Jet fuel project
doesn’t add up
A recent article, “From seawater to jet fuel” (Tribune-Herald, Sept. 24), left me very puzzled.
A paragraph tells me that about a half million gallons of seawater, 50,000 gallons of fresh water, and 70 kilograms of supplemental hydrogen gas will be combined to make 10 gallons of fuel. Could that possibly be correct?
What is the cost of the electricity required to pump the water from the ocean? Certainly not zero.
I read that the average residential water bill in Kona is between $100 and $150. The average residence uses a little less than 50,000 gallons monthly.
Even with a big discount, how much will these entrepreneurs be paying for that scarce fresh water?
At the quoted price online of $16 per kilo, the hydrogen gas will come in at under $70. Combine these three ingredients, in a facility that costs a mere $12 million to $million 20, and — poof — 10 gallons of jet fuel, worth $22 right now, will be manufactured. And some other byproducts, maybe $30 total?
What kind of business spends millions to refurbish a facility and many thousands of actual cash dollars to produce 30 bucks of product? None, that’s who.
Only government could do something this insane. Why is this being proposed? Well, I’ll leave that for others to imagine. But as the guy who’ll be paying the bill for this, I would like to cast my “no” vote right here.
Charles Clark
Hilo
Clarification regarding
San Fran proposition
The people of San Francisco, not Kamala Harris, came for their own guns.
You chose a classically misleading headline — “That time Kamala Harris came for San Francisco’s guns” — for your Oct. 25 editorial. The voters of San Francisco … you know, those people who are supposed to actually be in control of their government and lives … passed Proposition H by a significant majority: 123,033 to 89,856.
The proposed law called for the San Francisco police to “come for people’s guns,” not Harris. And four members of the city’s Board of Supervisors placed the measure on the ballot. Harris’s role? She was one of 123,033 voters who supported the measure.
She had a louder supporting voice than most, absolutely. But she did not invent or submit the measure. Your editorial reminds me of Donald Trump blaming Harris for anything that happened in the Biden administration.
And no one ever came for anyone’s guns. Proposition H never became a law. The NRA instantly litigated the free choice of San Francisco’s citizens, and a Superior Court judge struck it down. For full details, look up “San Francisco Proposition H (2005)” in Wikipedia.
I wish that people obsessed with the Second Amendment would reread its first four words — “A well regulated militia …” — and consider something similar to car registrations as a reasonable way to address gun control, as opposed to J.D. Vance’s idea of considering death by gun violence as “a fact of life.”
Steve Schlich
Pahoa
