At 09:39 AM 11/14/2000 EST, PBrowne900@aol.com wrote:

twin

Arild writes:
We may in fact end up switching to alternaitve power  before 2025.
Ballard  Power recently announced  the  debut of a new fuel cell that
converts methanol  to hydrogen dirtly.
The  hudrogen is used in their fuel cells that create elecrticity. This
electricity in turn gets stored  in batteries until needed.
The ultimate goal is to  develop a fuel cell which can run on regular
petroleum fuels like diesel.
These fuel cells are being developed  for use in automobiles as an
alternative to smog producing  internal combustion engines.

A parallel development is the  tighter  restrictions on  engine emissions;
including gensets.
I recall the  boom in sailboat sales during the "oil crunch"  of the
1970's.
Tougher new emission standards may well precipitate another sort of sales
boom in  reduced emissions  lower horsepower cruising boats.

Perhaps Paul Kruse or some else familiar with  multihulls can  report on
what  power savings if any  you  experience with  a power cat compared to
a similar  lenght  monohull.

Maybe 80 HP is plenty  for a power cat.  Or perhaps the  trawler of the
future will have a ton of battery for ballast as well as storing power fed
by a fuel cell and using inverters for AC  power creation.

Cheers

Arild

Paul and Arild ,

   Where  was information obtained  re :

will

All the Best
Ken
m/v Mrs. Hudson

The environmentalists bent on

Maurice ,

  The Am Lung Assn.  gives every county in Maryland a solid " F"  with

Arundel being the worst -And you don't even want to think about the cancer
rates in Baltimore, Baltimore County and Arundel County ..

 Something to think about when next cruising the Chesapeake Bay - Land

of Pleasant Living - and Dying ..

  Rather than destroying " progress and technology " actually quite the

reverse is true: - the Real Problem is how to get the  polluters to install
it on their aging  power and chemical and refining plants  among others ..
It ain't the environmentalists who are against  progress and technology  :
this is a myth put out by the anti environmentalists as part of their
agressive but false PR .. think about it ....

All the Best
Ken - the Greenie

Global warming has been going on since the ice age stopped. There are no
documented scientific studies to show that the intervention of man is making
any significant difference. Besides, what's wrong with a little warming.
Many people in the world would welcome it. The environmentalists bent on
destroying progress and technology would have us all afraid to breath if
they could. Nevertheless, we all like clean air and clean water - don't
confuse the two initiatives to keep our environment clean and to stop the
alleged dangers of global warming.

Maurice Marwood
aepmem@bahamas.net.bs

diesels,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Maurice Marwood" aepmem@bahamas.net.bs

Hi Maurice,

On the subject of global warming there is only one fact and one truism that
are beyond debate.

The Fact: Burning fossil fuel (as well as doing certain other things)
releases gasses into the atmosphere that have been proven to cause a
greenhouse effect under laboratory conditions. That is based on peer
reviewed repeatable experiments and is absolutely incontrovertible.

The Truism: We don't have anywhere near enough information, experience, or
wisdom to say what the final effect (if any) will be from the continued
release of these greenhouse gasses. For a basic idea of how little we know,
ask yourself how often you see an accurate 5 day weather forecast.

Those two things, taken together, lead me to the belief that we should be
trying to minimize greenhouse gasses.

After all, the worst result of a cautious attitude toward greenhouse gasses
is that the reserves of fossil fuels will last longer.

OTOH: The worst result of a skeptical attitude could be that all of our
charts will be wrong and our home marinas may be forced to move to higher
ground.

Greenly yours,

Alex

At 06:48 AM 11/15/2000 -0600, steve  -MS/V beluga wrote:

A warming trend means more evaporation and less precipitation, as the
warmer atmosphere holds more moisture in suspension.

The Great Lakes loses water that evaporates into  the air.  Less
precipitation means less run-off to replendish the lakes.
Meanwhile all the lower lakes  have  hydro-elecrtic dams that maintain  the
flow of water to meet the  electrical demands of a growing population.
That makes it hard to  limit the outflow to  keep the water levels  high.

Cheers

Arild

Steve:

Lower than normal precipitation and warmer water resulting in higher rates of
evaporation are both blamed.  It should be noted that global warming must be
considered as a factor in any climate change but it is too soon to tell if
this is a short term aberration or part of a  long term cycle.  At hundreds
of feet above sea level, the Great Lakes will not be affected by rising sea
levels any time soon.

My opinion only

Wesley
M/V Little Bitt
So Burlington, VT
weldred@zoo.uvm.edu

steve -MS/V beluga wrote:

Howdy!

You guys are all wonderful!

However, in the big picture, all of man's activities are just a "splash on
the flybridge" compared to mother nature. <Do you like that boating
metaphor? just trying to stay on topic for the list!>

Numerous hydraulic engineers and other types estimate that ALL of man's
activities result in only 3% of the fluctuations in the water level of the
Great Lakes. The rest is mother nature. This is despite the water control
structures in Chicago, the various canals, and all the water drawn from the
Lakes by every other municipality.

