Credit for the worker safety and American Manufacturing jobs infographics go to Forbes deputy editor Jon Bruner.

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WORKER SAFETY – NOW AND THEN
Source: LabSafety.com

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PRODUCTIVITY VS EMPLOYMENT
Source: Fisher Investments / Flickr

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AMERICAN MANUFACTURING JOBS
Source: Grainger.com

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Renewable energy sources, however, have their own problems. They are not without environmental impact.

According to an article in New Scientist, “Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels.” Hydropower damages river habitats and hydroelectric dams can cause disrupt fish migration. Dams have significantly contributed to the decline in salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest and California.

Solar farms have problems as well. They are land intensive–they can even be more land intensive than the fossil fuel projects they are meant to replace. Wind farms have the same problems and are also noisy and kill birds.

Geothermal power, incredibly, causes earthquakes. In 2009, a $60 million geothermal project in Basel, Switzerland was cancelled because of the earthquakes it was causing and would continue to cause.

In additional to these problems, renewable energy is expensive. Even the most viable renewable energy source, wind power, is at least twice as expensive as traditional energy.

What to do? Technology will improve and solutions will be found. Some dams already are designed to allow fish to migrate naturally. Some wind power facilities shut down their turbines when there is high change of hitting many birds–some even track flocks of birds via radar.

A Shell International study predicted that in fifty to one hundred years, most of America’s energy needs will be served by renewable sources. This may well be true. In the meantime, it’s important to support real progress rather than feel good solutions. And, as always, we need to be on the lookout for unintended consequences.

Sources

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-280.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7046-hydroelectric-powers-dirty-secret-revealed.html
http://www.powerscorecard.org/tech_detail.cfm?resource_id=4
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/01/21/21greenwire-geothermal-advocates-tout-plants-smaller-envir-84426.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/science/earth/11basel.html

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I spotted this sculpture while driving to the buffalo airport to pick up a friend.

The Make a Wish caption on the symbol of a buffalo (ok technically its a bison) made me do a double take as the buffalo is on our company logo.

I’m partial to the Buffalo. It’s an animal that is rugged and resilient (qualities of our industrial equipment products).

But getting back to the caption ‘Make a Wish’ … that phrase is used every day in countless situations

You hear the phase just before someone blows out birthday candles. Or when a young couple throws coins into a fountain. Or when brothers and sisters with small fingers are tugging on the Thanksgiving turkey’s wish bone, each hoping to get the bigger half.

We use it so frequently it may have lost some if it’s original luster, and it’s power.

I’ll explain. In times of past (and I guess still today in some places) a king or sovereign who wielded complete authority over his realm would use the words ‘It is my wish that ___ (fill in the blanks) be done.

He said ‘It is my wish’ because he did not need to issue a command. That would be beneath him. His simple wish was enough. He was the supreme authority over the land.

The rejoinder of ‘your wish is my command’ from the one receiving the wish/request likely originated from that understanding.

So often, when making a wish, we dispense of it as if tossing a coin into a fountain. There is no expectation the wish will actually materialize.

Next time, make your wish with the knowledge all things materialize from thought. As Buddha said 2500 years ago, “with our thoughts, we create our world”. If you wish like issuing a royal command to the universe, the universe has no rejoinder other than ‘your wish is my command’ and will work on bringing it into reality.

Because you are the king of your domain and the sovereign of your life.

Thanksgiving is the traditional time to reflect on this world we have created. We survey the kingdom we have built from our intentions, and on what we’re grateful for and what is bringing joy and true satisfaction into our lives.

Reflection may also reveal to us what is amiss. Where we need to focus our intentions in the future.

Try applying the Pareto Principle to your life. Is eighty percent of your happiness coming from twenty percent of your life activities? If so, focus your intentions on the twenty.

So when we hear ‘Make a Wish’ we need to remember the power of our intention and the command we are issuing. So that we create exactly what we want.

