From: hotrod@dixie.com (The Hotrod List)
Subject: No Subject Line
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 08:13:29 GMT
Organization: Dixie Communications Public Access.  The Mouth of the South.
To: hotrod@dixie.com
Reply-To: hotrod@dixie.com
Posted-Date: Monday, Jan 11 03:13:25
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[This letter should constitute the alternative viewpoint I promised to 
post regarding Slick Willie and the Ozone Kid.  Mark sent this to _Car_Craft_
in reply to the editorial in the October 1992 issue; several quotes are taken
from that editorial.  Since Dave's state suffered from Slick's Willie and
my home state has been Gored, I share little of Mark's optimism that 
we won't see environmental radicalism.  I believe there to be several
points that should be rebutted but this is not the forum to do so so please
take the debate to rec.autos unless it has to do specifically with
hotroding. JGD]

Dear Mr. Baechtel,

	I've seen, in your letters column, that just because a letter begins
with "I don't expect you to print this letter" doesn't mean you won't print it.
Nonetheless, I _don't_ expect you to print this letter:  not because I
think you lack sufficient honor to entertain opposing views on subjects more
significant than the relative number of Camaros in the magazine--I don't--but
because (1) it's gonna be way too long, and (2) it addresses _you_,
not the readers directly.  Besides, the election would be over by the time it
saw print, and that's what I wanted to talk about.

	I write in response to your _Point_of_View_ editorial in the October
1992 issue.  Considering the efforts the magazine has made to "clear the air"
(your regular _Pollution_Solution_ department, where I first learned of
cams, manifold, and heads with E.O.'s for my engine, all achievements I
would've bet were impossible; a feature in March 1992, _High_Tech_Muscle_,
that attempted to persuade knuckle-draggers like myself that post-sixties
emission-standards-driven engine technology was not Satan incarnate; and a
_Tech_Heads_Only_ article in September 1992 on hydrogen, that most
non-fossil of non-fossil fuels), I'm afraid, sir, that I found your tone to
be petulant at best ("What, we're not doing enough?  Well, fuck you, then!").
Even in the relatively few issues I have read since I started subscribing, I
can see that your chosen tone in _Point_of_View_ is usually enjoyably
irreverent; and certainly nobody deserves less reverence than politicians
and bureaucrats! However, lashing out at the Democrats, executive and
legislative, in terms borrowed uncritically from the Republican campaign does
nothing for your journalistic credibility; and broad-brush accusations that
smog regulators and environmentally-inclined politicians are primarily
interested in their own job security undermines your claim that car guys
generally and you in particular understand that there _is_ a problem that
necessitates our "genuine concern with doing the right thing."

	One specific charge that you borrowed from the Republicans was that Al
Gore is an "environmental extremist."

[This was written before Bush tried to upstage Bruce Willis by calling Gore
"Mr. Ozone" and both of them "bozos"...]

Given the relative emphasis that he and Clinton have put on environmental
questions in their careers so far, it's probably safe to say Gore would be the
point man for a Democratic administration on the environment, so an indication
of the likely policies of such an administration could be found in a record of
his views on the subject.  Well, we _have_ such a record, in his book
_Earth_in_the_Balance_.  Moreover, at the time he wrote it he had little to
lose:  remember, most of the pundits wrote him off as a Vice-Presidential
nominee on grounds of "geographic balance" in the ticket, and he had already
lost a Presidential nomination, so it's not likely he would have written a
dissembling account in order to position himself for a run at national office.
Moreover, it is a proposal rather than a memoir, a statement of what he'd like
to see done rather than a defense of what he did and didn't do and a settling
of old scores, so he would have been able to give relatively free rein to
implausible or extreme ideas without having to explain away past failures of
those ideas.  Thus, if he really is an "extremist", we should find the book to
be a sort of environmental _Mein_Kampf_; thus I went out and got a copy and
read it.

	Well, the most radical thing in the book seems to be that he recognizes
that there _is_ a problem, one that requires major effort to fix.  The root
of the word "radical" is Latin "radix", meaning "root" (surprise!); a radical
is somebody who wants to make changes at the very roots of society.  And
since Gore thinks the basic problem behind everything from air pollution to
deforestation to overfishing of the sea is the emphasis our society (and most
others) places on immediate benefits without much consideration of the eventual
costs of its actions, the basic change he wants to make is to shift its focus
from the short term to the long term, to see it include in its decisions those
long-term costs.  This _would_ be a pretty fundamental alteration, as he sees
it:  not only would it include econometric and regulatory changes, like
requiring farm policy decision-makers to account for the "depreciation" of
soil due to erosion and declining fertility (caused by farming techniques that
maximize short-term production at the expense of long-term productivity) just
as they now account for depreciation of farm machinery, but it would also
necessitate encouraging people to abandon the "throwaway mentality" that has
largely displaced "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without", and
which not only consumes resources profligately but also generates literal
mountains of unnecessary trash.  (In that sense, the car culture he'd attack
is not that of the car crafter lovingly working over a twenty-five-year-old
Camaro but that of Mr. and Mrs. New-Beemer-Every-Two-Years.) At the same time,
this radical change is a profoundly conservative one:  after all, what better
expression of "family values" than to try to improve the state of the world
we'll leave to our children?

