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US imports and production of steel are decreasing

International Trade Administration, 14(January 10)

U.S. imports of steel mill products decreased 16.4%to 2.4 million metric tonsfrom October toNovember 2013. In November 2013, U.S. exports and imports of steel mill products

both decreased, narrowing the steel trade deficit by 16%to 1.5 million metric tons.U.S. steelproduction decreased by 3.4%to 7.1 million metrictons in November 2013.Trade U.S.Imports of Steel Mill Products. From October to November 2013, U.S. imports of steelmill products decreasedto 2.4 million metric tons.November 2013 steel imports are 4.6% below the volume in November 2012 and

7.1% below the 2012 average monthly volume of 2.5 million metric tons.November 2013 steelimports are 17.6% below the most recent high import levels in April 2012.

Economic engagement increases steel production and imports

Friedland,13(Managing Director of the Singapore based investment banking and merchant banking firm, CEO of the investmentresearch firm, Friedland Equity Research. April 24)

Economic growthAnd Steel Demandimpacts the world's steelmakers. Steel production is abasic building block of a country's or region's economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)recently announced revised global economic growth projections as well as growth for regions and specific

countries. These revisionswill likely impact steel demand and revenues of steelmakers. Heavy

impact of economic growth and steel demand onU.S. steelmakers.

American investment and economic engagement with Mexico is set to increase steel

production and imports

Mexican Steel Forum,14 (January 29, 2014)

American Metal Markets19thAnnual Mexican Steel Forum promises to be one of the

most dynamic editions of the event in years .As existing steel industry players build

up their businesses in Mexico, new producers,service centers and distributors lookto expand into this attractive market. Consumer demand for steel, led by a flourishing automotive sector, iscontinually growing and theMexican administration seems determined to support the sectorand implement investment-attractingreforms.Join us in our new location to be part of the exciting debate about where the Mexican Steel sector is going and whatopportunities will arise from the developing situation both within and outside of the

country.

http://seekingalpha.com/author/jeffrey-friedlandhttp://seekingalpha.com/author/jeffrey-friedlandhttp://seekingalpha.com/author/jeffrey-friedlandhttp://seekingalpha.com/author/jeffrey-friedland

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Lifting the Cuban Embargo will increase steel production and imports for both the US and

China

Newswire, 13 (WASHINGTON, May 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/)

In a written statement submitted to the Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives, theSpecialty Steel

Industry of North America (SSINA) today encouraged stricter enforcement of the U.S.regulations on trade with Cuba, particularly with respect to China. Over the past sixyears, China has invested heavily in Cuba's metal development and, according to official tradedata, China is now absorbing the overwhelming majority of Cuba's metal production. Since the principal end use of metal is theproduction of stainless steel and China is among the largest offshore suppliers of stainless steel to the United States, SSINA believes thatstainless steel containing Cuban metal has been imported into the U.S. from China, in violation of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

While Cuba is the largest metal producing country in the world, the Cuban Assets

Control Regulations prohibit U.S. manufacturers from sourcing metal from Cuba. Theembargo prohibits the importation of merchandise from third countries that is made or derived in whole

or in part of any articlewhich is the growth, produce or manufacture of Cuba. The embargo

specifically covers the importation of metal-bearing materials.The U.S. Department of Treasury'sOffice of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), under the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, has the authority to require that importers ofstainless steel certify the origin of the metal in their products to confirm their compliance with the embargo. OFAC has utilized that

authority on previous occasions when it suspected that imports of stainless steel might contain Cuban metal.Dr. Sunil Widge, SSINA's

Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Emeritus of Carpenter Technology Corporation, says, "A failure to enforce theembargo not only undermines an important U.S. foreign policy objective, it also

places the domestic specialty metals industry at a distinct competitive disadvantageby allowing one of its biggest foreign competitors an opportunity to avail itself of the world's largest metal reserves, while

simultaneously denying the U.S. industry the same access. As long as the embargo remains U.S. law,it must be enforced,otherwise U.S. stainless steel producers and producers of other metal-bearing metals

will remain disadvantaged by the failure to apply the embargo."

Increased steel production causes huge carbon emissions

Kundak, 9

Taking into consideration the total world production of more than 1,3 billion tons of

steel, the steel industry produces over two billion tons of CO2. Reductions in CO2

emissions as a result of technological improvements and structural changes in steel

production in industrialized countries during the past 40 years are described.

