Every once in awhile, some good news.
Maybe.
The Environmental Protection Agency – usually strident, ideological and unreasonable – has suggested doing something reasonable: It has proposed reducing the total amount (and the percentage) of ethanol adulteration of gasoline.
Probably because it’s unavoidably necessary – to cover up a burgeoning debacle (think Obamacare and the delayed rollout of certain aspects of it).
Instead of 18.15 billion gallons of corn crap, just 15 or so billion gallons would be sloshed into our fuel tanks – and no more than 10 percent of the stuff per gallon of “gas,” which is the amount we currently have to accept. (See here for the news story).
As recently as last year, it seemed all-but-certain that EPA would mandate E15 – 15 percent ethanol. E85 (85 percent ethanol) was on deck.
But every now and then, reality intrudes and displaces the unicorn dreams of politicians and bureaucrats. The increasing dosage of ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply was causing several serious and all-too-obvious problems that could no longer be swept under the rug.
Firstly, even people who aren’t policy wonks or “car people” have noticed that a gallon of gas does not take them as far as it used to. Which stands to reason, because most of the “gas” out there is already up to 10 percent ethanol (E10), per EPA mandate. Since there is less energy in E10 than in unadulterated gas, it takes more E10 to drive a given distance, vs. the same volume of gasoline. The disparity is particularly obvious when one compares mileage using a tankful of E10 vs. a tank of straight gas – which is still available in many parts of the country if you look around a little bit (see here).
Less-energy ethanol is one of the chief reason why – despite numerous technological Great Leaps Forward such as direct-injection (fuel sprayed directly into the combustion chamber under extremely high pressure), eight-speed (and CVT and automated manual) transmissions, cylinder deactivation (a V-8 that runs on four cylinders when demand for power is light), Auto-Stop (the car’s computer turns off the engine automatically when the vehicle is not moving, then automatically restarts it when the driver pushes down on the accelerator) the fuel economy of new cars is not very spectacular. Especially when compared with the fuel economy achieved by cars built decades ago, which did not have the technological advantages of today – but did have the advantage of unadulterated fuel.
Thirty years ago, 40 MPG cars were common. Today, only a relative handful of cars hit that mark. A new (2014) Toyota Corolla, for instance, carries an EPA rating of 28 city, 37 highway. This is ok, but nothing much to write home about – in view of the fact that a 1985 Corolla rated nearly the same – 26 city and 33 highway (see here) – without the benefit of the technology advances of the ensuing 30 years. One of the reasons the ’14 and the ’85 are so close to one another, MPG-wise, is due to the fact that the ’14 is impaired by inferior (in terms of energy density) fuel. The EPA – which publishes fuel economy stats – tests new cars using E10, not straight gas.
Given that the efficiency reduction associated with burning E10 vs. pure gasoline seems to be in the neighborhood of 3-5 percent, the ’14 Corolla ought to be delivering better than 30 MPG in city driving – and at least 40 in the highway.
And would – if it were not fed crap corn gas.Β 
People like me who raise chickens are also unhappy about the upticked cost of feed corn – which is due to the fact that a majority of the country’s total corn crop goes not to food for animals or humans, but to ethanol production.
The price of every commodity that is dependent on corn – from corn flakes to steaks – is higher for the simple reason that there’s less corn available. Supply and demand. Only in this case, it’s an artificial distortion of the market, with the agri-business cartels laughing all the way to the bank. Β 
But, they may have pushed too far, too fast. Subbing in E10 all at once was a mistake. The reduced mileage was immediately – and blatantly – obvious. So also the mechanical problems associated with alcohol-laced fuels – especially with regard to older cars that can’t self-adjust for the leaner (less energy) nature of alcohol fuels and so tend to run hotter, which causes them to wear out faster. Ditto outdoor power equipment – everything from chain saws to lawn mowers. And marine engines – which do not do well when the fuel is saturated with water. Alcohol attracts water.
These problems – widespread, obvious – can’t be flim-flammed into the memory hole.
If they’d been smarter, they’d have gone slower. Feed it to us gradually. Start with 2 or 3 percent ethanol instead of 10 – and increase that by 1 percent every five years. The alcohol-related wear and tear could be dismissed as age and use-related wear and tear. The older stuff would be discretely attrited out of existence, with only a few gearhead holdouts noticing anything amiss – much less being able to do anything about it. Few would notice a 1 percent reduction in fuel economy. Or even a 5 percent reductionΒ . . . over the course of 10 or 15 years. 
Improvements resulting from technology advances would mask a lot of that.
The corn lobby – which has been making billions off the legislated “demand” for its product – is not happy we’ve taken notice of The Great Corn Con. Much less that EPA has felt real pressure to ease off and at least keep the con at its current level of rapaciousness.
The corn kahunas will continue to extract billions from the hides of the American people, even so. But any reduction in rent seeking is seen by them as a mortal threat. Expect much hue and cry. And much agit-prop about “renewable” fuels – and “reducing dependence on foreign oil.” It’s a crock, all of it. They are squealing because their profits might be squeezed a little bit.
Assuming the dialing-back actually happens, a few more dollars will remain in our pockets rather than theirs.
That’s something.
But just imagine if we could cut the corn lobby loose for good. Get them out of our gas tanks – and wallets – completely. Overnight, our cost of living would go down noticeably. Our cars would go farther – and last longer. Everything from steaks to corn flakes would become suddenly more affordable.
And that would really be something.
Throw it in the Woods?
PS:This site is almost entirely reader supported now. No Google. (TheyΒ blacklisted us – soΒ weΒ dumped them. See here for the full story about that.)
So, please: We needΒ yourΒ support to make a go of it and keep EPautos rolling. If you like what you see, consider supporting this site. The link to our “donate” button isΒ here. You can also mail stuff our way – if you prefer to avoid PayPal. The address is:
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Eric,
I like Floyd County enough that I bought a place there earlier this year. Considering the entire county has under 15k people and exactly one traffic light, you and I are practically neighbors. Unfortunately, I’m not there as much as I’d like since I still have a business to run here in PA.
It’s a neat place – but I fear the word may have gotten out. I have noticed the signs of doom cropping up: McMansions and the local pols gabbling about ways to attract Yankees – “tourists” – to make a buck off them. Still, it’ll take a while to ruin the place – and compared with most places, it’s heaven.
We’re in Copper Hill, about 13 miles from the stop light. Drop me a line sometime, if you like, and I’ll show you around our Redneck Southfork!
One of things that really irks my noodle is how the majority of the world is unoccupied. I’d say 95% of it is empty wilderness and desert, it only seems occupied because we use narrow corridors called highways to all drive on. Me being an avid hiker, I’m still suprised how just going a mile away from any roads that you find a whole different world of nothing and peace and tranquilty. Now granted most of land is too rugged to actually utilize effieciently, but I always found it fascinating that with such a huge supply of land that they’d want me to work 30+ years of my life in a rat cage to buy a 1/4 acre parcel of land with house. The house which I could build with my own two hands and build in two years labor.
And the scam gets worse actually. I guess it makes sense that tract houses should be build near rivers so they cover up all the most fertile and productive ground with neighborhoods of yutzes that wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. I mean are most humans stupid or what? And if that isn’t enough insult to pour salt on a wound. Then you got the local HOA club, city, and state government telling you have to pay a fee, and that you really don’t own anything anyway. Case example, you have to get their permission to paint your house a certain color. Or the water that hits your dirt isn’t yours. And everytime you do an improvement you have to pay more tax. Part of the reason I’m a renter is because property ownership in the USSA is a joke, literally a pure joke..ha ha ha ha. Granted I never thought I was going to be able to keep the land forever anyway, because I’m not foolish enough to think I’ll live forever on this plane, but it would be nice to really own something that shouldn’t cost me a lifetime to claim as my own. And such visible forms of wealth always lead to the ambulance chasers coming to claim it. Pure ridiculous banking empire and government fiction of land ownership. But I sure do understand why people want a place to call home sometimes in theory. When one comes to the realization that we are all renting whether we like it or not, then it gets a bit easier to just say oh well and decide how much medicine you’re willing to consume. Just my two cents of random thoughts about McMansions.
Regards,
HR
I think it’s a fundamental human thing, to “need” water in the area.
It’s a psychological thing, as we are mostly water, we know in our lizard hind-brains that we NEED water.
We just think it’s “pretty.”
Dear HR,
Then you got the local HOA club, city, and state government telling you have to pay a fee, and that you really donβt own anything anyway. Case example, you have to get their permission to paint your house a certain color. Or the water that hits your dirt isnβt yours. And everytime you do an improvement you have to pay more tax.
This is one of several reasons why I finally quit architecture in disgust. I wanted to get creative and come up with ultra cheap ways of building basic shelter. For example, by using shipping containers.
But building codes are the ultimate “clover controls” that prevent one from doing almost anything that deviates from “The Law.”
One last statement is that the banks and government are the feudal landlords of past. They alone dictate how much rent is to be paid just for breathing.
In a depression you think you could grow food on property? My grandad almost lost his farm just like the millions of farmers in the great depression, simply because they couldn’t pay the property taxes. And he would have if it weren’t for his uncle who was a fantastic business speculator outside of real estate.
Land as property is probably the worst investment there is long term, because of all the past government meddling. Yeah you can make money off the credit financed bubble of land property, keeping it is whole other thing. I know we need farmers, ranchers, and landlords though and I don’t like calling them scammed, but lets face it we are all working to make the unproductive rich. Land being a visible form of wealth is a hardship. The old saying of the rancher being money poor and property rich is basically impoverished for a lifetime from my own life experience.
Regards,
HR
@Hot Rod:
After income tax, property tax is absolutely the most evil invention and must be the second shackle we throw off.
It is, as you point out, feudalism…and a tool of the mega-rich banksters to steal the country back.
I read once that farmers would band together during the Depression and shoot at tax collectors and sheriffs trying to repossess properties for tax liens. Sounds like a great idea.
Property taxes and serfdom: Maybe it is because I have been seeing functional equivalencies since I was 5 or 6 years, but I just cannot understand how the those with political power change a few words and the mass of humanity then can’t tell it’s the same old system. I see it everywhere. Why don’t they get it? Why can’t they see it? It’s so fing obvious.
I once worked for a very large corporation. They had a big marketing plan. It failed. The next year they present the new marketing plan. I look at their chart, I say it’s the old chart rotated 90 degrees. I was just a malcontent. But it was just rotated 90 degrees on paper. It was the same plan with the graphic rotated. It failed too.
How can people not see these things?
Methylamine wrote:-
Even within the area of taxes, there are lots worse that you just haven’t seen yet: badly constructed V.A.T. (G.S.T.); poll taxes backed by forced labour sanctions; the Byzantine kapnikon (hearth tax), with its collective responsibility for payment; and many more.
That’s not feudalism at all. Feudalism has somehow got a bad name that it doesn’t deserve, getting accused of all sorts of things that actually went with those who took it over instead of the flaws it really did have. Hint: feudalism is a decentralised system that sprang up after the Dark Ages proper and supplied the things that governments claim to provide. It only fell short of being actually anarchistic from its gradual entrenching of initial power imbalances and from usually not attempting to displace the legitimacy of church and state.
Dear Meth,
I agree.
So-called “property taxes” or “land taxes” are truly mind-boggling.
One supposedly owns something, yet one has to keep paying others an annual fee, in perpetuity, in order to keep on “owning” it.
Insanity.
Think about it. Suppose the same principle was applied to the shirt on one’s back, which one actually owns? Suppose “The Government” decided to impose “shirt taxes?” Every year one would have pay a tax on one’s shirt, or else the IRS and local sheriff would come by and rip it off your back.
The amount would not be worth the looters’ while of course, but the point is the principle is absolutely identical.
The “law abiding citizens” aka sheeple who accept “death and taxes” as as “normal” and “unavoidable,” don’t realize they’re an integral part of this insanity.
meth, Are you from the bank? Cause my daddy said to shoot anybody from the bank. I winged one last week. Now that’s a good boy.
@PMLawrence–
I use “feudalism”, knowing the Middle Ages were in many respects an anarcho-capitalist dream. As you point out, it was decentralized.
However today’s neo-feudalism achieves the sociopath’s dream–it’s global, there’s no “voting with your feet”.
I hear you Bevin about the building codes. I’ve thought about buying undeveloped land and putting a storage shed on the top, then burrowing down and buidling an elaborate house underneath. Kind of helps with the inspector gadgets that thing they have a right to check your domain and tax for it.
Jean you have a point on the need for water, though that still makes no sense when you see them piping it 500 miles away for people to live in huge cities where suprise suprise its extremely expensive to live. And another point you seem to skip over is underground aquifers that are in many cases very abundant even these days. Most cities in fact do not allow housing developments to tap into the water table sitting a few feet below them, simply because its competes with their infrastructure.
My main thought on how land is a bubble almost always through most of history of the U.S. certainly has alot to do with fractional reserve banking and the monopoly money cartel, but also with all the restrictions government puts to “preserve” the 95% of unutilized land. The counterfeiting ring basically makes residents of a country invest in something that will retain value, even if they have no individual use for it themselves. So the land becomes a way to preserve value, this however makes doctors from cities buy land that has very little utilization value for them. Also the money printing scheme has funded extreme cases of importation of food. As Ron Paul points out that the reason why America has de-industrialized is because when you print money and it becomes your major export. There is no reason to have capital, farms, or industry. The farmers of the breadbasket basically sold out their farms to city dwellers because it was easier to import food (at the spinning of printing press) from a unnatural desert. Now we are up shit creek in this country because good farmland has been covered with useless McMansions. Finally, the banking cartel has sponsored housing development beyond reasonable. What would have been more equitable housing development on unusable arid range land, would have resulted because more housing would have been funded out of pocket and savings and not through banking bubble funding.
