Go back to elevated?

[bolta...@boltar.world]

Perhaps this is a stupid question from a non new yorker, but given the recent
and furture potential flooding of the subway , would there be a case for
going back to using elevated tracks again for some of the lines?

B2003

[Peter T. Daniels]

Most of the lines outside Manhattan _are_ elevated. One of the reasons
for shutting down service before the storm was that it isn't safe to
run the trains in winds stronger than 39 mph.

Some of the reasons for replacing the els with subways were the
unpleasant conditions on the streets beneath., as well as the pounding
from the elements that the equipment (in those days mostly made of
wood) took day in, day out.

And then there would be the cost ...

[bolta...@boltar.world]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:54:48 -0800 (PST)
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>Most of the lines outside Manhattan _are_ elevated. One of the reasons
>for shutting down service before the storm was that it isn't safe to
>run the trains in winds stronger than 39 mph.

Why is that? I've never heard of a wind speed restriction on trains before
anywhere in the world short of hurricane speed winds.

B2003

[Steven M. O'Neill]

Most of the tunnels that flooded were under the East River.
Your plan will require many bridges.

Inflatable plugs might work though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/science/creating-a-balloonlike-plug-to-hold-back-floodwaters.html

I was wondering if they could have just built masonry walls to
plug the tunnels, once the storm surge prediction was known.
Probably not. :)

--
Steven O'Neill ste...@panix.com
Brooklyn, NY http://www.panix.com/~steveo

[danny burstein]

In <k8g6e0$3e7$1...@reader1.panix.com> ste...@panix.com (Steven M. O'Neill) writes:

>I was wondering if they could have just built masonry walls to
>plug the tunnels, once the storm surge prediction was known.
>Probably not. :)

After 9/11 part of the interim construction was, in fact,
teh installation of concrete "plugs" in the #1 train
tunnel just north of the destruction zone (maybe south,
too). There was another set in the PATH tunnel in NJ.

(these were all removed so trains could get through...)

--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

[bolta...@boltar.world]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:08:48 +0000 (UTC)
ste...@panix.com (Steven M. O'Neill) wrote:
><bolta...@boltar.world> wrote:
>>Perhaps this is a stupid question from a non new yorker, but given the recent
>>and furture potential flooding of the subway , would there be a case for
>>going back to using elevated tracks again for some of the lines?
>
>Most of the tunnels that flooded were under the East River.
>Your plan will require many bridges.
>
>Inflatable plugs might work though.
>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/science/creating-a-balloonlike-plug-to-hold-b

>ck-floodwaters.html
>
>I was wondering if they could have just built masonry walls to
>plug the tunnels, once the storm surge prediction was known.
>Probably not. :)

Why not do the same as in the London Underground - have steel flood doors in
the tunnels?

B2003

[danny burstein]

In <k8g6sl$2rn$1...@speranza.aioe.org> bolta...@boltar.world writes:

>Why not do the same as in the London Underground - have steel flood doors in
>the tunnels?

THey're looking at the various options, which do include the steel
doors. But inflatable plugs would be much simpler, cheaper, and
quicker to install. Easier to maintain, too.

- note that you don't need a 100 percent seal. Anything in the
higher 90s would be more than adequate.

[bolta...@boltar.world]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:24:52 +0000 (UTC)
danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
>In <k8g6sl$2rn$1...@speranza.aioe.org> bolta...@boltar.world writes:
>
>>Why not do the same as in the London Underground - have steel flood doors in
>>the tunnels?
>
>THey're looking at the various options, which do include the steel
>doors. But inflatable plugs would be much simpler, cheaper, and
>quicker to install. Easier to maintain, too.

I presume they'd be inflated using some kind of liquid or cement? I can't
imagine an air inflatable being strong or heavy enough to hold back thousands
of tons of flood water.

B2003

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 20, 6:43 am, boltar2...@boltar.world wrote:

Elevated trains have their own troubles. For instance, heavy snow is
a problem.

The construction cost would be enormous. As others mentioned, els
leave the streets below in the dark and with noise, and are
suspectible to high wind troubles.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Maybe those trains were designed to run in near-hurricane-speed winds?

Better safe than sorry?

What if a passenger were blown off a station platform?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 20, 10:08 am, ste...@panix.com (Steven M. O'Neill) wrote:

>  <boltar2...@boltar.world> wrote:
> >Perhaps this is a stupid question from a non new yorker, but given the recent
> >and furture potential flooding of the subway , would there be a case for
> >going back to using elevated tracks again for some of the lines?
>
> Most of the tunnels that flooded were under the East River.
> Your plan will require many bridges.
>

> Inflatable plugs might work though.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/science/creating-a-balloonlike-plug...

>
> I was wondering if they could have just built masonry walls to
> plug the tunnels, once the storm surge prediction was known.
> Probably not. :)

Not in 3 days!

[Steven M. O'Neill]

danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
>In <k8g6e0$3e7$1...@reader1.panix.com> ste...@panix.com (Steven M. O'Neill) writes:
>
>>I was wondering if they could have just built masonry walls to
>>plug the tunnels, once the storm surge prediction was known.
>>Probably not. :)
>
>After 9/11 part of the interim construction was, in fact,
>teh installation of concrete "plugs" in the #1 train
>tunnel just north of the destruction zone (maybe south,
>too). There was another set in the PATH tunnel in NJ.

I'd guess building, what, 7 tunnels x 2 concrete plugs each would
take more time than they had.

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 20-Nov-12 12:21, Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
> danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
>> In <k8g6e0$3e7$1...@reader1.panix.com> ste...@panix.com (Steven M.
>> O'Neill) writes:
>>> I was wondering if they could have just built masonry walls to
>>> plug the tunnels, once the storm surge prediction was known.
>>> Probably not. :)
>>
>> After 9/11 part of the interim construction was, in fact, teh
>> installation of concrete "plugs" in the #1 train tunnel just north
>> of the destruction zone (maybe south, too). There was another set
>> in the PATH tunnel in NJ.
>
> I'd guess building, what, 7 tunnels x 2 concrete plugs each would
> take more time than they had.

I'm sure MTA had enough people to build such plugs, but they might not
have been able to get enough materials in place in time, or they might
have underestimated how bad the flooding would be.

Inflatable plugs seem like a better idea, though. If the City of Tempe
could build a lake using inflatable dams in a dry river, then surely MTA
could have plugged their tunnels that way. However, that depends on
having custom-made plugs (and enough equipment to inflate them all at
the same time, and enough people trained to do so) available ahead of time.

Hopefully, lessons are being learned and the next time this happens, we
will be more prepared. However, I'm not holding my breath; politicians
and executives always seem to cut disaster-preparation budgets a year or
two before the next disaster actually happens.

ObPhones: AT&T for decades maintained a "Central Office on a Truck",
ready to respond to a CO (even a competitor's) being destroyed anywhere
in the country. The executives eliminated it in early 2001 because it
had never been used. Hint: There was a CO in the WTC basement.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 20, 12:23 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> > Why is that? I've never heard of a wind speed restriction on trains before
> > anywhere in the world short of hurricane speed winds.
>
> Maybe those trains were designed to run in near-hurricane-speed winds?
>
> Better safe than sorry?
>
> What if a passenger were blown off a station platform?

I think it would take an extremely high gust of wind to derail an
elevated train. But as you said, there's much mroe risk of a
passenger being blown off a platform, a maintenance worker blown off a
catwalk, or airbourne debris striking passengers or equipment. In
high winds, things like trash cans get blown into the track bed and
even wedged in tightly. Many lines run near trees and blown over
heavy trees could strike stations or the train and/or block trains.
Given how such trees literally sliced cars in half in this storm, I
wouldn't want to be near one of them falling down.

For the commuter railroads, they're worried about crossing gates being
blown off.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 20, 2:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> On 20-Nov-12 12:21, Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
> > danny burstein  <dan...@panix.com> wrote:

> >> In <k8g6e0$3e...@reader1.panix.com> ste...@panix.com (Steven M.

ObTrans: The TA (or whatever it was in those days) gave up its own
independent power generation plants and joined the national grid
shortly before the Great Blackout of November 1965. If it hadn't, the
trains would have continued to run on time.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 20, 2:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> Hopefully, lessons are being learned and the next time this happens, we
> will be more prepared.  However, I'm not holding my breath; politicians
> and executives always seem to cut disaster-preparation budgets a year or
> two before the next disaster actually happens.

How much do we have to spend on disaster prep budgets--in a time when
we can't pay the bills we have now?

Further, how much do we want to prepare for extremely unusual storms,
as was Sandy. People said Japan should've been better prepared for
the tsunami (like the ill-fated nuke plant), but there are always
tradeoffs and maximum preparation for a once in 500 year event is very
expensive and tough to justify to those who have to pay the bill.

We have been warned about climate change, but half the country
strongly believes that's nothing but a liberal myth.

After a week without power, many of us would like to have a whole
house generator. But such things are extremely expensive.
Ironically, in this past storm, being 'prepared' with flashlights and
generators wasn't that much help after a few days as our batteries ran
out and generators ran out of fuel which could not be replaced.

We also have to be careful that our cure is not worse than the
disease. Parts of the Pentagon hit on 9/11 had already been rebuilt,
but the firedoors in the new construction may have blocked escape
routes hurting people, not saving them (other new features did save
lives). Generators and fuel tanks are located in basements for fire
safety--moving them to upper floors will mean fuel lines and new
risks.

[danny burstein]

In <48de17aa-b94e-4b78...@m4g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:

>ObTrans: The TA (or whatever it was in those days) gave up its own
>independent power generation plants and joined the national grid
>shortly before the Great Blackout of November 1965. If it hadn't, the
>trains would have continued to run on time.

Thought it was more like the late 1950s?

In any event, I have a unique photo (just the "contact sheet" image,
alas. Lost the negative..) of a Broadway #1 train in the 110th
street station, fully illuminated courtesy of a still working
"third rail" during the 1977 blackout. The station was dark..

This worked because the old transit powerhouse at 57th and 12th
was still isolated enough so that it stayed active (along with
the substations) when the rest of the grid went down.

- I had hoped that the DC feed to our building (for the elevator)
a couple of blocks away was still active. It would have been
pretty nifty to patch into it and have lighting... but, sigh,
it was dead, too.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 20, 4:14 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:

> In <48de17aa-b94e-4b78-88c1-c388518db...@m4g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> writes:
>
> >ObTrans: The TA (or whatever it was in those days) gave up its own
> >independent power generation plants and joined the national grid
> >shortly before the Great Blackout of November 1965. If it hadn't, the
> >trains would have continued to run on time.
>
> Thought it was more like the late 1950s?

I knew about it when it happened, and I wasn't _that_ precocious. I
think I even remember thinking at the time, Wow, if they hadn''t just
switched to regular power, this wouldn't have happened. (I was on the
platform at 110th St., having stayed for some after-school activity,
rather than trapped in a train.)

