Posts Tagged ‘transport’
Obama proposing a tax credit for natural gas-powered trucks
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
President Barack Obama pitched a plan on Thursday to boost U.S. use of natural gas and open more land for offshore drilling during a campaign-style tour aimed at bolstering confidence in his economic stewardship.
At a stop in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Democratic president sought to counter Republican criticisms of his energy policies as he proposed tax incentives for companies to buy natural gas trucks, which would help build demand for abundant domestic supplies of the fuel…
Obama said the United States needs an “all-out, all-in, all-of-the-above strategy” to develop energy resources at home and that doing so would create American jobs…”A great place to start is with natural gas,” Obama said during a visit to a UPS facility in Las Vegas, which received stimulus funding to invest in liquefied natural gas vehicles and build a public LNG refueling station.
“We’ve got a supply of natural gas under our feet that can last America nearly a hundred years,” he said. “Developing it could power our cars, our homes, and our factories in a cleaner and cheaper way. The experts believe it could support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade…”
Using domestic natural gas as a cleaner alternative to importing foreign oil has been heavily promoted by Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens and has attracted support from both sides of the aisle in Congress.
Still, Obama’s natural gas truck proposal, which would need congressional approval, could face an uphill battle to make it into law. Republicans, campaigning on promises to cut government spending, would likely resist costly energy subsidies…
Obama also announced that the Interior Department will hold the last scheduled offshore lease sale of the government’s current five-year drilling plan in June, offering 38 million acres for development in the central Gulf of Mexico…
Analysts said those results were a sign that drilling is rebounding in the Gulf after the administration temporarily shut down deepwater exploration after the BP disaster.
The Oil Patch Boys are still whining, of course, about oversight and regulations being resumed. They became accustomed to doing just about anything they wished during the Bush/Cheney years. Reality began to return with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – not that oil companies ever cared much for reality if it hinders profits.
NatGas tech is already advanced enough that some auto companies that sell pickup trucks will be offering a natural gas option in addition to clean diesel. For less than the additional cost of diesel. That’s pretty amazing.
We have the first natural gas-powered bus fleet in the country here in Santa Fe and it is a boon keeping our clean air clean. The cost in gasoline equivalent has risen over the years to $1.61/gallon. With serious federal help, it could be less.
8 NYC coppers among 12 charged in criminal conspiracy
Preet Bharara and Ray Kelly
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Five active and three retired officers of the New York Police Department are among 12 people charged Tuesday with conspiring to transport and distribute firearms and stolen goods…
“A group of crime fighters took to moonlighting as criminals,” Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a press conference.
The defendants are charged in an alleged conspiracy to transport and distribute untraceable firearms across state lines. and conspiracy to transport supposedly stolen and counterfeit goods including cigarettes from Virginia and slot machines from Atlantic City, New Jersey…
The current or former NYPD officers charged are William Masso, Eddie Goris, Ali Oklu, Gary Oritz, and John Mahony, all active-duty officers in Brooklyn; Joseph Trischitta and Marco Venezia, who were active-duty NYPD officers at the time of the alleged crimes but are now retired; and Richard Melnik, a retired NYPD officer. Also charged, federal authorities said, are Anthony Santiago, a New York City Department of Sanitation police officer; David Kanwisher, a New Jersey corrections officer; and Michael Gee and Eric Gomer, who court documents list as “associates” of Santiago…
Prosecutors said that while the defendants all believed the items they transported were stolen; they had in fact been provided by the FBI. The firearms were never a danger to the public, authorities said, as they had been rendered inoperable.
“These crimes are without question, reprehensible — particularly conspiring to import untraceable guns and assault rifles into New York,” said Janice K. Fedarcyk, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York division. “The public trusts the police not only to enforce the law, but to obey it. These crimes, as alleged in the complaint, do nothing but undermine public trust and confidence in law enforcement.”
You got that right.
The whole point of oversight is made in spades. This is why we have an SEC to keep an eye on Wall Street. And they failed us the last decade. This is why we have federal attorney-generals and they pretty much failed us during the 8 useless years of Bush/Cheney.
We’re fortunate to have someone like Preet Bharara operating in New York, nowadays. Seems like I get to note his name in a crime-busting case every couple of months.
Paris Air Show 2011 in pictures
We had a post about the economics and politics of the Paris Show a little earlier, today. Here’s a peek at the tech.