And finally land as a bubble is for a totally another reason. The government wishes to inflate the value of land and property, so that it can tax more. This makes them create even more limited supplies by hindering development of the 95% and creating urban growth boundaries on areas that have little utilitarian value otherwise.
One thing that makes me laugh my ass off about real estate agents. They always talk about making money off property and housing. Its all B.S. especially with houses. Take a house and its natural value is depreciating, you don’t get rich off investing in houses. You get rich by financing. For example, take a loan out with a 10:1 leverage. That is your seed money is one-tenth of the value of the house. If the house inflates (due to inflation of money printing) by 4% this year, you’ve made 10 times 4% or 40% return on the down payment. So to get rich in real estate in the past you were counting on money printing, government urban growth boundaries, and other government killing regulations of supply, and finally a growing demographics along with a high credit leverage of principle. If you pay off the loan on a house, tell me how rich you are getting by replacing the water heater and roof every 10 years? The whole thing reaks of stink. And I am not saying one can’t make money on real estate but if you do you have another big issue. The government. It wants to take you to the bank literally. Taxes and leans are just one way that can be done.
Renting as much as it sucks can be actually much better for the pocket. For one in times of demographics slow growth (like now) and over abundance of landlords, you can pretty much take all the gains of the landlord for yourself. As economics show that in a truly competitive market the average profit is always zero. Thus a renter is getting pretty much the cost of maintenance and with a good cash flow because he doesn’t have to put all the money up front.
The whole own the dream thing is a two bit scam. That is my opinion and there is way more utilizable land in supply then they let on.
Regards,
HR
Excellent analysis, Hot Rod. Really top-notch.
As you point out, the layer upon layer upon layer of distortion introduced by the State and its controller, the Central Bank, are almost impossible to unravel.
We really have no idea what a “free market” looks like anymore.
Well I have to admit I’m a Yankee. Actually German-born (pretty safe assumption given my name, eh?) but I’ve lived in PA longer than anywhere else. Thing is, I always wanted a place with no neighbors close enough to fuss at me for doing stuff like shooting my guns on my own property, and I finally found it. I’ll probably build another house on the property, but it won’t be a McMansion, and I promise I won’t be a part of any statist schemes to ruin the place.
Uwe, there’s a test for yankee. Do you want to tax free trade? Do you want to kill those who don’t want to be taxed? if no on both questions, you’re practically eating blackeyes and cornbread.
Hell no, I have no desire steal anything from anyone, and I certainly won’t ask someone else to do it for me either. May I have some collard greens now, please?
Uwe, better send some to me. We haven’t been able to grow anything but cactus and mesquite for the last 3 years. I have a brussels sprout plant that’s survived over 2.5 years, don’t know how. If it rained it might make something but I ain’t holdin my breath. I’ll send a batch of cornbread.
Morning, Eight!
And here’s another “Are you a Yankee?” test question:
How do you feel about the statement, “He ain’t hurting’ no one – leave him alone”?
A Southerner will say leave him alone.
A Yankee will insist on “educating” or “helping” him.
Hi Uwe,
Yankee is defined by your state of mind – not your place of birth.
There are plenty of people who were born and raised in the South who are as Yankee as Hillary Clinton.
And there are people who were born North of the Mason Dixon (or in other countries) who are soul kindred to the men who wore the grey and gold.
eric, I was once at a place of business my sister managed. This old fart came in and wanted something and he paid up without a hitch. He was my kind of guy but my sister said after he left. I just hate that old man. I wish “they’d” throw him in jail. Now I know about all the shit my sister has pulled, even been there to see a great deal of it. I asked her knowing the answer already. Have you ever been in jail. No, she said contritely. I didn’t have to say another word. We both knew what we were thinking. She’d probably done a 100 times as much shit to get jailed for but had that female thing going for her. I give people like her little hope. Maybe the last time I was in jail sorta woke her up……or not. Who can say?
HL Mencken called Yankees “uplifters.”
People whose existence seems to hinge on being able to interfere with the existence of others.
I can’t fathom it myself.
The bottom line with ethanol is real simple: If it made economic sense, it would have become available as a fuel without any mandates or subsidies.
Anecdotal mileage test with a modern car — 2012 Audi A6 3.0T. EPA rated 28 highway, this car normally gets between 27 and 30 on the highway on premium E10 fuel running at 10-15 mph over the posted limits.
Eric might be interested to know The Xpress Mart down in Floyd sells three grades of fuel: 87-E10, 87-E0 and.. Wait for it… 93-E0! I had maybe 3 gallons left in the 20 gallon tank when I filled up there on Friday and then proceeded on a 440 mile run up to PA.
The car got 29.7 mpg. That’s on the high end of its normal range, but nothing out of the ordinary considering my average speed on that trip was a couple of mph on the slow side and there was a net drop in elevation of over 2000 ft from start to end.
Right answer, wrong reasoning. It does not make economic sense, but it could well have happened that it did but it still needed such help to get started.
The issue is that transport issues have network externalities, so that they are only cost effective once they are going. Railways got a free ride off Britain’s canals, so they could get fuel away from coal mines even before there were linking railways. Cars got local petrol supplies on the back of railways, until which point petrol couldn’t be trucked around cost effectively (as nobody had yet made enough trucks). And hydrogen cars can’t make much sense until there are hydrogen stations around, even if they ever overcome all their other problems.
Similarly, it could happen that ethanol made sense in every way but availability, and then outside assistance would make sense to kick it past that barrier. But it isn’t like that, as ethanol doesn’t make sense outside niche applications for other reasons, just like hydrogen cars.
As long as we agree that “outside assistance” must never, ever be coerced or forced.
But there are a million ways to skin a cat; if ethanol made sense, it would emerge as a niche market…just as gasoline did. Or CNG.
If there’s money to be made, in a free market, someone will make it.
The thing is, a situation of the sort I described is not a free market. It’s rare, but it can happen.
On the issue of whether funds to deal with that should be coerced, that’s an ethical question. It would work whether they were obtained freely or not.
Dear meth,
Precisely.
The chain of causality is often appallingly long. Distortions to market signals go waaay back.
That does not undermine the case for free markets. It merely conceals the earlier distortions to the free market caused by government meddling, and cues the economically ignorant to obediently regurgitate “See! Market failure!”
The entire concept of “market failure” is nonsense. The market process cannot “fail,” by definition, because it is a perpetually self-correcting process.
It would be more accurate to say that the market never fails. It always succeeds, to the best of its ability, despite adverse circumstances created by “a long train of abuses and usurpations.”
The invocation of “market failure” is invariably a cue to demand that “The Government” step in to “correct” the alleged failures.
Hi Uwe,
You probably passed within 5 miles of our place!
I didn’t realize they had 93 octane E0 at the Express Mart; I’m pretty sure they didn’t have it last year. This is happy news!
How’d you like Floyd?
Rich W. forwards:
I call bullshit. From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles
I’m driving a 3500 lb car that gets in the low 30s per gallon running on 10% Alcohol with a 240 HP 6 cylinder engine that beats just about anything you could buy in the 1960s from 0 to 60 MPH and that could cruise comfortably at 120 MPH if I had an open road to drive it on. It doesn’t dump lead oxides out the back either. I’d rather burn some alcohol than go back to burning tetra ethyl lead.
Sorry, but this guy’s rant is just one of those that starts off with some valid points and then just keeps slipping in more and more bullshit.
Rich W.
Rich,
The performance of your car relative to a ’60s-era car is not the issue. The issue is what the MPG difference would be with your car using straight gas vs. 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gas.
I assure you, your mileage would be higher with 100 percent gas vs. gas with 10 percent ethanol because there is less energy in 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gas.
E10, E15, etc and so on aren’t modernized fuels, they are politicized fuels. The elimination of TEL was easily compensated for with other chemicals but the addition of ethanol has had a variety of problems that aren’t so easily dealt with. Also I don’t think TEL was ever the only choice because there never was a mandate to use it. Furthermore TEL, like ethanol has drawbacks for both man and machine. Yes, ethanol creates formaldehydes, a different emission that is not regulated or as tightly regulated (I forget which)
As to fuel economy, you’d find both power and fuel economy would improve using 100% gasoline. I believe EPA fuel economy and other tests are still done with a special grade of gasoline for testing and development. That grade last I heard was 100% gasoline.
The energy density of ethanol is 2/3 that of gasoline. But it’s only 10% of the blend. That is only a 3.33% loss.
So blaming the lack of improved mileage on ethanol is bullshit.
In addition, ethanol has a higher octane than gasoline, so it increases power.
Using 10% ethanol is not the problem. Pouring 40% of the US corn crop into a fuel tank and driving up food prices for no good reason is the problem.
It was the guv’ment pretending to do something dramatic, when it was an agribusiness boondoggle – a classic.
Methanol is what we ought to be using. Wood alcohol is – surprize! – cellulosic alcohol, and is used in Formula 1 racers.
Increased octane does not improve power unless the engine can adjust for it or has been designed for it. Furthermore, because it increases octane and ethanol is mandated it simply displaces other octane enhancement techniques. Why would a refiner or gasoline brand spend money to sell 90 octane as a 87?
The linear energy calculation also doesn’t tell the full story. Combustion isn’t such a nice neat linear process and neither is real world fuel economy.
I’ve got a couple of machines from the ’70s and early ’80s designed to burn appx. 87 octane, and have experimented with higher octane. No noticeable performance gain, but a noticeable drop in mileage (the ’83 Honda).
Now, many – IIIRC, most – new cars have very high compression engines, relative to what was common in the past. I am talking as high as 11.1:0 levels, which back in the ’60s you only saw in extremely high-performance cars. (For some sense of comparison, my ’76 Trans-Am, made at a time when high octane gas was hard to find and the automakers had slashed compression ratios, came through with 7.6:1 CR, I shit thee not.)
Here’s the new problem: If they were to pull the corn-crap, it would be necessary to find another octane enhancer to maintain the 91-plus octane levels these new engines need to achieve their peak hp and efficiency. There are now millions of these high-CR vehicles in circulation.
So, we now have a government-created Catch-22:
The old stuff is fucked because the ethanol will “lean out” the engines (absent adjustment) and also eat them alive via corrosion.
The new stuff would be fucked if the corn-crap got taken out. Either they’d suffer a pretty significant drop in economy/power or their owners will pay a lot more for high octane “straight” gasoline. Check the price of a barrel of Sunoco race gas.
Thanks, Uncle!
Rule of thumb is that higher octane fuel has less energy per unit volume so fuel economy drops some. How much of course depends on the vehicle, driving style, etc and so forth.
As to octane, ethanol has a very high anti-knock rating. It’s not a problem for high compression engines. Ethanol can be good fuel for engines designed for it. The high compression modern engines can to a well-enough degree adjust for it, not fully, but well enough not to be harmed. But there are limits.
A big problem with increasing ethanol content is that a wide-band O2 sensor is needed to adjust for it. A typical O2 sensor from years past (and probably in many cars being built today) is that the ethanol puts the fuel outside the range the computer can adjust for. Perhaps even mechanical limits of the fuel system, although fuel injection should be able to do it for normal driving.
Stuff like race gas won’t reflect what straight gasoline costs. It may not have ethanol but it’s also specially made and is a low volume product. It goes above and beyond what a non-ethanol gasoline would be. If non-ethanol fuel were sold freely it would have enough following to be economically priced. In Brazil, where ethanol is made in a sensible, economically viable way, people can choose their blend. Most cars are flex fuel. People buy fuel based on prevailing market conditions from 100% gasoline to I think to blends of at least 85% ethanol if not more. But it’s a choice, which is what it should be here. If it were a choice in the USA I could have checked a ‘flex fuel’ box as a option and I would have. So would you. (flex fuel systems have upgraded materials throughout which are just plain better and more durable no matter what your fuel choice is and worth the fuel extra bucks) EPA’s top down mandate has probably hurt the adoption of alternative fuels in this country.
I wouldn’t say that the lack of improved fuel economy is bullshit. The difference in energy density between gasoline and ethanol explains part of the fuel economy difference. However, energy density is not the only property one has to consider in determining the suitability of a fuel. Besides energy density, ethanol falls short of gasoline in two other areas that I know of. The first is vaporization. Ethanol simply does not vaporize and mix with air as well as gasoline does. This is the reason why E85 is sold but not 100% ethanol. That 15% gasoline is necessary in order for the vehicle to start when it is cold. The other area where ethanol falls short is its combustion characteristics. Ethanol tends not to burn as completely as what gasoline does. Most of that unburned ethanol ends up in the exhaust where the catalytic converter deals with it. A small portion of the unburned ethanol ends up slipping past the piston rings where it contaminates the oil. I do not know if any flex fuel vehicle manufacturer recommends a different type of oil or a different oil change interval if the vehicle is being operated on E85, but it is an issue.
Greenies are all against evil “fossil” fuels, but what’s been proven is that man-made is no better. It costs more monetarily and energy wise and creates more CO2 (not that it’s a problem – the planet is greening as a result and the Gorebull Warbling scare being the biggest scam in man’s history – besides religion) than it saves.