> In any event, I have a unique photo (just the "contact sheet" image,
> alas. Lost the negative..) of a Broadway #1 train in the 110th
> street station, fully illuminated courtesy of a still working
> "third rail" during the 1977 blackout. The station was dark..
>
> This worked because the old transit powerhouse at 57th and 12th
> was still isolated enough so that it stayed active (along with
> the substations) when the rest of the grid went down.

That must have been a fix done after '65.

[Stephen Sprunk]

The strength of an inflatable plug depends more on the material used to
construct it than what it's inflated with. Consider that the tires on a
car are inflated with air and hold up several tons of steel for long
periods, despite the physical stress they're put through--far in excess
of what a tunnel plug would need to handle. Unlike a tire, a tunnel
plug doesn't even need to be airtight; it just needs to keep the leakage
down to a level that the pumps can deal with.

[Phil Kane]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:12:52 -0800 (PST), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>How much do we have to spend on disaster prep budgets--in a time when
>we can't pay the bills we have now?

As a first responder you're preaching the wrong line to me. Spend it
now, or suffer the consequences of not having it when needed.

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 20, 8:00 pm, Phil Kane <Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:12:52 -0800 (PST), hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> >How much do we have to spend on disaster prep budgets--in a time when
> >we can't pay the bills we have now?
>
> As a first responder you're preaching the wrong line to me.  Spend it
> now, or suffer the consequences of not having it when needed.

As a society, we make tradeoffs for risks.

For instance, what would the cost be (all aspects) to eliminate the
40,000 annual motor US vehicle deaths?

The cost to prevent all crime in the NYC subways?

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 20, 4:03 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> ObTrans: The TA (or whatever it was in those days) gave up its own
> independent power generation plants and joined the national grid
> shortly before the Great Blackout of November 1965. If it hadn't, the

> trains would have continued to run on time.-

I believe the IND always bought commercial power.

The flip side of generating one's own power is the risk of failure and
no backup, plus high cost. The New Haven line for many years
generated some of its own power at Cos Cob, and this continued under
MTA operation. But Cos Cob was notoriously worn out and unreliable.

Over the years transit carriers found it was cheaper to buy commercial
power than generate it themselves. As time went on, commercial power
became more efficient with bigger plants that got more energy per unit
of fuel and had large economies of scale. If the NYCTA had generated
its own power, it would've paid more which would've left less money
for other necessary upgrades and improvements.

[Miles Bader]

bolta...@boltar.world writes:
>> Most of the lines outside Manhattan _are_ elevated. One of the
>> reasons for shutting down service before the storm was that it
>> isn't safe to run the trains in winds stronger than 39 mph.
>
> Why is that? I've never heard of a wind speed restriction on trains
> before anywhere in the world short of hurricane speed winds.

One of the most common causes (judging from electronic message board
notices) of train delays/service-outages in Tokyo seems to be "high
winds", often, but not always, during typhoons (the other big cause is
suicides...).

How fast those winds are, exactly, I can't say, as I'm usually riding
some other line at the time, but often when I see such notices I'm a
bit surprised because the weather doesn't seem _that_ bad to me (I'm
out riding a train after all!). My perception is that they stop
service well short of the actual danger zone (as you'd hope!).

-miles

--
Infancy, n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, 'Heaven
lies about us.' The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 20, 9:31 pm, Miles Bader <mi...@gnu.org> wrote.

Over the weekend I gave a paper in which I showed a little of how
_hiragana_ works. One of my examples is _Hokkaidoo_. There happened to
be a Japanese man in the audience, and he claimed that they never
pronounce it with a long o -- but it's spelled with a macron in both
the National Geographic Atlas and the Langenscheidt pocket dictionary.
But they only give the kanji -- who's right?

[Miles Bader]

"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:

> Over the weekend I gave a paper in which I showed a little of how
> _hiragana_ works. One of my examples is _Hokkaidoo_. There happened to
> be a Japanese man in the audience, and he claimed that they never
> pronounce it with a long o -- but it's spelled with a macron in both
> the National Geographic Atlas and the Langenscheidt pocket dictionary.
> But they only give the kanji -- who's right?

I'm not sure what he means by "never pronounce it with a long o"
... the word most definitely has a long sound when written in
hiragana...

北海道 => ほっかいどう => hokkaidou

Maybe he means that they "never" write it in latin letters using "oo",
which I suppose is probably true. It's much more common, I think to
either directly transliterate the hiragana (so "ou" in this case), or
just drop the long sound, and write "o" (messing up the pronunciation
a bit, but in many contexts it's not so important).

-miles

--
Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of
a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however,
is a most useful work.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 20, 11:58 pm, Miles Bader <mi...@gnu.org> wrote:

> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> writes:
>
> > Over the weekend I gave a paper in which I showed a little of how
> > _hiragana_ works. One of my examples is _Hokkaidoo_. There happened to
> > be a Japanese man in the audience, and he claimed that they never
> > pronounce it with a long o -- but it's spelled with a macron in both
> > the National Geographic Atlas and the Langenscheidt pocket dictionary.
> > But they only give the kanji -- who's right?
>
> I'm not sure what he means by "never pronounce it with a long o"
> ... the word most definitely has a long sound when written in
> hiragana...
>
> 北海道 => ほっかいどう => hokkaidou
>
> Maybe he means that they "never" write it in latin letters using "oo",
> which I suppose is probably true.  It's much more common, I think to
> either directly transliterate the hiragana (so "ou" in this case), or
> just drop the long sound, and write "o" (messing up the pronunciation
> a bit, but in many contexts it's not so important).

Thank you -- I couldn't know to spell it with -u rather than -o, so
that's most helpful.

Maybe because they only ever spell it with kanji, they don't pay
attention to the etymology.

> --
> Dictionary, n.  A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of
> a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however,
> is a most useful work.

Bierce, I presume? We've been trying to change that perception for
more than half a century now!

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 20-Nov-12 15:12, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 20, 2:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> Hopefully, lessons are being learned and the next time this
>> happens, we will be more prepared. However, I'm not holding my
>> breath; politicians and executives always seem to cut
>> disaster-preparation budgets a year or two before the next disaster
>> actually happens.
>
> How much do we have to spend on disaster prep budgets

That depends on how much we want to spend on disasters we're not
prepared for, of course.

If you're okay dropping several billion on cleaning up Sandy, rather
than spending a few million per year to be prepared for it, then we
should just keep doing what we're doing.

> --in a time when we can't pay the bills we have now?

That's a political problem, not a financial one.

> We have been warned about climate change, but half the country
> strongly believes that's nothing but a liberal myth.

That's part of the political problem, of course. When half the country
believes in fairy tales, eg. that hurricane's are God's punishment for
allowing gay marriage, then those of us living in a fact-based reality
don't have many options.

> After a week without power, many of us would like to have a whole
> house generator. But such things are extremely expensive.

Unless you expect them to run the heat, AC, oven and stove, they're
relatively inexpensive.

> Ironically, in this past storm, being 'prepared' with flashlights
> and generators wasn't that much help after a few days as our
> batteries ran out and generators ran out of fuel which could not be
> replaced.

I learned from Alicia that a 7-day supply of fuel is the minimum to have
on hand. Of course, fire code in many places prohibits that and the DHS
is likely to investigate you as a terrorist for hoarding "explosives".

> We also have to be careful that our cure is not worse than the
> disease. Parts of the Pentagon hit on 9/11 had already been
> rebuilt, but the firedoors in the new construction may have blocked
> escape routes hurting people, not saving them

I've lived and worked in many places with fire doors, and they were just
regular metal doors held open by a magnetic plate; when the fire alarm
went off, the plate was demagnetized and the door automatically closed
via the usual hydraulic or spring mechanism. They could still be easily
opened like any other door with such a mechanism; nobody was "trapped".

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 21, 3:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:


> > How much do we have to spend on disaster prep budgets
>
> That depends on how much we want to spend on disasters we're not
> prepared for, of course.

We don't want to spend anything. Seriously. After a disaster we try
to blame others (ie power companies, etc). After 9/11, many blamed
the Port Authority for failing to build the WTC towers with enough
strength to withstand such an attack, even though such an attack was
completely unprecedented.

> If you're okay dropping several billion on cleaning up Sandy, rather
> than spending a few million per year to be prepared for it, then we
> should just keep doing what we're doing.

Spending on prevention is a _known_ and _real_ expense. Spending on
post-event cleanup is an unknown expense.

It's far easier to spend money on cleanup, which absolutely must be
done, than on prevention, which has questionable value.

No, I'm wrong.

It's far easier to _get_ money for cleanup, than to _get_ money for
prevention. (Spending money is always very easy).

Many folks have called for improving the power grid to withstand
storms and other problems. Well, how much more will people--including
those who suffered without power--be willing to pay in their electric
bills for such improvements? Or, in increased taxes?

As you know, the US has spent zillions prosecuting two wars and
creating a new Department of Homeland Security. Yet there are many
legislators--of the same party who made those decisions--who flatly
refuse to raise taxes necessary to pay for all that. There are very
influential people (ie Norquist) who will see that those who raise
taxes are thrown out of office. (Even in the middle of the cleanup
there were those who played politics, FALSELY sending out rumors that
"evil unions" were delaying work.)

So go see Norquist et al and ask for money to build better dikes and
other infrastructure as 'prevention' and see how far you get.

> That's part of the political problem, of course.  When half the country
> believes in fairy tales, eg. that hurricane's are God's punishment for
> allowing gay marriage, then those of us living in a fact-based reality
> don't have many options.

Yep, there ya go!

> I learned from Alicia that a 7-day supply of fuel is the minimum to have
> on hand.  Of course, fire code in many places prohibits that and the DHS
> is likely to investigate you as a terrorist for hoarding "explosives".

Yep!

[danny burstein]

In <c80d2add-77de-43ec...@h15g2000yqe.googlegroups.com> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:

>> > How much do we have to spend on disaster prep budgets
>>
>> That depends on how much we want to spend on disasters we're not
>> prepared for, of course.

>We don't want to spend anything. Seriously. After a disaster we try
>to blame others (ie power companies, etc). After 9/11, many blamed
>the Port Authority for failing to build the WTC towers with enough
>strength to withstand such an attack, even though such an attack was
>completely unprecedented.

Err, those of us familiar with the situation are well aware
that simply holding the WTC to _standard_ NYC building code
would have saved quite a few lives, even if the structure
still collapsed.

And if the envirowhackoes had been slapped down and the steel
had kept its original spec asbestos-cement insulation, there's
a pretty good chance that it would have stayed up.

obtransit: an amazing job of rebuilding, pretty much from
scratch, that stretch of the #1 broadway line in that area.

