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MM/Chilean Miners, try this on for size. If you seek to persuade by using data, you should make it relevant data instead of cherry-picking an irrelevant blip that you think makes your case. To use the broad BLS Support for Mining category as evidence that an Antofagasta mine would be good for the Ely area continues the pattern of your either willfully attempting to mislead or failing to understand facts and/or your own statements. This is what the article you link to says about the Support for Mining category; I'm capitalizing relevant parts that you seem to have overlooked: "Support Activities for Mining is a subset of the larger Mining and Logging industry. EMPLOYEES IN THIS FIELD GENERALLY PROVIDE SUPPORT SERVICES (on a contract or fee basis) for the mining and quarrying of minerals, and FOR THE EXTRACTION OF OIL AND GAS." Support Activities for Mining as defined above supposedly added 52,500 new jobs since August 2016. See this article from CNN Money, which shows that it's highly likely that all those jobs are in oil and gas: http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/oil-jobs-worker-shortage/index.html. Antofagasta won't be drilling for oil and gas on the South Kawishiwi. Further, the "growth" that you want me to "try on for size" followed a crash in 2015 when "Mining and Logging" lost 131,000 jobs. And the mining industry knows that it will continue to increase automation and shed jobs. A recent mining industry report by international engineering firm ABB Group says this (https://library.e.abb.com/public/5d588609dd1842de95c7f7312dbd24fe/Next_Level_Mining_White_%20paper.pdf):

"The vision is one where, in the future, mines will have

equipment closer to and people further from the processes.

Technology, machinery and robotic automation will be doing

the routine and repetitious jobs, while personnel attend to

more strategic tasks. Taking people away from the process will reduce cost,

increase productivity and enhance safety by enabling

remote monitoring, diagnostics and interventions. It will see

a skeleton on-site workforce collaborating with external

specialists and supervisory staff based in remote operations

centers." Skeleton on-site workforce--do you understand what that means? It means engineers will be sitting in front of computer screens in a metropolitan area operating the mine. Goodbye, Ely.

This is no surprise to anyone who reads, listens, and understands. It takes only 1/3 as many people to mine copper--or taconite--as it did 50 years ago. The number of miners on the Range mirrors that--I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but about 15,000-16,000 people were Range miners in 1979-1980 and now it's around 5,000, give or take. Let me restate for you in a different way the population numbers that I posted in an earlier message. From 1980 to 2014, the total population of the five towns in the heart of Minnesota's taconite industry--towns surrounded by or close to operating (most of the time) taconite mines and plants--declined from 28,883 to 22,053, or slightly over 23.6%. Each of the five towns lost population in double digit percentage numbers. Your resort to the hoary ploy of accusing me of the things that in fact characterize your posts, and your willful failure to acknowledge the multiple inaccuracies in your prior posts after they are pointed out to you, simply confirm that your support for sulfide-ore mining in the watershed of the Boundary Waters is devoid of any rational basis. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.