Summer sparked this thought in my head:

[animal]

YES, this will be long...

Do any of you guys have "ozone action days" in your cities? I think it is the most pointless scam to ever have been thought up. It's right up there with Ultra-Light cigarettes in the 100's size, because half as much twice as long is beneficial HOW?

Here in Milwaukee, we have ozone action days. On these designated days, they (whatever wacky environmental association thought this up) want the general public to do things like, carpool, take mass transit, refrain from mowing lawns, pumping gas, running a chainsaw, aireating one's soil (shrug), rototilling, blowing snow(er wait), or basically any other activity that allows a machine to do some simple work for us to make things more productive. Too add to this confusion, we have a multi-million dollar computerized traffic sign system that flashes traffic info for all drivers on the freeway system. Instead of the normal traffic info, they instead display "Ozone action day TODAY", as if finding out once we're ON the freeway system is going to do us any good. To make things worse, the signs are static with the above message and display NO traffic information whatsoever for the course of the day. This in turn allows for people to end up sitting in a traffic jam idling their car for a half hour, instead of being able to turn off the system and avoid the jam because of the vital information contained therein.

I guess my real case and point on this issue can be illustrated in an example: This issue was confronted on a talk radio show on a local station here in milwaukee. The caller was a lawn service worker who had the day off because they were not allowed to work on ozone action day. But his point in calling was to tell everyone that instead they just work a double shift the next day, and the day after that to catch up.

It all goes back to my Ultra light 100's comparison. It is a pointless excercise. In which, even if it was carried out by everyone, the day after would involve probably DOUBLE the activity that was trying to be stopped in the first place.

I won't even get started on wisconsin's reformulated-reformulated gas. Crappier, more expensive gas, burns cleaner, but more gas is required to get animal from point A to point B? How does that work?

Feel free to comment or argue with me. :)

[WARPED1]

ROFLMAO

[the JoKeR]

People might argue that the gas doesn't screw up your milage, but I have proof (in my head, at least). I bought a 1988 full size Blazer in California and drove it back to Milwaukee. Fun. It USED to get about 16 mpg when my brother owned it and drove it around San Fran for years. Once it was here, my milage is now around 12-13mpg, with a LOT easier driving conditions. If you look at polution maps, the Chicago to Milwaukee corridore hasn't gotten any better with the new gas, which by the way, is more expensive to boot. Thanks for ticking me off, Animal!:D

[animal]

Hey no problem, i get really fired up whenever I think of the pointless "environmental" practices, aka scams, that we as the general public must put up with. Don't even get me started on emissions equipment.

I might note, that I like to drive around with overdrive off on ozone action days, as I take the long way... to the gas station... on the other side of town, to get gas for my lawn mower, so I can run the old gummed-up gas out of it, and then cut the lawn twice while burning new reformulated-reformulated gas... at twice the rate neccesary... all to get the nice golf course patterns and plenty of mulch to feed the lawn. Oh, what a spiteful individual I am. :p

[Hasty8]

There are tremendous benefits to limiting a lot of unnecessary travel to buses and subways. I remember when New York cabbies went on trike for a day. There were almost no cars in Manhattan.

I can honestly say that I would whole-heartedly support an initiative to ban all traffic in Manhattan except for cabs, buses and subways. All deliveries by trailers will have to be done at night and during the day there should be a limit as to the size of delivery vehicles allowed into the city.

If anyone know the area then you know what I am talking about. Make a huge underground tunnel from the Queens side where the midtown tunnel is that goes straight through to New Jersey. Anyone who wants to come into Manhattan either takes the Long Island RailRoad, a bus or subway or will be required to park their car in large parking buildings right next to the water. From there they can take either water taxis or shuttle subways under the river or over into the city and from there take cabs or buses to their destination.

And the same can be done on the New Jersey side. And the time for this is ripe. Queens is currently in the process of redeveloping and redesigning the entire river shoreline from the 59th Street bridge to the Queens Midtown tunnel. That is over 79 acres of land they want to redo. They already have to condo buildings up. Just build two or three high capacity parking facilities.

I understand your nausea from the "Ozone Action Days" but for different reasons. OR maybe they are the same. My problem with them is that they are only days. We as humans seem to fail to realize that it is far easier to destroy then it is to build. Do we honestly expect to see major changes after on day when we have been slowly destroying our environment since the Industrial Revolution?

And another thing folks. Don't worry about "Saving Mother Nature". She's been doing just fine since long before we crawled our way out of the premordial ooze. Worry about saving ourselves. We could nuclear bomb ourselve to death but Mother Nature will still be here, just in a form that won't be hospitable to us.

MY LIRR station is one of several stations hosting the Ford Company' electric car initiative. I would love to do it but it's a bit rich for me right now.

We need to break our yokes from the oil barons, both domestic and foreign. We need to better develop our fuel cell research and other forms of energy production.

Just my two cents.

[-Jôker-]

like the post above me hints at... why dont we stop wasting peoples time with pointless "ozone action days" and start developing things for us to use that dont damage o3 ??