Avgas Where is the ceiling?

In article ,
"Juan Jimenez" wrote:

you're not seriously arguing that the US is solely responsible for
kicking
the Nazis out of France, are you? that's a shameless example of wearing
blinders when reading history.

I'm seriously saying it wouldn't have happend without us.

No, it _might_ not have happened.

I'd take those odds. Way way way more likely for it not to have
happened without us. Only an idiot would dismiss the US
contribution.


[snip]
It's
not appropriate in any way, shape or form to make these arrogant statements.

and your statements *are* appropriate?

geeez.

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

No, it _might_ not have happened. We will never know, won't we.

If you think the French would have been able to drive the Germans out
of France w/o the U.S. you have a very odd understanding of history.

-Robert

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:22:55 -0700, "Matt Barrow"
wrote:


"David Dyer-Bennet" wrote in message
...
"Matt Barrow" writes:

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
On 2006-04-24, Roger wrote:
both with the latter being the most likely. I think though that the
bio fuels will probably outdo the Hydrogen overall in the big
picture.. It's easier to increase trucking incrementally than it is to
increase the power grid.

I think a lot of the hydrogen advocates are missing the massive change
to infrastructure needed - we would need:

- new cars

Average turnover is five years.

Maybe, but those 5-year-old cars aren't junked, they're bought and
driven for another 5 years by less wealthy people.

Most of them are around for another 10 to 15 years as either a second
car, a beater to drive to work, or driven by, as you say, the less
wealthy/fortunate.


Yes...so? The point is for the majority of vehicles, not a complete purging
of the inventory.


It may depend on where you go, but I'd guess that in this region,
Michigan which is the home of the US auto industry, that well more
than half the cars on the road are quite a bit older than 5 years. My
fore-runner is a 99.

Near as I have been able to pin it down the current average is some
where between 5 and 10 years which means even the experts aren't sure
as that's a pretty wide bracket of 2:1

People are keeping cars much longer than they did just a decade ago
and that was longer than the decade before that.

40 years ago we considered a car with 60,000 miles on it to be ready
for the junk yard. Now 60 to 90,000 is common. My wife's old
mini-mini van has almost 200,000 and it's still going strong and gets
around 34 MPG although for most of it's live it was just a tad under
40 MPG,. Now it goes through oil pretty fast, but it leaks out
instead of getting by the rings. It doesn't smoke a bit.

I used to trade often. I'd have saved a small fortune and I'd be rich
if I'd learned to drive them till the wheels fell off.

Although the average turnover was 5 years, I'd think it's a lot longer
than that now. Even in that case I think turn over is the wrong term.
At one time people did purchase a new car on average every five years,
but the old ones did not leave the roads.





- new filling stations

Like when we went to unleaded from Regular and "Hi Test"?

No; hydrogen gas takes very different handling than gasoline, whereas
leaded gas could go through the same pumps just fine (we decided to
make them change the nozzles to prevent mistakes that would ruin the
catalytic converters).

Wanna guess how many filling stations add that capability (especially when
it becomes pretty much mandatory) versus how many are built from scratch?

Some one is going to have to provide the money and most of the
stations, or even chains aren't going to be able to come up with that
kind of cash. To install a cryogenic storage and pumping facility is
no small chore. It will be the end of the "pump it yourself" era. No
one in their right mind would trust the average driver to fill a tank
with liquid H2. OTOH it can be stored in Metal Hydrides (better known
as metal sponges) for use, but it does not come off at a high rate.
That would take some form of heating and it'd be a gas fill under
pressure. The pressure would come from heating the Metal Hydride.

There are a lot of safety regulations pertaining to the storage and
use of liquid, or even high pressure N2. If purchasing it from a
station rather than the small generating stations mentioned earlier
it's going to be *expensive* due to all the safety precautions and
extra people required, let alone the investment in materials.

- new transport
- new ways of storage (I'm sure keeping hydrogen as a cryogenic liquid
is just not gonna work for everyday cars and trucks)

As I said, Metal Hydrides. They actually hold more H2 by volume than
they take up. In a wreck that ruptures the tank the H2 is given off
slowly. But again the Metal Hydrides in that quantity are very
*expensive*.


Like when we went from coal to whale oil to petro-based oils...?

Whale oil was never had a large nitch in the market. I think It was
briefly used in the early 1900's. Prior to that is was used a lot when
ships were made from trees.


I don't think whale oil replaced coal for much of anything.

Wow! Trivia pursuit champion.

Now try "Innovation Therapy".

Oh, hell...keep your high gas prices and stunted economies heading for the
trash bin...

We in the US don't have high gas prices. We've just been spoiled by
having "cheap" gas for so many years. According to the economists
consumer confidence is high, and the stock market is in good shape (if
you don't have the same stocks I have). However one more hurricane
season with results any where near last year's and that is subject to
change.

BTW, the difference between our prices and the much higher prices in
many countries does not even out through hidden taxes. Here the
average person pays less than a 1/3 of their income into taxes of one
form or another while in Europe "as I recall" it's over 50%. So not
only is the cost of gas much cheaper, taxes are less, and so is the
cost of living on average.

BTW, last week I paid $2.97 for car gas and $3.05 for 100 LL.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 10:57:07 -0600, "Jon Woellhaf"
wrote:

"Roger" wrote

... for hydrogen
you are limited to the distribution system that has yet to be
implemented except on a small scale. Electricity is easier to
transport and the electric farm you list below is one whale of a good
start. Unfortunately our power grid is only capable of *almost*
meeting peak demands. Cars user far more energy so that would mean
either trucking vast amounts of Hydrogen, increasing the size of our
electric grid several fold over what we have now, or a combination of
both with the latter being the most likely ...

Why transport the hydrogen? Just produce it electrolytically at every gas
station.

