Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much? - Page 8

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

In article <8b4b7de4.0408090134.1e821227@posting.google.com>, Chalo wrote:
> "Jack May" <jack.may@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> The car puts out CO2 even if it were to put out zero pollution.
>
> But it doesn't put out zero pollution; it pumps out plenty of carbon
> monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and micron-sized
> particles. Run your car in a closed garage and it's not CO2 that will
> kill you. Live out your days in a traffic-plagued city and it's not
> CO2 that will give you cancer.

Cleaner than the power plant that charges your electric car.

> It won't wash. The cars are robbing us of our individual health as
> well as our collective quality of life. "Cleaner cars" are like
> duller knives; they take longer to kill you but inflict every bit as
> much misery as the other kind.

I think you're still living in the early 1970s.

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

In article <eIWdnX1PUd1UC4rcRVn-ow@speakeasy.net>, Matthew Russotto wrote:
> In article <7VsRc.112077$eM2.44725@attbi_s51>,
> Brent P <tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>Chicago's is set up such that if you live in the suburbs and work in
>>the loop, you're set. Any other kind of journey? You'll have to drive
>>because the system is run such that it brings people into the loop
>>in the morning and out in the evening.
>
> Many transit systems have this problem. They're built for
> transportation patterns which either never existed, were obselete by
> the the time the system was built, or ANY pattern can only serve a small
> proportion or the population. Transit advocates think the people and
> businesses will follow the transit, but that's the tail wagging the
> dog no matter how many times they propose it.

Chicago really could be served well with a series of half-ring and
spoke railroad system. In a book I have, written by a friend of my
uncle on NW indiana and the south suburbs, there is an illustration
of railroad service that once existed in the area. One line circles
from the south through what is now the suburbs to the north of the city.
We've got some of the spokes, but not the rings. Metra is going to build
something similiar to the line that existed at one time. It's costing a lot
and will be ready some time in the distant future.

And yes, transit advocates insist that everything be built around the
existing railroads. No park and ride either, even when the parking is
squeezed onto narrow slivers land where no reasonable building could be
constructed. And for some reason, no new rail either. If the population
was scaled back to 19th century levels this might be possible.

I've seen buses advocated for people outside walking distance to the
rails. I'll never understand the love of buses, it's taking the worst
aspects of all transportation forms and puting them into one.

1) out in the weather waiting for the bus (bicycle)
2) crowded in with other people (train)
3) stuck in traffic (car)
4) stopping often and moving slowly (train,car,sometimes bicycle)
5) running on a time table (train)

And then there are the uniquely bus situation of buses on the same route
jammed nose to tail because some are late and others early.

The only advantage of the bus is not needing a place to park a car
or bicycle.

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

"Brent P" <tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:JSLRc.256297$JR4.212936@attbi_s54...
> In article <8b4b7de4.0408090134.1e821227@posting.google.com>, Chalo wrote:
> > "Jack May" <jack.may@comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >> The car puts out CO2 even if it were to put out zero pollution.
> >
> > But it doesn't put out zero pollution; it pumps out plenty of carbon
> > monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and micron-sized
> > particles. Run your car in a closed garage and it's not CO2 that will
> > kill you. Live out your days in a traffic-plagued city and it's not
> > CO2 that will give you cancer.
>
> Cleaner than the power plant that charges your electric car.
>
> > It won't wash. The cars are robbing us of our individual health as
> > well as our collective quality of life. "Cleaner cars" are like
> > duller knives; they take longer to kill you but inflict every bit as
> > much misery as the other kind.
>
> I think you're still living in the early 1970s.

Yea, he is totally out of touch with reality. He just wants to hate and
return to the horrible old days.

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

"C.R. Krieger" <warp2_shadow@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a8a578a8.0408090937.1ca9f9@posting.google.com...
> "Bernard Farquart" <bernardfarquart@hotmail.delete.com> wrote in message
news:<55jRc.1442$l96.1265@nwrddc04.gnilink.net>...
> > >
> > Nitro-methane and burnt rubber is about the
> > best automotive smell I can think of..
>
> How about a whiff of castor oil from an old F Prod racer?
>
> Personally (with a nod to 'Apocalypse Now'), "I love the smell of hot
> brakes in the morning."

