To the Editor: From the year 2000 to 2005, manufacturing jobs declined by 18 percent in the United States. In the 1930s, people looked at labels before buying. Now they buy according to low price and seldom look at a label. We have given our hard-earned manufacturing experience to foreign countries in return for low prices.

Free trade is fair trade when wage rates are equal. Our young people prefer computers to factories. Online beats assembly line. Today the House of Representatives passed a law raising the minimum wage. Cheering was heard in foreign countries. No more "made in USA labels."

An 85-year-old fuddy-duddy.

Hip, Hip
Craig Langelier
Parker, Texas

To the Editor: Your article entitled "Hip New World" covering hip replacement (October 2006) was by far more informative than any I've found on the Web.

Thanks.

To the Editor: I found the Input Output article "Carbon, Sunk" (November 2006), which described a speculative approach to the question of carbon sequestration, interesting in that it pointed out that pressures beneath the ocean floor are sufficiently high and temperatures sufficiently low so as render liquid CO₂ non-buoyant. While this approach is not necessarily practical, it could, at least theoretically, provide a relatively stable long-term storage site to help mitigate atmospheric impacts of CO₂ , as we transition out of the fossil fuel era.

However, I was dismayed by author Jeffrey Winters' framing of the study, where he blithely states that "CO₂ emissions are going to increase dramatically in the coming decades regardless of the number of Priuses sold or compact fluorescent lightbulbs installed." We are "too enmeshed with fossils fuels to avoid it," he says. That may well be true today; it needn't be true tomorrow.

I was also disappointed at his failure to point out that while the study's authors have stated that American sea beds have the capacity to absorb a millennium's worth of carbon emissions, the remaining supply of economically recoverable fossil fuel is at least an order of magnitude less than that. He also doesn't question how much energy would be required to liquefy and pump billions of tons of carbon thousands of feet beneath the sea. And, finally, as an editor of one of the world's premier engineering publications, he should have pointed out that if we have learned nothing else from this fast-approaching climate change fiasco, it is that we should tread very cautiously before putting such massive quantities of human-industrial-generated waste anywhere.

To the Editor: The comments below were inspired by Lee Langston's article ("Campus Heat") that appeared in the December 2006 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine.

In the late 1960s, my employer, Garrett AiResearch, built a plant in Torrance, Calif., that incorporated what today might be described as cogeneration. Power for electric lighting came from gas-turbine engines of our own manufacture, operating on natural gas. The engines were designed to supply auxiliary power for aircraft and as such were fitted with General Electric 60 kVA generators supplying 120 V at 400 Hz. To accommodate the high frequency, we modified the fluorescent light fixtures with custom ballasts, making them much more efficient than at the standard 60 Hz.

One of three 7.5 MW gas turbines that power a cogeneration plant at the University of Connecticut.

Understandably, the city building inspectors had a hard time with the concept, but eventually threw up their hands, saying, "Do what you want," possibly because we were the city's largest employer.

Waste heat drove an absorption-cycle air-conditioning system and the steam tables in the cafeteria. With their low turbine-inlet temperature, the engines were, of course, not efficient, but recovering the waste heat more than compensated.

In Moscow in the late '80s, I noticed steam rising from manhole covers, a byproduct of the "district heating" system similar to those found in the old cities of the eastern U.S. and now a component of most cogeneration systems. Thermostats apparently being a capitalist concept and steam being "free," the buildings were generally overheated. I heard of one expatriate who fitted his bedroom with a network of strings and pulleys so that without leaving his bed he could open and close the window and thus somewhat regulate the temperature.

To the Editor: During my 37 years of engineering practice, I valued Mechanical Engineering as informative. Without it, something always seemed to be missing, like having an automobile without a radio. It provided a function, but not quite as completely as desired. In fact, in retirement, Mechanical Engineering sometimes is covered up with other mail, which eventually gets discarded as not that important to read.

Reading the December 2006 issue revealed to me what I had been missing in past issues of the magazine. It was personality, the same thing that made my college thermodynamics class, taught by a man passionately devoted to the subject, different from my statics class, taught by a uninspired student lecturer. I was most pleased to see articles written in nearly first person, with opinions and ideas put forth. I believe that engineering exists to provide solutions for better lives for people, and the engineer's personality (or lack of) is frequently the key to the success of engineering effort.

Lee Langston's article on cogeneration of heat and electricity at UConn was both informative and interesting, as it evoked memories of presenting ideas similar to my experiences. I, too, have written letters outlining ideas that were somewhat different and at odds with current practices. These letters were usually ignored or answered with political politeness, implying "don't buck city hall." Some of these ideas came around again and were implemented.

As I learned later in my career, selling your idea often takes more than a letter. Face-to-face contact, determining what the "customer" needs, and persistence is key to gaining acceptance of your idea. Mr. Langston's idea was eventually implemented, which no doubt was due to the work of himself and other like-minded individuals. His frustration with the speed of implementation of other "sensible steps toward efficiency" is also shared by many engineers.

I'm anxiously looking forward to the next edition of Mechanical Engineering.

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