[al_biglan]

True, and we are getting cleaner production methods. The early production was incredibly inefficient and produced way more pollution than now. I can say _that_ with some certainty, but I can't say that they produced x% of the current production back then and were N times more polluting. Plus, it isn't clear how the atmosphere absorbs/reacts to the pollutants. (is there a lag? why the spike in 1970s? did the levels really fall off so quickly? I thought once steel left the US production it got much "dirtier" to produce?) Lots of questions, I'm mostly asking to show me a bit of the range that is clearly outside the definition of "preindustrial"

[kogus]

For the record, steel production has not left the US (although many of the jobs have due to automation).

The US is #4 in the world for steel production[1], although China produces about 17x more.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...

[dpark]

US steel production in absolute terms has dropped 45% (edit: 31%) from 50 years ago, when we made about 25% of steel globally. Now we produce less than 5% of steel globally. I'd say steel production has largely left the US.

[DougWebb]

The Wikipedia article shows US production dropping 30% from 1967 to 2015. It's a loss, yes, but 70% of the production is still here. What's changed is that China and other countries are producing much more now, so as a percentage of world-wide production the US has dropped. But that'd be true even if we were producing more domestic steel than before.

[philipkglass]

The other big thing is that US per-capita steel consumption (including imports and finished products) is significantly down since the 1970s.

This says that US steel consumption per capita went from 622 kilograms in 1979 to 451 kilograms in 1988: https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:373b3927-26ff-4591-8e7...

More recent numbers here say 348 kilograms per capita in 2003 down to 297 kilograms in 2015: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185031/apparent-steel-us...

With a US population of 225 million in 1979 and 322 million in 2015, that means that total US steel consumption is only 68% of what it was in 1979. It doesn't look like domestic production has declined much (if any) faster than domestic consumption since the end of the 1970s.

Cars are lighter than in the 1970s, cars last longer than in the 1970s, and non-steel materials are increasingly used in roles that steel was used for in the 1970s. Like parts of cars and making beverage cans.

[dpark]

> The Wikipedia article shows US production dropping 30% from 1967 to 2015. It's a loss, yes, but 70% of the production is still here.

Fair, I plugged my number in upside down. The production 50 years ago was ~46% higher than today, or today's is ~31% lower.

> What's changed is that China and other countries are producing much more now, so as a percentage of world-wide production the US has dropped. But that'd be true even if we were producing more domestic steel than before.

Yes, but we've also dropped 30% of our own production. When our absolute production is down this much and our overall share of production has plummeted, I think it's fair to say the industry has largely left. The population is also up by over 50% since 1967, so per capita our steel production has basically been cut in half.

In comparison, the absolute number of consumer electronics that America produces might actually be higher than 50 years ago, but as a share of the market, production has plummeted, to the point that everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US.

[DougWebb]

When you say "has largely left", that implies that we no longer have companies doing the work, that we've lost the capability to do the work. That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not based on these figures.

If we're producing less steel than we used to, but we're still producing some, then we still have the capability to expand. Production is down and if it continues we'll eventually lose the ability to produce our own steel, but we're not there yet.

For consumer electronics, I disagree that "everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US", especially if our production of consumer electronics is up. (Is it rising as well?) We may not be the leader anymore, but that's very different from "largely left".

I don't believe that everything is fine with US manufacturing; I think it's a problem that there are many things we still need which we don't make anymore. But there are many things that we do make, even when other countries make them too, so it's not all doom and gloom.

[dpark]

> When you say "has largely left", that implies that we no longer have companies doing the work, that we've lost the capability to do the work. That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not based on these figures.

I think this is wishful thinking. Well we've shed ~75% of jobs from the steel industry in the past 5 decades. We don't produce enough steel to meet our own needs. In fact we are the top importer.

Most of the integrated steel mills are shuttered, down to 11 from something like 50. There used to be 9 in Cleveland alone. Now there is 1.

We have some companies doing the work, but we have fewer, and they're doing less of it.

> If we're producing less steel than we used to, but we're still producing some, then we still have the capability to expand.

This is a meaningless statement. If our production was zero, we'd still have the capacity to expand. The reality though is that we are not expanding production. It's contracting while the industry in general is booming.

If US car manufacturing were down 30% since 1970 while worldwide sales were up 200%, I think everyone would agree that our automotive industry was floundering. In fact the numbers for car manufacturing aren't nearly that bad and most everyone still agrees that the U.S. car industry is in trouble.

> Production is down and if it continues we'll eventually lose the ability to produce our own steel, but we're not there yet.

Of course we're not there. But we don't have to hit zero before we're in trouble, nor do we have to hit zero before we're effectively unable to meet our own needs. At this point we already (net) import something like 25% of the steel that we need.

> For consumer electronics, I disagree that "everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US", especially if our production of consumer electronics is up. (Is it rising as well?) We may not be the leader anymore, but that's very different from "largely left".

I made up an example. I suspect that it is up since Woz was putting together Apple Is in a garage. When the numbers are that small, it's not hard for them to grow. At the same time, we basically have no domestic electronics manufacturing industry. The vast, vast majority of that happens in Asia. Even if our overall numbers are actually up, our manufacturing doesn't exist in a vacuum. When our own consumption is virtually completely outsourced, our industry has utterly failed to meet the demand and it's fair to say that the industry has effectively left.

It seems unreasonable to me to look at total output in isolation as if no other factors are relevant. While we might produce 70% of the steel we used to, we produce far less virgin steel than we used to. And we cover far less of our own needs than we used to. And we produce far less of the world's supply than we used to. And we employ far fewer people. And we have far fewer steel mills.

