 1923. Mexican rebels and cheese empires advance.
The Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, which has not been ratified, was first introduced in Congress.
At the time, many suffragettes opposed it out of fear that it would eliminate statutory protection of female laborers, which it likely would have.
Rebels were advancing on Mexico City.
Coolidge was encouraging commercial aviation, and running for reelection.
The National Dairy Products Corporation was founded by a merger of Thomas H. McInerney's Hydrox Corporation and Edward E. Rieck's Rieck—McJunkin Dairy Company. In 1930, it would acquire Kraft-Phenix Cheese Company, and then rebrand itself in 1969 as Kraftco Corporation and then Kraft, Inc.
It is now Kraft Heinz as of this very year.
Kraft cheese is, in my opinion, hideous.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co. that only it, in appropriate Federal questions, could review state supreme court decisions.
The Italian parliament was prorogued, i.e., dissolved, by King Victor Emmanuel III at the request of Benito Mussolini.
Turkey and Albania signed a treat of friendship.
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry. A Timely Rerun
Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry
Me, third from right, when I thought I had a career in geology, and probably in coal.
My main employer, right after receiving my bachelor's degree.
- "No household was wired for electricity"
- "Flickering light came from candles and whale oil,"
It really started with navies in some ways, although some might argue that it started with hydroelectric. We'll start with navies.
Navies had been powered by sail up until the mid 19th Century but already by the time of the American Civil War that was changing. The U.S. Navy may have had its grandest ships under sail during that war, but coal fired wheels were being introduced even then. And the scary smoke belching squat "monitors" that signaled the end of the age of sail were coal (and perhaps wood) burning beasts. Slow, hardly seaworthy, but iron clad. It was pretty clear by 1865 that the age of militarized wind was ending.
And indeed the Naval reformation that occurred after the American Civil War is incredibly stunning. Everything about navies soon changed. By the 1890s every major navy in the world was building ships that look odd to our eyes, but which still look familiar . Big guns on big ships powered by coal replaced sailing vessels, and the general purpose yeoman sailor was replaced by the specialist. At about this time, in fact, the U.S. Navy started to switching from a navy drawing its recruits mostly from port towns, and which was in fact an integrated navy, to one which was segregated which drew its recruits from the interior of the country. A wood and sail navy required men who had grown up near, or even on ships, and who knew the ins and outs of sail. That was a multi ethnic, polyglot group of men who in some way resembled the men in every port town around the world more than they did the men in the interior of their own countries. It's no accident that the first Congressional Medal of Honor to go to a foreign born serviceman went to a sailor, in action during the American Civil War fighting a naval battle in. . . . .Japan.
Smoke and spontaneous ignition.
Let's talk about smoke first, the disadvantage that was always there.
This is something that people who are more familiar with ships of the World War Two era don't instantly recall about earlier steel ships, but coal fires smoke and hence coal fired boilers likewise smoke, or rather the coal fires smoke
Coal has a well known propensity to self heat and to make it worse, the better the coal grade the bigger the problem. Exposed to air and moisture coal begins to engage in an exothermic reaction and can relatively easily self heat to the point where it ignites. Moreover, as it self heats and heads towards ignition it drives off highly flammable hydrocarbon gases. Indeed, heating coal intentionally in a controlled environment is a means of producing those gases and has sometimes been thought of as a method of producing them, although its never proven to be an efficient means of doing so.
Coal is so prone to spontaneous combustion that coal self ignition is a natural phenomenon. It simply happens where coal gets exposed to sufficient oxygen and moisture. Anyone who has ever spent any time in an open pit coal mine has seen coal simply burning on its own, as I have.
There are ways to combat this, of course, but the problem is uniquely acute for ships. Ships must store coal in large bunkers and must taken on a lot of coal at certain points. Ships are wet by their very nature. So any coal burning ship has, at some point, a lot of coal with just enough oxygen and moisture to create a problem.
This proved to be a real problem for ships and of course there were extreme catastrophic occurrences, the most famous of which is the explosion of the USS Maine. The Maine is an extreme example of what could occur, but any coal burning ship could experience what the Maine did. Basically, in the case of the USS Maine, the coal self ignited and the coal bunkers had sufficient liberated gas to create a massive explosion. Not quite as dangerous, but still a huge problem, a simple self ignition of the coal without an explosion was a disaster, quite obviously, of the first rate requiring sailors to put the coal fire out under extreme danger.
By the turn of the century naval designers were aware that oil could be used to heat boilers just as coal could, and they began to study it in earnest. Indeed, not only could it be used, but it had numerous advantages.