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 21-Nov-12 17:27, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 21, 3:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>
>>> How much do we have to spend on disaster prep budgets
>>
>> That depends on how much we want to spend on disasters we're not
>> prepared for, of course.
>
> We don't want to spend anything. Seriously. After a disaster we
> try to blame others (ie power companies, etc). After 9/11, many
> blamed the Port Authority for failing to build the WTC towers with
> enough strength to withstand such an attack, even though such an
> attack was completely unprecedented.

It wasn't unprecedented at all. A B-25 bomber flew into the Empire
State Building by accident in 1945, and that the building was
(essentially) undamaged (mostly due to novel construction techniques)
was studied intensively.

The WTC was _deliberately_ designed to survive a similar crash from a
B707 or a deliberate bombing, again using novel construction techniques.
A B767 holds more fuel than a B707, but even so it probably would have
been within the safety margin before all the asbestos was removed.

>> If you're okay dropping several billion on cleaning up Sandy,
>> rather than spending a few million per year to be prepared for it,
>> then we should just keep doing what we're doing.
>
> Spending on prevention is a _known_ and _real_ expense. Spending on
> post-event cleanup is an unknown expense.
>
> It's far easier to spend money on cleanup, which absolutely must be
> done, than on prevention, which has questionable value.
>
> No, I'm wrong.
>
> It's far easier to _get_ money for cleanup, than to _get_ money for
> prevention. (Spending money is always very easy).

Aye, there's the rub.

> Many folks have called for improving the power grid to withstand
> storms and other problems. Well, how much more will
> people--including those who suffered without power--be willing to pay
> in their electric bills for such improvements? Or, in increased
> taxes?

If it weren't for the tree-huggers clogging the courts with expensive
lawsuits that block new power plants, new transmission lines, etc., we'd
have the capacity we need--and pay less for it.

> As you know, the US has spent zillions prosecuting two wars and
> creating a new Department of Homeland Security. Yet there are many
> legislators--of the same party who made those decisions--who flatly
> refuse to raise taxes necessary to pay for all that.

That's a big part of the problem: the party wrapping itself in the flag
of fiscal responsibility is the party deliberately bankrupting our govt.
Not surprisingly, the same party also endorses the aforementioned fairy
tales. Zero connection to reality.

As long as people keep voting for those morons, nothing will change.

> There are very influential people (ie Norquist) who will see that
> those who raise taxes are thrown out of office.

He pushes politicians to sign his pledge, sure, but AFAIK he's never
actually taken any action to get one who broke it removed from office.

Also, even he has admitted the need to raise tax revenues to balance the
budget, and he has explicitly stated on the record that allowing tax
cuts to expire, reducing exemptions and deductions, or closing loopholes
do not count as "raise taxes" within the meaning of his pledge.

> So go see Norquist et al and ask for money to build better dikes and
> other infrastructure as 'prevention' and see how far you get.

Screw him and all the other politicians. Ask the voters via referendum,
do you authorize us spend $X on Y, including collecting the taxes to pay
for it. It is rare for voters to turn down a reasonable project, and
the politicians don't have to take any heat for raising taxes because
they can blame the voters for doing that to themselves.

[Sancho Panza]

That is why whole-house generators are being fueled by LPG or NG.

>
>> We also have to be careful that our cure is not worse than the
>> disease. Parts of the Pentagon hit on 9/11 had already been
>> rebuilt, but the firedoors in the new construction may have blocked
>> escape routes hurting people, not saving them

That seems to be saying that the firedoors lacked panic bars. Sort of
defeats several purposes.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 21, 7:28 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> If it weren't for the tree-huggers clogging the courts with expensive
> lawsuits that block new power plants, new transmission lines, etc., we'd
> have the capacity we need--and pay less for it.

The "tree-huggers" you right-wingers like to excoriate are trying to
preserve a major mechanism for _removing_ greenhouse gases from the
atmosphere that bring about the global warming that makes possible
increasingly severe and frequent storms.

[Phil Kane]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:12:25 -0800 (PST), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>> As a first responder you're preaching the wrong line to me.  Spend it
>> now, or suffer the consequences of not having it when needed.
>
>As a society, we make tradeoffs for risks.
>
>For instance, what would the cost be (all aspects) to eliminate the
>40,000 annual motor US vehicle deaths?
>
>The cost to prevent all crime in the NYC subways?

With all due respect, you're putting dollars ahead of lives. Not the
way I live.

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

[John Levine]

>> If it weren't for the tree-huggers clogging the courts with expensive
>> lawsuits that block new power plants, new transmission lines, etc., we'd
>> have the capacity we need--and pay less for it.
>
>The "tree-huggers" you right-wingers like to excoriate are trying to
>preserve a major mechanism for _removing_ greenhouse gases from the
>atmosphere that bring about the global warming that makes possible
>increasingly severe and frequent storms.

It's a lot more complicated than that.

In upstate NY where I live, there is huge NIMBY opposition to a new power
line that will import power from the James Bay hydro project in Quebec.
While there are certainly some environmental issues with James Bay, there
is no question that using power from there rather than from the coal plant
on Cayuga Lake is a huge greenhouse win.

A friend of mine is working on the Ivanpah solar project in the
California desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It's a big array
of steerable mirrors that focus power on a couple of towers to boil
water and run turbine generators. It's had endless environmental
hassles due to a local endangered tortoise, even though they chose the
site specifically because it has been used extensively by offroad
ATV'ers, and there is precious little reason to think that the power
project, which has carefully relocated any tortoises they've found, is
as bad as the ATVs bombing around and ignoring them. This is pure
solar power, way better for greenhouse than whatever the LA DWP would
burn to generate it otherwise.

There are reasonable tree-huggers, but there are some utterly
unreasonable and counterproductive ones, too.






--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

[Miles Bader]

John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> writes:
> A friend of mine is working on the Ivanpah solar project in the
> California desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It's a big array
> of steerable mirrors that focus power on a couple of towers to boil
> water and run turbine generators. It's had endless environmental
> hassles due to a local endangered tortoise

Why would tortoises be particularly incompatible with a mirror farm anyway?

It's not like they're gonna climb up the towers and get roasted... :]

> There are reasonable tree-huggers, but there are some utterly
> unreasonable and counterproductive ones, too.

Of course; environmentalism as a movement includes all sorts.

I consider myself "an environmentalist" but it's a very vague word;
I'm embarrassed on a regular basis by stuff done by those making the
same claim. Way too many "environmentalists" seem quite ill-informed,
and sometimes appear to care more about _style_ than they do about
actual results... [This, unfortunately, seems true of almost any
movement; they become tribes...]

But by the same token, there's a lot of _good_ stuff that gets done in
the name of environmentalism as well.

A phrase like "tree hugger", though, is purely pejorative, and seems
to reflect suspicion and distrust that's more cultural than anything
else. It says more about the user than it does the subject (e.g., "I
grew up in Texas")...

-miles

--
I'm beginning to think that life is just one long Yoko Ono album; no rhyme
or reason, just a lot of incoherent shrieks and then it's over. --Ian Wolff

[Phil Kane]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:51:19 +0900, Miles Bader <mi...@gnu.org> wrote:

>A phrase like "tree hugger", though, is purely pejorative, and seems
>to reflect suspicion and distrust that's more cultural than anything
>else. It says more about the user than it does the subject (e.g., "I
>grew up in Texas")...

In my wife's last job before retirement - an electrical engineering
designer for a major firm - she did quite a lot of work supporting
their Environmental Engineering department on projects such as that.
She referred to them as "bunny-huggers" and was totally convinced that
they lived in another world despite (or because of) the fact that most
had Masters or Doctorate degrees in things other than engineering. I
met some of them at various company events, and I can see why.

[Peter T. Daniels]

With the recent (and not so recent) track record of the Army Corps of
Engineers, you probably don't want to be speaking too highly of
engineers in general.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 21, 6:34 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:

> Err, those of us familiar with the situation are well aware
> that simply holding the WTC to _standard_ NYC building code
> would have saved quite a few lives, even if the structure
> still collapsed.

In what ways did the WTC fail to meet NYC bldg codes in effect at the
time of construction?

> And if the envirowhackoes had been slapped down and the steel
> had kept its original spec asbestos-cement insulation, there's
> a pretty good chance that it would have stayed up.

Separate issue: asbestos was banned for use everywhere.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 22, 1:44 am, Phil Kane <Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:

> >For instance, what would the cost be (all aspects) to eliminate the
> >40,000 annual motor US vehicle deaths?
>
> >The cost to prevent all crime in the NYC subways?
>
> With all due respect, you're putting dollars ahead of lives.  Not the
> way I live.

But it is the way of the world.

Today the paper reported that a little girl was killed in a nasty car
crash, and that there was a 100 car pile up in Texas. Again I
wondered what would be the cost to prevent such accidents and whether
society would be willing to pay it.

[danny burstein]

In <6a7a2819-37e5-428d...@s14g2000vba.googlegroups.com> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:

>On Nov 21, 6:34=A0pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:

>> Err, those of us familiar with the situation are well aware
>> that simply holding the WTC to _standard_ NYC building code
>> would have saved quite a few lives, even if the structure
>> still collapsed.

>In what ways did the WTC fail to meet NYC bldg codes in effect at the
>time of construction?

I'll give you one. The rest, as they say, are an
exeercise for the student:

NYC's standard building codes for high rises required
that the stairways be enclosed in reinforced concrete
block or similar strong construction. The stairways
at the WTC were simply covered by plasterboard.

If they'd have been conrete, most of the stairways
would have stayed passable and we'd have had a hefty
number of the folk above the impact zone succesfully
getting down past the fire floors.

>> And if the envirowhackoes had been slapped down and the steel
>> had kept its original spec asbestos-cement insulation, there's
>> a pretty good chance that it would have stayed up.

>Separate issue: asbestos was banned for use everywhere.

Turn over a rock and there's an envirowhackoe. Theyr're
all over.

[Sancho Panza]

On 11/23/2012 8:00 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 21, 6:34 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> Err, those of us familiar with the situation are well aware
>> that simply holding the WTC to _standard_ NYC building code
>> would have saved quite a few lives, even if the structure
>> still collapsed.
>
> In what ways did the WTC fail to meet NYC bldg codes in effect at the
> time of construction?

Here is just a small smattering of the easily available loads of
objective reports and analyses that serve to indict any number of
officials and experts:

NYC Dept. of Buildings: No Records for Pre-9/11 WTC Elevator Rebuild,
One of the “Largest, Most Sophisticated” Ever
By Aidan Monaghan
9/11 Blogger
July 20, 2011 – Originally Published June 16, 2011

The New York City Department of Buildings (DoB) has reported within a
June 6, 2011 Freedom of Information (FOI) response, that no records
could be located regarding the following request for information
pertaining to the massive elevator modernization project underway at
World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 until the very morning of September
11, 2001, one of the largest ever [1]. The DoB governs elevator
construction and use within New York City.

An April 15, 2011 FOI appeal request sought:

“Permits or certifications provided by the NYC Department of Buildings
regarding elevator modernization/renovation work performed at the former
World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 during the 1990s and 2000s.”

