‘Dump the Pump Day’: What I see

By on June 18, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Energy conservation, Transportation

National Dump the Pump Day is just two days away but today’s story begins in Maryland in the mid-Atlantic port city of Baltimore, only in 1828, for it was right about then that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad [...]

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Eighth annual ‘National Dump the Pump Day’ on June 20th

By on June 17, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Energy conservation, Fossil fuels, Transportation

On June 20th, National Dump the Pump Day in America will be recognized. The event is being sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club. This year marks [...]

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Fifty years of American commuting – 1960-2009: What the numbers say

By on June 15, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Transportation

Population is one of those areas that people should pay attention to. World population: 7-plus billion and growing. There are so many facets related to population, keeping current on all of the particulars is no easy task. [...]

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Cleaning the air by lowering diesel’s impact on it

By on June 14, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Energy production, Fossil fuels, Health impacts, Particulates, Transportation

Back on Oct. 23, 2012, Monte Morin in a Los Angeles Times newsstory reporting on the health implications of diesel exhaust, wrote: “A chemical analysis of air samples taken from California’s San Joaquin Valley and [...]

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Air: It is what it is and what it isn’t is good

By on June 12, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Climate disruption, Health impacts

On June 10, 2013 in “Answer to California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant closure could be clean energy,” I made reference to the The Fresno Bee op-ed “San Onofre closure will test state’s power grid,” plus one comment to [...]

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Answer to California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant closure could be clean energy

By on June 10, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Energy conservation, Energy production, Renewable energy resources

California now has less of an energy supply … or does it? I ask because the San Onofre nuclear power plant, located in northwest San Diego County, is no longer producing electricity – it is offline and it [...]

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Trains as an effective emissions-calming mechanism: There is strength in numbers

By on June 8, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Transportation

Picking up right where I left off in “Rails versus roads: Infrastructure equality can work wonders,” the use of passenger trains to mitigate harmful emissions can be a very effective means of doing such, provided [...]

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Rails versus roads: Infrastructure equality can work wonders

By on June 7, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Transportation

Right now I’m thinking about the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. As I see it the “Report Card” is an evaluation instrument used for the purpose of assessing [...]

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Capacitor energy storage feature to make U.S. October debut on light rail transit system

By on June 6, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Energy conservation, Transportation

Remember back on May 1 when I wrote about capacitor energy storage capability in an electric passenger rail application? Described in the “CATS: ‘Contactless,’ energy-storage features give transit an edge,” was the MITRAC system from Bombardier. In this case, it [...]

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Cars as a major pollution-fighting solution: In my lifetime? It’s definitely doable!

By on June 4, 2013 in Air pollution, Clean up, Fossil fuels, Transportation

I hold on to hope that one day cars will be a significant contributor to the overall effort to clean the air – that they’ll be more a part of the solution than what is right [...]

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