http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... 53775746/1Hillhater wrote:Dauntless wrote:. I've had shuttles stop to fill up with LPG, that's not quick.
when i have done it , .it takes no longer than filling up with petrol
Gee, I wonder how much less they've been putting into yours than they were putting into mine.
Hillhater wrote:Dauntless wrote:The truth being, natural gas is hardly convenient, not that safe, therefore not anyone's choice.
Again, where i am, NG is piped via a national distribution network every where, to 90% of domestic houses.
Its actually safer than gasoline ( air dispersal ), we cook with it, heat our homes, .. so why not a logical choice to drive on it ?
Cost into the tank is ( apparently) around $1.50 gge from retail pumps ........ if you dont want the convenience of at home refueling.
I don't understand, you're AGREEING with me? You sure didn't offer anything that refutes a thing I said. Of course you couldn't if you did try. Where I am if the natural gas that is piped to probably well over 90% of the homes is shut off, you get to wait a few weeks for the gas company to do a complete inspection of your pipes before they allow it back on. It's considered dangerous, not safe. I remember when my friend was safely cooking at his stove with the leak that suddenly made itself known. Just because he and his son didn't get hurt didn't mean it was perfectly safe. I finally had to go wait at his house while he was at work to let the gas company in so he could have it back on. Good thing his only vehicle wasn't natural gas, eh? (I've always noticed that a person who rolls his eyes turns out to ALREADY KNOW he's wrong.)
I remember when the Northridge Earthquake left a number of streets in flames because the gas leaks had caught fire. You know what they nickname such a fire, worldwide. The gates of hell. The name has been given to a number of locations with a fire as much as a half century old, even the ocean can have the surface turn into a wall of flame from natural gas. (These are all unstoppable natural gas fires.) I remember when they found the gas leak in my front yard. I'd never smelled it, but then neither did my friend when he was inside the house. They wouldn't have had to be burned, they'd have just had to have passed out from the gas that supposedly has something added for them to smell. Picture a car, smaller space, maybe less drafty than that 80 year old house. . . .
Better yet, picture the facility with the perpetual spray of water to protect it from a perpetual flame.
Don't let me keep you from feeling "Safe," even if Safe WAS banned from this community more than 3 years ago. Instead let me get you thinking about how none of this is any good until it WORKS. In the film 'Das Boot' the desperate U-Boat commander decides to try to use the darkness to sail through the English Channel on the surface, hoping the British would assume it must be one of their own since he'd NEVER be so audacious as to try that. Once the crippled sub lay helpless on the bottom, a way too kewl crewman remarks something to the effect, 'It was a good PLAN, but we needed one that WORKED.'
In the late 1970's, they added 10% methanol to gasoline, touting it as cleaner burning, cheaper, a win-win situation. Christmastime I was at the home of my cousin, who was quite sold on the stuff. Her eyes popped out of her head when the newsstory came on TV about the elastomeric parts in the carburetor swelling and degrading quickly after exposure to methanol. The disabled car they showed as an illustration was identical to hers. She dashed off to the gas station to dilute what was in her tank with pure gas, but it was too late. In a few months her new car was on the tow hook.
No amount of fantasizing and refusing to accept the risks makes them go away. 'Chaos Theory' reflects on the effect of SEEMINGLY random data. That just means we didn't know it was important. YET. But there's a lot of people who already know a lot of drawbacks to NG vehicles, they were coming forward in 2008 when T. Boone Pickens was pushing for the state governments to subsidize making all that natural gas he'd bought up more profitable. I had mixed feelings, after all I got one of my monthly natural gas checks just Monday. It was 1/80th of what it used to be at the time Pickens was carrying on and being interviewed by '60 Minutes.' (Mine is supposed to be UNFRACKED, but I mostly shy away from that argument because people might think I have an ulterior motive.) Imagine if Pickens had succeeded at keeping the price up. But I'm not so self centered I'd want that at the expense of Pickens' BAD plan being put into action. (Kind of reminds of Emperor Norton I trying to corner the market on rice in San Francisco 155 years before that, eh?) Mainstream natural gas cars are a dead end in a number of ways, but they could be a modest success operated by fleets.
But after all the scary revelations about natural gas not being a fire retardant afterall, let me leave you with a more cheery thought. Norton lost his large fortune on his rice speculation and was ordered homeless by the State Supreme Court, when he reemerged as the one and only Emperor of the United States. Yes, listed officially in the census as his occupation, although it said he was not allowed to vote because he was "Insane."
Yet 3 front-center seats were saved for him on opening night of every major show, (Two dogs accompanied him) he ate for free in every restaurant, was an honored guest at the visit of any visiting dignitary, including the Queen of England. And he'd show up wearing a uniform provided for him by the City of San Francisco. If you ever find any of his money he'd issued himself, perhaps in some old chest that hasn't been touched in over 100 years, then you may have a small fortune on your hands, it's collectable and in demand. (It's assumed that most of them were destroyed by whomever he gave them to at the time, what a loss.) When a fire wagon accidently ran over his dog Lazarus, every fire company accepted a collective blame as a day of mourning took place. No wonder Mark Twain wrote his eulogy. A lot of people don't realize that particular work wasn't fiction.
I've never been able to learn if that liquor company that wound up with the body of Lazurus after he was stuffed ever used it as any sort of corporate symbol or not. My own publishing on the subject of this particular Emperor was nowhere near as famous as Mark Twain's, but damn, I LOVE THIS GUY. So who am I to insist that you give up the refusal to face reality? I mean, it worked for Joshua Norton for 21 years. I'm just saying I never expect that to work for me. As my Dad used to say, 'Most good judgement comes from BAD EXPERIENCE.' I've had enough of that bad experience that I always try to keep the good judgement working for me. I'm certainly not going to back the widespread use of a technology that has nothing but wishful thinking to support it. But hey, whatever works for you.
http://www.molossia.org/nrton.html