Make many good wishes on this happy Thanksgiving.

We are CB Power and Industrial Equipment, supplying new, replacement and spare parts on major power and industrial equipment. For expert advice or a quote, call 1-888-317-8959 today.

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For those who believe Twitter has long since been a contaminated datastream, polluted with inane opinions and spamvertising, they’re only half right. Twitter CAN be a vacuous waste of time, and it can be an incredible source of business intelligence, current news, trends, celebrity gossip – pick your poison. It is both.

FOLLOW THE THOUGHTLEADERS

The quality of your Twitter experience and it’s usefulness to you relies almost wholly on who you listen to. If every time you glance at your Twitter stream, you wince, it’s because you’re not following people that are aligned with your interests.

Mind you, you don’t need to follow a single person to benefit from what Twitter has to offer. You don’t need to visit Twitter.com either as smartphone users can tweet via third party applications. You can even have a cherry picked list of your favorite Tweeters delivered via email, so you can read/scan it anywhere. More on that later.

Yes, the feature I’m talking about is Twitter lists, and we’re going to use it for Business Intelligence in the Manufacturing sector.

Lists allow users to organize “Tweeple” (Twitter parlance for other Twitter users) into various groups, associations or categories. For example, aspiring chefs might compile a list of their favorite celebrity chefs who are tweeters. Another list could be classmates he went to Chef School with, and yet another list of food and beverage retailers who tweet their daily specials. The number of categories are only limited by the creativity of the list builder.

For manufacturing, the categories would be vastly different and equally unlimited. Depending on your market and your own position in the company, your lists might include competitors, suppliers, management philosophies or manufacturing news. Whatever you want to learn more about or stay on top of, you’ll likely find it.

MAKING THE BESTSELLER LIST

So, let’s imagine you are compiling a list of top B2B salespeople. You could start with someone who you’re already following and datamine the person’s lists. You can also view that person’s favorite tweets by going to their Twitter page and clicking the Favorites tab. See any Tweeters who have been favorited frequently? If so, they are prime candidates to include on your list and/or follow. You can even subscribe to the lists they built.

Don’t know who to follow? Then head over to Listorious, a popular Twitter people search on the web where you can find anyone by topic, region or profession. Here you will easily find quality Tweeters to build your list with.

Personally, as I continue to prune my lists, finding new ones, spelunking into the vast abyss of information, I am humbled with how smart people some people are and how much there is for me to learn (about any topic). I am also often sleep deprived because reading the tweets of these thought leaders is more addictive than crack cocaine. It’s the freshest, hottest information in the world regularly delivered to my email.

So how do you have the lists emailed to you? I use and recommend Tweetymail.com, a simple yet robust web service that enables you to create custom email alerts for tweets, mentions of your brand or an industry keyword, Twitter lists, and Twitter searches – and have them delivered automatically to your inbox. Monthly subscriptions start at only $2.99 (I have no affiliation with this service, I’m only a happy user).

DIRECT MESSAGE PACKAGE TRACKING

There are other web services that interface nicely with Twitter and can be of use to your business. Twitter’s direct message feature work with cutting edge package tracking services like TrackThis, which will notify you via DM when your UPS, Fedex, USPS, DHL package is in motion.

A final word of warning: Leveraging this constant stream of choice industry related data is competitively advantageous, but the stream can be more like a firehose. Tweetymail makes it easy to turn it off as well.

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Maybe part of the problem is that we’re looking for that one, all-encompassing renewable fuel source that will allow us to live our consumer oriented lives uninterrupted. It likely doesn’t exist. A more plausible reality is that various alternative energy sources will need to be cobbled together in a customized, individualized way.

The ideal all-in-one energy solution would embody these five characteristics:

1. Abundant
2. High energy density
3. Environmentally friendly to extract and utilize
4. Predictable and reliable
5. The energy yield must be far greater than the capital cost of extraction and utilization

When you think about it, no current energy source fulfills all the above requirements. Coal, while meeting most of the criteria, isn’t environmentally friendly by a long shot. Neither is oil or natural gas.