The DoB’s June 6, 2011 FOI answer reads as follows:

“BIS shows no elevator records for the time period in question.”Organic
Oregano Oil Blend 125X125

The DoB’s Building Information System (BIS) “is the Department of
Buildings’ main database. The database was put into production in 1984
and supports Department functions with respect to: … Application
Processing (application submission …)” [2]

The DoB’s description of its role regarding elevator installation and
use within New York City: “The Department of Buildings’ Elevator
Division oversees the use and operation of New York City’s elevators”.
[3] Such duties include the receipt and issuance of construction
applications and permits:
“Applications and Permits; New Installations or Major Upgrades; File an
Elevator Application (EA) to install a new device or perform a
substantial upgrade, alteration, replacement or modernization to an
existing device.” [4]

The New York City building code regarding elevator construction reads as
follows: “SUBCHAPTER 18 ELEVATORS AND CONVEYORS; § [C26-1803.1] 27-1001
Permit required. – No construction, alteration or removal shall be
commenced until a written work permit therefor shall have been issued by
the commissioner” [5]

“Dear Mr. Monaghan

The New York City Department of Buildings (“the Department/DOB”) is
in receipt of your April 15,2011 letter appealing the Department’s
February 28, 2011 letter that acknowledged receipt of your FOIL request
letter and advised you that it was currently working to determine if it
had any of the requested documents.

DOB’s letter further advised that it would notify you within 30
business days regarding the status of your request. You are treating
this determination as a constructive denial based on the fact that the
Department did not provide an update within the 30 days as stated, and
that the Department is still working on your request.

Your FOIL request asked for the following DOB records:

“Copies of inspections and certifications records issued by the New
York City Department of Buildings, pertaining to construction projects
performed at the World Trade Center Buildings 1 and 2 between January
2000 and January 2002.”

“Permits or certifications provided by the NYC Department of
Buildings regarding elevator modernization/renovation work performed at
the former World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 during the 1990s and 2000s.”

According to the Department’s Building Information System (“BIS”),
there was a complaint registered on January 11, 2001 at 1 World Trade
Center, but the Department did not inspect in view of a lack of
jurisdiction. Nor are there records of the Department having inspected 1
World Trade Center during the time period in question for any other
reason. There are no records of complaints filed or inspections
conducted at 2 World Trade Center for the period requested.

The Department of Buildings records show no violations issued
during that period, so there would be no certification records.

BIS shows no elevator records for the time period in question.

Therefore, the Department has no records responsive to your request.

This constitutes the Department’s final determination.”--
http://theintelhub.com/2011/07/20/nyc-dept-of-buildings-no-records-for-pre-911-wtc-elevator-rebuild-one-of-the-%E2%80%9Clargest-most-sophisticated%E2%80%9D-ever/
----
The tube-frame design, earlier introduced by Fazlur Khan, was a new
approach that allowed more open floor plans than the traditional design
that distributed columns throughout the interior to support building
loads. The World Trade Center towers used high-strength, load-bearing
perimeter steel columns called Vierendeel trusses that were spaced
closely together to form a strong, rigid wall structure, supporting
virtually all lateral loads such as wind loads, and sharing the gravity
load with the core columns. The perimeter structure containing 59
columns per side was constructed with extensive use of prefabricated
modular pieces each consisting of three columns, three stories tall,
connected by spandrel plates.[31] The spandrel plates were welded to the
columns to create the modular pieces off-site at the fabrication
shop.[32] Adjacent modules were bolted together with the splices
occurring at mid-span of the columns and spandrels. The spandrel plates
were located at each floor, transmitting shear stress between columns,
allowing them to work together in resisting lateral loads. The joints
between modules were staggered vertically so the column splices between
adjacent modules were not at the same floor.[31]

The core of the towers housed the elevator and utility shafts,
restrooms, three stairwells, and other support spaces. The core of each
tower was a rectangular area 87 by 135 feet (27 by 41 m) and contained
47 steel columns running from the bedrock to the top of the tower. The
large, column-free space between the perimeter and core was bridged by
prefabricated floor trusses. The floors supported their own weight as
well as live loads, providing lateral stability to the exterior walls
and distributing wind loads among the exterior walls.[33] The floors
consisted of 4 inches (10 cm) thick lightweight concrete slabs laid on a
fluted steel deck. A grid of lightweight bridging trusses and main
trusses supported the floors.[34] The trusses connected to the perimeter
at alternate columns and were on 6 foot 8 inch (2.03 m) centers. The top
chords of the trusses were bolted to seats welded to the spandrels on
the exterior side and a channel welded to the core columns on the
interior side. The floors were connected to the perimeter spandrel
plates with viscoelastic dampers that helped reduce the amount of sway
felt by building occupants.

Hat trusses (or "outrigger truss") located from the 107th floor to the
top of the buildings were designed to support a tall communication
antenna on top of each building.[34] Only 1 WTC (north tower) actually
had an antenna fitted; it was added in 1978.[35] The truss system
consisted of six trusses along the long axis of the core and four along
the short axis. This truss system allowed some load redistribution
between the perimeter and core columns and supported the transmission
tower.[34]

The tube frame design using steel core and perimeter columns protected
with sprayed-on fire resistant material created a relatively lightweight
structure that would sway more in response to the wind compared to
traditional structures such as the Empire State Building that have
thick, heavy masonry for fireproofing of steel structural elements.[36]
During the design process, wind tunnel tests were done to establish
design wind pressures that the World Trade Center towers could be
subjected to and structural response to those forces.[37] Experiments
also were done to evaluate how much sway occupants could comfortably
tolerate, however, many subjects experienced dizziness and other ill
effects.[38] One of the chief engineers Leslie Robertson worked with
Canadian engineer Alan G. Davenport to develop viscoelastic dampers to
absorb some of the sway. These viscoelastic dampers, used throughout the
structures at the joints between floor trusses and perimeter columns
along with some other structural modifications, reduced the building
sway to an acceptable level.[39] --wikipedia
----
A principal factor limiting the loss of life was that the buildings
were one-third to one-half occupied at the time of the attacks. NIST
estimated that if the towers had been fully occupied with
20,000occupants each, it would have taken just over 3 hours to evacuate
the buildings and about 14,000people might have perished because the
stairwell capacity would not have been sufficient to evacuate that many
people in the available time. Egress capacity required by current
building codes is determined by single floor calculations that are
independent of building height and does not consider the time for full
building evacuation.
Due to the presence of assembly use spaces at the top of each tower
(Windows on the World restaurant complex in WTC 1 and the Top of the
World observation deck in WTC 2) that were designed to accommodate over
1,000 occupants per floor, the New York City Building Code would have
required a minimum of four independent means of egress (stairs), one
more than the three that were available in the buildings. Given the low
occupancy level on September11,2001, NIST found that the issue of egress
capacity from these places of assembly, or from elsewhere in the
buildings, was not a significant factor on that day. It is conceivable
that such a fourth stairwell, depending on its location and the effects
of aircraft impact on its functional integrity, could have remained
passable, allowing evacuation by an unknown number of additional
occupants from above the floors of impact. If the buildings had been
filled to their capacity with 20,000 occupants, the required fourth
stairway would likely have mitigated the insufficient egress capacity
for conducting a full building evacuation within the available time.
Evacuation was assisted by participation in fire drills within the
previous year by two-thirds of survivors and perhaps hindered by a Local
Law that prevented employers from requiring occupants to practice using
the stairways. The stairways were not easily navigated in some locations
due to their design, which included "transfer hallways," where evacuees
had to traverse from one stairway to another location where the stairs
continued. Additionally, many occupants were unprepared for the physical
challenge of full building evacuation.
The functional integrity and survivability of the stairwells was
affected by the separation of the stairwells and the structural
integrity of stairwell enclosures. In the impact region of WTC 1, the
stairwell separation was the smallest over the building height—clustered
well within the building core—and all stairwells were destroyed by the
aircraft impact. By contrast, the separation of stairwells in the impact
region of WTC 2 was the largest over the building height—located along
different boundaries of the building core—and one of three stairwells
remained marginally passable after the aircraft impact. The shaft
enclosures were fire rated but were not required to have structural
integrity under typical accidental loads: there were numerous reports of
stairwells obstructed by fallen debris from damaged enclosures.
The active fire safety systems (sprinklers, smoke purge, fire
alarms, and emergency occupant communications) were designed to meet or
exceed current practice. However, with the exception of the evacuation
announcements, they played no role in the safety of life on September 11
because the water supplies to the sprinklers were damaged by the
aircraft impact. The smoke purge systems operated under the direction of
the fire department after fires were not turned on, but they also would
have been ineffective due to aircraft damage. The violence of the
aircraft impact served as its own alarm. In WTC 2, contradictory public
address announcements contributed to occupant confusion and some delay
in occupants beginning to evacuate.
For the approximately 1,000 emergency responders on the scene, this
was the largest disaster they had even seen. Despite attempts by the
responding agencies to work together and perform their own tasks, the
extent of the incident was well beyond their capabilities.
Communications were erratic due to the high number of calls and the
inadequate performance of some of the gear. Even so, there was no way to
digest, test for accuracy, and disseminate the vast amount of
information being received. Their jobs were complicated by the loss of
command centers in WTC 7 and then in the towers after WTC 2 collapsed.
With nearly all elevator service disrupted and progress up the stairs
taking about 2 min per floor, it would have taken hours for the
responders to reach their destinations, assist survivors, and escape had
the towers not collapsed.

Objective 3: Determine what procedures and practices were used in the
design, construction, operation, and maintenance of WTC 1 and WTC 2.

Because of The Port Authority's establishment under a clause of the
United States Constitution, its buildings were not subject to any state
or local building regulations. The buildings were unlike any others
previously built, both in their height and in their innovative
structural features. Nevertheless, the actual design and approval
process produced two buildings that generally were consistent with
nearly all of the provisions of the New York City Building Code and
other building codes of that time that were reviewed by NIST. The loads
for which the buildings were designed exceeded the New York City code
requirements. The quality of the structural steels was consistent with
the building specifications. The departures from the building codes and
standards identified by NIST did not have a significant effect on the
outcome of September 11.
For the floor systems, the fire rating and insulation thickness
used on the floor trusses, which together with the concrete slab served
as the main source of support for the floors, were of concern from the
time of initial construction. NIST found no technical basis or test data
on which the thermal protection of the steel was based. On September 11,
2001, the minimum specified thickness of the insulation was adequate to
delay heating of the trusses; the amount of insulation dislodged by the
aircraft impact, however, was sufficient to cause the structural steel
to be heated to critical levels.
Based on four standard fire resistance tests that were conducted
under a range of insulation and test conditions, NIST found the fire
rating of the floor system to vary between 3/4hour and 2hours; in all
cases, the floors continued to support the full design load without
collapse for over 2 hours.
The wind loads used for the WTC towers, which governed the
structural design of the external columns and provided the baseline
capacity of the structures to withstand abnormal events such as major
fires or impact damage, significantly exceeded the requirements of the
New York City Building Code and other building codes of the day that
were reviewed by NIST. Two sets of wind load estimates for the towers
obtained by independent commercial consultants in 2002, however,
differed by as much as 40 percent. These estimates were based on wind
tunnel tests conducted as part of insurance litigation unrelated to the
Investigation. --http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/wtc_about.cfm

[danny burstein]

On 11/23/2012 8:00 PM, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 21, 6:34 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> Err, those of us familiar with the situation are well aware
>> that simply holding the WTC to _standard_ NYC building code
>> would have saved quite a few lives, even if the structure
>> still collapsed.
>
> In what ways did the WTC fail to meet NYC bldg codes in effect at the
> time of construction?