And most of the country is going to get the electricity to do this
from where? Certainly not from photovoltaic cells That works on small
scale and in areas where there is lots of sunlight.

it takes a lot of energy to create H2 and you get back less than you
put in. Now, each day, make enough to fill a few thousand cars with
enough to drive a few hundred miles.

If stations had to build photovoltaic cells large enough to do this we
certainly are using very cheap gas at present by comparison. As far
as the electric grid we have no where near the capacity to generate
enough H2 to fuel more than a small percent of the cars on the road.
In that case we'd be better off just building long range electric
cars. It'd be more efficient but then we come to the size, weight,
and number of batteries, not to mention handling the waste and worn
out batteries which could turn out to be an even larger problem than
we have now.

Cars are our largest energy user.
We could *probably* switch over to biofuels far easier than H2.
The only problem I see with Biodeisel is up here in the "cold country"
where the stuff either gels or solidifies. Additives raise the price
as does keeping it warm, but to me it looks like one of the best bets.
But the question does arise as to how much of the stuff we can make
economically.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 02:40:55 -0500, "Montblack"
wrote:

("Roger" wrote)
BTW There was a good program on tonight that started out showing some old
photos of glaciers and then faded to the present view from the same
location. Now that was eye opening!


I think that's happened three or four times in the past 15,000 years. On the
flip side, some early Middle Ages tapestries depict 'the year there was no
summer' in meticulous detail. That particular Mini Ice Age destroyed the
once thriving English wine making industry - for example.

My question is always:
If not for Global Warming (capitalized because it's now a religion)
...wouldn't we be locked in one of Earth's many Ice Ages, still?

There is a problem with the figures though. Research is showing that
the CO2 llevels are far higher than they have been during any warm
periods they can measure. I believe it is almost double what it
should be for a peak and it's the highest they've measured going back
nearly a half million years. They are coming up with some pretty
concrete figures as far as the excess CO2 and correlating it with the
temperature rise.



I believe 95% of GW is the Sun, and the Earth's tilt/wobble, and the ocean's
salinity/density/fresh water cycles, and the planet's solid iron core

The salinity/fresh water cycles are tied to the temperature.

flipping polarity, etc, etc, etc. But yes, I do think we need to work on our
5%.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


Montblack
Setting rivers on fire ain't nothing...

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 05:30:14 -0400, Bob Noel
wrote:

In article ,
Roger wrote:

Although that is the politically correct term there is no such thing
as Native Americans. Those called that merely got here before we did
although that does nothing to the fact that we took the land away from
them by armed force.

But who is this "we"? I'm part Sioux. Does this mean I took land away
from myself?

Hmmmm... I guess that means you are partly guilty.

Did you ever see the episode in the Original Star Trek (OST) where the
two black and white aliens are fighting?

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

In article ,
Roger wrote:

But who is this "we"? I'm part Sioux. Does this mean I took land away
from myself?

Hmmmm... I guess that means you are partly guilty.

why? I didn't take any land.


Did you ever see the episode in the Original Star Trek (OST) where the
two black and white aliens are fighting?

yep. Not applicable.

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

"Roger" wrote in message
...

Most of them are around for another 10 to 15 years as either a second
car, a beater to drive to work, or driven by, as you say, the less
wealthy/fortunate.


Yes...so? The point is for the majority of vehicles, not a complete
purging
of the inventory.


It may depend on where you go, but I'd guess that in this region,
Michigan which is the home of the US auto industry, that well more
than half the cars on the road are quite a bit older than 5 years. My
fore-runner is a 99.

FWIH, the number of cars is growing, so the auto makers expect to turnover
their buyers every five years. Older ones are lasting longer as well, but
average age is still a lot less than for aircraft. IIRC, average age is
seven years but that may be lengthening due to the slow market the auto
industry has had these past few years.

"Roger" wrote in message
...
My question is always:
If not for Global Warming (capitalized because it's now a religion)
...wouldn't we be locked in one of Earth's many Ice Ages, still?

There is a problem with the figures though. Research is showing that
the CO2 llevels are far higher than they have been during any warm
periods they can measure. I believe it is almost double what it
should be for a peak and it's the highest they've measured going back
nearly a half million years. They are coming up with some pretty
concrete figures as far as the excess CO2 and correlating it with the
temperature rise.

Professor Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology,
Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, would be surprised
to hear that.

http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm (Page down to publications)

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 02:10:21 -0400, Roger
wrote:

snip

Near as I have been able to pin it down the current average is some
where between 5 and 10 years which means even the experts aren't sure
as that's a pretty wide bracket of 2:1

People are keeping cars much longer than they did just a decade ago
and that was longer than the decade before that.

40 years ago we considered a car with 60,000 miles on it to be ready
for the junk yard. Now 60 to 90,000 is common. My wife's old
mini-mini van has almost 200,000 and it's still going strong and gets
around 34 MPG although for most of it's live it was just a tad under
40 MPG,. Now it goes through oil pretty fast, but it leaks out
instead of getting by the rings. It doesn't smoke a bit.

I used to trade often. I'd have saved a small fortune and I'd be rich
if I'd learned to drive them till the wheels fell off.

Although the average turnover was 5 years, I'd think it's a lot longer
than that now. Even in that case I think turn over is the wrong term.
At one time people did purchase a new car on average every five years,
but the old ones did not leave the roads.

I must be bringing up the "bottom end" of the scale for the
average... grins

I've never purchased a new car (started driving in 1979).

My newest automobile is an '81 model.

My daily driver is a '74 model.

Haven't had to make a car payment in 20+ years.

I do tend to "drive the wheels off of them" (parked one with frame rot
that was still running strong with 235,000 miles on it).

Bela P. Havasreti