Would the greenies like us to go back to using whale oil and horses? No. There’s no such thing as a happy greenie. Fossil fuels gave us electricity, saved the whale and the horse, got all that horse hit out of the streets and elevated us from the dark ages.
But the hypocrite greenies continue to drive their SUV’s from their Tasmanian Oak-furnished and fossil fuelled-electrified homes to to the bush where they’re quite happy to hammer big spikes into trees (yes, the supposed love of their lives) in order to cause chainsaw damage.
Every policy they have is either costly or fails utterly in the reverse direction. There’s almost no recycling ability for flouro light bulbs that contain mercury vapour (stuff all in them anyway). The US EPA wants to shut down all lead processing and coal power stations, without explaining how to get around all the brown-outs.
Ethanol is just another industry where it’s taken years of waste and lies to create an end product of no use, that now needs to shut down and lose jobs.
In the near future the very word “green” will be a provocateur of revulsion and anger at the many decades of waste, lives, jobs and living standards.
Greenies are the sand in the gears of civilisation – and they intend to be. To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against.
Dear REV,
One of the most serious problems with the “more conscious than thou” ecofreaks is their concept of “sustainability.”
The implication is that the earth’s life giving environment is “sustainable” in perpetuity, as long as man doesn’t screw things up.
That is of course nonsense. Even if mankind never evolved on Planet Earth, it would and it will one day be gone as a result of cosmic events. The sun will die and the earth along with it.
Assuming the ecofreaks are not “deep ecologists” who hate man so much they want it to become extinct, then the only solution is space travel and space colonization.
“Greenies are all against evil βfossilβ fuels, but whatβs been proven is that man-made is no better.”
True, that. Also, given the level of technology currently used by farmers, biofuels can’t be produced without using more fossil fuel that the process can produce in biofuel. Bad news for Green Weenies if they ever consent to hearing it at all.
“Thereβs no such thing as a happy greenie. ”
Damn right. They won’t be happy until 99% of humans have been exterminated. Of course, none of them will volunteer for the dirt nap. Extermination is for all us unenlightened nosepickers who think the Greenies are full of shit.
“Every policy they have is either costly or fails utterly in the reverse direction. ……Ethanol is just another industry where itβs taken years of waste and lies to create an end product of no use……..Greenies are the sand in the gears of civilisation β and they intend to be. ”
Oh, Hail Yayuh! You nailed it to the wall, there. Go ‘head, Revo witchyo bad self.
Son, Judging by all the home runs you hit in that comment, I can only conclude that you are a got-damn genius. Let me cyber-shake your hand and give you a Dan’l Webster seegar.
I nominate this one for post of the fuggin day.
It isn’t lack of the right level of technology that makes them use more energy to get biofuels than they get out; see my remarks elsewhere on this thread on what they could use instead. What makes them do it is the distorted market caused by government subsidies and so on.
Quite right, PM. I was just making the observation that the level of technology they are using is what it is: petro-deisel tractors for cultivation and transport which use more energy than the whole shitaree can produce as an end result.
There has been a misunderstanding about the E15 proposals, which have been willing perpetuated by some people.
The EPA was asked by the farm (that is, corn/maize) lobby to allow (not mandate) up to 15% ethanol in gasoline. It approves every additive that refiners place in mogas to include maximum amounts, and the standard allowed no more than 10%. The EPA website made it clear that allowing E15 once permitted would be up to each state. It would not be a federal mandate.
But quite a few alarmists spread the word that it was a proposed mandate. This is what discredits many who otherwise are good to have on our side.
It’s scientifically impossible to increase mileage with ethanol and for anyone to suggest otherwise is fraud. NASCAR did this recently by saying that their E-15 blend was giving better mileage. Can’t happen, at least if you believe in conservation of matter. Gasoline has 116,090 BTUs/gallon. Ethanol has 76,330 BTUs/gallon or about 34% less. Therefore any blend of fuel that incorporates gasoline and ethanol will yield less gas mileage.
Get the farmers out of the fuel business by eliminating their subsidies and get them back to what they do best, namely grow food.
No, it’s perfectly practical to increase mileage with ethanol if you also alter the engines to use higher compression to take advantage of ethanol’s better knock properties. Sure, there’s less energy in it to begin with, but you can get enough more out to more than make out for that; it’s only that ethanol isn’t a straightforward drop in substitute that will behave as well on the same engines. Butanol (including biobutanol) is much closer that way, but the economics of producing it are much worse still, at least so far.
The “corn-holers” have been attempting to screw us a lot longer than I realized. Here’s a link to a “corn alcohol” gas station photo taken in Lincoln, Nebraska back in 1933! http://newsroom.unl.edu/releases/downloadables/photo/20061103corngas.jpg Alcohol was the prominent lamp fuel in the USA until 1862. That was when King Lincoln’s congress imposed a $2.00 per gallon tax on it to help fund the war of federal aggression. This would equate to about a $31.00 per gallon tax today based on a silver dollar’s melt value. No wonder everyone switched to kerosene for lighting instead of corn alcohol. In 1906 Mr. “big stick” progressive Teddy Roosevelt lifted the alcohol tax to help promote hooch as a fuel again. It seems like everywhere you look gun-vernment meddling skews the market time after time after time. It’s a shame most of our contemporaries apparently never bother to look. But that does explain why whichever Judas Goats that win the elections are able to lead the sheeple back to the shearing shed time after time after time. Ah, if only Jefferson’s desire to truly educate the masses could really happen…
Just a minor correction here Boothe:
Reason is that kero makes a bright yellow flame, where alcohol (metho basically) makes a predominantly dim blue flame. Not wantin’ ta step on ya toes.. just sayin’ π
Yes. The actual earlier lamp fuel was either whale oil or oil from certain kinds of plants (I forget just which, but I think it began with “c”). Kerosene had another advantage over most vegetable oils, e.g. olive oil: it could be drawn further up a wick, so lamps using it could have a more convenient layout than the “Aladdin’s lamp” one with the reservoir offset to the side so as to be at nearly the same height as the flame.
The typical kero or paraffin lantern also uses thermally induced updraught, oxygenating the flame making it brighter and reducing smoke.
Looking at the Wiki entry, it seems that it’s still in widespread use in rural areas of Africa and Asia, burning some 77 billion litres a year, comparable to US jet fuel consumption at 76 billion. Wow – who woulda thunk it?
Rev, alcohol has got to smell better though……had to put up with kerosene all my life when power goes out. The old Coleman white gas lantern is much better although it’s probably sucking up oxygen quite a bit faster than the lamp. That’s a consideration stuck in the cellar all night. Having said that though, I admit since I moved from my parent’s house after leaving for college I don’t recall being in another cellar and damned sure not for the night. Do you have tornadoes where you are? Those certainly put the guesswork in living/dying.
Π―ΞβΞ©LUTββΌN – You aren’t stepping my toes. My information came from the corn-holers themselves, the University of Nebraska / Lincoln per Mimi Abebe’s article on the History of Ethanol. And I’ll grant you that Kerosene or as it was known in earlier times, (incorrect though it may be) “coal oil” does give off a brighter light from a lamp with a chimney. I grew up with, currently own and actually use both alcohol and oil lamps. Although alcohol (denatured ethanol) doesn’t burn as brightly as Kerosene, I can assure you that the tip of the flame is yellow and gives off useable light (I merely use it as a heat source for wax carving tools though). The base of the flame near the wick is blue, but to get the alcohol flame truly “blue” for hard soldering, you must use a blowpipe to oxygenate the flame. Alcohol does not soot either.
P.M. Lawrence – The plant oil you’re looking for was most likely cotton seed oil. Candle maker William Proctor and his brother-in-law, soap maker James Gamble worked to control the cotton seed oil business in the 1890’s, due to the price controls imposed on the required lard and tallow by the meat packers. The hydrogenation of cotton seed oil by “Proctor & Gamble” with the assistance of chemist E. C. Kayser, to give it the consistency of lard, was known by the trade name “Crisco.” Hence the ability to make a long burning “emergency” candle out of Crisco “It’s digestible!” shortening. Whale oil, well known as a superior lubricant for clocks and watches, would have been too expensive for the lower classes, especially rural folk, to commonly use for lighting. Hence the use of tallow candles, cotton seed oil, until the tax, alcohol and finally “coal oil.”
” (I merely use it as a heat source for wax carving tools though). The base of the flame near the wick is blue, but to get the alcohol flame truly βblueβ for hard soldering, you must use a blowpipe to oxygenate the flame.”
So, you’re a bencher. Joyero or Platero?
Ed – Sorry I missed your inquiry. To answer your question, Joyero y platero or “orfebre” if you prefer, having repaired everything from flatware to fine jewelry and all manner of other things (both ferrous and nonferrous) that require hard soldering and precision repair skills. I even stood on my head in the seal table room of a nuclear power plant using my “jeweler’s skills” to repair a stainless fitting on the Reactor Vessel Level Indication System. It saved my employer millions in lost generation and outside support. They gave me an extra $200. How generous of them. I love corporations.
Boothe, I tinker with it a little, nowhere near your level, but more as a hobbyist. It’s an enjoyable craft and doesn’t cost me too much for tools and equipment.
It’s amazing what silversmiths can do with an alcohol torch and a blowpipe. Navajo and Zuni jewelry are incredible fabrications, and mostly done without modern bench tools like gas torches and rotary shaft tools.
I have a Smith acetylene/air torch and a buffing lathe, nothing fancy or expensive.
Ed – Anymore I just (seldom really) tinker with it as well. Once in a while I’ll fix something for a friend or family member, but as I get older, I find I have less and less time for the bench. I still maintain a decent repair and hand fab bench along with complete lost wax casting facilities, but like you it’s just a hobby now. I also use the Smith’s mini torch (mine’s so old I think it’s a Tescom, but same thing). And instead of a polishing lathe, I use a Vigor flex shaft machine. Blowpipe? I don’t think so. And those venerable Navajo and Zuni artisans soldered on charcoal as I recall. That whole silver and turquoise craze of the 70’s is what got me started in jewelry really.
I had no social life as a teen because we lived out in the sticks. I liked girls and realized (most) girls like shiny things. So at fourteen I taught myself jewelry repair and fabrication from books. By fifteen I had an open account with a wholesaler (boy was he shocked when he discovered my age) and at sixteen when I graduated highschool, I hired on as a goldsmith’s apprentice in Williamsburg, Va. He dumped most of the scut work on me, left me to tend the counter with his wife and went fishing a bit too much. Not having much confidence in my bench skills (or self confidence in general) at that age, along with serious reservations about the economy, I joined Uncle Sam’s Airplane Club and went into avionics. That led me into industrial instrumentation and controls. Now I’ll tell ya’, it has consistently kept food on the table and the bills paid for over thirty years. But if I had stayed in the jewelry trade, which I loved and was passionate about, I’d probably be a very wealthy man now. As usual, hindsight is 20/20. Maybe when I “retire”…
Boothe, I just started playing with silver about 10 years ago. I’ll probably end up buying a Little Torch now that the jewelry business is in the doldrums and used stuff is going up for sale. My torch is the Silversmith, a one-tank, one valve job.
I kinda wish I had started sooner, like in my teen years. I’m 61 now, but still love learning. The best goldsmith I know is a guy my age from Panama who started on the bench at about the age you did. It’s fun watching him do things the jewelers charge an arm and a leg for like retipping prongs and replacing shanks. He does it all right on a little asbestos pad with just a bottle of flux and an inch of water in a cup. He won’t work silver, though.
To me, it’s really satisfying bringing a whole piece up to temp until the solder suddenly flows. Takes longer with silver, but I have fun with it. I’m still using a Dremel instead of a Foredom, but I’ll get one of those too, soon enough.
Ed – I can highly recommend the Little Torch. I run oxy – propane since it’s cleaner than acetylene. It won’t get quite as hot, but I have successfully melted platinum with mine (it takes a while). Since it is cleaner, it doesn’t seem to oxidize silver as quickly either. But if you flame coat and use a good flux, that’s not really an issue. I have the smallest jewelled tips for mine and they say they’ll only work with oxy-hydrogen. I would love to try it sometime, because I’ve read that an oxy-hydrogen flame is self fluxing, although it burns a bit cooler than acetylene. But I usually don’t try to repair filligree or fine wire and don’t need the smallest tips, so why bother?
What is an issue is the thermal conductivity of silver; it sinks heat faster than any other metal which can make a large piece impossible to work on using the Little Torch. I even have a rosebud for it and on a larger pieces, like belt buckles, I have to switch over to my acetylene torch to get enough flame volume to bring the work piece up to the solder’s melt point. Overall, I find karat gold (and platinum) easier to work with due to their oxidation resistance. Oh and jobs using the noble metals typically pay better too. π
Boothe, if you’re concerned about silver oxidation you might want to look into Argentium sterling silver (see http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/argentium-testing.htm and http://www.jewelrymakingdaily.com/blogs/daily/archive/2013/04/05/my-silver-love-affair-and-the-sterling-silver-alloys-continuum-argentium-and-sterlium-plus.aspx). Its germanium content is supposed to help in a similar way to chromium in stainless steel, and apparently it has other good qualities too (I wonder what chromium in silver would do?).
Ed, Boothe, have either of you ever used a “turbo torch”? I’m blanking on the name brand but it mixes with air with enough velocity to do a great job, fluxless, on copper as well as silver. I think it’s almost the standard in HVAC and plumbing (Jacob). No oxy needed and the small torch would run a very long while on a single E cylinder. I like hell out of them although they’re not cheap.
