Author Archives: scottsoapbox

Sec. of Transportation Ignorant About Auto Industry

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Csaba Csere had an excellent column back in July.  Unfortunately C&D is much slower posting their columns than their reviews online – and I am much too lazy busy to re-type it myself.  However it is now up for general viewing and is even more pertinant given the current Auto Industry problems being eyed for government intervention.

I always thought April Fools’ Day came on the first of that month and Earth Day on the 22nd, but apparently, this year those dates were swapped. How else to explain the proposal, on April 22, of Mary E. Peters, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, to accelerate by 25 percent the CAFE increases that Congress enacted last year?

With gasoline pushing four bucks a gallon, it’s not that I would mind seeing average fuel economy rise to 35.7 mpg for cars and 28.6 mpg for trucks by 2015, as Secretary Peters proposes. I’d also like to see a big, happy parade of Sunni, Shiites, and Kurds marching merrily together down Yafa Street in Baghdad. Plus, I’d like to see an eight-figure balance on my brokerage statement and Kelly Brook delivering UPS packages to our office. Sadly, none of these events is any more likely than Secretary Peters’s delusions about CAFE.

Now if you come away from this article dogging old G.W.’s administration (or even blanket Republicans) you are completely missing the bigger point.  This is not a W. is stupid problem – this is a general problem with allowing (trusting?) politicians to fix (meddle?) in problems that they truly know nothing about.  Government can give nudges here and there in attempting to direct the market.  BUT economic forces and moreso laws of physics can not be overcome by legislation – no matter how much you will it to happen, nor how pure your intentions.

A perfect example for this would be the legislation that was passed in the hopes to make home ownership “affordable” to those that couldn’t afford it.  Result? Well it took a while to come home to roost but the noble plan cost us all 700 billion dollars and counting.  Remember that as government promises to solve the next problem with a wave of its legistative hand – or rushes aid those in need.

H-H-Oops

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In the Dec 08 issue of Car & Driver, Franz Kafka attempts to answer a question about HHO with the help of an associate engineering prof.  The two end up completely off point and so butcher the response that a corrective response was required.  Both are below:

HO-HO-HHO
What would happen if you inject HHO (oxyhydrogen) into a gasoline-combustible engine? Oxyhydrogen is a mixture of hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (02) gases, typically in a 2:1 molar ratio, the same proportion as water. This gaseous mixture is used for torches for the processing of refractory materials. I have found numerous claims on the Internet (i.e., www.water4gas. com, www.watertogas.com, etc.) that allege mpg savings by installing an HHO injection kit on a common gasoline engine. Thank you for your help, and please consider us working-class schmucks who might buy into this stuff with gas at nearly $5 a gallon!
Brian Gong
Arroyo Grande, California

Sorry, Brian, those claims are bogus, and you need to stop cribbing from Wikipedia. Lest any reader doubt the indomitable authority of Car and Driver, Kafka asked Claus Borgnakke, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. For starters, you won’t gain any energy by converting water to hydrogen and oxygen in the car–you’ll end up with less useful energy than you put in because both the disassociation of water into hydrogen and oxygen and the burning of hydrogen are less than 100 percent efficient in real-world conditions. Even if you did have a perfectly efficient process, there would be no energy left over to power the car. Starting with an oxyhydrogen mix in the car is a bad idea, too. According to Borgnakke, “Never try to store hydrogen and oxygen gas together. Hydrogen is much more dangerous than other fuels in that it burns at nearly all ratios with oxygen and has a very low threshold for ignition.” You could use an energy source such as solar power to make hydrogen from water, but that’s not cost effective, and you’re still left with the problem of storage. Kafka will leave the last word to our expert, who says, “Hydrogen is still too costly to store and transport compared with gasoline or diesel fuel.”

-Franz Kafka’s Garage

My response:

Kafka

Your HHO response in Dec 08 is so busy feigning intelligence that you miss the fact that the specific laws of physics you snobbishly explain – don’t apply to the question at hand: HHO does not claim to create energy out of thin air.  It simply allows more efficient use of the available energy contained in the gasoline.

1) Gas engines divert a constant amount of energy to the alternator that is converted to electrical energy (yes at less than 100% efficiency).  That energy if unused is soon wasted attempting to overcharge the battery.  HHO draws from this waste power to separate the water into its component gases not to “create energy”,  but as a safe, cost effective way to store the dangerous hydrogen.  Only small amounts of the gas ever exist out of the water state as they are fed into the car as created.

2) The Hydrogen gas adds a nominal amount of energy to the fuel air mixture.  Again, energy is not being created here by violating physics any more than pouring an octane booster into your gas tank.  Water, however, does tend to be cheaper than those fancy additives.  However, much like those additives, the energy boost is small as it would take a tremendous amount of hydrogen gas alone to power a car.