Hot brakes smell too much like hot clutch plate for
my taste. I have not smelled the castor oil smell,
so I will accept your description of it's loveliness.

Bernard

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

In article <T-OdnTqMm7AsL4rcRVn-jA@speakeasy.net>, Matthew Russotto wrote:

>>The only advantage of the bus is not needing a place to park a car
>>or bicycle.
>
> If I biked to work, I could just drag the thing up into my
> cubicle if nothing else.

I park mine in an empty cube across the isle....

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

In article <rgjfh0lrq9nju1hnsibdv0t0deb3i9fq6k@4ax.com>, Scott en Aztlan wrote:

> Perhaps the folks who want to "punish" personal automobile drivers
> have another agenda, and are using transit advocacy as a smoke screen?

That's the only explaination I can come up with. I am actually surprised
that the various comments made about building transit that is better
than driving have not been met with some angry replies. I had to kill
file chi.general's 'transit advocate' enventually due to that sort of
thing.

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 18:05:36 GMT,
<Q1PRc.11694$114.5437@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>, "Bernard Farquart"
<bernardfarquart@hotmail.delete.com> wrote:

>
>"C.R. Krieger" <warp2_shadow@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:a8a578a8.0408090937.1ca9f9@posting.google.com...
>> "Bernard Farquart" <bernardfarquart@hotmail.delete.com> wrote in message
>news:<55jRc.1442$l96.1265@nwrddc04.gnilink.net>...
\szip
>I have not smelled the castor oil smell,
>so I will accept your description of it's loveliness.
>
No, you really must try it. Ricin is good to breathe.
--
zk

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

"Jack May" <jack.may@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> "Brent P" <tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Chalo wrote:
> > >
> > > It won't wash. The cars are robbing us of our individual health as
> > > well as our collective quality of life. "Cleaner cars" are like
> > > duller knives; they take longer to kill you but inflict every bit as
> > > much misery as the other kind.
> >
> > I think you're still living in the early 1970s.
>
> Yea, he is totally out of touch with reality. He just wants to hate and
> return to the horrible old days.

What's not to hate about cars? They kill hundreds of thousands per
year by traumatic injury, millions a year by illness, and blight
billions with a noisy, dangerous, polluted, congested, and ugly
milieu. They propagate by employing people's selfishness, laziness,
greed, insecurity, and willful ignorance of the costs they
unilaterally impose upon the collective.

Newer "clean" cars are not clean; they are toxic. A single running
car would have exterminated Biosphere 2 for instance, whiz-bang
anti-emission technology notwithstanding.

I'm not ignorant about this stuff; I work in aerospace prototyping
jet- and rocket-powered flight vehicles, which belch a lot of fumes.
Yet rockets and even commercial jets are not responsible for the brown
air in today's cities. The problem is not that cars exist or that
they run on petroleum, it's that almost everyone uses them to go
almost everywhere, almost all the time. Their ubiquity is what ruins
the city surface for more human uses, and poisons the air despite the
fact that their exhalations have been rendered somewhat less noxious
than in the recent past.

Chalo Colina

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 14:28:57 GMT, <JSLRc.256297$JR4.212936@attbi_s54>,
tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS@yahoo.com (Brent P) wrote:

>Cleaner than the power plant that charges your electric car.
>
He could be getting power from wind, solar or hydro energy or living
somewhere off the grid. Compare transportation's spewage to what the
oil slicks spin proclaiming the supposed cleanliness of natural gas.

>> It won't wash. The cars are robbing us of our individual health as
>> well as our collective quality of life. "Cleaner cars" are like
>> duller knives; they take longer to kill you but inflict every bit as
>> much misery as the other kind.
>
>I think you're still living in the early 1970s.

Did you grow up with ozone alerts, UV warnings and an Air Quality
Index numbers being part of the weather reports?

The number of cars has increased as has the number of hours spent
driving. The popularity of SUVs and other gas guzzling personal scuds
causes increased volumes of emissions simply by the fact that they're
running more fuel through those engines. Engines that aren't all kept
tuned to meet the EPA specs touted by the duped.