Unlike coal, petroleum oil for ships fuel did not result in much smoke. It resulted in some, but not anything like that which coal put out. The smoke from a single ship was much less visible and suffice it to say the smoke from a fleet of ships was greatly reduced. Again, there was smoke, but not smoke like that put out by coal fired boilers. Indeed, it was so much reduced that to a large degree detection of ships over the horizon by the naked eye was approaching becoming a think of the past.
And petroleum does not spontaneously self ignite. A big vat of petroleum can sit around forever and never touch itself off. This does not mean, of course, that its free from danger. It isn't. But some of the dangers it poses were already posed by coal, but in lesser degrees. Petroleum burns more freely than coal by quite some measure and once it ignites putting it out is extremely difficult. Sparks, other fires, etc., all pose increased dangers for petroleum over bunkered coal, but they existed to some degree for bunkered coal already.
And petroleum is more efficient and easier to use for ships. Coal was basically stoked by hand, a dirty laborious job. But petroleum wasn't. Petroleum burning boilers were fueled by what amounts to a plumbing system involving a greater level of technical know how but less physical labor. And oil had double the thermal content of coal making it a far more efficient fuel which required less refueling. And on refueling, ships fueled with oil can be refueled at sea. Ships fueled with coal cannot be. Indeed, the maintenance of coaling stations in the remote parts of the globe was a critical factor in naval planning prior to the introduction of oil.
Which isn't to say that there weren't some unique problems associated with petroleum for ship.
For one thing, the fact that it spreads out when leaked and can more easily ignite meant that petroleum added a unique and added horror for a stricken ship. Coal fired ships that were simply damaged and sinking were unlikely to cause a horrific sea top fire. Petroleum ships are very likely to do that. And the risk of a munitions caused explosion is increased with petroleum fueled ships. A torpedo into a coal bunker might blow a coal fired ship to bits with an explosion or might just sink it. With a petroleum fueled ship the risk of an explosion in such a situation is increased as is the risk that oil on the water will catch on fire or otherwise kill survivors.
A huge factor, however, was supply.
By odd coincidence all of the major naval powers, save for Japan, had more than adequate domestic supplies of coal. Some had very good supplies of coal, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Imperial Germany, within their own borders. Japan nearly did in that it obtained it from territories it controlled on the Asian mainland, although that did make its supply more tenuous. At any rate all of the big naval powers of the pre World War One world had coal supplies that htey controlled. That's a big war fighting consideration. Of the naval powers of that era, in contrast, only the United States and Imperial Russia had proven petroleum sources they controlled, and Imperial Russia had proven it self to be a second rate naval power during the Russo Japanese War.
Switching from coal to oil did not occur in the Royal Navy, or any navy, all at once. The decision was made somewhat haltingly and it was an expensive proposition to convert an entire navy to oil. Britain started to convert prior to World War One but it didn't complete the process until after the war. Still, its decision to start constructing capitol ships as oil burners in 1912 was a huge step for a nation that had the world's largest navy but which had no domestic oil production at all. The United States followed suit almost immediately, with its first large ship to be converted to oil, the USS Cheyenne, undergoing that process in 1913.
Diesels in that application show that industrial diesel engines had arrived.
By World War Two every navy in the world was an oil burning, not a coal burning, navy. And it wasn't just navies. Merchant ships had followed in the navies' wakes. They were now oil burning too for the most part. Coal at sea had died.
Still, the trend line had been set.
And it would next show itself with transportation.
At least according to one source written in 1912 coal fueled 9/10s of all locomotive engines at that time. The other 1/10th would have been fired by wood or, yes, oil.
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
Thursday, November 1, 1923. Walton arraigned, Krupp signs, Baltic treaties, Finnair founded, George Washington Cornerstone laid, the wages of sin.
Oklahoma was impeaching its anti Klan Governor.
Gustav Krupp signed an agreement with the French which established operating conditions for his mines in the Ruhr. He was released from prison fourteen days later.
Estonia and Latvia signed a mutual defense treaty.
Finnair was founded as "Aero Osakeyhtiö". It had one airplane at the time, a Junkers F.13 seaplane.
The George Washington Memorial cornerstone was laid.
Recently retired, at age 29, Irish mob gangster Bill Lovett was murdered in his sleep at an abandoned store in Brooklyn. Lovett was a well-educated man who loved animals, and a distinguished World War One veteran, but a dedicated alcoholic who could be very temperamental when drunk. He'd been in the Irish mob before and again after World War One, but had recently given up crime and drinking after marrying. He fell off the wagon on October 31 while downtown for a job interview, and went to sleep in the store with a compatriot. He was apparently murdered by other Irish mobsters.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Thursday, September 21, 2023
The Aerodrome: Challenging airport funding and looking at subsidization of transportation in a different light.
Challenging airport funding and looking at subsidization of transportation in a different light.