Eightsouthman – I’ve used “swirl” torches in the past. The one you’re referring to is most likely the brand name TurboTorch. Victor owns them now.They are more suited to larger surface area / high heat sink jobs…like HVAC and plumbing (i.e. sweating copper pipe) as you noted. If you are careful and watch the color of your silver work piece they work well for heating up a whole object like a belt buckle. If you are trying to do a fine repair localized to one spot on the work piece, the flame tends to be too broad and will heat thing you don’t want heated. I still have and use a conventional air / acetylene rig and it works well too, just not as fast as the TurboTorch. But with the smaller tips you can do moderately fine work with it. Still, there is no substitute for a fine tipped oxy/fuel torch like the Lilttle Torch (or even a conventional jeweler’s torch) for precise repairs like retipping a prong mount, repairing a frame on eyeglasses or even sizing a ring.
P.M.Lawrence – Thank you for the info on Argentium. I remember hearing about it years ago, but at the time as I recall it wasn’t commonly available and I wasn’t doing much (if any) fab work. I may have to try that or the Continuum or Sterlium. The idea of producing a platinum or white gold like finish in silver is intriguing.
I don’t know about a silver chromium alloy. You would probably need to start with copper chromium, then alloy that with the silver. I find it difficult to believe that someone hasn’t tried it yet. Copper chromium (.6 – 1.2% Cr) has about twice the strength (when fully age hardened) of pure copper, retains 85% of copper’s conductivity and resists corrosion well. Hmmm. I have an electric melting furnace and some fine silver. Now, I just need a fresh crucible, the copper chromium and then find the time…
My heart pumps peanut butter and jelly for the corn producers. The perverse incentives are causing native grasses in Nebraska, etc., to be plowed and planted to corn, which then requires irrigation because there is not enough rain in those areas to grow corn. Thus leading to the continued depletion of the Oglala Aquifer. (It ain’t the 2-3 gallon per flush toilets that are causing it.)
Even before ethanol fuel requirements, corn growers were reaping the benefit of gunverment interference in the marketplace. HFCS would likely have never been invented if not for tariffs on imported cane sugar, which make the US price about double that on the world market.
Phillip, nothing grown in the US of any consequence isn’t price supported which is BS. 5 states have become critically polluted with Gyphosates mainly for use on cotton but soybeans also. I recently read where the Ogalala and Edwards aquifers took 100-200 million years to create but only several decades to empty. We just virtually have no aquifer left in my part of Tx. and every time we look up there’s another site for nuclear waste being foisted on us, just not enough voters to matter and others don’t understand the leakage will be headed their direction. Hey Houston, wake up you fools!!! I said Wa….oh hell, they aren’t listening.
We’re listening, alright–some of us anyway.
The passive/aggressive trendy fucktards are selectively deaf when it comes to their convenience but can be activated at a moment’s notice to act on the behalf of Emperor Obomber for the trendiness-du-jour.
It’s a funny thing; I used to be extremely pro-nuclear until lately, when their level of irresponsibility seems to have learned no bounds. Old, old, old reactors are being re-upped on their service life, and they’re leaking like sieves. Solution? Why, just turn off those pesky alarms! They’ll just scare the plebes…who’ll be dead soon enough anyway so why get them scared–unless it’s something we WANT them scared about!
I’m definitely in favor of nuclear until we get fusion–which we should be working towards like drowning men grabbing a floatie. But we should be using thorium cycle reactors.
Fifty guesses why we’re using dirty old uranium and fast-breeder water designs? You–yes, you there in the back with the tobacco-stained beard…no…yes YOU, what’s that you said? To make weapons did you say? Absolutely correct sir.
So for sixty years we’ve been using known-compromised, stupidly unsafe, non-passive-cooling designs that are guaranteed to melt down and spew catastrophically nasty stuff if they’re left to their own devices for even a week or two.
Think Fukushima; hundreds of times. Because most of the active designs in America are basically the same POS technology.
meth, YOU’RE listening. How many of your neighbors are? Now if they’d only select a site down there at the cul de sac to plant a few hundred tons then somebody might look up. Now kids, don’t play around those barrels, they might fall on you. I don’t think that’s what I’d be worried about mom….and you can turn off that nightlight in their room.
I actually think many utility companies would rather build new reactors and scrap the old ones. Modern reactors, besides being safer, are also more efficient than the mid 20th century junk that the utilities are using now. Higher efficiency equals higher profit for the utility companies. The problem is that any proposal to build a new reactor is going to provoke a rabid response from the environmental extremists, so the utility companies just follow the path of least resistance and renew the license for their rickety old plants. This is just one for instance where the unintended consequences of the actions of environmentalists result in a situation that is more detrimental to the environment than if the environmentalists had just left it alone.
Ethanol itself is another green energy solution that is more detrimental to the environment than the fossil fuels it replaces. Ethanol production requires a lot of water which depletes water resources. The corn used to produce ethanol requires a lot of room to grow. This means clearing large areas of forest in order to grow all of that corn. To top it all off, it requires about the same amount of energy to produce a gallon of ethanol as what you get from burning the gallon of ethanol. The diesel fuel used for tractors and trucks to cultivate and transport the corn is part of it. As is all of the fertilizer used to grow the corn. The fertilizer is produced from oil. However, most of the energy consumed in ethanol production is used in distillation. The corn is fermented with a large volume of water. When fermentation is complete, the solution is about 10% ethanol and 90% water. To separate the ethanol from the water: the solution needs to be heated to about 180 degrees Fahrenheit. To produce ten gallons of ethanol about 100 gallons of water and ethanol have to heated to that temperature. That is very energy intensive as anybody with a water heater knows. Ethanol producers typically use natural gas to heat their stills. So, not only is ethanol driving up the cost of your corn flakes and chicken wings. It is likely wreaking havoc on your winter heating bills as well.
The environment and the consumer would both be better off if the government scrapped the ethanol subsidies and mandates and just gave the corn lobbyists welfare checks instead.
You think this is accidental?
“This is just one for instance where the unintended consequences of the actions of environmentalists result in a situation that is more detrimental to the environment than if the environmentalists had just left it alone.”
Their intent is to control and destroy the human race. They hate humans. This is what they SAY, mind – not imputing anything here.
For instance, there was a kerfluffle a while back about using donkeys to deliver mail in some warzone.
The complaint? The donkeys might get hurt.
Answer: You value the donkeys more than the humans? If human got hurt doing this, that would be fine?
Answer: YES.
Tells you all you need to know – and that’s only one example. Their purpose is control.
The solution is their death. Cure the sociopathy. END it.
toldev, nobody even mentions thorium reactors as if they’re not the best thing to happen to nuclear power. So why doesn’t Iran build one? It COULD be for not getting medical isotopes but I don’t know that…but that thorium reactor will never produce weapons grade material. Here is another thing who’d time may have come. We’ll just have to wait and see.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171660-1-megawatt-cold-fusion-power-plant-now-available-yours-for-just-1-5-million
See my earlier remarks about ethanol production not actually needing those outside energy inputs; it’s just the faulty economic incentives that makes producers do it that way.
On top of that, no, it doesn’t take that kind of temperature with its associated energy inputs to refine ethanol. Quite recently, the inventors of graphene found a way to use it for that; as a demonstration, they put a graphene cap on a bottle of vodka and let it sit in the open for a few days, which concentrated the ethanol even more by only letting the water vapour out. That means you only need to blow air through the feedstock (sparging) and pass it over graphene, then chill it to get the ethanol (or just vacuum boil the feedstock with a vacuum pump and let the ethanol condense in a receptacle with a graphene cap to lose the last of the water, returning the heat of condensation to the boiling side). I think that method shows even better promise for refining butanol, since the old methods are even less cost effective and butanol doesn’t need all that to leave solids behind; it separates from the feedstock as it concentrates, leaving the other stuff behind that way.
Eightsouthman, you can actually build up materials for a bomb using a thorium reactor (a breeder, not an “energy multiplier”). It’s just that the neutron economy is so tight that it would take a lot of time, trouble and money to get enough. More to the point, if you had the necessary facilities to build up a starter stock of fuel for a thorium reactor, you could probably use those to make bomb material instead.
“, it doesnβt take that kind of temperature with its associated energy inputs to refine ethanol.”
Let’s not miss the basic point most central to the discussion of “bio-fuels” : They are totally unnecessary. To repeat this point in slightly different words:
WE DON’T FUCKING NEED FUCKING WASTEFUL BIO-FUELS BECAUSE THERE’S NO FUCKING SCARCITY OF PETROLEUM.
Ahem….’scuse me. I do seem to get a little worked up from time to time.
Ed, in countries where ethanol is needed, they produce it cheaply. i”m sure you know this though and like you said, we don’t need it, and certainly not for the price it costs.
Dear methylamine,
The stocks are instances of Global Architectronics
It’s time to being taking stock of Tavistock = Woodstock = Colonial American medieval stocks
Mind Control, Psychedelics and Cold War Culture
http://beyondmkultra.50megs.com/whats_new_10.html
GBG: Game of Games – Our Metaphoric Constructed World Social Reality
Hermann Hesse won the Nobel prize in Literature (1946) for his final masterwork The Glass Bead Game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game
This work (set in the 23rd Century) describes a cadre of individuals and their headmaster — the Magister Ludi — engrossed in interdisciplinary play engineering cultural values from behind the scenes.
Hesse never forthrightly explained just how the game is played, but gave many hints to its structure for future aspirants seeking solutions to the critical predicament of mankind through Global Architectronics.
The Glass Bead Game requires that its players synthesize aesthetics and philosophy. The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, say, in the great age of the arts a painter might have played with the colors on his palette. The Game’s synthetic, non-linear information play is a forerunner of virtual reality.
After each symbol conjured up by the director of a Game, each player was required to perform silent, formal meditation on the content, origin, and meaning of this symbol, to call to mind intensively and organically its full purport.
The members of the Order and of the Game associations brought the technique and practice of contemplation with them from their elite schools, where the art of contemplation and meditation was nurtured with the greatest care.
The variety of the phenomenal world reached perfection and ultimate cognition only in the divine Unity. Thus, “realizing” was a favorite expression among the players. They considered their Games a path from Becoming to Being, from potentiality to reality…We would scarcely be exaggerating if we ventured to say that for the small circle of genuine Glass Bead Game players the Game was virtually equivalent to worship.
The name Castaglia, the place of knowledge, is the Italian form of the Latin Castalia, which was the Roman name for the spring on Mount Parnassus where dwelt the mythical Muses. Castalia was also the name for the abstract realm of the intelligentsia.
Under the shifting hegemony of now this, now that science or art, the Game of games had developed into a kind of universal language through which the players could express values and set these in relation to one another. Let the game begin?
Post-Metaphysical Spirituality
What happens when the prey realizes its predicament and become the predator? In intelligence parlance, it is called Counter Measures, and that is just what is required by agent provocateurs in todayβs world to maintain even the slightest semblance of ever-elusive βfreedom.β
This is summarized nicely in the movie The Matrix, where Neo navigates his way through an artificially constructed maze of situations and synthetic environments the participants mistake for reality.
Tommyknockers – Stephen King – Ancient Aliens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D5W-vs579o
Ancient aliens beneath a small town engineering a new culture and new values from behind the scenes.
They gain influence over living humans who aspire to be like these “builders” as they begin a new local reality they construct via Alien Architectronics.
Military Industrial Entertainment in Laurel Canyon
Aaron Franz and David McGowan
Frank Zappa on Biowarfare
So Al Qaeda got its start in Laurel Canyon, CA. Sounds about right.
“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing β¦ a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.”
Aldous Huxley, 1959
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923
Internet’s best source for disinformation-free news
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/
– Welcome to the age of internet/media/gaming servitude and voluntary suicide of our former real world physical lives. Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes. Let’s not have it be the changes they want. We win If we reach a position where we can take or leave them if we please.
On Dave’s Web, the author will leave the site dormant for rather long periods of time before starting a series of articles. The most recent series is on the Boston Marathon smokebomb hoax.
In that series, he analyzes a large collection of photos taken at the site of the bomb which supposedly caused all of the media frenzy of ” dismemberment” stories. From the photos is very easy to see that all the “traumatically injured victims” were crisis actors who had 3rd rate fake injuries that wouldn’t have passed muster for a made-for-TV B movie. The pics show them going through some ridiculous motions such as moving from place to place before lying down for their hastily poured “blood” paintjobs.
The series was originally titled “The Curious Case of the Man Who Could Only Sit Down”, in reference to the absurd TV tale of a man who lost both legs to an IED and who subsequently was wheeled out to an ambulance in a wheel chair with a weird looking prosthetic that was supposed to be a bone sticking out of a severed leg. The author shows that the man couldn’t go out on a gurney because the very poorly done wound prosthetic would have been sticking up in the air as he was transported, so he could only sit down to be even semi-believable.
The facile absurdity of the bullshit we’re supposed to accept as fact is just astounding. McGowan exposes the absurdity in easily accessible prose and photo analysis.
Ed;
Anything can be garnered from still pics. This guy is like all the rest, conjecturing without giving you the real evidence.
I’ve been involved in an Army range explosion many years ago where 15 of us were injured, some seriously. I saw them run from the explosion point and eventually when they discovered they had received deep shrap wounds, they laid on the ground and succumbed to the pain. Dave’s site somehow says this kind of behaviour is “unusual”, considering this is the first time he’s seen it.
