There are also passenger cars/suvs that are E-15 certified. They have emblems on them stating "flexfuel" and stickers inside the gas door.
What has always amazed me in the shell game of ethanol is the silence in what it does to motors outside of the auto industry. I just purchased a $2,700 generator that warns in bold letters that ethanol will void the warranty if used. Lawnmowers, outboards, weed eaters, chainsaws and the list goes on of motors we use everyday that are impacted by ethanol. Where is the government in protection of the citizens investment in small engine repair and replacement. Another soon to be "cost" absorption is the tier 4 emission control on diesel engines. This will raise the cost of all diesel transport trucks by roughly $20,000 per unit. With this cost increase the motors emission converter is only good for 5 years and then you will need to purchase a new converter for $8,000 to keep it operational. We currently have 38 diesel power units and 6 diesel tractors on our "one" farm. If we plan on replacing anyone of them in the future we will pay the new price for the tier 4. The reaction from those of us faced with this is we will rebuild our motors instead of purchasing new tier 4 replacements. I have a vision of the comeback of diesel mechanics in our future and the downturn of manufacturing output because the cost associated have such a major impact on your business.
RE, I was blown away by your farm. I grew up on farm in North Dakota in the 30's. We farmed a section of land, at that time considered an average farm for diversified farming. Seems we grew everything and raised all manner of livestock. Turkeys were a big item. BTW, we had one tractor, A Farmall. Had to start it on gasoline, but then could switch to another much cheaper fuel.
vicm Wow, I can't even comprehend the effort it took to farm in North Dakota in the 30's. The era and remoteness of being located so far away humbles me to consider it. This may sound goofy to most but I always wanted a Farmall tractor and my friends father used one to grow silver queen corn and melons when we were in high school. Every time I think the small farm is going away people with a passion come back and make it work and shut up the naysayers for another six months. I manage a fair size farm that in all purposes is a commercial farming operation owned by one family so we think of ourselves as a mixture of the little guy living by the rules of the big guys. The problem with small farming today is the USDA and federal requirements demand that you behave like Delmonte, Dole and Chiquitas of the world. This is what puts more small farmers out of business than the weather and believe me the weather can be pretty cruel...
Oops, Obama Program: “Cash for Clunkers” Actually HURT Economy And Environment Everything he touches… Via Yahoo News Back in 2009, President Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program was supposed to be a boon for the environment and the economy. During a limited time, consumers could trade in an old gas-guzzling used car for up to $4,500 cash back towards the purchase of a fuel-efficient new car. It seemed like a win for everyone: the environment, the gasping auto industry and cash-strapped consumers. Though almost a million people poured into car dealerships eager to exchange their old jalopies for something shiny and new, recent reports indicate the entire program may have actually hurt the environment far more than it helped. According to E Magazine, the “Clunkers” program, which is officially known as the Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), produced tons of unnecessary waste while doing little to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The program’s first mistake seems to have been its focus on car shredding, instead of car recycling. With 690,000 vehicles traded in, that’s a pretty big mistake. According to the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA) , automobiles are almost completely recyclable, down to their engine oil and brake fluid. But many of the “Cash for Clunkers” cars were never sent to recycling facilities. The agency reports that the cars’ engines were instead destroyed by federal mandate, in order to prevent dealers from illicitly reselling the vehicles later. The remaining parts of each car could then be put up for auction, but program guidelines also required that after 180 days, no matter how much of the car was left, the parts would be sent to a junkyard and shredded. Shredding vehicles results in its own environmental nightmare. For each ton of metal produced by a shredding facility, roughly 500 pounds of “shredding residue” is also produced, which includes polyurethane foams, metal oxides, glass and dirt. All totaled, about 4.5 million tons of that residue is already produced on average every year. Where does it go? Right into a landfill.
Warmists Go Unhinged: Now Blaming Lightning Strikes On Global Warming… So dumb. Via Irish Examiner: Veteran Irish explorer Pat Falvey believes global warming was to blame for the lightning strike which killed Ian McKeever. About 1,000 Irish people climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania every year, but Mr Falvey said this is the first time there has been such a tragic accident on the imposing African peak. Mr Falvey told The Ray D’Arcy Show yesterday he believes the world’s changing climate caused the “freak” weather which hit Mr McKeever and his group as they climbed Kilimanjaro amid torrential downpours. “It was quite freaky and probably it’s because of the global warming climate change and it happened in an area that he was misfortunate to be in,” he said. “It was a place called Lava Towers which sticks up in the air like a sore thumb. It is a tower of rock in the lunar landscape section. “It is very unusual to have thunderstorms and rain at that particular level of the mountain but it is just the whole climate is changing.” Climber and retired Garda Martin Byrne, who climbed Mount Everest in 2011 and recently brought a team of fundraisers to climb Kilimanjaro for the charity Concern Worldwide, said he was very saddened to hear of Mr McKeever’s death.