In an interview with Wyoming News Now, Casper Mayor Bruce Knell came out against providing subsidies to Sky West and went on to suggest that Wyoming had more airports than it needs. He specifically stated, regarding SkyWest
SkyWest is a 1.2-billion-dollar company. They absolutely should not receive any of taxpayers’ money … to help them with their business.
Knell also went on to accuse SkyWest of "feasting" off of the revenues and basically threatening the communities by indicating they may pull out.
And he went on to challenge the Minimum Revenue Guaranty concept, stating, according to Oil City News:
We need to do away with these MRGs statewide. The state needs to quit funding them. We need to do away with the airport in Gillette, in Rock Springs, in Evanston, in Sheridan, in Cody, in Riverton. They all need to go away. We need to have one international airport in Casper, and one airport in Jackson.
Not too surprisingly, the communities which Knell feels should lose an airport reacted. Officials from Sweetwater County wrote a letter in reply which stated.
The Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport is a critical economic driver for Southwest Wyoming, supporting over $36.9 million in annual economic activity including $25.5 million in annual spending and 324 jobs resulting in $11.4 million in annual payroll,” the letter states. “Much like your local airport, our airport provides critical connectivity to the global economy for dozens of commercial and industrial employers in Southwest Wyoming while also providing residents connectivity to healthcare, friends, family and leisure destinations, improving the overall quality of life for our workforce.
While you may be willing to risk your local economy’s vitality, we are not. Our airport and its air service are foundationally critical assets to our community.
Casper's mayor, it should be noted, serves in a different capacity than those of most cities and towns, and accordingly is not elected as mayor, but appointed to that position by other councilmen. This is not to say that it's wholly influential, however.
As for doing away with airports, it's hard to imagine any of these airports going away. The real question is whether they shall continue to have commercial air service. Knell's view seems to be that if they didn't have regional service to Denver and Salt Lake, that would mean that the Casper and Jackson airports would succeed by default, something that's not really clear.
FWIW, at one time or another I've been in planes that landed at every one of these airports, although I've only been on regular commercial flights to Casper. Having said that, I've known people to take commercial flights into Jackson, Cody, Riverton and Rock Springs, and I've never heard any complaints about those flights. Being able to fly regionally, and with much greater access than currently exists, is something that outside business entities often ask about.
Knell's overall point is that he feels that the free market should take care of all of this. The truth of the matter is, however, that only rail transportation isn't subsidized in the U.S. Highway transportation is heavily subsidized by taxes, which fund the roads, various transportation departments, and specialized police forces. Air transportation is subsidized by the creation and maintenance of airports, and the maintaining of the TSA and FAA.
Given that, we might really wish to ask the question of what transportation we wish to subsidize and in what amounts, assuming we wish to subsidize any, and of course we do. Nobody is going to suggest we abolish highway funding, for example. So the real question is what is most efficient, socially productive and serves our long term goals.
Thursday, September 14, 2023
Towns and Nature: Hydro, OK: 1929 Historic Route 66 Gas Pumps
Thursday, August 31, 2023
The Work Truck Blog: Not a truck at all.
Monday, August 14, 2023
Tuesday, August 14, 1923. The Kemmerer Mine Explosion.
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XIV. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
June 5, 2023
Saudi Arabia is cutting its petroleum production by 1M barrels a day.
June 6, 2023
Ukrainian wheat prices have jumped.
June 9, 2023
Wyoming will divest itself of investments in China.
June 22, 2023
Ground was broken yesterday, after a decade and a half was expended on permitting on the Trans West Transmission project. The event took place near Sinclair.\
June 27, 2023
Ford Motors is laying off salaried workers and engineers in order to save costs.
June 28, 2023
WYDOT approved a grant to Jackson to use Federal money to purchase EV buses.
June 29, 2023
Walgreens is closing 150 stores in the U.S.
In a tragedy, National Geographic magazine laid off its last remaining staff writers.
The magazine has been independent of the National Geographic Society since 2015, when it was sold to Fox.
Wyoming and Colorado Sign MOU Regarding Direct Air Capture
MOU outlines commitment to exploring direct air carbon dioxide capture (DAC) industry development
BOULDER, Colo. – The State of Wyoming and State of Colorado announced today that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding direct air capture (DAC) activity and development. The bipartisan inter-state agreement will focus on the DAC industry’s potential to complement existing and emerging industries and increase jobs and economic development in both states while simultaneously reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Governors Mark Gordon and Jared Polis announced the news during the Western Governor Association meeting today in Boulder, Colorado.
Direct Air Capture is a method of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in which CO2 is removed from the air and then sequestered and stored to produce high-quality carbon removal credits or used for industrial applications, such as enhanced oil recovery or as a chemical feedstock for other products. The federal government has established several significant incentives and competitive grant opportunities to test and scale direct air capture technologies and projects. The mountain west is uniquely positioned to lead on these efforts, and this bipartisan agreement represents the first such multistate partnership in the county.