He even states things like this:
and:
There’s no photographer seen in the photo whom the girl is supposedly looking at and, in other photos broken fence pickets are everywhere. He’s a flat-out bullshit artist.
There are many sites like this popping up all over the place, copy-and-pasting from other sites. I could pull this crap apart all day, but will leave you with a recommendation:
Be critical, suspicious and fully investigative of anything you see on the interwebs, not just an unthinking conspiracist parrot – which is not the scientific method.
Further Ed, Jeff’s thighs aren’t thin and lifeless as they should be had he been a long-time amputee. Like I said, I could call this bullshit all day but I’m just too disgusted at Dave’s arrogant lies and your uncritical thought processes.
@Tor – You joggeb my memory on FrΓ©dΓ©ric Bastiat. He laid out the path to voluntary servitude in his book The Politics of Obedience.
[But It is βfor the childrenβ,Nancy Pelosi so accurately stated. You bet it is brothers]
It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.
FrΓ©dΓ©ric Bastiat
In his book published in 1850
How to Identify Legal Plunder
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law β which may be an isolated case β is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.
The Seductive Lure of Socialism
Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.
This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had not cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves?
Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself. It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude.
The American people too “Won it’s enslavement.” That’s a bingo.
The fight Americans are fighting, is to win back one of their previous enslavements and to reaffirm the terms under which they once happy to toil under.
We stir the pot from time to time. But we are under no illusion of any of us really wanting freedom. Pharisees all, comforting ourselves with xenobashing and ravenesque prideful display of purity rings found whilst pecking at an old discarded crackerjack box.
Too afraid to really look at ourselves under rays of natural starlight. Algernons in a shared falselit incandescent labyrinthic menagerie with no exit whose entrance we immediately seal behind us after being birthed into.
The most we will do is throw shadows at you. An American without a slave narrative, don’t make me laugh. Blame it all on yourselves if we carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding.
“If you like your enslavement, you can keep your enslavement.”
– The longer the Torch of American Enslavement stays lit, the greater the number of moth men who will be drawn to her fetters and flame and bustle about her bright silent empty hedgerows.
@Tor – I just had Thanksgiving with my younger relatives who consider themselves “aware” and tell me about everytime we meet. After dinner they made the journey to stand in line at Wal-Mart for three $99.00 flat screens manufatured in and with inferior Chinese parts. They are also happy with their $800.00 IPad, $600.00 IPhone and $250.00 XBox, all of which report theoir actions to Brother, but they see no enslavement. We are so screwed.
Ed Mang, I see I am a rank amateur in what I call the art/science of the “hyperthesis”.
hypothesis – the safest, least controversial, most unassailable thing you can say given the evidence.
hyperthesis – riskier, more controversial, in an unsettled area of thought, thing said will usually be assailed, you’ll have to defend your statement in an ongoing manner.
Wikiepedia article on G.S. Morrison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stephen_Morrison
“G.S. Morrison was a Rear Admiral and naval aviator in the United States Navy. Morrison was commander of the U.S. naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 1964, which set off what is known as the Vietnam War. He was the father of the late Jim Morrison…”
The shocking truth about how my pal Jim Morrison REALLY died
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-466947/The-shocking-truth-pal-Jim-Morrison-REALLY-died.html
Somebody died in that Paris Left Bank toilet, who’s to say who it really was.
That’s what the watches and transport systems in “They Live” are in real life. The spooks and their fake “Stalinist Media Extravaganzas.” Their reality transcending fakeries that bring people into and out of mainstream public reality.
Morrison “dies” goes into witness protection, gets a slight alteration, and emerges elsewhere as someone else. Either for a new psyop, or he goes into retirement.
Who needs aliens when we have the PTB?
“I see I am a rank amateur in what I call the art/science of the βhyperthesisβ.”
So am I.. Dave is one of the kings of the orbit-breakout hyperthesis explorations. I found his site back when we had that go-round awhile back here on whether the moon landings were faked. Someonbe here linked to something that had a link to something that led me to Dave’s “Wagging the Moondoggie” series.
He’s as doggedly “out there” as Hunter S Thompson, but without benefit of hallucinogens. π
I run my jeep on 100% corn. Corn oil that is.
If the “corn lobby” really wants to be in the fuel-supply business, then they can start making corn-diesel. I’ll buy all of it they can make.
But they don’t want to do that. No, it’s easier to hire the government to poke guns in the ribs of every person whose hand grips a steering wheel and make us buy their ethanol.
Well… Not all of us.
Texas Chris wrote:
“If the βcorn lobbyβ really wants to be in the fuel-supply business, then they can start making corn-diesel. Iβll buy all of it they can make.”
The problems with bio-diesel are the same problems as with ethanol. (1) It takes more energy input to make the stuff than you can get out of it. (2) It exacerbates the problems of longterm monoculture agriculture that will result in real problems with the food supply in the U.S. (3) It further strengthens the hold on the market of the likes or ADM and Monsanto and encourages the acceptance of GMO crops. Just saying….
Hemp – now there is a crop that has great potential both as an oil source and a source of biomass for fermentation, along with a “plethora” of other products. That’s why W R Hearst and John D Rockefeller fought so hard to have it outlawed back in the 1930’s.
In colonial times, there were laws requiring every farm to grow a certain amount of hemp.
And cannibis? That’s just the Dutch word for ‘canvas.’
Phillip, as late as WW11 farmers had a quota of hemp they HAD to grow upon pain of fine and/or jail. Then it was outlawed as soon as du Pont and big oil realized what they had with nylon.
See my remarks elsewhere about not needing more fossil energy inputs to make ethanol from maize than you can get out. It only takes more if you make it using those for farm equipment and to make fertiliser; if you power the farm equipment with gasified crop waste and recycle the ash from that through settling ponds with nitrogen fixing plants to make “green manure” for the fields, you only need the energy inputs from the sun. Well, the same goes for biodiesel: it only takes more non-free inputs than you get out if you do it that way.
Chris, your Jeep being a diesel, just use filtered deep fryer oil from fast food shops. Mythbusters did that a while ago on a Benz – without catalysing. Just straight veggie oil.
Texas Chris, the ethanol plants I’ve invested in are extracting the corn oil from the wet distillers grain after the alcohol is distilled out of it. A business in Sioux Center Iowa is extracting some kind of protein for human consumption and then making biodiesel.
http://siouxpharm.com/sioux-biochemical/introduction/
True story. I decided to test Eric’s theory that you’d get better gas mileage with straight gas (E0) vs. Corn-o-hol (E10 … or as I call it “Corn-hole” since that’s what’s happening to the taxpayers to pay for this shuck.) I have a 2013 Ford Fiesta, let the gas run almost all out (pulled into the station with 3 miles to empty on the clock), and filled it up with straight gas. With E10 I was getting around 34 MPG on average, and possibly 37-38 MPG on the highway at 70mph. After filling up with straight gas, I pulled onto the expressway, set the cruise control to 70, drove a 10 mile stretch of I-96 without slowing down or speeding up the entire way, and by the 10th mile the trip computer was showing 45 MPG at an average of 70mph (yes 70, usually over 60mph wind drag starts to take a toll.) I tried the same experiment on Hines Drive (a 5-10 mile parkway on a flood plain through the Wayne County parks system with only a few traffic lights), this time going 45mph (the limit is 40, but this was later at night with no traffic), not hitting any lights along the way the trip-comp was noting 51.4 MPG. After filling up (12.4 US gallons) with two tanks of E10 (the comp adjusts to the amount of fuel used with each blend), the trip comp notes I have around 420 miles to empty; when I fill up with two tanks of straight gas, the comp notes I have 495 miles to empty. You lose 75 miles on cornhole gas vs. straight gas and this is on subcompact econo-box, and with money being tight in this neverending depression that 75 could be a make or break deal for some people. I can only imagine the E10 drain on a larger car.
“You lose 75 miles on cornhole gas vs. straight gas”
That, and listening to my fellow Alamo fighters, is worth staying up to know.
Thanks for the testing, Chris.
Tomorrow, or the next day or so, if someone doesn’t refute you, it’ll get burned into my brain as fact.
@eric, why the hell haven’t you done this on those free cars you get?
[Just giving you shit, mang. … At the same time, wouldn’t that be a good test for you to do? Assuming you have enough time with them? I imagine you don’t., though. ]
And, what is the new blend going to be? I wonder.
Will it be good enough to switch from real gas?
Is that the whole idea? To get people to switch from real gas, … then cut that source of real gas off?
Is there a marketing lesson playing out here?
Just how much ethanol is acceptable without any noticeable problems?
The bastards are sneaky, I smell a rat.
Could be I’m wrong. But I’m dealing with rats. And they want to get inside my tank,… and fuck with my fuel injectors, and your carbs, plus, they are known bastards.
Hi RB,
On principle, I can’t do stuff to the workings of other people’s cars. I will certainly drive the press cars hard – that’s part of testing them, and it’s understood and expected. But I don’t fiddle with their engines or other mechanical parts.
If EPautos ever gets big enough, we might be able to do it, though – because we could buy cars to mess with.
Along those lines, I have been itching to do demonstration projects such as taking a car like a late ’70s diesel VW Rabbit and updating it here and there with modern equipment such as a deeply overdriven modern transmission, aerodynamic tweaks (underbody pan, low rolling resistance bearings and tires, etc.) and noting the efficiency improvements. I am pretty convinced it would be not only feasible but fairly easy and pretty cheap to take an economy car from the late ’70s that achieved 40-45 MPG and get it to 60 MPG.
Another fun one would be to “de-content” a current subcompact – remove weight-adding crap – and note the mileage difference.
Lots of possible projects that would be entertaining as well as educational!
Eric. I would love to see such a thing too. I have read, when you do something as simple as putting today’s tires on old muscle cars, they immediately perform noticeably better. More and more over in Corvette Forum , guys are asking about E85 and what it will do to the engines of mid 80 to 90 Corvettes. Most of us have come to the consensus, it would be very harmful for the engines. Due to the nature of the destructive properties it has against 0-rings, injectors, anything with rubber in it or made of it. I also know you would have to monkey around with the compression, the cam, and many other things related to the way it would burn in the combustion chamber. As it would burn a lot different.
I would love to see you De-content a car today. See how much better it would run, and how much easier it would be to repair and maintain it. The best car I ever owned for repair and maintenance, was my 62 Bug. Little to go wrong, easy to find parts.
@Eric – Now there is a thought. Maybe I’ll get one of those new $12,000 Mitsubishi mini cars, throw in an under pan & gut it for weight. What do you think 50+, or maybe 60+ even? π Now lets see, 12 gallon gas tank at XX MPG …..Vegas!
Hi Gary,
I’d bet getting 50-plus out of the new Mitsu would be very doable. Just by lightening the thing up. One could probably cut off 150-200 or so pounds just by pulling the front and rear fascias (the plastic/cosmetic “bumpers” all new cars have) and removing the heavy real bumpers underneath them. It might be possible to replace some of the bolt-on metal body panels with lightweight composite panels (if such are available or could be made). Remove both the driver and front seat passenger seats. Replace with lightweight seats. Pull the carpet up and remove any heavy insulation; replace with a thin, lightweight carpet – or just leave it exposed metal. Replace the factory wheels with skinny, ultra-light “pizza cutters” and low rolling resistance tires. Look into replacing whatever the final drive ratio is with something a bit more MPG-friendly. It’d slow the car down some, but if the previously listed steps had lightened it up a couple hundred pounds, performance might not suffer noticeably, if at all.
I’d also experiment with removing the AC. Probably, getting rid of the compressor, condenser, evaporator and hoses, etc. would take off another 50-75 pounds. And also the load on the engine. A flow-through vent system could no doubt be rigged up. And with some fabrication work, wing vent windows.
Roth, as I have said a few times here, about 5% ethanol is the limit (it also allows me to run about 2 degrees more advanced) before economy problems develop. E10 reduces my fuel economy by about 10% on every engine I’ve tried it on – down to my lawnmower.
Any more ethanol will not only reduce fuel economy (as ethanol contains less energy BTU’s than petrol), but it will begin to attack the seals and steel fuel lines thanks to its affinity with water.
I don’t like to imagine what E85 would do to an engine not designed to accommodate it from tank to piston.
Hi Chris,
Yup.
I have done this test myself, several times, using several different vehicles (including motorcycles). Similar results. Always a significant decrease in mileage when running E10.
Your observation is spot on that people ought to be furious.
The ethanol mandate is not unlike the Tesla thing. Average people are forced at gunpoint to subsidize the operation/profit of billionaires.
Chris, are you sure the gasoline the ethanol was mixed with was the same formulation as the E0? If they were both 87 octane then they weren’t and you were probably getting sub octane vs. 100% good stuff. Here in Iowa until Sept. we had 87 E0 and 89 E10 because they were using the same gasoline and the ethanol added 2 to 3 octane points.
Hi Martin,
I’ve done the same testing Chris has – and seen similar results. The disparity is very noticeable in all vehicles, but particularly so in older, carbureted vehicles (non-EFI) without computers. These run lean when using ethanol-laced gas. Remember, they were jetted at the factory on the assumption that they’d be burning 100 percent gas, not 90 percent gas and 10 percent ethanol. Lean running also tends to make them run hotter (with air-cooled motorcycles, this is something you need to keep close track of).