- [lots of "Sancho Paza" comments snipped]

Just addressing the first couple of paragraphs:

- The Port Authority _IS NOT_ under NYC jurisdiction,
so the fact that the Department of Buildings doesn't
have [a] any records of elevator repair work means
absolutely diddly squat.

[a] if, of course, your repost of a FOIL sequence is correct.

Of course, they could have responded to the requested with
an explanatory note. SIgh.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 23, 9:12 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:

> >> And if the envirowhackoes had been slapped down and the steel
> >> had kept its original spec asbestos-cement insulation, there's
> >> a pretty good chance that it would have stayed up.
> >Separate issue:  asbestos was banned for use everywhere.
>
> Turn over a rock and there's an envirowhackoe. Theyr're
> all over.

There are some tree-huggers who successfully disrupt projects, but
generally they remain on the fringe with very little influence. For
more troubling are various special interests such as wealthy NIMBY's.

Sometimes politicians use the tree-huggers as a convenient excuse to
block a project they don't want for other reasons.

There are other projects that deserve to be stopped.

Basically, each project has to be judged on its merits rather than
making a blanket condemnation.

[Phil Kane]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 04:40:28 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>With the recent (and not so recent) track record of the Army Corps of
>Engineers, you probably don't want to be speaking too highly of
>engineers in general.

Contrary to their name, "The Army Corps" as they are referred to
locally doesn't do any engineering itself any more (if in fact they
ever did). They outsource all of that to consultants and contractors.
Their main job is contract maintenance and money direction.
(Source - a friend who is an IT geek with The Army Corps)

"Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please"

Phil Kane - Beaverton, OR
PNW CP HALL MP 29.9 - OE District

[Phil Kane]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:06:14 -0800 (PST), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>Today the paper reported that a little girl was killed in a nasty car
>crash, and that there was a 100 car pile up in Texas. Again I
>wondered what would be the cost to prevent such accidents and whether
>society would be willing to pay it.

All collisions are preventable. What failed?

I would bet that the little girl's parents would vote "yes" for
whatever the cost.

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 23, 11:34 pm, Phil Kane <Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 04:40:28 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
>

> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >With the recent (and not so recent) track record of the Army Corps of
> >Engineers, you probably don't want to be speaking too highly of
> >engineers in general.
>
> Contrary to their name, "The Army Corps" as they are referred to
> locally doesn't do any engineering itself any more (if in fact they
> ever did).  They outsource all of that to consultants and contractors.
> Their main job is contract maintenance and money direction.
> (Source - a  friend who is an IT geek with The Army Corps)

Then their oversight is crap. The buck stops there. And, moreover,
you've tarnisned the name of all the engineers they contract with.

[Phil Kane]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 05:37:57 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> Contrary to their name, "The Army Corps" as they are referred to
>> locally doesn't do any engineering itself any more (if in fact they
>> ever did). �They outsource all of that to consultants and contractors.
>> Their main job is contract maintenance and money direction.
>> (Source - a �friend who is an IT geek with The Army Corps)
>
>Then their oversight is crap. The buck stops there. And, moreover,
>you've tarnisned the name of all the engineers they contract with.

Including my wife?

My point is that sometimes the oversight is good, sometimes not. This
is true throughout the industry.

My experience is that they know beforehand what they want and the
function of the contractors is to deliver same. In our consulting
firm we run into the same problem - and therefore we are very
selective on who our clients are.

== Phil Kane
Registered Professional Engineer (4 states so far)

[danny burstein]

In <0uu1b8tuu27p2na99...@4ax.com> Phil Kane <Phil...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> writes:

>My point is that sometimes the oversight is good, sometimes not. This
>is true throughout the industry.

A key problem with the way the US Army Corps of Engineers
is established in this country is that they and (quite
often) their contractors, can take advantage of that
nifty "sovereign immunity" cloak. Hence we recently
had those lawsuits about the failures of the New Orleans
Cohens thrown out of court.

Remove that immunity clause and we'd (possibly/maybe/presumably/perhaps)
see a better level of construction. Or maybe just more costs. I dunno.
But the current system has a lot of issues.

obnyctransit: The Corps brought lots of high capacity
water pumps and other useful tools to the larger NY/NJ
area to help clear out the flooded subway and other tunnels.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 24, 11:59 am, Phil Kane <Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 05:37:57 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
>

> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> Contrary to their name, "The Army Corps" as they are referred to
> >> locally doesn't do any engineering itself any more (if in fact they
> >> ever did).  They outsource all of that to consultants and contractors.
> >> Their main job is contract maintenance and money direction.
> >> (Source - a  friend who is an IT geek with The Army Corps)
>
> >Then their oversight is crap. The buck stops there. And, moreover,
> >you've tarnisned the name of all the engineers they contract with.
>
> Including my wife?

Is she responsible for civil engineering projects loaded with
unforeseen consequences and/or shoddy workmanship?

> My point is that sometimes the oversight is good, sometimes not.  This
> is true throughout the industry.
>
> My experience is that they know beforehand what they want and the
> function of the contractors is to deliver same.  In our consulting
> firm we run into the same problem - and therefore we are very
> selective on who our clients are.

"What they want" may not always be in the best interest of the larger
community. Were the New Orleans levees the right thing in the first
place? Has their reconstruction been achieved intelligently?

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 24-Nov-12 11:11, danny burstein wrote:
> A key problem with the way the US Army Corps of Engineers
> is established in this country is that they and (quite
> often) their contractors, can take advantage of that
> nifty "sovereign immunity" cloak. Hence we recently
> had those lawsuits about the failures of the New Orleans
> Cohens thrown out of court.

Did you mean levees here?

> Remove that immunity clause and we'd (possibly/maybe/presumably/perhaps)
> see a better level of construction. Or maybe just more costs. I dunno.

Liability for damages only works because it motivates the owners to
avoid losing their investment. The USACOE has no "owners" except us
taxpayers, so _we_ are the ones that would have to pay the price for
Congress's inept management and perennial underfunding.

IIRC, construction quality wasn't the problem anyway; it was the ongoing
maintenance that was the problem. That and the idea of building levees
in the first place, which is almost always the wrong solution, but I
doubt they were given the flexibility to come up with a better one (or
at least the funding to implement it). Part of this is that politicians
in this country are generally not concerned about any costs beyond the
next election, so we tend to get designs that minimize short-term costs
but maximize costs over the project's entire lifetime.

> obnyctransit: The Corps brought lots of high capacity
> water pumps and other useful tools to the larger NY/NJ
> area to help clear out the flooded subway and other tunnels.

They do good work when the funds are available--and it's hard to imagine
any politician stupid enough to block funding for disaster relief
_after_ the disaster has occurred. Too bad that costs a lot more, in
the end, than being prepared ahead of time.

[Stephen Sprunk]

You could feed a starving child (or two) in Africa for less than you pay
for Internet access, yet here you are. Unless you're secretly an
ascetic who donates every penny he makes to charity, and you only post
here from a free Internet cafe when taking a break from working in soup
kitchens.

We all put dollars ahead of lives.

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 24-Nov-12 11:11, danny burstein wrote:

> A key problem with the way the US Army Corps of Engineers
> is established in this country is that they and (quite
> often) their contractors, can take advantage of that
> nifty "sovereign immunity" cloak. Hence we recently
> had those lawsuits about the failures of the New Orleans
> Cohens thrown out of court.

Did you mean levees here?

> Remove that immunity clause and we'd (possibly/maybe/presumably/perhaps)
> see a better level of construction. Or maybe just more costs. I dunno.

Liability for damages only works because it motivates the owners to
avoid losing their investment. The USACOE has no "owners" except us
taxpayers, so _we_ are the ones that would have to pay the price for
Congress's inept management and perennial underfunding.

IIRC, construction quality wasn't the problem anyway; it was the ongoing
maintenance that was the problem. That and the idea of building levees
in the first place, which is almost always the wrong solution, but I
doubt they were given the flexibility to come up with a better one (or
at least the funding to implement it). Part of this is that politicians
in this country are generally not concerned about any costs beyond the
next election, so we tend to get designs that minimize short-term costs
but maximize costs over the project's entire lifetime.

> obnyctransit: The Corps brought lots of high capacity
> water pumps and other useful tools to the larger NY/NJ
> area to help clear out the flooded subway and other tunnels.

They do good work when the funds are available--and it's hard to imagine
any politician stupid enough to block funding for disaster relief
_after_ the disaster has occurred. Too bad that costs a lot more, in
the end, than being prepared ahead of time.

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 21-Nov-12 22:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Nov 21, 7:28 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> If it weren't for the tree-huggers clogging the courts with expensive
>> lawsuits that block new power plants, new transmission lines, etc., we'd
>> have the capacity we need--and pay less for it.
>

> The "tree-huggers" you ... like to excoriate are trying to preserve

> a major mechanism for _removing_ greenhouse gases from the atmosphere

If they're so virtuous, why do they fight every attempt to _reduce_
pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions?

I reserve the pejorative term for the idiots; I do not apply it to sane
environmentalists who understand that progress (eg. replacing a dirty
coal plant with one that pollutes less per MWh) is better for society,
not to mention more likely to succeed, than trying to drive our entire
society back into the Stone Age.

If they want to protect a bunch of trees (that will eventually rot or
burn down, releasing their sequestered carbon anyway), let them buy the
trees themselves rather than spending _more_ money on lawyers to block
said trees being put to a more useful and lasting purpose by their
rightful owner.

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 22-Nov-12 16:51, Miles Bader wrote:
> John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> writes:
>> A friend of mine is working on the Ivanpah solar project in the
>> California desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It's a big
>> array of steerable mirrors that focus power on a couple of towers
>> to boil water and run turbine generators. It's had endless
>> environmental hassles due to a local endangered tortoise
>
> Why would tortoises be particularly incompatible with a mirror farm
> anyway?
>
> It's not like they're gonna climb up the towers and get roasted...
> :]

It doesn't matter. If there's any kind of wildlife anywhere, the
tree-huggers will come out of the woodwork to "protect" it with
expensive and time-consuming lawsuits, even if said wildlife is not
actually threatened.

