KLC,

I don't like the thought of spills either, but three Canadian companies
have a total of 450+ wells for both oil and natural gas in Lake Erie
alone. They seem to manage just fine (with gear and technology from
American suppliers).

Recently, I was told by someone that has studied these problems for many
years that most of the oil on Lake Erie comes from untrapped storm
drains. The last big one was the Rouge River about three years ago.

We have the opportunity to correct a lot of problems if we pick the real
ones instead of the "politically correct" ones.

This has been my problem with the "evironmental movement" since they
forced cars to get much reduced fuel economy in favor of maginally
reduced tailpipe emissions. Remember the early cat cars of the mid
seventies?

Matt


KLC Lewis wrote:
"Matt Colie" wrote in message
...

Why do they make noise about dependence on foreign oil and not let anybody
go get what we have. (Canada has wells in most of the great lakes - we
aren't allowed to, Cuba will soon be using Chinese investment to drill
under the Florida straight - we can't do that either.)

Matt Colie - environmentally conscious but educated and realistic




I'm all for energy-independence, but I cannot believe that oil wells on our
Great Lakes would be a good idea. Oil spills from rigs on the oceans are bad
enough -- but similar spills on the Lakes would be disasterous.

Exactly. You can't force technology faster just to meet an arbitrary goal
dreamed up by a beaurocrat.
And the sick thing about it is that whoever dreamed up those regs goes to
bed thinking "I saved the world again today".

"Matt Colie" wrote in message
...

This has been my problem with the "evironmental movement" since they
forced cars to get much reduced fuel economy in favor of maginally reduced
tailpipe emissions. Remember the early cat cars of the mid seventies?

Matt

Garland Gray II wrote:
Exactly. You can't force technology faster just to meet an arbitrary goal
dreamed up by a beaurocrat.
And the sick thing about it is that whoever dreamed up those regs goes to
bed thinking "I saved the world again today".



Well regardless, the technology caught up and cars get roughly double
the fuel economy as they got in the 70s, have much cleaner emissions,
and many are far more powerful too.

"James Sweet" wrote in message
news:ah1bh.10103$7a2.1829@trndny06...
Garland Gray II wrote:
Exactly. You can't force technology faster just to meet an arbitrary goal
dreamed up by a beaurocrat.
And the sick thing about it is that whoever dreamed up those regs goes to
bed thinking "I saved the world again today".


Well regardless, the technology caught up and cars get roughly double the
fuel economy as they got in the 70s, have much cleaner emissions, and many
are far more powerful too.

The more economy is mostly from smaller cars. My 1964 300 hp 327 Impala SS
got about 16.5 mpg on average. City and highway. My slightly heavier, way
more technology 1999 Expedition got 14.5 mpg average. But MTBE cost about
10% milage, while reducing air pollution about 6%. Not a large combined
number. while at the same time, causing mass ground water pollution.

That's my point. It was misguided --inefficient-- to force manufacturers to
meet standards before the technology was developed. And I don't think for a
moment that the stiff initial regs caused the technology to be developed any
sooner.
Furthermore, it was counterproductive to prevent (which the feds did) the
major car makers from pooling their resources to develop this technology.
Anti trust laws, you know.

"James Sweet" wrote in message
news:ah1bh.10103$7a2.1829@trndny06...



Well regardless, the technology caught up and cars get roughly double the
fuel economy as they got in the 70s, have much cleaner emissions, and many
are far more powerful too.

Matt:

I'm too young to remember the seventies. Can you point me towards a
link that explains what you're talking about, with regards to reduced
fuel efficiency in cars for marginally better results at the tailpipe?
Sounds interesting.

Thanks

-Maxime Camirand


Matt Colie wrote:
KLC,

I don't like the thought of spills either, but three Canadian companies
have a total of 450+ wells for both oil and natural gas in Lake Erie
alone. They seem to manage just fine (with gear and technology from
American suppliers).

Recently, I was told by someone that has studied these problems for many
years that most of the oil on Lake Erie comes from untrapped storm
drains. The last big one was the Rouge River about three years ago.

We have the opportunity to correct a lot of problems if we pick the real
ones instead of the "politically correct" ones.

This has been my problem with the "evironmental movement" since they
forced cars to get much reduced fuel economy in favor of maginally
reduced tailpipe emissions. Remember the early cat cars of the mid
seventies?

Matt


KLC Lewis wrote:
"Matt Colie" wrote in message
...

Why do they make noise about dependence on foreign oil and not let anybody
go get what we have. (Canada has wells in most of the great lakes - we
aren't allowed to, Cuba will soon be using Chinese investment to drill
under the Florida straight - we can't do that either.)

Matt Colie - environmentally conscious but educated and realistic




I'm all for energy-independence, but I cannot believe that oil wells on our
Great Lakes would be a good idea. Oil spills from rigs on the oceans are bad
enough -- but similar spills on the Lakes would be disasterous.

max camirand wrote:
Matt:

I'm too young to remember the seventies. Can you point me towards a
link that explains what you're talking about, with regards to reduced
fuel efficiency in cars for marginally better results at the tailpipe?
Sounds interesting.

Thanks

-Maxime Camirand


Remember the seventies??
With tacky polyester clothing, platform shoes, God awful big hunk of
s*it cars and disco.... who'd want to remember.
Now the 60's...that was a time to remember!