	Actually, he comes down pretty hard in the book on several classes of
_real_ environmental extremist:  for example, the so-called "Deep Ecologists"
exemplified by Earth First!, who go beyond "Let's give the country back to the
Indians" to "Let's give the planet back to the animals and plants, cut the
population by 95% and go back to subsistence farming."  As for his supposed
tendency toward extreme regulation, he notes that coping with the "year without
a summer" of 1816 stimulated the growth of the modern bureaucratic state, and
that the New Deal was formulated in large part in reaction to the ecological
disaster of the Dust Bowl, and uses these as examples of what we could _avoid_
by taking corrective action now rather than having to erect some worldwide
bureaucracy later to deal with crisis after crisis down the road.  And he
hits particularly heavily on those who want to use world action on
environmental problems as a means to set up a world government, quoting
Dorothy Parker in saying that the idea "`should not be tossed aside lightly;
it should be thrown with great force.'"  On the whole, though he proposes some
major efforts, deliberately comparing them with the Marshall Plan, the Apollo
program, and SDI, he appears to have drawn on his years of experience in
Congress to make judgments as to what could, or could be made to, fly
politically, and to have tried to bring his proposals within those bounds.
When was there ever an "extremist" who made that much of a concession to
reality?

	Setting aside particular individuals and political parties, then, 
you still expressed concern about the effect on car guys and the automotive
industry of increased fuel economy standards and oil import fees.  Well,
just remember that feature in March on _High_Tech_Muscle_:  car crafters are
adaptable, and will in-your-face anybody who says "nope, cain't be done"; and
Detroit can do the same, if management can learn to look beyond the next
shareholders' meeting and face the challenge--after all, who would've bet
they could "emissionize" an eight-liter engine for the Viper? I understand
that the auto industry's quoted numbers of jobs that would be lost to 40 mpg
CAFE standards were derived by counting up the number of workers who build
cars of less than 40 mpg, i.e., nearly all of them, and assuming they'd all
be fired; that sounds much more like looking for excuses to keep the
comfortable status quo than an honest facing of the future.  And speaking
of "facing the future", I think that most serious students of air pollution
realize that buying and crushing "gross polluters" is a smokescreen (pun
intended) put out by oil companies who are trying to find an excuse to wriggle 
out of reformulation standards that would, again, change the comfortable
status quo for them; for example, in Gore's book neither the idea nor the
term "gross polluters" is mentioned anywhere.  Serious efforts to cut air
pollution are going to have to address the mass market for new cars and the
enforcement of existing standards for used ones; as long as car guys maintain
their "voluntary compliance, emission certification, and genuine concern",
not to mention their interest in keeping their rides in top running condition,
we'll always be less of a problem than the know-nothing who hasn't had a
tuneup in the lifetime of his car.  Consequently, we'll have less trouble
than he with serious air pollution laws, and though I agree with you that
we've got to stay on guard against "smokescreen" laws, I think that concern
about depriving poor people of their ten-to-twenty-year-old cars will prevent
laws from becoming too broad-brush in discriminating against older machines.  
It's true that oil-import fees, increased registration fees, and other measures
to encourage conservation and use of mass transit will make running a
gasoline-fired car more expensive, but based on levels I've heard proposed
I think that the additional expense would not be too large compared to the
money that even a starving-grad-student

[Actually, as of Friday 8 Jan, I'm a PhD...]

car guy like myself already puts into the car in fuel and parts; we'll survive,
and even if we decide we can't afford the extra expense for fuel, well, having
to cut back the amount of driving we can do still doesn't amount to "use a car,
go to jail." And as long as economics and the law don't cut us off altogether,
if a putative car guy can't handle a little social disapproval from Mr. and
Mizzz Politically-Correct, well, he's too much of a wimp to be trusted with
more than two digits of horsepower anyway.