Turkey’s prime minister proposes dividing Istanbul in two
Istanbul is renown as the place where east meets west, the only city in the world to straddle Europe and Asia. But it may soon lose this unique status if the Turkish government goes ahead with a plan to divide it in two.
The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor, has announced what he described as a “wild project” to split the city into European and Asian sides to make it easier to govern. “We will build two new cities in Istanbul due to high population,” Erdogan said, announcing his party’s manifesto for June elections.. “One on the European side and one on the Anatolian side.”
Istanbul’s official population is soon expected to reach 17 million, with thousands more unregistered people living in the city.
Tahire Erman, an urban planning expert at Ankara’s Bilkent University, said this caused significant problems for authorities: “[Istanbul] is already overgrown, and there are already many problems in the provision of infrastructure and municipal services to the city.”
Should the plan go ahead, the two cities would be well connected by transport links promised by the ruling party, including a third bridge over the Bosphorus, the strait that divides the European and Anatolian sides of the city, and two tube tunnels for cars and rail transport under the water. Two bridges and frequent ferries already connect the two sides of the city…
Plans have been announced to build a new financial district in Atasehir, a booming district on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, as part of a government pledge to increase Turkey’s global stature by 2023, the centennial anniversary of the Turkish republic.
The politicians in power think it’s a wonderful idea. The politicians out of power think it’s a silly idea. The concept does make sense. If anyone had their brains switched on after World War Two, the same might have been done with London, Tokyo or Los Angeles.
Pepsi escalates renewable bottle battle with Coke
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, cola wars rivals for a century, are now locked in a bottle battle.
PepsiCo Pepsi’s new bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business.
Two years after Coca-Cola Co. unveiled a bottle made partly from plant materials, PepsiCo says it is introducing a better one. The Purchase, N.Y. company says it has developed the world’s first plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources, cutting the use of petroleum. Coke’s PlantBottle is made of up to 30 percent plant sugars…
Beverage companies are trying to design bottles to counter environmental concerns. The bottled water industry is using lighter plastics, dropping the average weight of the 16.9 ounce “single serve” bottle by a third over the past eight years, according to the International Bottled Water Association.
That means less fuel consumed to transport the beverages.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle is available in nine countries and is expected to reach more than a dozen other markets this year. More than 2.5 billion PlantBottles have reached the marketplace, a number Coca-Cola says equates to saving about 3 million gallons of gasoline.
The technology will also appear in Heinz bottles, under a partnership with the ketchup-maker, and possibly in bottles for Honest Tea, a Maryland company Coca-Cola just acquired. The PlantBottle is made partly with natural sugars found in sugarcane ethanol from Brazil. Odwalla, a Coca-Cola juice brand, plans to switch to the PlantBottle within the next few weeks.
Before someone brings it up – yes, I know that glass is one of the easiest after-use commodities to recycle. And we’re not about to run out of sand to make glass bottles either. But, either road, glass production in the traditional manner consumes a boatload of energy. And that, too is a commodity which must be paid for by consumers.
China and Colombia propose railway as alternative Panama Canal
Click on photo for map
China is proposing to build a rail link to rival the almost century-old Panama canal, the Colombian president has said. The 220km rail connection would connect Cartagena, on the northern Atlantic coast of Colombia, with its Pacific coast – making it easier for China to export its goods through the Americas and import raw materials such as coal.
“It’s a real proposal … and it is quite advanced,” Juan Manuel Santos told the Financial Times. Although the link would be almost three times the length of the canal that cuts through neighbouring Panama, the president added: “The studies [the Chinese] have made on the costs of transporting per tonne, the cost of investment, they all work out…
Panama also has a rail route, built almost 60 years before the canal, which is more expensive than the waterway for shippers but faster…
A shipping executive told the newspaper that moving containers on to and off the link at either end would probably cost $200 each in addition to $100 fees for the rail transport. In comparison, fees for the canal are around $100 a container…
Well, that’s one estimate. Any others?
The ministry of foreign affairs in Beijing confirmed the proposal.
The project is reportedly one of several Chinese proposals to improve transport links with Asia. The most advanced is a $7.6bn plan to build a 791km railway and expand the port of Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast. It would allow up to 40m tonnes of freight a year to be carried from Colombia to its ports and promote the export of coal to China, where demand is rising fast.