> I don't believe that everything is fine with US manufacturing; I think it's a problem that there are many things we still need which we don't make anymore. But there are many things that we do make, even when other countries make them too, so it's not all doom and gloom.

I don't think it's all doom and gloom, but the steel industry is clearly largely outside the US now.

[maxerickson]

Active production capacity has left the US, but one of the things that people lament about the loss of industry is the loss of technical capacity. The current US steel industry is clearly large enough to support some high level of technical capacity, even if it doesn't compete in terms of volume.

It seems that really big, really fussy castings get done in Japan and Korea though.

[jacobolus]

> Fair, I plugged my number in upside down. The production 50 years ago was ~46% higher than today, or today's is ~31% lower.

For such comparisons, we should always use either explicit ratios or (even better) a logarithmic scale. “X% more” and “X% less” are confusing constructs which are easy to screw up.

[Retric]

The backdrop for this is each location has gotten more productive in part because most of this is recycled steal. So, the US has lost far more than 30% of it's steal mills.

AKA, net production of new steal in the US from ore is what has has really declined.

[jcranmer]

To understand steel production, you need to look at three numbers, not one: production, capacity, and consumption.

One of the things that has happened since 2000 is that China has expanded its steel production capacity a lot. The capacity utilization--which should optimally be around 80-90%--is at 75% right now and plummeting. China basically built its steelmaking capacity assuming consumption growth rates would increase instead of what they actually did (decrease).

The obvious solution is to close down steel mills. Unfortunately, many governments consider steelmaking to be a point of national prestige (the EU started out as the European Coal and Steel Community!), to the point that democratic governments often idolize steelmakers (with other industrial workers) as the "every-man" [1]. Which means no one wants to cut their capacity.

[1] I find this somewhat ironic given that, now that I think about it, no one in my family that I can trace ever worked in a factory of any kind. Although my grandparents and some of my second and third cousins are farmers, which was historically the other idolized profession.

[Roodgorf]

Looking at the amount produced by year it seems like U.S. production has been relatively steady over the last year and not too much lower than it was in previous decades. I think looking at percentages doesn't really tell the full story here, since China's production has increased so much as to overshadow most other countries' output. The "drop" from 25% to 5% wasn't as much due to production leaving the US as it is production not increasing at breakneck pace.

[dpark]

> I think looking at percentages doesn't really tell the full story here, since China's production has increased so much as to overshadow most other countries' output. The "drop" from 25% to 5% wasn't as much due to production leaving the US as it is production not increasing at breakneck pace.

But that is extremely relevant. When our production is flat (actually declining) while world production is soaring, it means that we control very little of the market. We don't control supply. We don't control pricing. This puts our production at higher risk because it's much easier for China and India to price our industry out of business.

Our production per capita has also been cut in half since 1967. So in addition to the world producing more, the US is actually producing a lot less. Our consumption is also up, and we're producing only about half of what we consume now.

[kaybe]

If you don't inject it into the stratosphere, most pollutants such as acids or particles are precipitated out (dry or wet) pretty quickly (on the order of days to weeks/months), so I'd expect a lag of max 2 months due to the transport time to Greenland (and it will be a bit lower due to the distance and loss over time). [1]

(If China did a better job of filtering the SO2 from exhaust, this particular air problem there would be gone within a week.)

[1] http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookcha...

[anexprogrammer]

The spike in the 70s will have been the steady growth of cars and re-industrialisation since the war. The fuel crisis was 73, for a couple of years, which led to queues at pumps, rationing and introduction of speed limits in many places. That led to recession and the decline of some heavier industries... and was a factor leading to the election of Reagan and Thatcher at the end of the 70s, start of 80s. Their restructuring led to the terminal decline of some heavier industry.

In 79 there was a UNECE conference[1] on pollution that most members signed up to. 1985 gave us the Sulfur agreement that UK and US (amongst others) never ratified. The mid 90s saw further reduction of sulfur, that finally the UK adopted, though the US didn't.

That led to wider use of SO2 scubbers and tighter emissions, though initial efforts only stemmed the increase due to rising car numbers during the 80s. The agreement has had regular updates ever since, leading to lower targets, adding pollutants, adoption of catalysts etc. Most of the acid rain is now in the oceans of course.

It's still all under the UNECE so excludes the growth economies and the developing world so in today's world it excludes much of the world's industry.

That was nearly all from memory - there will be mistakes. :)

It's worth noting that at the start of the 80s acid rain, its causes and effects, were on the news almost like climate change is today. It was every week - seeing pieces showing dieback in Scandanavian forests, lake acidity, some previously unknown effect and on and on. In the UK it was a weekly reminder the Thatcher govt didn't believe. We learned the UK had tried to limit Sulfur in the 30s and had started fitting SO2 scrubbers on power stations - between the wars! The war meant that was the last heard of it until the 80s and 90s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Long-Range_Trans...

[Ericson2314]

Ozone and acid rain, things from the biology book that we no longer need to worry about. Hopefully C02 has a nice clear peak in retrospect someday too :|.

[maxerickson]

Presumably China adopted some of the pollution control technologies developed in the 1970s as it industrialized.

edit: It's pretty likely that steel production since 2010 is greater than all steel production prior to 1900. I would think that the energy used to make steel since 2010 is at least comparable to the energy used for all metal production prior to 1900.

Industrialization certainly got started prior to 1900. I would say it took a while to really hit it's stride.