>> There are reasonable tree-huggers, but there are some utterly
>> unreasonable and counterproductive ones, too.
>
> Of course; environmentalism as a movement includes all sorts.
>
> I consider myself "an environmentalist" but it's a very vague word;
> I'm embarrassed on a regular basis by stuff done by those making the
> same claim.

I have no problem with environmentalism; we _should_ be minimizing our
impact on the environment so our descendants inherit a world that's
inhabitable. However, that doesn't mean _zero_ impact.

The "tree-huggers" take this to the extreme, though, by demanding _zero_
impact (which is impossible, of course) with religious fervor--and
actually do their own cause more harm than good. They're the left's
equivalent of Bible-thumpers and Teabaggers.

[danny burstein]

In <k8r37f$c5b$1...@dont-email.me> Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org> writes:

>The "tree-huggers" take this to the extreme, though, by demanding _zero_
>impact (which is impossible, of course) with religious fervor--and
>actually do their own cause more harm than good. They're the left's
>equivalent of Bible-thumpers and Teabaggers.

And the "right's" as well. Tree hugging envirowhackines ain't
limited to any single political slant.

ob nyctransit: the battles against subway/bus extensions...

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 23, 11:34 pm, Phil Kane <Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:

> Contrary to their name, "The Army Corps" as they are referred to
> locally doesn't do any engineering itself any more (if in fact they
> ever did).  They outsource all of that to consultants and contractors.
> Their main job is contract maintenance and money direction.
> (Source - a  friend who is an IT geek with The Army Corps)

During WW II, the Army Corps of Engineers were in charge of the
Manhattan Project (it was their "Manhattan District"). Almost
everything was contracted out. Kodak ran Oak Ridge, duPont ran
Hanford, Univ of Calif ran Los Alamos. Stone & Webster did much of
the construction work.

A bunch of math geeks were drafted, given a quickie training of how to
salute, and assigned to Los Alamos as technicians. There were clashes
with "regular military" officers of the techies considerable lack of
military composure, but the senior scientists intervened for the
techies.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 23, 11:37 pm, Phil Kane <Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:06:14 -0800 (PST), hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> >Today the paper reported that a little girl was killed in a nasty car
> >crash, and that there was a 100 car pile up in Texas.  Again I
> >wondered what would be the cost to prevent such accidents and whether
> >society would be willing to pay it.
>
> All collisions are preventable.  What failed?

That's where the question becomes difficult. The preliminary cause
was suggested to be another driving speeding and jumping the median.

Now, does that mean we should have higher medians on _every_ road to
prevent that sort of thing? Governors on cars to prevent speeding?
They didn't say the errant driver's record, but she repeat speeders
lose their license permanently?

> I would bet that the little girl's parents would vote "yes" for
> whatever the cost.

Yes. But the rest of society be willing to pay for it?

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 24, 1:21 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> It doesn't matter.  If there's any kind of wildlife anywhere, the
> tree-huggers will come out of the woodwork to "protect" it with
> expensive and time-consuming lawsuits, even if said wildlife is not
> actually threatened.

I think the real problem is such lawsuits get a hearing rather than be
immediately dismissed as frivolous.

Such a mentality is a reaction to the Moses years where he did pretty
much whatever he chose (though he was blocked on several major
projects he wanted*).

The problem is that the pendelum swung too far in the other
direction. Instead of Moses bulldozing the opposition, we have the
opposition bulldozing projects. Even worthwhile projects are delayed
for years and cost much more just to go through the normal motions of
impact studies and hearings.

Exp: I saw archeologists digging up ground (slow painstaking work by
hand) that would become a new highway. I don't think they found
anything of significant or even insignificant interest. But the clock
stopped while they did their thing and of course they were paid for
their efforts.

> The "tree-huggers" take this to the extreme, though, by demanding _zero_
> impact (which is impossible, of course) with religious fervor--and
> actually do their own cause more harm than good.  They're the left's
> equivalent of Bible-thumpers and Teabaggers.

I believe public transit is good for the environment in that it uses
less fuel and pollute less to move people a given distance. But many
transit projects are fought by environmentalists, and the result is
people stay in their cars.

Exp: SEPTA wants to build a new parking garage at a busy station.
The tree-huggers are fighting it, staying it will attract automobiles
and that is bad; rather, they think people should walk or bike to the
station. But the reality is that many commuters simply live too far
from the station and driving there is their only option. Further, if
they can't drive to the station and park, they'll drive all the way to
town, which is a worse outcome.


* Moses was blocked on the Oyster Bay Sound Crossing, the Midtown
Expressway, Lower Manhattan Expressway, Bkn-Battery Bridge, a Staten
Is expressway connection, a Brooklyn exprssway connector, and running
NYC's airports.

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 23-Nov-12 22:37, Phil Kane wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:06:14 -0800 (PST), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> Today the paper reported that a little girl was killed in a nasty car
>> crash, and that there was a 100 car pile up in Texas. Again I
>> wondered what would be the cost to prevent such accidents and whether
>> society would be willing to pay it.
>
> All collisions are preventable.

True, but only in a theoretical sense.

> I would bet that the little girl's parents would vote "yes" for
> whatever the cost.

It's very easy to spend _someone else's_ money.

What would have been the cost of saving her life, and how many other
lives could have been saved by spending that same amount on programs
that are far more cost-effective?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 24, 12:56 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> On 24-Nov-12 11:11, danny burstein wrote:
>
> > A key problem with the way the US Army Corps of Engineers
> > is established in this country is that they and (quite
> > often) their contractors, can take advantage of that
> > nifty "sovereign immunity" cloak. Hence we recently
> > had those lawsuits about the failures of the New Orleans
> > Cohens thrown out of court.
>
> Did you mean levees here?

If the Jewish jokes have to be explained, maybe you don't belong in
nyc.transit after all ...

BTW Danny Burstein is back on Broadway, in another revival.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 24, 3:03 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 23, 11:34 pm, Phil Kane <Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:
>
> > Contrary to their name, "The Army Corps" as they are referred to
> > locally doesn't do any engineering itself any more (if in fact they
> > ever did).  They outsource all of that to consultants and contractors.
> > Their main job is contract maintenance and money direction.
> > (Source - a  friend who is an IT geek with The Army Corps)
>
> During WW II, the Army Corps of Engineers were in charge of the
> Manhattan Project (it was their "Manhattan District").  Almost
> everything was contracted out.  Kodak ran Oak Ridge, duPont ran
> Hanford, Univ of Calif ran Los Alamos.  Stone & Webster did much of
> the construction work.

And the University of Chicago, where the fundamental work was done?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 24, 3:17 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 24, 1:21 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>
> > It doesn't matter.  If there's any kind of wildlife anywhere, the
> > tree-huggers will come out of the woodwork to "protect" it with
> > expensive and time-consuming lawsuits, even if said wildlife is not
> > actually threatened.
>
> I think the real problem is such lawsuits get a hearing rather than be
> immediately dismissed as frivolous.
>
> Such a mentality is a reaction to the Moses years where he did pretty
> much whatever he chose (though he was blocked on several major
> projects he wanted*).
>
> The problem is that the pendelum swung too far in the other
> direction.  Instead of Moses bulldozing the opposition, we have the
> opposition bulldozing projects.  Even worthwhile projects are delayed
> for years and cost much more just to go through the normal motions of
> impact studies and hearings.
>
> Exp:  I saw archeologists digging up ground (slow painstaking work by
> hand) that would become a new highway.  I don't think they found
> anything of significant or even insignificant interest.  But the clock
> stopped while they did their thing and of course they were paid for
> their efforts.

In Israel and Italy, when a construction project uncovers ancient
sites, all work halts immediately and "rescue archeology" is done to
assess the value of the site. Sometimes the discoveries are
incorporated into the ensuing structure. There's even a highrise at
the tip of Manhattan with an archeological site exposed through glass
floors in its covered plaza.

> > The "tree-huggers" take this to the extreme, though, by demanding _zero_
> > impact (which is impossible, of course) with religious fervor--and
> > actually do their own cause more harm than good.  They're the left's
> > equivalent of Bible-thumpers and Teabaggers.
>
> I believe public transit is good for the environment in that it uses
> less fuel and pollute less to move people a given distance.  But many
> transit projects are fought by environmentalists, and the result is
> people stay in their cars.

Today's RadioLab (I think from the production style it was several
years old) talked to economists who have shown that urban living is
vastly more efficient than rural living, even if it takes more upfront
capital to provide the basic services (they were talkig specifically
about bringing water from Upstate).

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 24, 1:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> On 21-Nov-12 22:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Nov 21, 7:28 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> >> If it weren't for the tree-huggers clogging the courts with expensive
> >> lawsuits that block new power plants, new transmission lines, etc., we'd
> >> have the capacity we need--and pay less for it.
>
> > The "tree-huggers" you ... like to excoriate are trying to preserve
> > a major mechanism for _removing_ greenhouse gases from the atmosphere

that was "you right-wingers." You won't find a lefty using that word.

> If they're so virtuous, why do they fight every attempt to _reduce_
> pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions?

???

> I reserve the pejorative term for the idiots; I do not apply it to sane
> environmentalists who understand that progress (eg. replacing a dirty
> coal plant with one that pollutes less per MWh) is better for society,
> not to mention more likely to succeed, than trying to drive our entire
> society back into the Stone Age.

Replacing a coal plant with a less dirty coal plant solves nothing in
the long run, and the coal districts continue to be raped.

> If they want to protect a bunch of trees (that will eventually rot or
> burn down, releasing their sequestered carbon anyway), let them buy the
> trees themselves rather than spending _more_ money on lawyers to block
> said trees being put to a more useful and lasting purpose by their
> rightful owner.

No one "rightfully owns" forests. (Wasn't it _you_ who put forth the
theory that _only_ the divinely ordained King actually _owns_ the
land, and everyone else simply gets to use it as the pleasure of him
or his agents?)

They have to burn in order to carry on their life cycle.

The problem is the people who built houses in or alongside the forests
and think their houses should be prevented from burning up.

A different problem is the people who built houses on flood plains.
_Every spring_, there are stories in Chicagoland about the
subdivisions that get swamped by the Fox and Des Plaines Rivers.
_Every spring_. Yet they keep moving there.

At least the Passaic, Hackensack, and Raritan don't usually do that.
This time, the extra water came from the other direction.

[danny burstein]

In <a078d652-89fe-4e64...@p17g2000vbn.googlegroups.com> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:

>BTW Danny Burstein is back on Broadway, in another revival.

At least this time around my doppleganger doesn't get
to be Up Close and Personal with one of my unobtainable
fantasy heart throbs, namely Bernadette Peters.

- the two of them starred in Follies last year, meaning
he was with her pretty much every afternoon and evening.

- hey, if I'm going to have unobtainable fantasies, they're
going to be high quality..

ob transit: the theaters are a quick #1, 2, 3 subway ride
away. Or the BMT lines. Or lot of buses...