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:24:02 +0000, Don White wrote:

Remember the seventies??
evilunclean disco.... /evil/unclean
shudder....

On 28 Nov 2006 13:08:05 -0800, in message
om
"max camirand" wrote:

Matt:

I'm too young to remember the seventies. Can you point me towards a
link that explains what you're talking about, with regards to reduced
fuel efficiency in cars for marginally better results at the tailpipe?
Sounds interesting.

In the sixties cars ran at fairly high compression ratios thanks to
high octane gasoline spiked with tetra ethyl lead. Lead poisoning was
an issue and the higher temperatures produced at high compression
ratios lead to more oxides of nitrogen in the exhaust, a major
contributor to the photo-chemical smog that plagued Los Angeles and
other places. High compression engines are inherently more efficient
due to the thermodynamics involved.

Besides being dangerous, lead poisons the catalyst in catalytic
converters, so there was a triple whammy when it was removed, lower
octane because other additives had not been fully developed, thus
lower compression, lower compression still to cut NOx, and
inefficiently designed catalytic converter systems. Then came the oil
embargo that drove the price of gas up high enough that North
Americans had to care. The results were much better for smog in Los
Angeles, but there was strong sentiment that everybody was paying a
price that didn't make much difference in most locations.

Given time, automotive engineers and fuel specialists have advanced
the state of the art and current vehicles are both more efficient and
much cleaner than those of the 60s, but it took time to figure it out,
and not much attention was given to the problem until government
regulations required it. The result was a few years of absolutely
dismal fuel economy in the seventies.

Ryk

Max,
As much as I would like to do just that, those files got dumped
(litterally) two moves ago.

In a nut shell, the automotive industry was working very hard to clean
up its act starting in the sixties because new EPA regulations and clear
data. We were actually making very nice progress both in tailpipe and
fuel economy, but then came the election of '72. Senator Muskie decided
to make a name for himself, so he ramrodded regulations through that
reduced the exiting standards for allowable emissions by 90%. This was
a real problem because we were on a track to reduce the fleet emissions
by 80% from the unregulated in five years. This cut the time table by
three years and made the new target a 98% reduction.

This left us with two difficulties:
There was no current technology to do this reliably.
There were no instruments available that could even confirm that were we
meeting these new standards.

Catalyst development went into high gear. The original systems were so
valuable that when a milage accumulation vehicle was damaged at that the
proving ground we did not dare risk moving it back to the garage, we
rolled it over in place and the technicians removed the exhaust system.
The exhaust system went back to the garage on a flat bed and they
rolled the now totaled test vehicle up and hauled it back with a wrecker.

Beckman was the first company to come up with instruments the could
measure these things and the Horiba was slitghly later, but nobody's was
reliable and calibration was a crap-shoot.

It was discovered that the catalyst did not like exhaust from an engine
running a stoichiometric (ideal) air/fuel (something we had been
working toward for years now), but rather favored and engine that ran
badly such that the mixture varied from rich to lean so the cat got a
shot of HC then a shot of O2 to keep the fire going. It was clean after
the catalyst (for about 50k when it went down the tube), but a car that
used
to run in the high 20's was now lucky to get to 20. The engines that
had been historically good, now ran like so much crap. This was
essentialy the end of the good running engine until the computer
controlled port fuel systems came on line.

That was only compounded by the elimination of lead (not a bad thing
IMHO). The lead had to be eliminated from the refineries altogether
because any lead would contaminate the cat (and later the O2 sensor).
This lead reduced the cylinder flame temperature and also lubricated the
exhaust valve seats. Without it, exhaust valves became a warranty
nightmare (so the big three shortened the warranty).

Big cars faired better than the smaller because they could give away
more engine performance the meet the tailpipe.

The came the oil embargo of '74. . . .

I hope you enjoyed my recount.

Matt


max camirand wrote:
Matt:

I'm too young to remember the seventies. Can you point me towards a
link that explains what you're talking about, with regards to reduced
fuel efficiency in cars for marginally better results at the tailpipe?
Sounds interesting.

Thanks

-Maxime Camirand


Matt Colie wrote:

KLC,

I don't like the thought of spills either, but three Canadian companies
have a total of 450+ wells for both oil and natural gas in Lake Erie
alone. They seem to manage just fine (with gear and technology from
American suppliers).

Recently, I was told by someone that has studied these problems for many
years that most of the oil on Lake Erie comes from untrapped storm
drains. The last big one was the Rouge River about three years ago.

We have the opportunity to correct a lot of problems if we pick the real
ones instead of the "politically correct" ones.

This has been my problem with the "evironmental movement" since they
forced cars to get much reduced fuel economy in favor of maginally
reduced tailpipe emissions. Remember the early cat cars of the mid
seventies?

Matt


KLC Lewis wrote:

"Matt Colie" wrote in message
...


Why do they make noise about dependence on foreign oil and not let anybody
go get what we have. (Canada has wells in most of the great lakes - we
aren't allowed to, Cuba will soon be using Chinese investment to drill
under the Florida straight - we can't do that either.)

Matt Colie - environmentally conscious but educated and realistic




I'm all for energy-independence, but I cannot believe that oil wells on our
Great Lakes would be a good idea. Oil spills from rigs on the oceans are bad
enough -- but similar spills on the Lakes would be disasterous.