The amount and extent of infrastructure and portion of the economy
dedicated to private automobile use has bankrupted us by enslaving us
to the hidden costs of cheap oil.

Even when clean cheap alternative fuels are available the overwhelming
presence of individually occupied and inattentively piloted personal
scuds will continue to be an ineffectual and dangerous model for
coping with the transportation needs of an increased population.
--
zk

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

Chalo wrote:
> "Jack May" <jack.may@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>"Brent P" <tetraethylleadREMOVETHIS@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Chalo wrote:
>>>
>>>>It won't wash. The cars are robbing us of our individual health as
>>>>well as our collective quality of life. "Cleaner cars" are like
>>>>duller knives; they take longer to kill you but inflict every bit as
>>>>much misery as the other kind.
>>>
>>>I think you're still living in the early 1970s.
>>
>>Yea, he is totally out of touch with reality. He just wants to hate and
>>return to the horrible old days.
>
>
> What's not to hate about cars? They kill hundreds of thousands per
> year by traumatic injury, millions a year by illness, and blight
> billions with a noisy, dangerous, polluted, congested, and ugly
> milieu. They propagate by employing people's selfishness, laziness,
> greed, insecurity, and willful ignorance of the costs they
> unilaterally impose upon the collective.
>
> Newer "clean" cars are not clean; they are toxic. A single running
> car would have exterminated Biosphere 2 for instance, whiz-bang
> anti-emission technology notwithstanding.
>
> I'm not ignorant about this stuff; I work in aerospace prototyping
> jet- and rocket-powered flight vehicles, which belch a lot of fumes.
> Yet rockets and even commercial jets are not responsible for the brown
> air in today's cities. The problem is not that cars exist or that
> they run on petroleum, it's that almost everyone uses them to go
> almost everywhere, almost all the time. Their ubiquity is what ruins
> the city surface for more human uses, and poisons the air despite the
> fact that their exhalations have been rendered somewhat less noxious
> than in the recent past.
>
> Chalo Colina

"somewhat less noxious?" You mean almost zero, right? As in, almost
pure C02 and water. I doubt any fuel-fired energy plant is any cleaner
than a new car. The real problem, as you say, is that there are so many
of them - but still I imagine that once our automobile fleet has turned
over a few times, even you will have to admit that the problem is
elsewhere. The car emission problem is, for all intents and purposes,
solved - if you want to clean up smog etc. you're going to have to look
elsewhere.

nate

--
replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
http://home.comcast.net/~njnagel

Re: Drivers: How can you love something you hate so much?

In article <8b4b7de4.0408091532.7dae1a62@posting.google.com>, Chalo wrote:

> What's not to hate about cars? They kill hundreds of thousands per
> year by traumatic injury, millions a year by illness, and blight
> billions with a noisy, dangerous, polluted, congested, and ugly
> milieu. They propagate by employing people's selfishness, laziness,
> greed, insecurity, and willful ignorance of the costs they
> unilaterally impose upon the collective.

I think you should pick up some 19 century publications regarding
horse based transportation. You'll find the automobile a modern marvel
of cleaniness and safety.

> Newer "clean" cars are not clean; they are toxic. A single running
> car would have exterminated Biosphere 2 for instance, whiz-bang
> anti-emission technology notwithstanding.

So would a few extra humans, cattle, anything that breathes.


> I'm not ignorant about this stuff; I work in aerospace prototyping
> jet- and rocket-powered flight vehicles, which belch a lot of fumes.
> Yet rockets and even commercial jets are not responsible for the brown
> air in today's cities.

It's something you don't work on of course.... yeah it's not like
those things ever land....

> The problem is not that cars exist or that
> they run on petroleum, it's that almost everyone uses them to go
> almost everywhere, almost all the time. Their ubiquity is what ruins
> the city surface for more human uses, and poisons the air despite the
> fact that their exhalations have been rendered somewhat less noxious
> than in the recent past.

I think you should read the study on air pollution during the big
blackout. Seems while cars still ran, and the power plants and factories
didn't, pollution went down dramatically.