Modern container ships get unloaded and loaded faster and more efficiently every year. I don’t see any new technology improving transit via the Panama Canal. All that’s happening there is widening and tweaking the system to allow larger vessels through. None of that would be a problem for the dry land solution proposed in Columbia.
Nissan unveils the City of St. Petersburg – green Leaf transport
A video with no commentary – adjust it for 720p HD and enjoy full screen
Japanese automaker Nissan has unveiled its eco-friendly transport ship: the 21,000-ton City of St. Petersburg. Thanks to its unusual design, which features a semispherical prow that’s claimed to reduce wind resistance by up to 50 percent compared to a conventional vessel, the City of St. Petersburg is expected to cut annual fuel usage by 800 tons, which will reduce CO2 emissions by 2,500 tons.
The ship has room to haul up to 2,000 vehicles and will hit the waterways to transport cars and trucks to Northern Europe and Russia from the automaker’s factories in the United Kingdom and Spain. In a fitting move, starting in 2013, the City of St. Petersburg will transport battery-powered Leafs from the Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, UK. Hop the jump to catch a pair of videos that showcase Nissan’s City of St. Petersburg.
21st Century roll-on, roll-off auto transport for 21st Century EV automobiles.
A secret journey to take Serbian nuclear fuel to safety
A shipment of nuclear fuel has arrived in Russia after a top-secret international operation to remove it from Serbia, where it was feared terrorists could seize it to make a nuclear or dirty bomb.
In the dead of night, armed men in balaclavas surround a long convoy of trucks in the woods just outside Belgrade. Radios crackle as they prepare for a long journey.
Their mission is to escort a dangerous cargo, the kind terrorists would dearly like to get their hands on.
Inside blue, bomb-proof, fire-proof containers on the trucks are 2.5 tons of radioactive material, including 13kg of highly enriched uranium that could be used for a nuclear weapon.
This is the largest shipment of its type ever made, and will clear Serbia of all its civilian highly enriched uranium…
RTFA. A dark, convoluted tale of an equally dark, circuitous journey.
The sort of political and industrial work remaining to be accomplished by treaty obligations that our bubbas on Congress farted around with for months – until they had sufficient time before TV cameras to justify their face time on that cardboard political stage.
Meanwhile, enough grunt work remains for decades to clean-up the crap produced to satisfy Cold Warriors and corporate profiteers.
Drivers of nuclear weapons getting drunk on duty
US government drivers trusted with transporting nuclear weapons are sometimes getting drunk while on duty, a Department of Energy investigation showed Monday.
The drivers were involved in 16 alcohol-related incidents from 2007 to 2009, with one agent arrested by police three years ago and two others handcuffed and detained last year, the Energy Department’s office of inspector general said.
The Office of Secure Transportation (OST) oversees the shipment of nuclear weapons, weapon parts and special nuclear material, with a workforce of nearly 600 agents.
“Alcohol incidents such as these, as infrequent as they may be, indicate a potential vulnerability in OST’s critical national security mission,” the report said…
Two of the 16 alcohol incidents took place when convoy trucks were in “safe harbor” status and the agents had checked into local hotels…
Under new rules designed by the government agency, agents are barred from drinking alcohol eight hours before reporting for duty and agent candidates are prohibited from “possessing kegs of beer or quantities of alcohol in excess of what is reasonable for personal use,” said the report.
I’d concur – that taking a keg along while transporting nuclear weapons might help with the jitters – I doubt if it would contribute anything positive to driving performance.
Italian cardinal shares corruption with government
Crescenzio with Bubba Berlusconi
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
A leading Italian Catholic cardinal and an ex-government minister are under investigation for corruption.
Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the archbishop of Naples, previously ran the department that co-ordinates the Vatican’s foreign missions. He is accused of colluding with Pietro Lunardi, a former transport minister, to offer cut-price property deals…
Until 2006 he headed the Vatican department in control of financing overseas missions. In that position he enjoyed access to the department’s enviable portfolio of cash and property assets.
He now faces investigation alongside Mr Lunardi, a former minister in the centre-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, under the scope of an magistrates’ investigation into a major corruption scandal involving prominent politicians…
Emerging from church in Naples on Sunday, Cardinal Sepe told reporters: “The truth will emerge. I am serene…”
Didn’t Al Capone say something like that – a few times?
The nice thing about inviting a church into government, it supposedly dilutes corruption by giving citizens two centers of greed and deceit instead of just one.
Or does that double the corruption?