The MOU outlines the partnership between the states through potential collaborations such as: applying for grants, identifying necessary infrastructure, defining carbon removal measurement standards, analyzing atmospheric CDR markets and their growth opportunities, identifying a process for resolving issues with cross-border CO2 sequestration, developing a commercialization pipeline for nascent technologies, and ensuring that local, tribal, and state stakeholders are empowered participants in shaping the future of this innovative technology and its significant economic opportunity.
“Wyoming is a longtime leader in carbon management practices and policy,” said Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon. “We believe direct air capture could complement efforts for point-source carbon capture and the related infrastructure. Colorado and Wyoming each have pieces of the puzzle necessary to develop a carbon removal market and industry. Together, we have a powerful combination of assets, infrastructure, policy, markets, people, geology and mindsets that are needed to accelerate the development of the industry. This agreement focuses on working together on the most important questions related to DAC, including measurement standards that work to create more transparency in markets and benefits to communities.”
“This exciting bipartisan partnership builds upon our nation-leading work in Colorado to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2040 while adding good-paying jobs. I am proud to partner with Gov. Gordon on this innovative work that benefits both Colorado and Wyoming as we continue to find creative ideas and common-sense solutions in the fight for clean air that won’t just benefit Colorado and Wyoming, but the entire world,” said Colorado Governor Jared Polis.
The MOU highlights the combined assets, infrastructure, policy, markets, resources and geology that make the region a strong contender for developing a direct air capture industry. Wyoming has world-class carbon capture, use and sequestration (CCUS) assets, including permanent geologic storage – in addition to existing infrastructure, manufacturing and energy workforce. Colorado has been developing a policy environment to evaluate the regulatory, economic, technological, and research opportunities in the carbon dioxide removal and direct air capture area and is home to the world’s second-largest operating DAC facility.
This agreement builds on further regional collaboration between Wyoming and Colorado with Utah and New Mexico to develop the Western Interstates Hydrogen Hub. This existing partnership will mobilize billions of dollars of investment in clean hydrogen infrastructure, another emerging technology to reduce pollution and continue the West’s leadership on global energy solutions.
For more information, read the Memorandum in full.
June 30, 2023
UW is receiving a Federal grant for nuclear chemistry research. The grant is in the amount of $300,000.
A headline:
Sriracha prices soar amid ongoing supply shortage linked to droughts
July 3, 2023
In an effort to cause prices to rise, Russia is cutting petroleum production by 500,000 bbls per day.
July 12, 2023
Inflation has fallen to 3%. Historically, while it's perfectly possible to have even lower inflation, or deflation, that's a pretty good rate.
That we allow for government induced inflation through monetary policy is inexcusable, however.
The official aim is for 2%:
Why does the Federal Reserve aim for inflation of 2 percent over the longer run?
1% would be better. 0 would be even better. Very difficult to achieve.
And in actuality, with a labor demand that exceeds employment, a slight deflation, over a decade, would be nice.
July 13, 2023
A study published in Joule maintains that ending fossil fuel use will impact the net worth of only the very wealthy.
Swiss voters have voted to reach net carbon zero by 2050.
July 16, 2023
Hollywood actors and writers are on strike, something that could carry on forever as far as I'm concerned, given the overall negative affects the industry has had.
July 19, 2023
Wheat prices have jumped 8% due to Russia pulling out of the Black Sea grain shipment arrangement.
July 20, 2023
NON-ENERGY MINERALS ON PUBLIC LANDS ARE A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTOR TO ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND JOBS
July 22, 2023
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles lost its renewed legal battle seeking to keep Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. from selling the redesigned Roxor off-road vehicle in the US.
The lawsuit claimed the designed trespass on protected elements of the Jeep. I don't know the details of the suit, but the Roxor is pretty clearly a Jeep externally, and more particularly the old CJ-5.
July 28, 2023
Supreme Court rules in favor of Mountain Valley Pipeline
Or;
Supreme Court rules in favor of Mountain Valley Pipeline
Thumbs Up Emoji Costs Canadian Farmer $82,000
August 3, 2023
Sales of Bud Light have fallen 10%.
August 4, 2023
Saudi Arabia extended production cuts. U.S. oil prices are at a nine-month-high.
August 8, 2023
Two out of three of the major credit rating entities have downgraded the US rating from AAA+ to AAA. This occured to the lunacy of current American politics and the high U.S. debt.
And, locally:
Environmental Groups Lose Appeal Of Wyoming 3,500 Gas Well Project at Jonah Field
Last prior edition: