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Gold/Mining/Energy : Global Warming -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (174)	9/28/2009 3:42:48 PM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Respond to of 185

The Width of a Horse's Ass! The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (including England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. So the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's patute came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. Now a twist to the story… When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are Solid Rocket Boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Morton-Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs, therefore, had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of two horse's behinds. Urban Legend

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (174)	9/28/2009 5:33:04 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 185

<even if disaster is around the corner, i don't think people will leave their vehicles or give up industry. i was hoping that GST or yourself would give me concrete evidence this view was wrong, but GST affirmed it and you just simply avoid it (leading to the logical inference you haven't changed much and don't want to admit it).> How people change behavior is worth discussing. I make no effort to conceal the minimal extent to which I have made changes in how I live. Where I do see people change the way they live is where it enters into their economic interests. Cars are an easy place to start to grasp this because so many people have one and drive it. In Europe half the new cars are diesels -- 70% of new cars in France. In Europe you can buy a non-diesel, non hybrid car that gets over 70 miles to the gallon -- VW sells it. But you cannot buy that car in the US. In the US the market for fuel efficient cars is smaller and developing more slowly. We are at the back of the global line as manufacturers introduce new products. Why? Because compared to the rest of the world, gas is dirt cheap in the US. Gas prices reflect oil prices and public policy -- and the US policy is 'filler-up' cheap as you can. I have not done much about my own life so far on a daily basis -- although flying is by far the most carbon intensive aspect of how I have lived my life so far. The planes I flew in for millions of miles spewed carbon that will be in the air affecting the climate long after I die. All aspects of our lives need to be considered -- CR used the example of CFCs where the science pointed out the grave concerns, there was a coordinated public policy response, CFCs were largely eliminated and new CFC substitutes have performed very well, thank you very much. This is a good model, although the complex nature of reducing all greenhouse gases will require far more complicated responses. But none of these responses will be effective without some form of economic reason for people to change their behavior -- at least not on a scale to make a dent.