A  BETTER TOMORROW

Begins today…  By examining the past, I feel beyond a doubt that, the future could be a better place, and I provide reliable evidence.  Early trains burned wood, and pulled about four lightweight, wood cars.  It took a lot of wood to go a short distance, and smoke and ash covered passengers and their clothes to get there.  The change to coal burning technology made the engines much more powerful, they could pull more cars and increased the range the trains could travel, as the filthy coal, soot and ash, filled the air with billowing clouds of debris.   Then came the diesel.  A paradigm shift.  Enormous power.  By comparison miniscule exhaust emissions, great range, longevity and fuel economy.  This is real progress we have already made.  From pulling four cars full of soot covered people, to two hundred freight cars, with up to eight hundred steel containers, carrying more weight than an entire town in the old west.  The amazing diesel locomotives have proliferated, and almost entirely replaced wood and coal burning engines, with the exception of those preserved for historical, and modified for pleasure trips, usually fired by natural gas.  Solar cells, popularized like cell phones, could proliferate in there use everywhere, and automobiles could be greatly improved, using the so called hybrid locomotive technology.  General Motors has indicated that a local range of forty to fifty miles, purely on batteries alone, and a whopping five hundred mile extended range, at an estimated fifty miles per gallon, is possible, utilizing the proven, for over fifty years, freight locomotive engine, generator, hybrid technology, burning a variety of fuels, gasoline, ethanol, methanol, diesel and bio diesel.

WHAT TO DO?

Be an advocate, spread the word, make it your desire to popularize ecologically friendly products, and demand they be brought to market and buy them, if you can afford them.  Vote with your money.  For example.  Front wheel drive cars are the result of the automobile industry desiring to increase their profit margin, at the expense of giving consumers a quality product.  Many of the manufacturers claim that front wheel drive puts the engine over the driving wheels, and therefore offers better traction and superior handling.  These claims are blatantly untrue.  The facts are from a scientific engineering standpoint, putting the greatest mass, the drive train, all up front makes for an ill handling vehicle, that is incapable of accelerating, braking or turning well.  No race car design has ever successfully used that design.  Under acceleration, the front of the vehicle lifts from engine torque reaction, transferring the weight, to the rear wheels, during braking the weight is transferred to the front wheels.  Front wheel drive cars spin their tires on acceleration, and tend to lock the rear wheels early on, increasing the stopping distance, they also under steer and can snap around suddenly, out of control, as there is no drive train weight to keep the rear tires connected to the pavement.  NASCAR has proven the safest design is front engine, mid transmission, and rear wheel drive.  Some of the cars you can buy at the dealer with this superior design are the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, Challenger, Mercedes Benz, B.M.W.s, Ford Mustang and most trucks.  This is why trucks have become so popular, and have been marketed as "Sport Utility Vehicles" by Cadillac and Lincoln.  People would not buy their front wheel drive cars, but will buy a rear wheel drive truck.  Environmentalists are not going to stop people from buying the best designed cars and trucks ever made, and should focus on getting automakers to replace junk front wheel drive vehicles with hybrids, to paradigm shift us into the bright new future, right now.  Eventually hydrogen power may be that zero emission destination we are looking for.  B.M.W. has them right now.