Modern cars with EFI and computers (and 02 sensors in the exhaust stream) can adjust their A/F ratios and other parameters automatically to accommodate ethanol-laced fuels, but they still (all else being equal) get better mileage running straight gas.
As Meth and Brent rightly observe, if ethanol made sense, if would not be necessary to mandate it.
oxygenates, before all the ‘renewable’ popularity to change the subject were designed specifically to lean out older cars’ engines. The logic was because some people did not maintain their vehicles and let them run too rich the government would add oxygen to the fuel (ethanol or MTBE) to force them to run leaner. Once again, never mind the hazards, drawbacks, or harm to the responsible people who did maintain their vehicles.
MTBE quickly started contaminating water supplies and thus was eventually removed, leaving ethanol. Then as the non-O2 sensor cars disappeared from the roads (at this point most everything made prior to 1982, certainly 1985. they were already over a decade old at the time the oxygenate mandates went in in 1995) it became a ‘renewable’ and ‘energy independence’ issue, thus increasing ethanol content.
Eric, my question hasn’t been answered. If the 90% gasoline in the E10 is not the same as the E0 then you’re not comparing apples to apples. Nobody around here experienced the big variation you guys seem to have. That is because until Sept., 87 octane was our base gas and when ethanol was blended with it making 89, most experienced no difference. I know people that actually said their mileage went up. I have to admit, I did wonder about that.
Hi Martin,
E10 is up to 10 percent ethanol. E0 is no ethanol. I’m not following you.
In the mid-late ’80s, some states began using so-called “winter gas” – which was “oxygenated” with either MTBE or ethanol. I can’t recall the percentages. But the doctored gas was not year-round, or even used in all 50 states. One noticed an obvious decrease in mileage using the “winter gas.” Also, water in the fuel became a constant problem. I remember feeding my VW Beetle a bottle of dry gas with every other tank. If I didn’t do that, the engine would spit, sputter and stall out or not start at all.
Octane has been increased (and decreased) in various ways over the years. And the way it’s measured – and referenced – has also changed. But in terms of octane as such, it’s only an issue insofar as mileage (and performance) if a lower or higher octane than the engine was optimized for is used, due to the different burn rates.
As far as mileage: There is a station up the road from us that sells both E10 and E0. I have noticed a consistent mileage decrease using the E10 in multiple vehicles, varying from brand-new to over 30 years old.
The Trans-Am does run without detonating using premium (94 octane) E10, which is a plus. But I also had to make a number of modifications to the fuel delivery system to eliminate problems. These included:
Replacing the primary jets and secondary metering rods to richen the A/F ratio. Adjust float (and replace float as well as needle and seat and accelerator pump with ethanol compatible parts). Replace all gaskets and o-rings with ethanol compatible parts. Replace fuel pump with an ethanol compatible pump. Replace all steel lines with stainless steel lines. Replace gas tank with new tank – coated/sealed internally, to resist corrosion.
I did all the work myself and the parts alone cost close to $1,000. If someone had to pay to have this work done, it would probably be closer to $2,000.
All because of the ethanol mandate.
Bottom line is: If it’s such a wonderful idea, why does it have to be forced on people?
Martin,
1 gallon (US) of gasoline (E0) has about 114,000 BTU of energy
1 gallon (US) of ethanol (E100) has about 78,000 BTU of energy
Ethanol has about (78/114) 68% energy of an equivalent amount of gasoline.
E10 would have (110.4/114) 96.8% energy of an equivalent amount of gasoline.
The 3% difference may not seem like much, at first but it does add up. This difference only includes the energy (mpg) difference and does not include any other added expenses that occur due to the use of ethanol blended fuels.
Ethanol from corn is not the best way to produce ethanol. (based on what I have read over the years.) I think I have read that sugar cane would be a more economical source for ethanol. (assuming that one designed an engine to work on 100% ethanol.)
I think I made a slight error. The BTU is not directly equivalent to mpg. (ie it is not a 1-1 relationship)
Also if anyone is interested:
http://www.hho4free.com/gasoline_vs_ethanol.htm
http://www.valero.com/V_MSDS/002%20-%20UNLEADED%20GASOLINE.pdf
Here’s what I mean—-gasoline in made of many different hydro carbon molecules with different charateristics. Sub octane 84 is not the same molecules as 87 which is different than 91 etc. Ethanol gets the blame when suboctane 84 molecules probably are what is causing the problem when you compare 87 E0 to 87 E10. Like I said here in Iowa 87 octane E0 was sold by itself and the same 87 was blended with ethanol thus not a big difference in mpg between the two.
Hi Martin,
Outside of very high altitude areas, I have never seen 84 (or less octane) in my life! I can tell you that, in my area of the country (East Coast, Virginia) the regular unleaded sold back in the ’80s and prior was (excepting the “oxygenated” – ethanol or MTBE-laced – “winter gas” that began to appear in the mid-late ’80s) straight gas, no ethanol.
I’m not making up the marked difference in mileage in the same vehicle, driven the same way, using E10 vs. E0. Chris’s observations and the observations of anyone who wishes to try the experiment will confirm this.
I’m not saying ethanol is entirely negative – indeed, it has positive attributes (increasing octane/knock resistance, allowing higher CR engines, etc.).
But it does have objective negatives – and the mandate is entirely negative.
Let ethanol compete on equal terms with gasoline (and any other fuel) But stop force-feeding it to consumers. Rent seeking by huge corporate cartels is particularly despicable. I don’t like being forced to “help” Farmer Brown – but I really don’t like being forced to “help” ADM.
WATERLOO (KWWL) –
A new type of fuel has been brought to Iowa, but it canβt be sold at the pump. At least, not right away.
Known as sub-octane, or v-grade fuel, the gasoline rates at 84 octane. Thatβs key, because the state of Iowa doesnβt allow anything below 87 octane to be sold.
“So in Iowa you have to take that gas and make it a cocktail,β said Jim Lind, of Jim Lindβs Service in Waterloo. βAnd mix it up to get it up to the current standard, and the quick, easy way to do that is to put ethanol in it,” he said.
Besides ethanol, to bring the gas up to the state minimum, it can also be mixed with stronger 91 octane gasoline. For the manufacturers, pumping lower octane gas through the pipeline to the Midwest is more convenient, since the lower-grade fuel is easier to mix. But mixing presents other problems: using higher grade 91 to raise the sub-octane increases demand for premium 91, so the price could spike, or create higher-end fuel shortages. Mixing ethanol with the v-grade gas addresses this, but that has issues too.
Eric, I forgot to say, this new fuel to Iowa has been used for quite awhile around the rest of the country. Suboctane is most of the reason people see the big mileage loss when you compare 87 E10 to 87 E0.
Hi Martin,
I can’t speak to the situation in Iowa, but I can tell you that here in Virginia, E10 delivers poorer mileage than E0 – and our E0 is gas, no ethanol. It would be fraud to advertise it as ethanol-free if in fact it contained a significant percentage of ethanol.
Eric, my sister lives about 2 miles from the oil refinery at Yorktown VA. That’s where I was raised. Southeast VA is mandated E10 to try and clean up the air in that rat race environment. Can’t you understand that the gasoline that is 87 octane E0 is different than the gasoline portion of 87 octane E10. If you mix ethanol with 87 E0 and make it E10 then the octane is raised to 89 to 90 octane. That is what makes the difference—-the gasoline in the two 87 octanes is different composition apples to oranges for the gasoline used.
Martin,
I actually don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Is it that 87 octane E0 advertised as ethanol-free is actually adulterated with ethanol?
If that’s your argument, ok – but I doubt it’s true because it would be fraud. Actionable fraud.
We have four grades of gas in my area:
Regular unleaded, which is 87 octane E10
Medium grade, which is 89 octane and also ethanol-adultered
Premium – 91 or so – and also ethanol laden
And:
E0 – no ethanol – 87 octane.
I cross-tested ethanol unleaded 87 octane and straight gas 87 octane. The ethanol-adulterated fuel always returns noticeably poorer mileage.
I reiterate: If ethanol were such a win-win it would not be necessary to force it down people’s throats. They’d buy it because it made sense. The fact that it has to be mandated is pretty compelling evidence that it does not make sense.
Besides which, it’s simply wrong to force people to buy anything. Or do you believe I ought to be able to use the police powers of the state to force people to subsidize this web site?
No?
Well, the principle is exactly the same. Let whatever the product or service happens to be succeed – or fail – on the merits. Let the market freely choose the winners – and losers.
Right?
Eric, because ethanol increases octane, the additive package for the gasoline is probably different, as is likely the refining compared to gasoline of the same octane rating without ethanol.
unfortunately, the internet source on such things, the gasoline FAQ hasn’t been updated in many years.
Eric, This so simple but I don’t seem to get the point across. I’ll try this. Would you agree that 91 from the refinery is different than 87 or the newer 84. All are different in the molecules that the refinery distills and blends into each octane fuel. Just like there is summer blend and winter blend—they’re different. OK,we get to the gas pump you fill you’re car at. If you put in 87 E0 that is a 50/50% blend of 91 and 84 octane. The 91 is way better and the 84 is junk. OK, we put is 87 E10—it a 90/10% blend—–90% junk gas and 10% ethanol. That means in a given gallon, there is 40% more junk gas in that gallon. I give up if you don’t understand.
Martin,
E0 cannot be a blend of 91 and 84 octane because the 91 octane (premium) is (to my knowledge *) ethanol-adulterated and thus, it would be fraud – false advertising – to tout the resultant blend as ethanol-free.
There’d be a major stink. People buy 87 octane E0 over 87 octane E10 because – wait for it, now – they want ethanol-free fuel. That’s what’s advertised – and it’s what they’re paying 10-15 cents more per gallon for, relative to the 87 octane E10.
PS: You’ve been silent on the mandate issue. If ethanol is so fabulous why not sell it on the merits? Why is it necessary to force people to buy this allegedly superior fuel? And – what gives anyone the right to force someone else to buy their product or service? Please give us your thoughts.
*The only premium-grade gas I’m aware of that does not contain ethanol is aviation fuel and race gas. I’ve never seen or even heard of high-octane E0 being available at the pump. If you know of a place that sells it, I’d be glad to know about it!
“If theyβd been smarter, theyβd have gone slower. Feed it to us gradually.”
They probably figured they didn’t have to move that slowly anymore. It wasn’t that long ago that government power grabs had to be obfuscated and implemented slowly. Anymore, if they can keep it off the evening TV entertainment, err, news, which apparently isn’t very difficult, it seems they can get away with just about anything these days. Come to think of it, even when something newsworthy is brought to the general public’s attention, it doesn’t seem to phase the masses. The Ethanol goons probably thought they could get away with their bullshit with even less resistance.
I can see how people that are actually awake might be rooting for the ship to sink even faster than it already is. I just wish that the undeserving weren’t going down with it.
I’m in that boat–once they’d made it impossible for Ron Paul to have a fair shake, I rooted for Obama.
I think it’s had the intended effect.
I feel bad just the same.
Me too, especially after the GOP totally screwed Ron Paul over. I was 17 at the time, if I could have voted I would have voted for Gov. Johnson, and I really “rooted” for him (He wasn’t perfect either, far from it, but at least half decent.) But I’m glad Obama beat Romney. Well, I guess I really shouldn’t say that… I’m glad Romney lost.
Morning, David!
I got a small piece of satisfaction the day I was able to give the “up yours!” salute to that oily shyster Mitt Romney. A futile gesture, I realize. But I’m a guy who admires the doomed gunners in the forward turret of the battlecruiser Hood – who fired one last salvo into the air, even as their ship split in half and was already on its way to the bottom.
I am one of those hoping for the ship to sink faster.
Car question: what would be the best octane for a 5.7L Hemi on a 2013 Dodge Charger? Also, any good tips on maintenance?
Hi Argent,
Check the area around the gas filler – and your owner’s manual under “fuel recommendations.” If it says “premium fuel recommended.” then you should use premium to get the best performance and mileage out of the engine. If it says “regular unleaded only,” using premium won’t hurt anything – but won’t give you more performance or economy. You may even see a reduction.
Same, by the way, goes for using regular rather than premium in an engine car that was optimized to burn premium: You won’t hurt it – because modern cars have knock sensors and will adjust things like spark timing automatically to compensate for lower octane fuels – but you won’t get max power or economy, as noted above.
Remember Eric, there’s a difference between RON (research octane number) and MON(motor octane number), but usually RON is used at the pump.
Here in Oz, we start at 91 octane. I’m not sure what your lowest is in the USSA, if someone could enlighten me please. If your car has between 9.5:1 and 10.5:1 compression ratio, then 91 – 95 octane is fine. Anything higher (including increased ignition timing) needs more octane to avoid knocking unless there’s a knock sensor, which reduces ignition timing, reducing performance.
Noting that turbo/supercharging often requires a lower compression ratio such as 8:1 or so, if your engine is pinging at any time considering everything’s normal, either the fuel’s bad or too low an octane, or you have carbon buildup in the cylinders causing a higher compression ratio than designed.
I disagree with knock sensors. They “mask” the problem. However, they probably save a lot of engines from destruction because many drivers are unaware or completely oblivious of the mechanics and chemistry of internal combustion engines.
In the USA, gasoline octane is rated by (R+M)/2 which is exactly what you think it is, an average of research and motor octane. There are some differences by market but in most there is 87 and 91 octane and then mid grade, a blend between the two done in the pump at 89. That’s in (R+M)/2 of course.
