Natural gas-powered locomotive

[paulusthegnome]

My local landfill has two CAT 4MW generators running on waste gas (not as clean as LNG) and the city sewage processing facility is installing a similar 500kw unit. All these are spark assisted engines that produce more energy than the community needs, allowing us to become a net electrical producer.

One advantage of NG over diesel that has not been mentioned is the reduced engine maintenance requirements due to the lack of particulate contamination. For a fleet operator, this is a significant cost savings. This was a motivator for Walmart and UPS (the #1 and #2 operators), the US Post Office and many transit authorities to convert to CNG, long before the fuel cost was a factor.

Here is an article concerning a large road fleet operator:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304707604577422192910235090.html


The local paper this morning carries a headline about a court blocking a pipeline to an LNG terminal on the Pacific coast. This frustrates the NG producers who see the export of LNG as a mechanism of keeping prices higher. One problem with the current excess of "shale gas" is that it can not easily be stored in the ground but must be consumed or converted into LNG.
Hence the urgency to find new markets for the product.

In rail operations, the Russians seem to have a lead on LNG locomotives as they have those huge NG reserves in Siberia.
See:
http://indrus.in/articles/2012/09/06/russian_lng-powered_trains_on_the_way_17463.html

 

[brianthegiant]

I would submit David Bellamy is as qualified as David Attenborough to comment however you won't find his views easily as his TV career was over the minute he started publicly expressing his sceptical opinion of man made global warming.
Those who parrot the "Official" view are constantly in our faces, those who dare to question are ridiculed and have every obstacle up to and including career destruction put in their way - no wonder the "majority" support man made global warming or climate change as we have now to call it.
As for the polar caps the southern one has advanced recently.

Or it could be that Bellamy got dropped because as a TV scientist he was pushing a view which goes against the scientific evidence. I'm actually not convinced if the majority of people in the UK do agree climate change exists, I certainly seem to come across a lot of scepticism, go to the US & you find that most people either aren't aware of or dont believe climate change exists or is man made.

With regards your second point, Al Gore did some statistical analysis of media coverage of climate change & found that the majority of articles in the general media were sceptical of it (despite the majority of peer reviewed scientific papers on climate change affirming it). This seems likely to me, a lot of articles in UK newspapers still put global warming in double quotes "global warming".

So which should we believe the newspapers or the scientific journals?
We only have to look at the C**p printed about the railways in the daily mail to know that newspapers aren't exactly fountains of unbiased wisdom.

By contrast, to publish something in a peer reviewed scientific journal your work needs to be of a very high standard, you need to be able to justify your data, and declare the uncertainty (tolerance) in your readings. Your article will be reviewed by a committee of academics from rival universities and a high proportion are rejected.

With regards the southern Ice Cap, you might find some Glaciers are growing - after all the global climate is an extremely complex mechanism, However the evidence from the people going out and measuring the glaciers very year is that the majority of glaciers are retracting:
www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing.htm
This is enough to convince me, furthermore I've seen it with my own eyes, the Vallee Blanche near Chamonix is Europes longest glacier, the steps leading down to it for tourists & skiers are being repeatedly extended because the thickness of snow at the bottom of the glacier is getting thinner every year. This pattern is the same all over Europe & is measured every year by the Alpine Club.