	Though I think that we need not fear Apocalypse November, there _is_
one thing that does concern me, namely, global warming and the fact that _any_
fossil fuel used in an internal-combustion engine, even natural gas burned
with perfect efficiency, produces CO2.  Once you consider _that_ to be a
pollutant, all the CARB E.O.'s in the world don't mean a thing.  Here Gore
_did_ say one thing that alarmed me, namely that one goal that might be set
for a "Strategic Environmental Initiative" could be an effort to "completely
eliminat[e] the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year
period."  Though I expect this to apply only to new cars, still it is cause
for concern for anybody who benefits from Bow-Tie heads and over-the-counter
valve retainers and other factory parts.  I think that the aftermarket will
survive even this loss of a "fore-market", though prices may very well go up
toward the levels found in the restoration market for discontinued marques;
but I think that we can head this outlawry for new internal combustion
engines off at the pass, and I think that _Car_Craft_ and car crafters are
vital to the effort.  As noted in the _Tech_Heads_Only_ article mentioned
above, there _are_ clean-burning fuels for internal-combustion engines that
also produce no net contribution to the greenhouse effect.  The article cited
hydrogen, but biomass fuels like methane, methanol, and ethanol also produce
no net CO2 ("atmospheric CO2 thou wert, and to atmospheric CO2 shalt thou
return, after passing through green plants, distillery, and my engine").
Right now these fuels are not economically viable; for example, the methanol
now being introduced into the California fuels market is made from natural
gas.

[I have since read that U.S. Patent number 5,000,000 was awarded to a guy who
has genetically engineered a microbe to digest cellulose-derived sugars into
ethanol--this vastly broadens the scope of usable feedstocks, and should make
ethanol a _lot_ cheaper; he's now licensed it to at least two firms, so we
should see results soon.]

However, if fossil fuel CO2 emissions become a source of widespread
concern, as I think they will, and indeed should--despite political and
industry efforts to cloud the debate, the evidence of global warming and of
the scope of the changes needed to cut it short is overwhelming--we need to be
ready to take advantage of the changed economics, and this means being ready
to burn alternative fuels.  The auto industry will only get into this in a
limited way without lots of government prodding, so I think advances may very
well be made by private tinkerers--and better that it be us car guys than the
proverbial mad back-country inventor who also thinks he has the recipe for a
perpetual-motion machine.

	I never said what my credentials as a car crafter are; as I said,
I'm a starving grad student (physics), so they aren't too impressive--no money
to do much more than maintain and at most incrementally improve my
family-heirloom 1970 Chevy Caprice (400 CID smallblock, Turbo 400--and
skyscraping 2.56 12-bolt rear)--but if you'll refrain from challenging me to
put my non-existent money where my mouth is, I'll tell you what I hope to
submit to _Straight_Scoop_Garage_ in a couple of years.  The Caprice has to
stay ready to drive cross-country, so I'm only going to convert her to
readily-available propane, which is still a fossil fuel, though a lot
cleaner-burning than gasoline; however, for my "real" project car (I'm
leaning toward a 1965 Nova)

[This has since metamorphosed into the "vaporware 1964 Chevelle" in my usual
signature line...]

I'm studying the possibility of burning alcohol--either the M85 (85% methanol,
15% gasoline) blend that is being tested in California, or home-brew biomass
ethanol if I can find a place for a couple of 55-gallon drum fermentation tanks
and a small distillery.  (A nitrous-type spraybar supplied with propane during
startup could supplement or replace a choke and eliminate characteristic
alcohol cold-start problems with minimal fossil-fuel investment, certainly
less than the 15% of gasoline added for that very purpose to M85, and I'd like
to try using a small, highly-overdriven B & M Roots blower to enhance
evaporation and distribution...  you get the idea.)  In the case of either
kind of alcohol, or natural gas or even propane if the alcohol idea falls
through, I and others interested in getting away from gasoline could really
use the help that _Car_Craft_'s experts and expertise could provide.  For
example, where in _hell_ can I find an alcohol carburetor that's not full-race
like, say, the Holley double-pumpers I saw in the P.A.W. catalog?  If I want
to modify some kind of existing system, I understand that many gasoline-safe
materials dissolve in alcohol--what are they?  Just how much compression can I
use on a moderately-cammed engine for each fuel?  How about ignition timing?
Boost?  I know gaseous fuels are safe for motor oil, but I hear alcohols
attack the additives--what can I do about that?  _Car_Craft_ could increase
awareness of these fuels, and facilitate the efforts of the growing number of
us who are interested in them; indeed, with articles like the one on hydrogen
mentioned above, you already are.  And you would assuredly bolster our
collective case for the reality of car crafters' "genuine concern with doing
the right thing."

	I hope you will take this "constructive criticism" in the spirit in
which it is given, namely that of an enthusiast with enough book-learnin' to
know how much he still needs to learn and with enough experience to know how
much experience he still needs to gain, and who looks to your magazine as a
good source of both theory and distilled experience.  Also, while _I_ wouldn't
pretend to tell _you_ how to vote, I hope I have corrected some
misapprehensions about the Democratic ticket!

	Keep 'em rolling!
	Mark Looper

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Posted by: hotrod@dixie.com
Newsgroups: alt.hotrod,wiz.hotrod