Newtonian traffic safety
Catching up on some reading, I just came across your proposal (OGJ, Jan, 5, 2004, p. 15) to base traffic penalties on vehicle weight. It is an intriguing and certainly novel approach. It would be interesting to combine your approach with Finland's, where I understand speeding penalties are adjusted according to one's income, so that multimillionaires pay significantly higher penalties for speeding to give them the same incentive not to speed as others. Difficult to implement, and probably impossible politically in America, but worth exploring.
Steve Bain
Welborn Sullivan Meck & Tooley P.C.
Denver
Traffic fines
I loved your editorial in OGJ (Jan. 5, 2004, p. 15). Newtonian traffic fines is an excellent idea. Texas used to have auto registration based on weight (rather than ad valorem) presumably as weight would be proportional to highway wear.
I used to feel guilty driving our Suburban in Houston, and so we drove the Civic, unless we needed more than five seatbelts for carting around our daughters' friends. But sometimes it feels good to have a lot of steel around you. We recently saw a vision of our mortality when a shiny new red Humvee pulled up and several teenagers in backward ball caps piled out.
A couple of years ago, I saw an automobile show on PBS [television] where a Suburban had been fitted out with dual-fuel (gasoline and CNG). These SU vehicles with a bit of extra space for pressured fuel tanks might be a good place for nonfleet CNG fuel inititive, moderating the gas hog impact. (My latest Suburban mileage is 3 miles/liter.)
Jim Tucker
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Ethanol 101
Jeannie M. Stell's column on ethanol was very informative (OGJ, Jan. 12, 2004, p. 15). I can't say how efficient making ethanol from corn is, but if the government wouldn't subsidize its distilling, the ethanol plant described in that column would not be built. Nor would any of the plants that are distilling ethanol today be running tomorrow.
Deep in China during WW II we could only get high octane gasoline for our P-51s. For vehicle fuel it was mixed with locally purchased, 190 proof alcohol, 50:50. It was ethanol, except I'm not sure what they made it from.
In our outfit was one of those Tennessee bootleggers who was knowledgable about "corn squeezing." On a midnight requisition the trucks and jeeps were raided for fuel, the ethanol plant was fired up, and the 530th Fighter Squadron had alcohol that was purer than when it was mixed with 130 octane gasoline.
Toby Elster
Consulting Geologist
Wichita, Kan
Global warming
In your editorial (OGJ, Jan. 26, 2004, p. 17) was a comical but serious statement about Al Gore's apocalyptic global warming position. Junk science leads to junk politics.
In my 80th year, I am concerned about the many problems my children and grandchildren will face. Global warming isn't one of them, in my opinion.
The future limited capacity of our industry to meet the world's increasing demand for crude oil is one of them.
Wayne E. Swearingen
Swearingen Petroleum Management Inc.
Tulsa
More on ethanol and the environment
I'd like to respond to the letter criticizing my argument that ethanol's negative net energy balance means very little (OGJ, Feb. 2, 2004, p. 10). The author then discusses ethanol production's adverse environmental consequences in some detail. Actually, I thought I'd argued that the use of energy balances without further analysis means very little, that energy balance analysis is but one tool of many needed to make logical decisions. Looking in detail at environmental consequences, as the author does, is precisely what is needed here. The fact that it takes lots of energy to make ethanol is not enough, by itself, to condemn it. For example, if we decide, at some time in the future, to use our plentiful coal supplies to make liquid fuels or hydrogen, a net energy analysis is not likely to make this decision look especially pretty...but the basis for the decision must rest instead on how well we can deal with the environmental consequences of mining and transforming the coal, and what the entire process costs. The net energy analysis will help us to measure these factors, but a negative energy balance shouldn't be used as the deciding factor.
Steven Plotkin
Argonne National Laboratory
Global warming hypothesis
The article titled "Energy development and climate change: considerations in Asia and Latin America" promotes the global warming hypothesis as tenable rather than a factual myth (OGJ, Feb. 2, 2004, p. 18).
The earth's temperature as measured from space has in fact decreased even though carbon dioxide levels have increased. Earth's warming or cooling is tied to solar activity, not carbon dioxide.
Developing countries badly need hydrocarbons to bring them above their current poverty level. Increased CO2 promotes an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals.
I suggest you request a factual article from either Arthur or Zachary Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine or Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of the University of Virginia, who has authored seven books on this topic.
Our industry deserves the truth.
James E. Armstrong
Crosby, Tex.