Hydroelectricity, on the other hand, is environmentally friendly but to make it requires altitude and rainfall. It also doesn’t have a high energy density.

The intermittent nature of wind makes wind power fail number four, although it seems to meet the other criteria when you include deep and shallow offshore wind sources.

Solar power is unquestionably the most abundant renewable energy, but it fails on cost, specifically the cost of installation.

Biomass is a renewable energy source derived from garbage, wood, waste, landfill gases, and alcohol fuels. Being renewable doesn’t mean it’s environmentally friendly however. Biomass produces air pollution at levels that rival or even surpass coal or natural gas.

Nuclear power meets most of the criteria handily, but while radioactive waste is less than one percent of total industrial toxic wastes, much of it remains hazardous indefinitely.

So as you can see, there is no “one size fits all” solution to our imminent fossil fuel troubles. Then again, even if fossil fuel supplies went on forever, our current rate of consumption can’t. Every product we buy puts more pressure on our planet and on the finite natural habitats we are stewards of.

Because we’re nowhere near finding a replacement for Mother Nature.

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In a study conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada ranks number six for happiest country in the world.

We Canadian’s have much to be happy about, particularly in comparison to developing nations and those with oppressive regimes. A big reason Canadian’s are of a more positive mental state is because we live in a country “where pines and maples grow, great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow“. Canada is renowned for it’s natural beauty. Nature provides for us a retreat from the bustle of urban life.

Studies show nature relaxes us and improves mental and physical health. The research data indicates that people only need to look at gardens and plants and their stress reactions are healthier than unlucky folks who don’t see nature.

However, according to the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and other wildlife protection organizations, nature is at risk due to rapid urban sprawl. (For those unfamiliar with the term, urban sprawl is the outward spreading of a city and its suburbs to automobile-dependent developments on rural land).

At the current rate, natural forests and farmland nearly double the size of Toronto will be converted to asphalt and concrete by 2021.

Urban sprawl annihilates wildlife and farmland, pollutes our waterways and forces over dependence on automobiles. More cars and trucks mean more smog, more commuting, more stress.

It also decentralizes the city and weakens the downtown core. Municipalities with carefree urban sprawl developments often have downtowns that are slowly dying. They are no longer a central place of entertainment and commerce, and the local businesses suffer economically.

Urban Sprawl also means more taxes for everyone. As new suburb developments extend further and further, so must the city’s electric power distribution, water and sewage systems. Garbage and recycling trucks must service the new areas, as do the public transit routes. There is increased pressure on fire departments and police stations as they must cover more territory, and the list goes on.

Everyone pays for urban sprawl, but few benefit.

In contrast, cities and counties that respect the boundaries of natural habitats are more likely to enjoy vibrant downtowns and an environment which encourages local business. A city where people want to live and work. This mindset of urban planning is known as smart growth.

Smart growth is realistic in it’s assumption cities will grow, but offers a mix of alternatives to urban sprawl which includes:

• Incentives to reclaim older buildings and re-develop “brownfields”, which are abandoned industrial parks.

• Offers pedestrian friendly, community-oriented living areas with houses of many different types and costs.

• Provides robust public transit services and bike routes which offer an alternative to driving.

Smart growth takes the long view of environmental and economic sustainability. It resists the quick gratification of urban sprawl. It preserves some nature and the animals that reside there for our children and their children to enjoy.

Now that’s something to be happy about.

We are CB Power and Industrial Equipment, supplying new, replacement and spare parts on major power and industrial equipment.  We also provide emergency rental boilers with customized energy solutions to fit your requirements.

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Overall, the outlook according to these numbers is hopeful for a cleaner future. However, the best way to save what’s left of nature and wildlife is for us all to stop consuming so much.