It has just occurred to me that I don’t know if compression ratios are given as the proportional change in volume or in pressure (which is higher, because of adiabatic heating). Does anyone know?
Mr. Lawrence, compression ratios are given as a proportion of physical displacement only, compared by total head+cylinder volume at bottom stroke to top stroke.
If it were measured via pressure and adiabatic heating, there would be problems calculating that, since air pressure at sea level is 14.7PSI (which reduces with altitude) and if the cylinder’s still cool, then pressure is reduced etc.
Leaded fuel in Oz was slowly phased out, but secretly. Suddenly after filling at some servos our exhausts wouldn’t go that nice grey colour anymore. Eventually pumps listed as unleaded came out.
Eventually we had E5 (95 octane) and E10 (98 octane). I get the same mileage with E5 as with any 91 octane (unadulterated) fuel (and it’s “cheaper” – subsidised by me, the taxpayer), but with every engine I’ve tried, E10 gets me 10% less mileage – right down to my lawnmower.
Ethanol is the main reason for doubling of food prices in poor countries, starving the already starved. It creates more CO2 (noting that manmade global warming is the biggest con in human history) to produce than it saves.
Ethanol or not, people get sucked into the “high octane = more power” myth. It only works if your engine’s tuned to it, such as higher compression. A friend of mine recently filled up on 100 octane, thinking he’d get his shitty ’96 average car to go better.
A friend of mine many years ago filled up on 130 octane aviation fuel, thinking his old carby-banger would rocket along. He soon discovered otherwise. You can get the same octane by pouring some kerosene into the tank with the fuel. It burns at a slower rate. But ethanol attracts water, although it still doesn’t fully mix with fuel, more H2O atoms will be attracted and rust the fuel lines, mess with the seals and o-rings etc.
It’s a con and a nightmare from top to bottom.
I’ve been tearing apart carbs (bikes and cars) since the early ’80s. I have never before seen the weird gray goop that I now find regularly in the fuel bowls of carbs that have sat for a few months with ethanol “gas” in them. I assume it is the residue of dissolving non-ethanol compatible gaskets.
I’ve become extra vigilant about cylcing out the fuel in all my older vehicles – and that’s a job given five bikes and one antique car. I also use marine-grade Sta-bil and have gone through them all and replaced original gaskest and floats and so on with ethanol compatible stuff. I also up-jetted everything to fatten up the A/F mixture. No holed pistons, hopefully….
Fingers crossed….
@Eric – Look at PRI-G and PRI-D. Works much better then StaBil at long term use and storage. I have been using it with my stored 10% mandated junk eco fuel in CA. So far everything is looking and working fine.
Eric – I second Garysco’s recommendation for PRI-G. We discussed this back in January here: http://ericpetersautos.com/2013/01/07/conspiracy/#comment-57217
Methylamine gave us a brief rundown on its chemical composition and a link to it’s MSDS.
I have fuel in my generator with PRI-G in it that is going on three years old and it starts and runs just fine. With Sta-bil I would notice some sputtering and hard to start issues if it went over two years. That being said, I’ve never tried marine Sta-bil though. BTW, I did a U.S. Carburetion conversion on my generator this year similar to what you did on yours. It now runs on gasoline or propane (or N.G. with a valve tweek).
Lowes carries a fuel line shutoff for gravity fed fuel systems on lawn tractors/mowers/whathaveyou. I installed them on my mower and lawn tractor and use the fuel shutoff to empty the line and carb. Lucas ethanol treatment additive is what I’ve been using to condition and stabilize gasoline.
Time will tell how well it works, but Stabil turned out not to preserve stored gasoline for more than a few months, in my experience.
Ed, good to know. Amsoil also has what I have heard but never used, a good fuel stabilizer too. Back when ethanol started on the scene here, it was common to have fuel/water problems. I have cleaned the bronze sintered fuel strainer on Q Jets many times and they would not only be full of water but there would be water smudge type stuff on the outside. My Nissan had a pleated paper fuel filter with a clear bowl. It started bucking like hell on a trip so I replaced it and saw literally water pulled into the huge surface it had. This was a really big filter area so it had to have had a great deal of water to clog it. That’s when I started using water dispersants in my fuel tank. Back in ’07 I tried using various ‘hot’ solvents for doping diesel. Never saw any mileage increase but my fuel filters never had anything above 1/4″ off the bottom of being dirty. I think I could have run the same filter forever. At least I never had any water problems and never drained water out of the separator.
Very interesting. I have a pickup I put in storage down here in the southern desert during the summer months. I always store it with the least amount of fuel in the gas tank (near empty), then add 10 gallons of fresh stuff letting it set before I even turn the engine over. When I arrive to start it back up in the late fall (just yesterday actually after 8 months of setting), I’m always crossing my fingers that something is gummed up like the injectors or the pump.
I was shitting bricks when it wouldn’t start and the battery was going dead. Was relieved when I put a little gas directly in the portside injectors intake and the thing took right off.
Which brings me to the fuel additive thing as good measure to protect a long sitting vehicle with gas in it. On carburettors we used to store our vehicles by idling the engine until the tank went dry. It was the best way to keep the carbs from getting gummed up for long time storage. I’d do this for more modern cars but they advise people not to run the gas tank dry because the pump inside the tank requires some gas as a coolant and lubricant. I don’t like replacing internal gas pumps as its expensive and something I can’t do myself.
The additive thing really works from experience and how long can it set?
Regards,
HR
Hi HR,
I use the Marine Grade Sta-Bil and do the following on top of that:
Cars:
Start/run/drive at least once a month for at least 15 minutes – ideally twice a month for 30 minutes. Top off tank after each event, so that the tank is as full as possible (limits condensation accumulation and also mixes fresh gas with the old gas).
Bikes:
Same as above, but drain the fuel bowls (or run them dry) prior to periods of disuse.
Outdoor power equipment (lawn mowers, etc.):
Toward the end of the season, I dose the gas with the Stab-Bil, but prior to storage, I run them dry. Then I fog the carbs with WD-40 (tank too). Remove plugs, fog cylinders with light oil or WD-40. Fresh oil and filter just prior to this – and run it for 10 minutes or so.
So far, so good.
But none of these sit idle for more than a maximum of 3 months or so – so, your mileage may vary…
@HotRod – Just my 2 cents. Eric is doing it right IMHO. But that takes time and effort. I do the same for my 6 cyl. motorcycle, because rebuilding and synchronizing 6 carbs is something I don’t want to do again anytime soon.
Lucky you, storing in the low / no moisture desert. Except for the rubber and plastic deterioration.
Everything about modern gasoline and diesel storage I have come across ends up with this:
– Modern gasoline begins to deteriorate within 90 days, and will gum up the carburetor works if sitting for 6 months – 1 year. It has something to do with the ethanol/alcohol/water chemical structure changes. Fuel injection is a sealed system, so I do not know if it deteriorates once inside a modern sealed system.
– Stored fuel lasts longer and deteriorates less when stored in a air-tight container. Gas cans are generally not air-tight. It has something to do with the oxidation process.
– A full gas tank is better then empty. The air space (moisture laden air) is replaced with a liquid leading to less moisture/ deterioration of the fuel.
I started using the PRI-G product 3 years ago after I listened to some scientists discuss the chemistry of gasoline and cars. So far everything I have using the up-to-1 year old stored fuel (20HP garden tractor, 7HP weed/brush mower, 2500 watt generator) works good and the float bowls and filters are clean. I had been using StabBil with mixed results in 6 mos. – 1 year old stored gas.
PRI says their stuff will protect almost indefinitely if dosed once a year, and they claim at least 5 years of standby storage. It is also used by government agencies in their big generator fuel storage tanks.
No, it only does that when it is produced the wrong way (with fossil fuel inputs to farm machinery and fertiliser production). Done the right way – which is not happening – it really does cut back on net carbon dioxide emissions.
People may be interested to know that, nearly two centuries ago, the economist Nassau Senior analysed the effects of mechanisation on living standards. He discovered that they were mostly neutral or favourable apart from a couple of special cases – but one case was just precisely when food resources go towards fuel. He only described it for completeness as it wasn’t applicable then – but not only is it going on now, everybody involved should have known about it (or they were taking money under false pretences of knowing what they were doing).
Actually, the physical process is the other way around: water attracts alcohol in a strong and special way, which it only does to “polar molecules” like alcohol but not like oils. Alcohol itself does attract water, but only in the same way that it attracts oils. What happens is that even a trace of water will pull all the alcohol into it out of the fuel, making not only waste but also large amounts of unburnable liquid that are harder to filter out than the original traces of water.
@PM – I have been around long enough to have gone through at least 3 major science “has it settled” government sponsored “the sky is falling, so pay up” events.
(1) Golbal Freezing of the late 60’s that was going to kill us,
(2) Acid Rain destroying all the lakes and rivers and killing the fish,
(3) The ozone is collapsing, leaving all of us to burn up with UV rays.
Global Warming, like acid rain, ozone depletion, and freezing fell apart quick enough. The propaganda masters quickly switched to Climate Change as the method to save some of their money, grants and control. The climate was chosen in the late 60’s and early 70’s as the best method the elite would use to control, profit and enslave the masses. It was the end product of group think at the Club of Rome meetings. Billing us for air is the greatest hoax in modern history for controlling human behavior world wide. And it is working.
There, I was only commenting on whether it was physically possible to cut back on net carbon dioxide emissions that way, not on whether the motives for it were scientifically sound.
If anyone did want to do that on a serious scale, there is an engineeringly feasible method, based on “terra preta”: just cut lots of trees down, convert them into charcoal, bury that or sink it under water, then grow more trees (ideally nitrogen fixing ones, and ideally on top of the buried charcoal to recycle its phosphate content etc.) and repeat. That locks up a continuing stream of carbon, which keeps building up. But the Greens would reject that just as they reject carbon neutral nuclear power.
@PM- Just think – if the Co2 Nazis were successful (impossibility) in “reducing footprints” life on earth as we know it would be done for.
PM, I couldn’t find your post you asked about compression ratios. In answer, they are figured with head gasket on a new engine by volume. My uncle who was a tractor mechanic turned me on to a thin steel gasket for a SBC that increased the CR a tiny amount. I used them exclusively and never had one fail. Every time I did a head job or any work that required head removal I replace the old gasket with those.
The climate, the weather, has been used for thousands of years to control populations. Now instead of priests we have state scientists and other intellectuals. Same difference really since in ancient times the priests were the intellectual class as well. There have always been people who make a living coming up with reasonings why we should be ruled over.
However, direct pollution like acid rain while often overly hyped are real threats. However notice how these real threats have fallen aside in favor of CO2 to control everything.
@BrentP – I am up for that whole virgin sacrifice thing. Must have been quite a show when begging the mystic priests for rain.
http://youtu.be/mk2E1CoGe98
The very first published newspaper in 1800 had the headline of global warming. Never mind there was no inexpensive method of measuring temperatures. The thermometer was a lab curiosity in 1800. But every 40 years, like clockwork, the global warming headline shows up. And all this oil we use was created in tropical climates.
Ever talk to a real greenie? These people hate the human race, and they also hate the natural environment. Just look at the damage they are causing to the ecosphere. Solar panels that fry birds, windmills that decimate birds like hitler decimated jews, toxic waste created by the manufacture of neodymium, which is used in windmill motors. Using farmland to grow motor fuel rather than being used to feed people is a clear violation of all ethics.
Greenies hate all forms of life, but especially the one race at the top of the food chain. [That is homo sapiens.] They are all insane, and are destroying the planet for every creature, except bacteria and viruses. Give them time and they will do away with those bugs also.
Greenies are the biggest HATERS on the planet.
But they make good fertilizer, and there’s always another one around.
“water attracts alcohol in a strong and special way, which it only does to βpolar moleculesβ like alcohol but not like oils.”
That’s good to know, PM. The additive called “Gas-Dri” is, I think, ethyl acohol. Its intended effect , according to the label, is to mix with water in a fuel tank and allow the water to pass through the fuel system along with the fuel so that it will be combusted and thus removed from the tank. That’s the theory, at least.
It has never worked as advertised for me. Water in a fuel tank is best removed by dismounting the tank when it’s nearly empty and draining it completely, or that’s what I’ve found in the course of wrenching on my own rides.
Funny, I always noticed the engine ran better when the DriGas had gone through the tank… But it SUCKED while there was ethanol in the gas.
Of course, that was on a Subie WRX – so my gas mileage was something I noticed…
The v-6 Buick LeSabre before that didn’t care as much.
Pennsylvania just announced a 28c per gallon tax increase. I’m loving every minute of this country slipping further down the shaft. “Worse is Better” is now my motto. People need that cold hard slap to wake em up.
Eric, I’m sorry but to me this article is just another nail in the USSAs coffin. Even if they stopped corn fuels they would just add or tax another way.
Hi Joe,
28 cents? All at once? Wow. That is pretty appalling. Makes Virginia seem almost free…
eric, as each state does something more egregious than the next it’s just another way to make you feel glad you don’t live in the latest horror. $.28/gal is a 10% increase, a big hit for many and a bite out of food and heating for everybody who works. I’d like to see a poster of a little girl about to take a bite of bread and Uncle Sam grabs it and says “Uh uh, you’ve had your share, this is mine” as he pockets her food. Close enough for govt. work even if that example of JoePA’s was the state. I like your qualifier, “Almost” although I don’t know any where I’d feel even remotely ‘free’. Maybe it slipped under the radar for most but ten years ago there were riots and massive demonstrations because the corn Mexico depended on from the US became so expensive it was starving people there.