Climate Change Mag Editor: Only “Hobbit-Sized Humans” Capable Of Surviving Coming Global Warming Apocalypse… Dennis Kucinich and Robert Reich rejoice! (CNSNews.com) – The joint editor of the Climate News Network is warning that in as little as two centuries global warming will lead to “mass extinction,” which may be good news for residents of “The Shire.” “Hobbit-sized humans, able to exist on less nourishing food, will have the best chance of survival in a warmer world, scientists say,” said Paul Brown, a journalist and author, in an article entitled, “Mass extinction forecast with 6C temperature rise,” published on Jan. 7. Brown bases his claim on findings by the “Bighorn Basin Coring Project,” a group of scientists from the United States, the UK, Germany, and Netherlands studying a “period 55 million years ago when the Earth’s temperature rose suddenly.”
Leaked UN Climate Report Shows They Have Overstated Global Warming Going Back 20 Years… Busted . . . again. Via Fox News: A preliminary draft of a report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was leaked to the public this month, and climate skeptics say it contains fresh evidence of 20 years of overstated global warming. The report — which is not scheduled for publication until 2014 — was leaked by someone involved in the IPCC’s review process, and is available for download online. Bloggers combing through the report discovered a chart comparing the four temperature models the group has published since 1990. Each has overstated the rise in temperature that Earth actually experienced. “Temperatures have not risen nearly as much as almost all of the climate models predicted,” Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, told FoxNews.com. “Their predictions have largely failed, four times in a row… what that means is that it’s time for them to re-evaluate,” Spencer said. The IPCC graph shows that the midpoints of the various models predicted that the world would warm by between about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit and 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit between 1990 and 2012. Actual warming was much less than that: 0.28 F, according the data the IPCC cites.
Democrats Ask NFL, NBA Teams For Suggestions On How To Stop Global Warming… Apparently professional athletes hold the keys to saving the planet from Al Gore’s imagination. Via The Hill: A new Capitol Hill climate task force wants a wide range of parties — including energy companies, green groups, sports leagues and plenty in-between — to submit suggestions for federal actions to battle global warming. The letter to 300-plus companies and groups is among the first actions of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change that Democrats unveiled last week. Recipients of the letter include oil and power companies such as Exxon and Southern Co., think tanks, environmentalists, defense contractors, retailers like Wal-Mart, financial companies like Goldman Sachs, food companies and many other sectors. Also on the list: the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and other sports leagues.
Obama: It’s A “Fact The 12 Hottest Years On Record Have Come In The Last 15″ – Reality: Zero Global Temperature Increase Over Last 16 Years… Barack Obama 2013 SOTU: “But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.” The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
"For the sake of our children...". What hypocritical ********! They may need global warming. They'll be spending so much of their income paying off the incredible debt this clown has rung up that they won't be able to afford heat!
Obama Takes Carbon-Spewing Air Force One Flight To Illinois To Deliver Speech Lecturing Us On The Evils Of Fossil Fuel… Via NRO’s Jim Geraghty: Today, President Obama boards Air Force One and flies to Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Lemont, Illinois to deliver a speech on weaning the nation from oil and gas. If the flight to Chicago takes about one hour, and another hour to return, the operation of Air Force One will cost taxpayers $359,500 today. That’s enough to restore about 20 weeks of public tours of the White House. [...] Also note that the president will be flying about 620 miles between Washington and Chicago. While the precise rate of fuel consumption of Air Force One is not revealed to the public, a 747 burns about five gallons of fuel per mile. So President Obama will burn about 6,200 gallons of jet fuel in his round trip, to deliver a speech urging “new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.”
So what's one of the big issues in the special election for John Kerry's seat in Mass.? Why the Keystone pipeline of course. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/06/keystone-pipeline-opponents-biggest-spenders-in-massachusetts-senate-race/?test=latestnews From earlier reports, if the Canadians don't sell the oil to the US they'll just sell it to China. In other words, we're trading thousands of jobs that would be created by building the pipeline for.....nothing.
