Arkansas Blog

Give them some credit. Natural gas provides much cleaner combustion. Those times when I used to walk to the old Post Office in Chickenopolis and numerous diesel pick ups were coming and going I had to back off a block and wait for the traffic to clear. If you want gun blue-grey skies just run more diesel. Anything you can do to get the oil burners off your streets the better.

Yeah, I'm pretty much with eLwood. Thinking outside the box in this neck of the woods and on environmental issues is a good thing. Of course, the decision making process should be open and transparent and free of shenanigans (and shenanigans/conflicts should be highlighted...I take no issue with that). But lets give new ideas a try and recognize that lobbyists are frequently in the mix. Doesn't necessarily make it the wrong thing to do.

I can not comment on the fellow pushing the project but I am for it.

Let me put it anecdotaly. In our warehouse we can run natural gas powered forklifts INSIDE for extended times with the doors down in the winter, yet when a diesel truck backs up OUTSIDE and leaves their motor running while we load/unload it nearly chokes everyone in the warehouse.

If we as a society want to encourage citzens to use mass transit then belching smoking choking soot covered stanking buses is counterproductive.

I would resist a diesel bus coming down my street every hour spewing soot and choking out anyone walking, jogging, or pushing strollers.

There is a point where cost is prohibitive but health has a cost also.

If you are accepting ads against the polution from the Turk dirty Coal Plant which saves money but poisons people, I find it odd to resist natural gas over diesel.

Excellent point CitizenUno. If diesel suppliers had to pay the real costs of burning diesel fuel the price would be prohibitive. Same for gasoline. Physics Professor emeritus, Art Hobson of Fayetteville, has repeated stated the real cost of gasoline should include a minimum of $5 per gal tax to offset the actual social costs that burning it produces. Diesel prices should reflect an $8 per gallon tax.

I would point out that Walt Disney World, which operates arguably one of the largest and most efficient internal transportation systems in the world, has converted nearly their entire bus fleet over to natural gas. If you've never been to WDW, you cannot fathom exactly how extensive and impressive their transportation system is, but trust me, I think they know what they're doing.

Perhaps Mr. Hays, in this case at least, is on to something.

There is certainly no shortage of people willing to throw less fortunates under the bus. The price of getting to and from work for 98% of the people responsible for putting chicken McNuggets on your plate is crippling enough without more taxes on fuel. It's that "I got mine, screw you" thing. It isn't just for republicans anymore.

I'm with the majority it seems on this issue of NG verses Diesel. Besides it being cleaner, and has been proven to be less harmful to the environment, the public transportation authority can have us tax payers pick up the tab, on conversions. That's why T.Boone was wanting to switch over all the trucking and transportation systems (about 33% of oil used a day in US) to NG because these business' can tax deduct it. Lowly little ole' taxpayers like us working stiffs can just recoup a fraction of what is take to live on our 1040's, let alone what it takes to transport ourselves.

At some point we have to make a jump to a new technology and it will rarely, if ever, make financial sense -- at that point in time.

If you are waiting until alternative energy sources are cheaper than what we've got now, you'll be waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.

How many decades will it take us to break our addition to oil?

Why is there so much passion in favor of protecting oil company profits, keeping us at war in the middle east, and polluting the air?

It's exactly what you'd expect from the state that elected Lincoln and Pryor.

It's the exact same logic that protects insurance companies from the evil of a public option.

Man, I'm an angry liberal this morning. Thinking about Obama's capitulation on health care put me in a bad mood.

Bug eye,

I am of the mind that poisoning and polluting someone under the guize of giving them a lower cost of transportation is immoral and unethical.

The 98% of those with tight finances would be forced to live in polluted areas and be subject to breathing more poisons.

And this is all so that I can get my mcnuggets cheaper?

I value my health and the health of those possibly less fortunate than I quite a bit more than thinking trading cheap transport outweighs healthy air.

Let's make a small leap. We could have lower water rates by not treating drinking water to as high a standard. This will keep down the cost to Mcnugget cookers. The rich could buy bottled water and get cheaper mcnuggets since we could keep paying the mcnugget workers less.

I am not interested in getting myself or others lower electric rates by burning coal and saving money but fowling the air and adding mercury to the already mercuried up rivers. I believe that would be short sighted and immoral.

Fry cook's and deboner's cost of getting to work may ultimately affect the price of McNuggets, but, if you give the bastards a raise they are just going to buy more gas.

Tax the guy with the small penis and huge dually pickup if you're going to tax somebody for burning too much oil. Tax him when he buys the vehicle or when it rolls off the assembly line or require a permit to operate an oversized engine. Tax GM executives for deciding to spend all their energy fighting fuel mileage requirements and failing to build more fuel efficient transportation. Tax the anti nuclear boneheads for taking a reliable, clean, efficient and low cost form of energy away from us. Tax university professors just for being full of crap.

I'm with eLwood. It is a breath of fresh air to have local officials going out of their way to fund cleaner-fuel transportation. The science just gets worse and worse on the health effects of diesel particulates. See the Clean Air Task Force webpage for real-time videos of heart rhythm changes in the car behind a diesel truck.

We have to quit thinking in the near term and look to the long term. Diesel fuel is a petroleum product which is derived from oil which is not, for the most part, produced in the USA. Natural Gas is a product which is produced in the USA.

Current cost aside, why would we not want to fuel our buses and other fleets with a fuel which is generally available in USA, rather than hitching our wagon to a star controlled by OPEC.

This view is not protectionist, it's pragmatic.

This is a grandchildren issue.

a) Drake is certifiable...Argenta Blog has just the highlights of his "business acumen". He also headed a "Faith Based Initiative" in LR for a while, accomplished nothing but grant writing for harebrained concepts.

b) Nothing wrong with CNG but the Industry folks are flat out lying about the cost to start it up. They want the public to do it for them, all while cloaked in the "free enterprise" garb.

c) Reality Check--EPA has been putting the screws to diesel fuel and diesel engines for 15 years. they are damn near invisible , and th Nox and Sox are very near CNG...CNG is carbon based fuel just like diesel...shit comes out the tailpipe of both

e) why not burn up all the mideast oil first? then we will switch to our own diesel, coal products, and NG for the last 10 years or so of Life As We Know It!

Hands down natural gas is better. Diesel fumes make my throat hurt almost immediately. I hate it.