Substantial further reductions in those emissions will not be possible using

conventional technologies. In the production and processing of steel, the prices of

products and energy costs are strongly affectednot only by labour costs, but also by the cost of raw materi-als and reducing agents. This has been especially evi - dent at the time of the present fast industrial develop- ment of the countries likeChina and India. To enhance energy efficiency in the production of raw iron and steel, and to apply the conventional technologies with

maxi- mum efficiency have become focal points of interest worldwide. Global CO2 emissions caused by the

burning of fossil fuels to heat homes, to fuel vehicles, or to power the industry, haveincreased rapidly over the past century. Fig- ure 1 shows thatglobal CO2 emissions

increased ten times from 1900 to 2000. The rate of growth has been particularly

high over the past fifty years, although it has slowed down to some extent in the past two decades. Europe andNorth America were responsible for 87 % of global CO2 emissions at the beginning of

the twenty-first century,with Western Europe accounting for 52 % and North America for 35 %. Over thecentury, emissions increased more than three times in Western Europe and nearly

nine times in North America.

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groups that fill the keystone roles . However, there are a couple of problems with this idea. First of all, for most ecosystems we

dontknow which species are the keystones ! Ecosystems are so complex that we are still

discovering which species play vital roles in maintaining them. In some cases its groups of species not just one species that are vital for the ecosystem.Second, even if we did co mplete the enormous task of identifying and protecting all keystone species, what back-up plan would we have if an unforseen event (e.g. pollution or disease) led to the demise of these keystone species? Would there be another species to save the

day and take over this role? Classifying some species as keystone implies that the others are not important.This may

lead to the non-keystone species being considered ecologically worthless and subsequently over-exploited. Sometimes we may not even know which species are

likely to fill the keystone roles. An example of this was discovered on Australias Great Barrier Reef. This r esearch examined what would happen to a coral re ef if it were over-fished. Theover-

fishing was simulated by fencing off coral bommies thereby excluding and removing fish

from them for three years. By the end of the experiment, the reefs had changed from a coral to an algae dominated ecosystemthe coral became overgrown

with algae. When the time came to remove the fences the researchers expected herbivorous

species of fish like the parrot fish(Scarus spp.)to eat the algaeand enable the reef to switch back to a coral dominated ecosystem. But, surprisingly,

the shift back to coral was driven by a supposed unimportant species the bat fish (Plataxpinnatus). The bat fish was previously thought to feed on invertebrates small crabs and

shrimp, but when offered a big patch of algae it turned into a hungry herbivorea cow of the sea grazing the algae in

no time.So a fish previously thought to be unimportant is actually a keystone speciesin the recovery of coral reefs

overgrown by algae! Who knows how many other species are out there with unknown ecosystem roles! In some cases its easy to see who the keystone species

are but in many ecosystems seemingly unimportant or redundant species are also capable

of changing niches and maintaining ecosystems . The more biodiverse an ecosystem is, themore likely these species will be present and the more resilient an ecosystem is to future

impacts.Presently were only scratching the surface of understanding the full importance of biodiversity and how it helps maintain ecosystem func tion. The scope of this task is immense. In the meantime, a wise

insurance policy for maintaining ecosystem services would be to conserve biodiversity. In

doing so, we increase the chance of maintaining our ecosystem services in the event of future

impacts such as disease, invasive species and of course, climate change. This is the

international year of biodiversity a time to recognize that biodiversity makes our survival

on this planet possible and that our protection of biodiversity maintains this service.

Global warming will cause a massive increase in famine.