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 24-Nov-12 15:21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Nov 24, 1:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> On 21-Nov-12 22:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Nov 21, 7:28 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>>>> If it weren't for the tree-huggers clogging the courts with
>>>> expensive lawsuits that block new power plants, new
>>>> transmission lines, etc., we'd have the capacity we need--and
>>>> pay less for it.
>>
>>> The "tree-huggers" you ... like to excoriate are trying to
>>> preserve a major mechanism for _removing_ greenhouse gases from
>>> the atmosphere
>
> that was "you right-wingers." You won't find a lefty using that
> word.

I'm further left than the Democrats on nearly all issues, Peter. Your
definition of "right wing", i.e. anyone who is even slightly to the
right of Chairman Mao, does not match common parlance.

As I have repeatedly told you before, do not confuse my _explaining_ how
the world works with _endorsing_ it.

>> If they're so virtuous, why do they fight every attempt to
>> _reduce_ pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions?
>
> ???

Yes, that's a mystery to me too, hence my use of a pejorative term for
those idiots as explained below.

>> I reserve the pejorative term for the idiots; I do not apply it to
>> sane environmentalists who understand that progress (eg. replacing
>> a dirty coal plant with one that pollutes less per MWh) is better
>> for society, not to mention more likely to succeed, than trying to
>> drive our entire society back into the Stone Age.
>
> Replacing a coal plant with a less dirty coal plant solves nothing
> in the long run,

As Lao Tzu said, a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

It is better for us to take steps in the right direction rather than to
stubbornly insist on staying exactly where we are, which is the _result_
of the tree-huggers' actions--and the exact opposite of what they claim
to be fighting for. The only logical conclusion is that they want to
end energy production completely.

> and the coal districts continue to be raped.

Too bad the tree-huggers also block nuke plans, hydro plants, solar
farms, wind farms, etc. The only options left are coal and NG, and coal
is the more efficient of the two. But when anyone tries to improve the
efficiency and reduce the pollution of an existing coal plant, the
tree-huggers block that too.

What is _your_ solution to this dilemma?

>> If they want to protect a bunch of trees (that will eventually rot
>> or burn down, releasing their sequestered carbon anyway), let them
>> buy the trees themselves rather than spending _more_ money on
>> lawyers to block said trees being put to a more useful and lasting
>> purpose by their rightful owner.
>
> No one "rightfully owns" forests.

Do you not believe in private property rights?

> (Wasn't it _you_ who put forth the theory that _only_ the divinely
> ordained King actually _owns_ the land, and everyone else simply
> gets to use it as the pleasure of him or his agents?)

I never said anything about divinely ordained kings.

I said that only a sovereign (eg. the United States) can own land. A
non-sovereign can only hold title to real estate, which is subtly
different from owning the land itself. Real estate is the exclusive
right to _use_ the sovereign's land.

However, in common speech, we refer to the owner of real estate as being
the owner of the land itself because the difference is rarely relevant.

> They have to burn in order to carry on their life cycle.

... so they serve no long-term purpose in sequestering carbon, because
the amount of carbon they release is equal to the amount they absorb.

AFAIK, the only known way to permanently sequester carbon is to compress
it into diamonds--and, given how the tree-huggers have successfully
blocked every form of clean energy production, the energy required for
compression will end up burning more carbon than is being sequestered!

[danny burstein]

In <k8rilt$5qh$1...@dont-email.me> Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org> writes:

>Too bad the tree-huggers also block nuke plans, hydro plants, solar
>farms, wind farms, etc. The only options left are coal and NG, and coal
>is the more efficient of the two.

Huh? double huh? what'cha mean there, Willis? Coal may be older
than Man, but by pretty much any measurement, natural gas is
cheaper per MWH than coal. And dramatically less CO2.

obtransit: there are a couple of demo projects for trains
powered by CNG, but none in actual, practical, revenue service.

[Sancho Panza]

On 11/24/2012 4:25 PM, danny burstein wrote:
> In <a078d652-89fe-4e64...@p17g2000vbn.googlegroups.com> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> writes:
>
>> BTW Danny Burstein is back on Broadway, in another revival.
>
> At least this time around my doppleganger doesn't get
> to be Up Close and Personal with one of my unobtainable
> fantasy heart throbs, namely Bernadette Peters.
>
> - the two of them starred in Follies last year, meaning
> he was with her pretty much every afternoon and evening.
>
> - hey, if I'm going to have unobtainable fantasies, they're
> going to be high quality..
>
> ob transit: the theaters are a quick #1, 2, 3 subway ride
> away. Or the BMT lines. Or lot of buses...
>
>

As well as the A and E on the IND.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 24, 4:21 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:



> Replacing a coal plant with a less dirty coal plant solves nothing in
> the long run,

Yes, it reduces emissions, which is a good thing.

> and the coal districts continue to be raped.

Huh?

Having visited abandoned anthracite regions, the impression I got was
that the people there wanted the mines reopened so as to create jobs
instead of the massive unemployment they now have.

[hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com]

On Nov 24, 5:57 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:

> obtransit: there are a couple of demo projects for trains
> powered by CNG, but none in actual, practical, revenue service.

I believe Chicago has buses powered by a gas fuel, but some refueling
accidents soured them on that operation.

[danny burstein]

In <9dc4fb27-0200-4920...@u9g2000vbm.googlegroups.com> hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:

CNG for buses and an increasing number of trucks and fleet
vehicles is pretty mainstream. NYC's transit bus fleet
has a couple of depots set up for it.

[Miles Bader]

hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> Exp: I saw archeologists digging up ground (slow painstaking work by
> hand) that would become a new highway. I don't think they found
> anything of significant or even insignificant interest. But the clock
> stopped while they did their thing and of course they were paid for
> their efforts.

Hmm, can archaeologists work any other way...? I think it's very
unlikely they would have been called in if there wasn't some reason to
believe something of interest would be found.

And it's not just the U.S.... I've heard of archaeological digs
causing delays to public works projects in _tons_ of countries.

I know in Tokyo the recently built Fukutoshin subway line was delayed
by a fair bit because they discovered historical artifacts while
digging, and had to carefully excavate them (some of them are
displayed in the resulting subway stations). That added cost, but
wasn't a major factor; the project still came in at about 1/5 the
cost-per-km of the SaS...

-miles

--
"Nah, there's no bigger atheist than me. Well, I take that back.
I'm a cancer screening away from going agnostic and a biopsy away
from full-fledged Christian." [Adam Carolla]

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 24, 9:05 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 24, 4:21 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Replacing a coal plant with a less dirty coal plant solves nothing in
> > the long run,
>
> Yes, it reduces emissions, which is a good thing.

I said, in the long run.

> > and the coal districts continue to be raped.
>
> Huh?
>
> Having visited abandoned anthracite regions, the impression I got was
> that the people there wanted the mines reopened so as to create jobs
> instead of the massive unemployment they now have.

And the lung diseases (not to mentione the mine collapses) that go
with them?

Next he'll be telling us that frakking is a good thing. Damn the
earthquakes, full speed ahead!

And doubtless wants the Keystone Pipeline opened, the better to ship
Canadian oil to Europe, oblivious to the danger to the Nebraska
aquifer it passes over.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 24, 5:45 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> On 24-Nov-12 15:21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Nov 24, 1:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> >> On 21-Nov-12 22:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Nov 21, 7:28 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:

> >>>> If it weren't for the tree-huggers clogging the courts with
> >>>> expensive lawsuits that block new power plants, new
> >>>> transmission lines, etc., we'd have the capacity we need--and
> >>>> pay less for it.
>
> >>> The "tree-huggers" you ... like to excoriate are trying to
> >>> preserve a major mechanism for _removing_ greenhouse gases from
> >>> the atmosphere
>
> > that was "you right-wingers." You won't find a lefty using that
> > word.
>
> I'm further left than the Democrats on nearly all issues, Peter.  Your
> definition of "right wing", i.e. anyone who is even slightly to the
> right of Chairman Mao, does not match common parlance.
>
> As I have repeatedly told you before, do not confuse my _explaining_ how
> the world works with _endorsing_ it.

Yeah, right. You won't find a lefty using that word.

> >> If they're so virtuous, why do they fight every attempt to
> >> _reduce_ pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions?
>
> > ???
>
> Yes, that's a mystery to me too, hence my use of a pejorative term for
> those idiots as explained below.

You know perfectly well that I am not echoing your "why," but
questioning your presupposition.

> >> I reserve the pejorative term for the idiots; I do not apply it to
> >> sane environmentalists who understand that progress (eg. replacing
> >> a dirty coal plant with one that pollutes less per MWh) is better
> >> for society, not to mention more likely to succeed, than trying to
> >> drive our entire society back into the Stone Age.
>
> > Replacing a coal plant with a less dirty coal plant solves nothing
> > in the long run,
>
> As Lao Tzu said, a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

But not with a step in the wrong direction.

> It is better for us to take steps in the right direction rather than to
> stubbornly insist on staying exactly where we are, which is the _result_
> of the tree-huggers' actions--and the exact opposite of what they claim
> to be fighting for.  The only logical conclusion is that they want to
> end energy production completely.

And that's you merely "reporting" what the right-wingers say, not
endorsing it?

> > and the coal districts continue to be raped.
>
> Too bad the tree-huggers also block nuke plans, hydro plants, solar
> farms, wind farms, etc.  The only options left are coal and NG, and coal
> is the more efficient of the two.  But when anyone tries to improve the
> efficiency and reduce the pollution of an existing coal plant, the
> tree-huggers block that too.

And that's you merely "reporting" what the right-wingers say, not
endorsing it?

> What is _your_ solution to this dilemma?

Solar, wind, hydrothermal.

[Phil Kane]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 09:55:21 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> >Then their oversight is crap. The buck stops there. And, moreover,
>> >you've tarnisned the name of all the engineers they contract with.
>>
>> Including my wife?
>
>Is she responsible for civil engineering projects loaded with
>unforeseen consequences and/or shoddy workmanship?

No, she and her employer produced quality electrical designs that the
Army Corps contractors couldn't get right the first or even the second
time. Something about not finding ones pockets with two hands.

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 24-Nov-12 16:57, danny burstein wrote:
> In <k8rilt$5qh$1...@dont-email.me> Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org>
> writes:
>> Too bad the tree-huggers also block nuke plans, hydro plants,
>> solar farms, wind farms, etc. The only options left are coal and
>> NG, and coal is the more efficient of the two.
>
> Huh? double huh? what'cha mean there, Willis? Coal may be older than
> Man, but by pretty much any measurement, natural gas is cheaper per
> MWH than coal.

US DOE EIA estimates for Feb 2013 are ~$2.44/MMBtu for coal and
~$3.86/MMBtu for NG. kWh/MMBtu will be roughly equivalent in modern
power plants. If NG does better in practice, it is only because the
tree-huggers have blocked construction of modern coal plants.

