• The Home Page of
• Douglas M. Chatham
• 
• This is a letter about Automotive Emissions: Cars are not the major source of air pollution.
  

• A letter advocating the National Retail Sales Tax and eliminating the IRS.
  This is the Address List of the recipients of the above letters

• Environmental Chemist and Generalist (see my resume and Chatham Ventures). I am not an environmentalist. I am an environmental professional.
• Objectivism The philosophy of Ayn Rand. This is the only modern philosophy which views man as heroic and capable. In metaphysics, it views existence as having primacy over consciousness. In epistemology, it views reason (including logic) as man's only means of knowledge. In ethics, it views rational selfishness as the moral. In politics, it views capitalism as the only 'pro-man' system possible.
• Libertarian - Take the world's smallest political quiz
• Catastrophist ( Velikovsky) A planet sized comet passed within ~25,000 miles of the earth (one-tenth of the distance between the earth and the moon) approximately 3500 years ago.

• Geodesic Dome Enthusiast - My wife and I have moved (at the end of 1997) to a new house in Loganville, GA. I intend to build a geodesic dome greenhouse at the back of the property. I will use my video and still cameras as much as possible to record every stage of the process. If I can do it, I will post as many of these pictures on my web site as I can and provide links to them here. Well, I still haven't done the greenhouse (middle of 2002). I've had two back surgeries and I might be scheduled for another, so the greenhouse had to be postponed. I hope to get back to it, soon.
• I sometimes have ideas which I will post here. If you want to comment about one or more of them, click on my guest form to send me a message. Make suggestions about my page, flame my page, or just tell me you like it.
• A committee (the Atlanta Regional Commission) has been appointed in the Atlanta area to propose ways to reduce the number of miles driven. There are many reasons for the extent of urban sprawl in Atlanta. People have been moving out away from Atlanta to get away from three problems; 1) high property taxes, 2) high crime rates, and 3) traffic and noise. Carpools and vanpools will have no impact on Atlanta's traffic. In order for mass transit (MARTA) to reduce traffic, it has to go where people commute. I won't take MARTA if it is not convenient to both my home and my work. MARTA's board of directors has an explicit policy that the purpose of MARTA is to provide transportation to people who do not drive automobiles; i.e., those on welfare.
• Instead of building more trains for people, consider using flat-bed rail cars to carry automobiles along the heavy transportation corridors. This removes traffic from some of the highways and still allows people to have their cars with them. This idea was used in the Old West. Cowboys would load their horses on cattle cars and ride the train. This is also similar to the use of ferries to carry automobiles across rivers. I got the following response from one reader:
• "A note about your idea of loading cars on trains.....my parents went on a motorhome guided tour deep into Mexico. They loaded all the motorhomes (about 30) onto flat bed train cars for a good part of the trip. Worked great, but it took a couple of hours to load them each time and make sure they were secure. Then they could actually walk along the side of their vehicle and visit the other motorhomes on that train car." The time for this type of commuter train could be minimized by having platforms at the train stations at the same level as the train so that cars could drive on and off. The railroad cars could be equipped with automatic securing devices.
• High property taxes in the Atlanta area are primarily due to multiple layers of government and the use of governments as jobs programs. The services provided by county government and city government are the same. There is no reason to have more than one government entity providing services and taxing property. I advocate the elimination of city charters, especially in the Atlanta area. The county governments within the Metropolitan Atlanta area should be merged and the Atlanta Regional Commission could provide the format for the Atlanta Regional government.
• We DO NOT choose to drive many miles to and from work because of a love affair with our automobiles. DOT has become an autonomous government all to itself. The state legislature gave them taxing power and the power of imminent domain many years ago. They are answerable to noone. I think that it is time for the legislature to revoke their powers and return DOT to agency status.
• In the Atlanta area, we have had a rash of deadly accidents involving either tractor-trailer trucks or teen-agers or both. I believe that we need to separate tractor-trailers which weigh 40 TONS (80,000 pounds) from automobile traffic. If we can set aside HOV lanes for cars and other vehicles carrying more than one passenger and set up separate entrance and exit ramps for those lanes, we certainly can do the same thing to separate trucks from cars. HOV lanes are useless. We should convert them into truck-only lanes. On a four or five-lane highway we should specify that two lanes will be for trucks only and those lanes will have their own entrance and exit ramps and will be separated from automobile lanes by concrete dividers. One highway engineer told me that it couldn't be done, but I have heard that the New Jersey Turnpike does just that. As a beginning, we should set aside the far left lane as a truck-only lane with the next lane being trucks allowed.
• In addition, I think that there should be severe restrictions on teen-age driving. No sixteen year old has the maturity to drive on today's interstates. I propose that states require a minimum three-year training period with minimum standards of passing simulator tests, showing an ability to handle skids and other emergency situations, and a thorough knowledge of highway safety and law in order to get a driver's license. A potential driver should pay for his own training. With the proliferation of school busses we have, no high school student should be allowed to drive a car to school. I don't care if their parents think that it's inconvenient to be forced to drive their kids to functions. College students should not be allowed to have cars on campus before their Junior year.
• The wet-lands act destroys wet-lands!! How?? It inhibits the production of artificial wet-lands because anyone who creates a wet-lands is then stuck with it. Sewage treatment plants would function much more efficiently with an artificial wet-lands area as the final water treatment, but no-one wants to use that method because the Corps of Engineers would then prevent it from ever being destroyed.
• A method of removing hydrocarbons from urban air could consist of absorption from air being pumped through a concrete pipe containing activated carbon in removable cartridges. The concrete pipe is the core of the concrete divider in the middle of the expressway. Air is pulled through the pipe by a flat black chimney heated by the sun. The carbon cartridges are removed in sequence and either regenerated by thermal desorption distilling the hydrocarbons recovering them for use as a fuel. An alternative is to use the saturated carbon cartridges as fuel in a coal-fired power plant.
• Combine the technology of ground-effect flying machines, which take advantage of the extra lift produced when an airplane flies close (within 5 feet) to the ground, and ultra-lights. This would produce a low-flying ultra-light which would be an inexpensive ground-effect machine.
• Cool urban areas to reduce ozone produced during summer months and to reduce the air-conditioning load. Several simple to complex actions can be effective:
• Add a pigment to asphalt to make it more reflective.
• Use concrete paving rather than asphalt.
• Plant more trees in the downtown area.
• Build an arched cover, like an arbor, over the downtown expressways. These can support a porous shade material. In some places vines could be grown on them.
• Consider collecting storm-water run-off in large cisterns for use in evaporatively cooling the highways around Atlanta. Spray water on the highways controlled by a thermostat.
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