Home Solar Power Discounts – One Block Off the Grid

We are CB Power and Industrial Equipment, supplying new, replacement and spare parts on major power and industrial equipment. For expert advice or a quote, call 1-888-317-8959 today.

CB Power and Industrial Equipment supplies new and replacement industrial equipment. For expert advice or a quote, call 1-888-317-8959 today.

The latest articles can be found below. Enjoy.

The quote is attributed to Ted Nordhaus, chairman and founder of the Breakthrough Institute, an energy think tank Calif.

Is he right? Well I do know this. It’s his opinion. I’m sure he believes it.

But is it true?

Only if you believe it.

So yes, since the gentleman believes it, it is true for him … and those he convinces.

Surely the challenges are there. The catch is what we define as “cheap”.

At the turn of the century there were hundreds of “barn and garage” motor-enthusiasts tinkering with horseless carraiges. Some left the barns and their garages and started companies. Did they do it on the cheap? In the beginning yes.

So innovation has nothing to do with dollars … only the limitless capacity of the human mind to conceive.

There is a quote attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899 which goes, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” I have come to understand that this quote is not really the words of Mr. Duell. (Unless you were there how would we know for sure?)

But the point is that was in fact the belief of many people around the turn of the century where there were so many mechanical marvels surely no more could be conceived of.

There is a phrase my favourite professor used to say that “the bumble bee aerodynamically shouldn’t be able to fly … but no one told the bumble bee”.

Quite right.

Okay just to be clear I’m not ripping on think tanks.

But really when was the last time you ever heard of an innovation from a think tank?

And that leads me to ask another question what exactly is a “think tank”? Is there actually a tank? Is it full of water? And when someone starts is there a freshman initiation like you have to hold your breath for like a minute?

But I digress.

Ideas all have their time and we are in new times. We have never been before at this part in history.

Every American president has said at some time in their term of office said that the American people are the country’s most important asset.

Are they right?

Not sure.

I guess we should ask a think tank.

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Maybe you’ve read the news about the soaring productivity in North America’s manufacturing sector this year. It’s a ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak economy. Journalists and bloggers declared the greater output was a sign of a thriving and vital industry, not an industry in decline.

And in a sense it’s true. The economic activities in the manufacturing sector have been growing month upon month, for several years now. This is in part due to the focus on future-based clean-energy technologies like lithium-ion batteries that will power the new breed of  electric cars like the Chevy Volt and  Nissan Leaf.

However, the United States has shed about five million manufacturing jobs in the past decade and unemployment has been stuck at 9 percent. A Gallup poll released recently revealed employee job concerns are at a record high.

We’ll mention three reasons for the high productivity, high unemployment conundrum. Two are obvious, but the third reason, not so much.

The first reason would be automation. Repetitive work that assembly line workers have been doing is being replaced by robots that can do it faster and better. The “robopacalypse” has been unfolding for years now, first inconspicuously, but now any assembly line worker still with his or her job is looking over their shoulder – wondering when they will become obsolete and decommissioned.

The second reason for the stubbornly high unemployment is due to off-shoring. The cost differential to manufacture a product in China versus North America was so pronounced, it was irrational not to outsource.

The third, less evident reason why so many people who have been phased out are not back and participating the manufacturing surge is a mismatch of skills.  According to an article in Metal Miner, US manufacturers are indeed hiring but they can’t find qualified people to fill those positions.

In the new robopacalypse, a human’s role will be as one of the many contractors building the machines,  or designers, engineers and scientists. Repetitive, low-skill jobs are the past.

What unemployed people need is re-education in the new disciplines of the industry. A better trained workforce can lower the high unemployment and raise North America’s competitiveness in the global market.

Upgrading isn’t just for robots anymore.

We are CB Power and Industrial Equipment, supplying new, replacement and spare parts on major power and industrial equipment. For expert advice or a quote, call 1-888-317-8959 today.

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