Reuters 05[May 27, Climate change likely to increase famine: FAO,http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1378213.htm]

Global warming is likely to significantly diminish food production in many countries andgreatly increase the number of hungry people , the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says. The FAO says in a report that fooddistribution systems and their infrastructure would be disrupted and that the severest impact would likely be in sub-Saharan African countries. "There is strong evidence that

global climate is changing and that the social and economic costs of slowing down globalwarming and of responding to its impacts will be considerable," the report said. Many scientists fear risingtemperatures, blamed mainly on heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, will melt ice caps, raise sea levels by almost a metre by the end of this century and bring more floods,

droughts and storms. Global warming would increase the amount of land classified as being eitherarid or insufficiently moist in the developing world. In Africa the amount of this type of harsh land could increase by as much as 90million hectares by 2008, an area nearly four times the size of Bri tain. Changes in temperature and rainfall as well as an increase in the number of so-called "extreme weather events"such as floods will bring with them potentially devastating effects. The world suffered 600 floods in the past two-and-a-half years, which claimed the l ives of about 19,000 people and

caused $US25 billion in damages. That excludes December's devastating tsunami in south-east Asia that killed more than 180,000. FAO says scientific studies show that

globalwarming would lead to an 11 per cent decrease in rain-fed land in developing countriesand in turn a serious decline in cereal production. "Sixty-five developing countries,representing more than half of the developing world's total population in 1995, will loseabout 280 million tons of potential cereal production as a result of climate change," FAO said.The effect of climate change on agriculture could increase the number of people at risk ofhunger, particularly in countries already saddled with low economic growth and highmalnourishment levels. "In some 40 poor, developing countries, with a combined

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population of 2 billion... production losses due to climate change may drastically increasethe number of undernourished people, severely hindering progress in combating povertyand food insecurity," the report said.

Famine must be rejected and outweighs extinction.

Watson 77[Richard, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, World Hunger andMoral Obligation, p. 118-9]One may even have to sacrifice ones life or ones nation to be moral in situations wherepractical behavior would preserve it.For example, if a prisoner of war undergoing torture is to be a (perhaps dead) patriot evenwhen reason tells him that collaboration will hurt no one, he remains silent. Similarly, if one is to be moral, one distributesavailable food in equal shares even if everyone dies. That an action is necessary to saveones life is no excuse for behaving unpatriotically or immorally if one wishes to be apatriot or moral. No principle of morality absolves one of behaving immorally simply tosave ones life or nation. There is a strict analogy here between adhering to moral principles for the sake of being moral, and adhering toChristian principles for the sake of being Christian. The moral world contains pits and lions, but one looks always to the highest light. The ultimate

test always harks back to the highest principle recant or die. The ultimate test alwaysharks back to the highest principle recant or die and it is pathetic to profess morality ifone quits when the going gets rough.

Warming kills phytoplanktonExtinction

Ward, 10 (Peter, PhD, professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences at the University

of Washington, paleontologist and NASA astrobiologist, Fellow at the California Academy ofSciences, The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps, June 29, 2010)First, the world warms over short intervals due to a sudden increase in carbon dioxideand methane, caused

initially by the formation of vast volcanic provinces called flood basalts. The warmer world affects the ocean circulation systems and

disrupts the position of the conveyor currents. Bottom waters begin to have warm, low-oxygen water dumped into them. The warming continues, and the decrease of equator-to-

pole temperature differences brings ocean winds and surface currents to a near standstill. The

mixing of oxygenated surface waters with the deeper and volumetrically increasing low-oxygen bottom waters lessens, causing ever-shallower water to change from oxygenated to anoxic. Finally, the

bottom water exists in depths where light can penetrate, and the combination of low oxygen

and light allows green sulfur bacteria to expand in numbers, filling the low-oxygen shallows.

The bacteria produce toxic amounts of H2S, with the flux of this gas into the atmosphere

occurring at as much as 2,000 times todays rates. The gas rises into the high atmosphere,

where it breaks down the ozone layer. The subsequent increase in ultraviolet radiation from

the sun kills much of the photosynthetic green plant phytoplankton. On its way up into the sky, the hydrogen

sulfide also kills some plant and animal life, and the combination of high heat and hydrogen

sulfide creates a mass extinction on land .9 Could this happen again? No, says one of the experts who write the RealClimate.org Web site, Ga vin Schmidt, who, it turnsout, works under Jim Hansen at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington, DC. I disagreed and challenged him to an online debate. He refused, saying that the environmental situation is going to be bad

enough without resorting to creating a scenario for mass extinction. But special pleading has no place in science. Could it be that global warming could lead to theextinction of humanity? That prospect cannot be discounted. To pursue this question, let us look at what might be the most crucial of all systems maintaining habitability on PlanetEarth: the thermohaline current systems, sometimes called the conveyor c urrents.