3) The real trick behind HHO is the added oxygen in the fuel air mixture.  It is well understood that more oxygen in the engine means more power potential.  Many after market parts exist to pump cooler air or shove more air into your engine for the express purpose of increasing the oxygen amount in the combustion chamber. Where, oh Kafka, are your snide remarks at those products?

The added oxygen increases the percentage of gas burning inside your engine instead of exiting your tail pipe. Again, energy is not being created, rather less fuel (energy) is being wasted.  This increased efficiency translates into more power at the same gas input or better fuel economy at the same power output.  Herein lies the second caveat to HHO: modern oxygen sensors.  While older cars can bolt on HHO and forever enjoy increased efficiency, newer cars will only see improved MPG for a short period until the oxygen sensors compensate with increasingly rich fuel mixtures until the gains are offset.  So if one wants to run HHO in a current vehicle they must also be prepared to alter their O2 sensors with one of the variety of after market methods available.

Perhaps a senior professor could check this one for you.
Scott

Biden: World Will Generate Crisis To Test Obama

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In what is often called political stupidity VP nominee Joe Biden had a fit of honesty at a recent fund raising rally:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy… I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities…”

Why test Obama? I dismiss the “young” theories, but he is extremely inexperienced and all over the map on his foreign policy (half the time we’re unsure he’s aware which nations are currently our allies).  Now the trend amidst his wide array of FP comments seem to be more talking with our current enemies, distancing ourselves from our allies, and pulling back our military as much as possible.  Which could be why the Military support McCain over Obama 68 to 23.  Sen. Biden went on to say:

And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

…Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama. “This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’

Wait, so we’re going to make tough decisions to respond in foreign affairs in unpopular ways… but we need to do it because in the long run its a good idea??? For a party that claims to hate G. W. Bush above all else, you could swear VP Nominee Joe Biden was channeling him.

Republican Giuliani responded to Biden on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program:

GIULIANI:  My reaction is, maybe we could elect a president that will not tempt the world to test them because of their inexperience.  If Joe Biden is suggesting this, it seems to me that we could elect someone more like Ronald Reagan, who has experience, who the rest of the world has a pretty good idea how he would react and what he would do in the way he would defend America.  I can’t imagine why Joe Biden would want to raise this, but since he’s raised it, it seems to me we should answer…

GIULIANI:  I find the remark very puzzling.  And exactly why he did it and what motivated it only Joe Biden can explain.  I do know that if he’s predicting that the president he’s supporting is going to somehow motivate an attack on the United States, it would seem to me he’s doing it for a reason.  I guess the reason is, the lack of experience that Senator Obama has.  I think he went on to say, “Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis to test the mettle of this guy.”

GIULIANI:  Well, I think it would be far better off to have a president that wouldn’t tempt people to want to test his mettle the way Joe Biden is talking about, and it is true that at least history records that that’s what happened with John Kennedy, that Khrushchev tested him and believed that he was flaunting and then went ahead and Cuban missile crisis, other things happened.  But that didn’t happen with Ronald Reagan.  No one tested John Kerry’s mettle.  In fact, they released the hostages as he was being sworn in as president of the United States, if I recall correctly.

RUSH:  Mr. Giuliani, do you realize how many times Bill Clinton was tested by Al-Qaeda, starting in 1993 through Mogadishu to the USS Cole, and every time Clinton was tested, he failed, and that’s why they tested Bush on 9/11… And we haven’t been hit since.

GIULIANI:  I think if we had raised this, there would be all kinds of criticisms that we were trying to frighten people.  But it seems to me that Joe Biden has raised it, and it is a very good point to just ask, well, is there a way to avoid this testing, and maybe if we elect someone with the kind of experience and background that John McCain has, no one knows exactly what’s going to happen, but don’t we give ourselves a better chance as we did with Ronald Reagan, we can avoid this?

RUSH:  Well, look, I agree. I think by definition he was saying there would not be an attack if McCain was elected.

GIULIANI:  I am not sure.  I think we’re going to have to ask Joe Biden this.  But, you know, typical of when Joe does something like this, makes one of these comments, they then hide him for about a week and nobody can get to him to find out what he means. – Transcript Rush Limbaugh

Rudy was certainly right about one thing, Biden hasn’t been seen or heard since this story broke.

Al Gore Was Wrong: Ice Caps Growing Not Melting

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“In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound,” said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. “On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying, located at about 1,500 feet elevation, did not become snow free until early August.

“In general, the weather this summer was the worst [coldest/snowiest] I have seen in at least 20 years.”

Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too.

Whew. Crisis averted.  And none too soon since “carbon taxes” would only drive the economy lower.  Thanks to China and India global CO2 emissions are way up in spite of guilt-ridden Americans’ trying new light bulbs and other token fixes.

For most of us, this news is quite stunning, considering that the former VP had both invented the modern day internet AND had the backing of many Hollywood heavy-weights.  Meteorologists, however, were less surprised.