Federal Government Report: No, Global Warming Had Nothing To Do With 2012 Drought… Or as the Goracle would call it, an inconvenient truth. WASHINGTON (AP) — Last year’s huge drought was a freak of nature that wasn’t caused by man-made global warming, a new federal science study finds. Scientists say the lack of moisture usually pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico was the main reason for the drought in the nation’s midsection. Thursday’s report by dozens of scientists from five different federal agencies looked into why forecasters didn’t see the drought coming. The researchers concluded that it was so unusual and unpredictable that it couldn’t have been forecast. “This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years,” said lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event.” Researchers focused on six states — Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and Iowa — but the drought spread much farther and eventually included nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48 states. For the six states, the drought was the worst four-month period for lack of rainfall since records started being kept in 1895, Hoerling said.
Goracle Hyperventilates: We Have Only 3 Years “To Avert A Major Catastrophe That Could Send Our Entire Planet’s Climate System Into A Tailspin Of Epic Destruction”… BTW- another Looney Lefty idea is that the world "is running out of topsoil." The first time I heard that was in 1968, when one of my Lefty professors told us that, "The world has less than 50 years of topsoil left...after that, there won't be any food." They also told us that we were running out of oil, gas, water and everything else. That was 45 years ago... re: Gore He’s been making these doom and gloom predictions for well over a decade and not a single one has come true. Via PressDemocrat: ‘‘Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction . . .” This quote, spoken by Al Gore in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” embodies the fear that is driving the modern environmental movement. Producers and consumers search endlessly for “green” items, such as reusable bags, energy efficient cars, and sustainable foods, all in the hope of protecting the planet from the harmful byproducts of civilization. However, in a society where the desire for wealth and industry often takes priority over environmental conservation, living an eco-friendly lifestyle proves difficult. Senior Chis Wynkoop is one of many students who has developed an active interest in preservation and the environment. http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130421/LIFESTYLE/130429951/1036/business?p=all&tc=pgall
Al Gore, please call your office The Red State Report NASA: We Are Worried About Global Cooling Now! This will not be good news for the leftist all over the nation. The socialist left has spent a lot of money and energy on indoctrinating young skulls full of mush about the dangers of Global Warming and it’s cause CO2. Schools all over the nation are convincing young children that polar bears are drowning as polar ice melts from the dreaded and deadly global warming. NASA has normally been a trusted partner in this fairy tale, but maybe no longer. From a study done by none otherthan NASA: “Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats,” explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER’s principal investigator. “When the upper atmosphere (or ‘thermosphere’) heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space.” So, carbon dioxide and nitric oxide reflect heat back away from earth. If we didn’t have CO2 than earth would literally burn up from solar flares and the liberals are trying to rid the planet of this protective chemical compound. NASA scientists are estimating sun flares to be reduced dramatically causing global cooling: NASA reports this week that we may be on the verge of another Maunder Minimum (a period with an unusually low number of sunspots, leading to colder temperatures): http://www.redstatereport.com/2013/04/nasa-we-are-worried-about-global-cooling-now/
CA Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Moonbeam) Blames Global Warming For Wildfires And “People In Charge” For Not “Slowing Down Climate Change”… Isn’t he in charge? SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown put the state’s early wildfire season in global terms Monday, saying the state would have to grow accustomed to more forest fires as a consequence of climate change. Brown’s remarks at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s aviation management unit in Sacramento came as firefighters in Ventura County said they expected to have the 28,000-acre Springs fire fully contained by Tuesday. State firefighters have responded to about twice the average number of wildfires so far this year – more than 1,100 in all. “Our climate is changing, the weather is becoming more intense,” Brown said in an airplane hangar filled with trucks, airplanes and helicopters used by the state to fight fires. “It’s going to cost a lot of money and a lot of lives. “The big issue (is) how do we adapt,” Brown said ,“because it doesn’t look like the people who are in charge are going to do what it takes to really slow down this climate change, so we are going to have to adapt. And adapting is going to be very, very expensive.”” http://junkscience.com/2013/05/06/gov-moonbeam-blames-global-warming-for-calif-fires-and-people-in-charge-for-not-doing-what-it-takes-to-slow-down-climate-change/