NG plants are certainly cheaper to build, though. That's why they're
primarily used as "peaking" plants, though many NG plants are now
running 24x7 just to cover the base load--and driving up the price of
electricity due to higher fuel costs.

[Phil Kane]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:01:54 -0600, Stephen Sprunk
<ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:

>You could feed a starving child (or two) in Africa for less than you pay
>for Internet access, yet here you are. Unless you're secretly an
>ascetic who donates every penny he makes to charity, and you only post
>here from a free Internet cafe when taking a break from working in soup
>kitchens.

What makes you think that (a) I don't contribute substantial amounts
to such charitable organizations commensurate with my disposable
income or (b) I don't do volunteer work in the community?

Giving to others is part of my religious makeup/responsibility.

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

[Phil Kane]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:15:01 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>In Israel and Italy, when a construction project uncovers ancient
>sites, all work halts immediately and "rescue archeology" is done to
>assess the value of the site. Sometimes the discoveries are
>incorporated into the ensuing structure. There's even a highrise at
>the tip of Manhattan with an archeological site exposed through glass
>floors in its covered plaza.

Contrast that with the construction of a high-rise office building in
the San Francisco Financial District in 1978 when the workers
uncovered the remains of the Niantic, the first ship to call at SF
after announcement of the discovery of gold in 1849 (the harbor
extended well into what later became "dry land"). Work stopped while
the historians battled over who, what, when and how much, and the
construction company finally gave them a 60-day deadline to get their
act in gear. Nothing happened aside from the rescue of several small
items, and the site was covered up. Only a plaque remains on the
building to memorialize the site. There's a decent write-up in
Wikipedia on this.

Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 24-Nov-12 14:17, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Nov 24, 1:21 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> It doesn't matter. If there's any kind of wildlife anywhere, the
>> tree-huggers will come out of the woodwork to "protect" it with
>> expensive and time-consuming lawsuits, even if said wildlife is not
>> actually threatened.
>
> I think the real problem is such lawsuits get a hearing rather than be
> immediately dismissed as frivolous.

_A_ hearing? These suits drag on for years, with dozens of hearings,
before they're finally dismissed. Dismissing them faster wouldn't
matter, though; as soon as one is dismissed, another is filed to replace
it to keep the opposition alive.

This is yet another consequence of our fundamentally flawed civil
system; power companies have to pay their own legal costs--running into
the millions of dollars--for each suit, even though they nearly always
win. If plaintiffs had to put up a bond sufficient to pay a victorious
defense's legal costs, as defendants are required to pay a victorious
plaintiff's legal costs, it would be another story entirely.

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 24-Nov-12 22:41, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Nov 24, 5:45 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>> On 24-Nov-12 15:21, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> that was "you right-wingers." You won't find a lefty using that
>>> word.
>>
>> I'm further left than the Democrats on nearly all issues, Peter.
>> Your definition of "right wing", i.e. anyone who is even slightly
>> to the right of Chairman Mao, does not match common parlance.
>>
>> As I have repeatedly told you before, do not confuse my
>> _explaining_ how the world works with _endorsing_ it.
>
> Yeah, right. You won't find a lefty using that word.

I'm a lefty, and I use that word, ergo you are incorrect.

>>> On Nov 24, 1:10 pm, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
>>>> If they're so virtuous, why do they fight every attempt to
>>>> _reduce_ pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions?
>>>
>>> ???
>>
>> Yes, that's a mystery to me too, hence my use of a pejorative term
>> for those idiots as explained below.
>
> You know perfectly well that I am not echoing your "why," but
> questioning your presupposition.

There was no presupposition there. They fight _every_ power project,
including those that will _reduce_ pollution.

>>> Replacing a coal plant with a less dirty coal plant solves
>>> nothing in the long run,
>>
>> As Lao Tzu said, a journey of a thousand miles starts with one
>> step.
>
> But not with a step in the wrong direction.

You think a net reduction in pollution per kWh is a "step in the wrong
direction"? I shudder to think of what direction you'd prefer we move in.

>> It is better for us to take steps in the right direction rather
>> than to stubbornly insist on staying exactly where we are, which is
>> the _result_ of the tree-huggers' actions--and the exact opposite
>> of what they claim to be fighting for. The only logical conclusion
>> is that they want to end energy production completely.
>
> And that's you merely "reporting" what the right-wingers say, not
> endorsing it?

That's logic.

You're the one that is obsessed with the right-wing media, not me. I
have no idea what those buffoons say, unless it's being parodied on the
left-wing media sources.

>>> and the coal districts continue to be raped.
>>
>> Too bad the tree-huggers also block nuke plans, hydro plants,
>> solar farms, wind farms, etc. The only options left are coal and
>> NG, and coal is the more efficient of the two. But when anyone
>> tries to improve the efficiency and reduce the pollution of an
>> existing coal plant, the tree-huggers block that too.
>
> And that's you merely "reporting" what the right-wingers say, not
> endorsing it?

It's a fact, Peter. I don't need to "endorse" it.

>> What is _your_ solution to this dilemma?
>
> Solar, wind, hydrothermal.

All blocked by the tree-huggers. Try again.

[Stephen Sprunk]

I don't doubt any of the above. However, unless you give _everything_
to charity, you are putting _some_ portion of your dollars ahead of
lives, something you claim that you never do.

[danny burstein]

In <k8s88p$duq$1...@dont-email.me> Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org> writes:

>US DOE EIA estimates for Feb 2013 are ~$2.44/MMBtu for coal and
>~$3.86/MMBtu for NG. kWh/MMBtu will be roughly equivalent in modern
>power plants. If NG does better in practice, it is only because the
>tree-huggers have blocked construction of modern coal plants.

ah, ok... I see what they've done there.

[Peter T. Daniels]

I'm done with your offensive, ignorant lies (and your lack of self-
awareness). Go keep pontificating about phone systems, which it
appears you don't know any more about than any other subject.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 25, 1:11 am, Stephen Sprunk <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> On 24-Nov-12 22:57, Phil Kane wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 12:01:54 -0600, Stephen Sprunk
> > <step...@sprunk.org> wrote:
> >> You could feed a starving child (or two) in Africa for less than you pay
> >> for Internet access, yet here you are.  Unless you're secretly an
> >> ascetic who donates every penny he makes to charity, and you only post
> >> here from a free Internet cafe when taking a break from working in soup
> >> kitchens.
>
> > What makes you think that (a) I don't contribute substantial amounts
> > to such charitable organizations commensurate with my disposable
> > income or (b) I don't do volunteer work in the community?
>
> > Giving to others is part of my religious makeup/responsibility.
>
> I don't doubt any of the above.  However, unless you give _everything_
> to charity, you are putting _some_ portion of your dollars ahead of
> lives, something you claim that you never do.

You really are an idiot. His own life is a life too, you know.

[Clark F Morris]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 20:37:25 -0800, Phil Kane
<Phil...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop> wrote:

>On Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:06:14 -0800 (PST), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>>Today the paper reported that a little girl was killed in a nasty car
>>crash, and that there was a 100 car pile up in Texas. Again I
>>wondered what would be the cost to prevent such accidents and whether
>>society would be willing to pay it.
>

>All collisions are preventable. What failed?

>
>I would bet that the little girl's parents would vote "yes" for
>whatever the cost.

Especially if they didn't have to pay it. I could be safer than I am
but I am unwilling to pay the cost. We could eliminate all grade
crossing accidents by eliminating the grade crossings. I suspect that
wouldn't be that much more expensive than Positive Train Control on a
per life saved basis. I don't see any major clamor for it.

Clark Morris


>
>Phil Kane
>Beaverton, OR

[Clark F Morris]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 22:52:45 -0600, Stephen Sprunk
<ste...@sprunk.org> wrote:

>On 24-Nov-12 16:57, danny burstein wrote:
>> In <k8rilt$5qh$1...@dont-email.me> Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org>
>> writes:
>>> Too bad the tree-huggers also block nuke plans, hydro plants,
>>> solar farms, wind farms, etc. The only options left are coal and
>>> NG, and coal is the more efficient of the two.
>>
>> Huh? double huh? what'cha mean there, Willis? Coal may be older than
>> Man, but by pretty much any measurement, natural gas is cheaper per
>> MWH than coal.
>
>US DOE EIA estimates for Feb 2013 are ~$2.44/MMBtu for coal and
>~$3.86/MMBtu for NG. kWh/MMBtu will be roughly equivalent in modern
>power plants. If NG does better in practice, it is only because the
>tree-huggers have blocked construction of modern coal plants.
>
>NG plants are certainly cheaper to build, though. That's why they're
>primarily used as "peaking" plants, though many NG plants are now
>running 24x7 just to cover the base load--and driving up the price of
>electricity due to higher fuel costs.

The plummeting price of fracked natural gas has changed the equation.
Especially if they use combined cycle.

Clark Morris
>
>S

[Phil Kane]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:36:35 -0400, Clark F Morris
<cfmp...@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:

>We could eliminate all grade
>crossing accidents by eliminating the grade crossings. I suspect that
>wouldn't be that much more expensive than Positive Train Control on a
>per life saved basis. I don't see any major clamor for it.

You don't live on the San Francisco Peninsula where for 20 years
CalTrain has been installing grade crossing separations as fast as
they get grant money from somewhere - the public.

Phil Kane - Beaverton, OR
PNW CP HALL MP 29.9 - OE District

[Stephen Sprunk]

On 28-Nov-12 21:03, Phil Kane wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:36:35 -0400, Clark F Morris
> <cfmp...@ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> We could eliminate all grade crossing accidents by eliminating the
>> grade crossings. I suspect that wouldn't be that much more
>> expensive than Positive Train Control on a per life saved basis. I
>> don't see any major clamor for it.
>
> You don't live on the San Francisco Peninsula where for 20 years
> CalTrain has been installing grade crossing separations as fast as
> they get grant money from somewhere - the public.

That's being done everywhere the public (via their representatives) is
willing to pay for it.

However, the justification for private railroads to spend their own
money on such projects is simply not there, as with PTC. There are
benefits, true, but they do not outweigh the costs--absent legislation
forcing them to do it or grants reducing the costs sufficiently.

[danny burstein]

In <k8sdj0$anu$1...@reader1.panix.com> danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> writes:

>In <k8s88p$duq$1...@dont-email.me> Stephen Sprunk <ste...@sprunk.org> writes:

>>US DOE EIA estimates for Feb 2013 are ~$2.44/MMBtu for coal and
>>~$3.86/MMBtu for NG. kWh/MMBtu will be roughly equivalent in modern
>>power plants. If NG does better in practice, it is only because the
>>tree-huggers have blocked construction of modern coal plants.

>ah, ok... I see what they've done there.

I've been trying to backtrack that list you re-posted but
haven't had any luck. Could you give me a pointer? Thanks