Natural Gas Powered Vehicles

Natural gas powered vehicles (NGV) - why aren't there more on the road?

**Natural gas, an inherently clean-burning fuel, produces 75 percent fewer smog forming pollutants (oxides of nitrogen) compared to the output of a conventional gasoline engine.

**The gasoline gallon equivalent of natural gas costs an average of one-third less than gasoline.

**While NGV filling stations are limited in the US, half of US homes have access to natural gas. NGVs can safely be fueled at home via a compressor that is plumbed into your house gas line. Most personal vehicles in the U.S. have a majority of their annual mileage within a 100 mile radius of the home - allowing home refueling to be a reasonable option.

**98% of natural gas in the US is produced domestically.

**Natural gas is plentiful in the US and reserves are growing

Most major automakers offered production NGVs in the 1990s, primarily for government and corporate fleets. Today, the only production model NGV available in the U.S. is the Honda Civic GX which is assembled in East Liberty, OH. Of the approximately 300,000 Honda Civics sold in the US annually, about 1,000 are the GX or natural gas version of this model. Most are sold as government fleet cars available nationwide, and a handful of them are sold to consumers at select Honda dealers - but only in NY and CA. The 2008 Honda Civic GX achieves an EPA-estimated city/highway fuel economy of 24/36 miles per gasoline-gallon equivalent and a fuel tank with an 8.0 gasoline gallon equivalent capacity at 3600 psi provides a range of approximately 200 to 225 miles.

The Honda Civic GX is often described as the "cleanest internal combustion engine on the planet" and is the only vehicle certified by the EPA to meet both Federal Tier 2-Bin 2 and Inherently Low Emission Vehicle (ILEV) zero evaporative emission certification standards.

If we're really serious about reducing emissions in the U.S. - NGVs need to be part of the solution - and the technology and infrastructure are in place now to satisfy the majority of personal transportation needs in this country.

Global Warming? Climate Change? How about Earth Science!

Does Earth's climate change? Of course. Often.

We are geoscientists, we know from the geologic record that environmental conditions change, this is absolutely true.

In central Ohio in fact, something like 10,000 years ago there was a mile and a half of glacial ice sitting on the ground. Does 10,000 years sound like a long time to you? It isn't. When you visit the Bahamas does it occur to you that it is strange that the rocks that make up the island are corals? If you look close enough you will see even the same species as you can see living in the reefs 100 yards offshore! How did the coral reef get up there on the land? It grew there my friend, in place, when the ocean level was higher than it is today. In fact, in the geologic record one can identify a plethora of indicators of the climate changing. It has happened before, it will happen again.

Scientific research within the geosciences will continue to help us understand the mechanics and underlying causes of the observed changes. It is important that science be kept sacred. Scientific study is a continuum effort that add to our knowledge base. It suffers immensely by fits and starts of funding as well as socially driven research whims (ie global warming).

The alarmists would like you to believe that the crisis called global warming (although they are no trying to supplant that term with "climate change") is something we can do something about (remember the bumper sticker "stop continental drift"?). As if we can control mother earth. Our recent friend Hurricane Ike should make us consider this.

Are we causing climate change? Is anthropomorphic carbon dioxide to blame

I have many very smart colleagues who believe we are.

I have many very smart colleagues who believe we are not.

Quite frankly, we are skeptical, but we are also not researching and studying the question either, so we don't THINK it is, and that is an opinion, subject to change.

Science will, eventually, sort it out (much like the goofy theory of continental drift).

We support advancing and escalated funding for geoscience research.

Policy, Science, and Politics

Thinking of opening the US coastal waters for drilling?

Less than six months ago, the House was continuing to root out government expenditures that supposedly were oil stained and purportedly subsidies to "Big Oil". Talk about knee jerk reactions. Obviously the House has a very poor understanding of science.

Science is not always about telescoping results, science isn't always sexy and headline grabbing, science doesn't always appear relevant. Most science is grueling, boring, ceaseless, (ad nausea). Fortunately, a brilliant segment of society thrives on the quest, and provides for the maintenance and growth of a growing foundation of science by which society can build itself.

Here are two examples I have learned about over the last six months or so.

Last year the US Department of Energy had to freeze some programs because the Federal Budget was not being approved, and the President's budget request of course left certain line items zeroed out (so that Congress would have to put them back - a silly budget game played every year). The DOE Office of Science effectually had to issue stop orders to to over 200 graduate students at 19 Universities. Now, these graduate students of course were relying on that funding to, well, go to school and be trained. These dollars were not going to Big Oil, they were going to a graduate student, doing basic scientific research, working toward an advanced degree. This within months of approval of the America Competes Act which recognized the severe shortage of graduate students in the sciences, and recommended massive shift of funds to help build the future workforce (for private industry, regulatory agencies, government science laboratories, and policy advisers). Ridiculous. Hurtful to the students, the universities, and our country.

Another simple example. Stream gauges. What is a stream gauge? It is a simple device that measures the amount of water flowing in a stream or river over time. Useful in many scientific analysis from basin water analysis, rainfall, flood planning, etc. The USGS with other agency partners has been maintaining and monitoring stream gauges throughout the country for decades. Recently, scientists trying to find basic data to help characterize and predict patterns in our climate (global warming, climate change, um-geologic processes) were excited to find such complete time series data (ie regular, consistent measurements through time). Now comes budget tightening, and funding slipping away from the agencies monitoring the gauges. We will loose a valuable resource if the gauges stop being monitored or maintained. Even if funding is restored in the future, there will always be a gap - and as in Murphy's Law - something will happen in that gap, and no data will be available to help us understand what it was.

Science is a process, a delicate process that is absolutely destroyed by irregular, neurotic and inconsistent support. We advocate solid stepped increased funding for geoscience throughout the funding agencies (NSF, DOE, USGS, NOAA, etc).

Conservation

We appreciate the access to cheap energy we enjoy, gas stations on every corner, natural gas electricity, (and water) plumbed to every home, it is certainly easy here in the US to be a resource consumer. We believe in a market economy, that consumers will make better choices with better knowledge and appreciation of the real cost (and value) of the resources used.

We believe that "better choices" are intertwined with conservation. We believe that as consumers we are not educated enough in the value (and cost) of energy.

The hydrocarbon molecule is an extremely power packed, the economy of the world is powered by it, and a global change to that truth will take many decades of investment in research and development as well as behavioral change. These changes can/will occur as a result of (or should to occur in spite of) economic pressures.

We need to continue to explore, but we also need to continue to be more efficient. Energy independence is a lofty and unrealistic goal. Reducing our reliance on alien sources of energy is a far more realistic goal, for our national and economic security. We believe the barrel of oil we do not use today is the cheapest "discovered" reserves that there are.

The danger in developing or encouraging or providing cheap resources is that they are not valued (ie, if the price of gasoline was $1 per gallon, our useage would not have decreased this year....). We argue for more efficient use of cheap energy.

Conservation just isn't popular, but it is a big key item. Conservation doesn't raise much money (save the earth) and doesn't have a bad guy (big oil), because conservation is something we each, as individuals must commit to. Look in the mirror to find blame, there is plenty to go around.

A common topic in this blog will be about our use of resources, and ideas to moderate that use, from our lives, from our observations, in our world.