The "problem" with most of the research done by the people in atmospheric
science is not the research itself, but rather the ideological bias of the
people performing the research. Are they liberal? You bet! However, is that
all bad? I don't think so. These are important questions to be asked, and
these people are usually really dedicated. They (the scientists) do tend to
try and expose flaws in their own hypotheses and theories. However, people
who do have strong biases misuse this research to try and shut down
industry, prevent construction, etc. Many of the lead thinkers in the EPA
and similar agencies are NOT scientists, but are extremely partisan
ideologues who really believe that all industrialists are evil, socialism
is good, etc. They have a big ax to grind, and they grind it. There are
numerous issues where pollution could be reduced more efficiently with
different approaches, but these ideologues prevented these market driven
approaches because of their FEAR of the free market. These idiots have PhDs
in planning or pseudo economics, and they truly don't believe in Adam
Smith's invisible hand (the free market).

An example.

Until recently, air pollution control equipment was mandated on a "command
and control" approach. You have X process (an incinerator, for instance),
therefore you must have Y pollution control equipment (a baghouse). You
could NOT use a venturi air scrubber, an electrostatic precipitator, or any
other pollution control equipment, because the EPA examined a bunch of
devices, and at one point in time, the baghouse was the "best" process. I
won't even go into the silly averaging technique they used to determine
this "best" device. The reason they wouldn't/didn't let each company
determine their own best method to control their pollution, the EPA didn't
trust them! How about the "bubble concept" whereby a plant could look at
its overall pollution, and work to reduce the easiest areas first, then
progress to the more expensive fixes, and so on until their overall
pollution emission was what was mandated by law? I was able to actually ask
the EPA official who wrote the regs, who considered this method of
pollution control. She said that, "That would let the companies get away
with spending less!" No matter that the SAME level of pollution would occur
using the more expensive command and control approach.

The big picture is that MOST of the environmental problems are much less
bad than portrayed by the media and the environmentalists. Yes, industry
sometimes does STUPID and even CRIMINAL acts. I have managed the testing
and clean up of many of these messes. However, so often the reverse is
true, and it is so frustrating to try and actually achieve anything and the
money spent is a crime.

The strong ideological underpinning of "environmental engineering" is the
main reason I am no longer in that field. I earned a research master's
degree in environmental engineering, but am now in geotechnical engineering
where there are more facts and less hyperbole.

End of rant.

Regards,

John

At 08:45 AM 11/15/00 , Arild Jensen wrote:

           John W. Norton, Jr. E.I.T
   Doctoral Student - Geotechnical Engineering
  University of Michigan: office-(734) 764-3648

"Teaching and motivating the engineers of the future!"

   http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~jnorton/

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We
have before us many, many months of struggle and
suffering.

You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by
land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all
the strength God has given us, and to wage war against
a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and
lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is
victory. Victory at all costs -- victory in spite of all
terrors -- victory, however long and hard the road may
be, for without victory there is no survival.

--Winston Churchill, First address to the House of
Commons as Prime Minister, May 13, 1940

I've received a couple of responses to my post on this thread. If I may, I'd
like to treat both of them here. Please note that my thesis here is not that
global warming is guaranteed to happen. Rather I believe that would be
dangerously rash to not hedge our bets on this issue.

----- Original Message -----
From: "steve -MS/V beluga" barnacle42@ameritech.net

Hi Steve,

I don't know the answer to that and I'm not sure anyone else does either
although the explanation put forth by Wesley and Arild is certainly
plausible.That's the point of my earlier post. We don't know enough to make
reasonable first assumptions let alone accurate final predictions. In
everything that I've read, seen, or heard on the subject of global warming
there is one prediction that has been consistent throughout and that is that
the results will be complex. Some areas will warm up others will cool down;
some will dry out while others receive more precipitation; some agriculture
will fail while other areas become more fertile. In other words, global
warming isn't the end of "life on earth" but it will cause changes and
shifts in every aspect of human endeavor. Many of those changes are likely
to be unpleasant for certain groups and especially unpleasant for those who
live and work in coastal areas (which includes most of us boat geeks).

From: "John Gaquin" jgaquin@ici.net

warming] would be considerably worse when you add in the economic and
political effects.

Hi John,

Much of the "doom and gloom" reaction to calls for better fuel efficiency
and lower emissions are based in truth, but only in a sort of short term
truth. Every tightening of emission or CAFE standards have been met with the
same response from the affected parties (mostly engine builders and oil
companies): "We can't do it; It won't work; It will cost too much; or This
isn't fair". In every case so far it has turned out to be possible,
effective, not too expensive, and equitable. I won't claim that the system
works perfectly but we do have cleaner air and more efficient engines than
we did not that many years ago. It also means that the marina doesn't smell
as bad as it used to on those days when everyone decides to work on their
engine and that the picturesque haze over that quiet anchorage is fog and
not smoke. (just trying to get in a little trawler content).

Reducing our appetite for fossil fuel will cause changes to the political
fabric of the world but IMHO we've shown an ability to adapt to such things
fairly easily. Oil and coal exporting countries will have somewhat less
power and leverage than they do at present but isn't it at least arguable
that those countries have a bit too much power?

To summarize: You're right that there will be costs incurred to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions but it seems to me that those costs are more easily
borne than the ones that could result if global warming comes true.

Pontifically yours,

Alex

P.S. I just read John Norton's post and I agree completely that
environmental issues are not handled efficiently here in the USA. If memory
serves, Denmark has done a very good job of maximizing environmental "bang
for the buck" by simply telling industry what the goal is and letting them
figure out how to achieve it.

ibid

Well said. Big brother knows best.
----- Original Message -----
From: John the Civil Engineer jnorton@umich.edu
To: Arild Jensen elnav@uniserve.com; trawler-world-list@samurai.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 6:00 PM
Subject: Re: TWL: global warming - Engineering comment

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