Agreed, Eight.
VA has been fairly decent with respect to “allowing” mere Mundanes to possess firearms. But now that the odious piano-toothed carpetbagger is governor, I expect that to change, too. This ex-Clinton bag man is very much in favor of “reasonable” abrogations of other people’s rights.
I don’t give the EPA credit for wanting to help out those they forced into burning $6.00 a box corn flakes as fuel. The fascist EPA Eco-Nazis must have been told to back off. They were perfectly happy to destroy all the older engines and fuel systems with the 15% mandate last year. And they WERE going to shove up our dark places whether we liked it or not.
There is something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
Come on Garysco, ethanol is grrrrreat!
Tony the tiger recommends frosted fuel flakes for your car
You better stop children what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
For What It’s Worth is a song about the 10pm curfew imposed in LA, not Vietnam as commonly claimed.
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
FWIW/Mr Soul – Buffalo Springfield
Mr Soul
I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter
I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her
Any girl in the world could have easily known me better
She said, “You’re strange, but don’t change”, and I let her
In a while will the smile on my face turn into plaster?
Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster
For the race of my head and my face is moving much faster
Is it strange I should change? I don’t know, why don’t you ask her?
Heroes raid Port Melbourne Bikie Property
@Tor – Thanks. Now I know why I have so much “energy”.
That’s exactly right, about FWIW. Did you ever notice that there was very little in the way of antiwar content in any of the “hits” by the iconic LA music scene bands?
That song, which is still referred to as an antiwar protest song is about the riot on the Sunset Strip, whi was mostly about the curfew.
Here’s a great series of articles (soon to be released in book form) about the phony, intelligence community fostered “hippie music movement” in LA:
http://www.whale.to/b/inside_the_lc1.html
Woah, very interesting articles. So imagine the brunt of the whole hippie thing was an exaggerated “false flag” event. Some mundanes participated to be sure, but it was at root instigated by the various agencies of the PTB.
What a Psyop! They have created a permanent rift where the productive, the middle age, and the older phyles are firmly against the youth, and against normal youthful exploratioin, and against anyone who wishes to live outside their control grid and funny money treadmill.
So many good Germans everywhere now. They take less than a nanosecond to shout down and demand police action of anyone who doesn’t want to be part of the national social treadmill “long walk.”
Modern society as the todesmarsch/”long walk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az08AuTcMBw
We are all on a “long walk”/”death march” of sorts. A march to produce tax revenue. But the pace is extremely slow, and you are allowed a rest each weekend. Never mind, outside of Israel, no other country forces you to participate in this “long walk.”
A death march for dummies/slackers that if not participated in bankrupts us, makes us an “untouchable” or leads to us spending time in a cage.
Because most are forced to march, on paper we’re wealthy and successful. (be wealthy or perish, your only options)
http://home.loloyd.com/ebooks1/Stephen%20King%20(Bibliography)/1970's/1978/The%20Long%20Walk%20-%201978.pdf
“So imagine the brunt of the whole hippie thing was an exaggerated βfalse flagβ event. ”
Yes, a subversion or sublimation effect of sorts. Jim Morrison was the son of Admiral George S Morrison, who ran the Tonkin Gulf false flag (actually not even an attack) event which gave LBJ his pretext for pushing all out, undeclared war in Vietnam.
The Lizard King arrived on the LA music scene with his entire portfolio of hit songs in hand, though he couldn’t write music and played no instrument. Most of the LA music scene stars of the day had direct family connections to military intelligence, and several bands consisted mostly of mediocre background singers who played no instruments but whose bands were instantly granted prestigous contracts with old line, fuddy-duddy, establishment music labels.
Curious shit indeed.
One word: Tavistock
A thing that didn’t seem real back then was none of these people ever seemed to have cash flow problems. They lived as kings and queens, bought whatever they wanted and had scads of bodyguards. I could never see how one hit song would enable this type of luxury. It makes sense now.
Damn Ed, you’re a plethora of info. Tor “Lite” may become your new moniker.
Plethora? It ain’t fair to call me cuss words when I don’t even know what they mean. π
8, a good observation indeed. These overnight musical icons were instantly rich and were quickly granted appearances on prime time network TV shows, such as the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
The usual suspects were all there, the Chicago mob, Naval Intelligence, CIA, etc. Read the series. It’s a real eye-opener.
Ed, learning about all their connects certainly gives insight into their “stardom”. Maybe Chuck Barris was a spy ha ha. Sorry about plethora, I’ll revert to ‘whole bunch of’ from now on. Glad I have instant dictionary so I can read the posts here. Of course, most aren’t in the dictionary.
Garysco, I believe what you see is two big bullies who have always gotten their way and now they have opposite goals. Big Oil has always had the govt. machine in its pocket and now it has serious competition. Same can be said for Big Ag. I love it, maybe they’ll take each other out. My money is on Big Oil.
@8 – Not so sure. The big multinational Corp’s are all interlocking ownerships. They didn’t start this until they had ramped up oil demand in China (like a market for 1 billion folks who now want cars), Viet Nam, and Indonesia. No problem selling good oil to them while we get second tier junk for $3.00/ gallon.
What’s that old poker game saying – if you look around the table and don’t see the chump… then it’s you.
Gary, Corn flakes might be $6 a box but the corn I just harvested is $4 for a 56 lb. bushel. Whose ripping us—-BIG FOOD. Also, I’ve got a 1992 Toyota pickup that has has 30 to 50% ethanol since April of 2001, a 1995 Ford Aspire E30 since August of 2002, and 2000 Buick LeSabre since late 2009. To top it off, I just ran my Stihl chainsaw with E10/2 cycle oil that was mixed a couple of years ago and it ran fine. You people with problems must leave the gas cap off or something of that nature. The cattle feedlots and dairies around here just love the distillers grain that comes back out of the ethanol plants. Remember, 1/3 of every bushel going in comes back out as a high protein livestock feed and it tastes good—kinda like beer.
@Martin – No doubt you could run on 100% alcohol with engine adjustments. But for stock older cars and motorcycles (my 93 and 99 Honda’s for example) greater than 10% is a corrosive and gums up the works if left for any amount of time. That is why warranty’s forbid it and why there are so many “ethanol” treatments sold in the auto parts stores. Not to mention the metal and rubber (non Vitron) fuel system parts.
OK, corn is good for cows. Is this documentary movie wrong? Start at about 40 minutes.
Hi Gary,
Is corn good for cows?
It’s not their natural food – the food cows evolved to consume.
I go out of my way to buy grass-fed beef and the difference in taste is (to me) obvious. There may also be health differences as well.
For instance, I’ve read that eggs produced by free-running chickens (not cooped, allowed to roam and eat bugs, grass and so on – chickens being omnivores) have considerably lower levels of the supposedly “bad” cholesterol and so on than store-bought eggs produced by battery hens – which are fed corn.
Corn fed beef, and the typical foods americans can buy are one of the main causes of heart disease and the general poor health of our populace (sedentary lifestyle) being the 2nd leg of that stool. Third leg is big pharma. Back to beef. The reason the health nazis said,don’t eat beef, its bad for you is because corn fed beef (all you see in grocery stores most of the time) is really bad for you. The proteins, omega 3’s and omega 6’s are out of whack. Omega 3, good, omega 6, good, but only when balanced with omega 3 fatty acids. Grass fed beef is in proper balance, since the cows can properly digest/metabolize it. Corn feed on the other hand, makes the cows sick, increases their acidity (FYI, most chronic diseases stem from excess acidity), and this translates to meat that is very bad for your health. This adulteration largely presents in the fat, which is why your friendly doctor always said don’t eat fat, and the eating beef and the associated fat is bad for you. What your doc didn’t know was that grass fed beef, naturally raised and fed chickens/eggs, non farm raised fish, organic, whole milk, etc…. ALL are extremely healthy. It is when you eat the crap raised stuff, and/or combine it with crap carbs that your health goes off the rails. Don’t know if you all have heard, but there is a major rise in diabetes in China. Seems their middle class are embracing the standard American diet. When you eat crap proteins, and continue to eat high carb diets, the two just don’t mix. Cholesterol is required for healthy living, as long as it isn’t cholesterol from some animal that was fed corn and antibiotics its whole life. Feedlot cows, do you,know why they are limited to 8 weeks on the feedlots? The cows tend to die if they eat that corn rich diet for longer than that. Big ag has absolutely screwed America, and big pharma, and insurance companies and major health providers have reaped the rewards as well. Big auto just wants their fair share, and killing your older cars slowly, well eventually you will have to drop 30k on a new car, sooner than you normally would. I’d love to take a look in all these big ag buys pantrys and see what is on the shelf. I bet nothing that is made by Kellogg’s or general foods.
Eric–Your intuition is exactly correct.
Tomas lays it out in his post–couldn’t say it better myself. The man’s done his homework.
Gary, Can you explain why my unmodified vehicles, especially, the 1992 Toyota haven’t had anything replaced after using way more than 10%? Oh, I did replace the thermostat yesterday but that’s not fuel related. Feeding wet(no drying cost or energy used)distillers to local cattle is great. I have neighbors that just put up a 1000 head confinement and the manure is applied to grow more corn. The cattle are trucked to local packing plants instead of long distances.That is way better than railing the corn to Texas and then the manure nutrients are mostly wasted.
Martin,
Some people also never (literally, never) change their engine’s oil/filter – just periodic top-offs. They report “no problems.”
I wouldn’t do it myself.
The real issue in re ethanol is not its effect on ’90s-era stuff – which is all fuel injected and probably designed for alcohol-laced fuels, since “oxygenates” began to be put into gas back in the mid-late ’80s.
The issue is older stuff – carbureted, non-computerized stuff. Stuff not designed to burn alcohol-laced fuels. Which cannot self-adjust to a richer A/F ratio to compensate for the leaner mix. Which was assembled using gaskets and seals (and fuel tanks and lines) not resistant to alcohol.
And all cars – regardless of vintage – deliver poorer fuel economy using E10, E15 and so on relative to straight gas. That costs us money – or rather, it takes our money for the benefit of billion-dollar agri-business cartels.
Who can defend that?
Martin, I got a dose of 10%(minimum)ethanol in wife’s Cutlass one night during a storm. Since the owner’s manual says DO NOT in letters like that use more than 5% ethanol I never had, stayed away from it if possible(not). That “fuel’ lasted less than 2 days before melting the plastic end on the fuel filter. I lost fuel all the way across town, could see the gauge falling and had a 15′ circle around the car where I stopped to open a gate. I drained what little was left in the tank into a plastic bottle it dissolved. Absolutely no color to it, didn’t smell like gas at all. No thanks, if GM says DO NOT use, I won’t ever again and wouldn’t have that time had I been able to read the sign behind the sun-crazed lens.
Another big problem with corn used for fuel is 100% of it is Roundup Ready. More gyphosates being injected into the earth, the water and people’s gardens along with pastures. I see this first hand all growing season every year. It’s not like I have to research this on the web. I used to work for the NASS(National Agriculture Statistical Service)arm of the USDA. MY job was to map locations of fields and crops grown. All cotton is RR as is corn. Now we have all these old homesteads in this country in the middle of cotton fields that have had all the trees killed by Roundup. Even our water “shows” Roundup, you don’t even have to test for it. I once worked on a big farm that grew lots of milo and corn. The corn was fed to the cattle in the feedlot and the beef there was great. Whether it was not good for you I couldn’t say. This was long before chemical farming and we fed the entire corn plant to the cattle green so I suspect it was much healthier than pure kernel corn feed. Most of the feedlots around here(no more, EPA killed them)used to feed milo. I can tell you from butchering just about everything except cattle, the fat was white and pretty and the meat smelled good. Feedlot beef after slaughter these days is rank and stinks. One day we had a big piece of beef thawing I was going to cook on the Q and realized the temp was getting too high daily in the barn where the deer were hanging so we decided to butcher deer. I was hauling venison cuts in the house and got to smelling something rank. I was worried the deer was turning but it turned out to be the stink of the beef. I got the Q going and got the beef out of the house so we didn’t have to smell it. The venison was fine.
Someone mentioned 8 weeks max in the feedlot. That’s the first I’ve heard of it. When we fed the entire corn plant ears included, those cattle stayed for months till they reached 1100 lbs, the ideal slaughter weight. Damn, that was good beef too. Feedlots in my part of the country fed mainly mile, haygrazer and similar grains and I never noticed any health problems to speak of except cattle in feedlots will spread disease faster.
Eric, this is what is going on here in Iowa. Oil companies are sending 84 sub-octane and 91 up the pipeline—–no more 87 E0. Oil likes the sub 84 because it’s cheap to make and they can pass more crap off if the ethanol brings it up to 87. Anyway, we can still get 87 E0 which is a blend of 84 plus 91 and it is priced 30 cents more than E10 87. If there was no more ethanol, gas would be considerably higher than it is now—believe it or not.
I don’t doubt that, Martin. They’ve got us coming and going.
I’m “fortunate” to have a station not too far sway that sells 87 E0, which is fine for the low compression old stuff I have.
My Trans-Am, though, needs premium – and short of buying barrels of Sunoco 260 – there’s no realistic option but to use E10 premium. I saw this coming years ago, and took preventive measures:
Tore down carb and rebuilt with ethanol-compatible needle and seat, accelerator pump, float and gaskets. Up-jetted primary and secondary side.
Replaced all fuel lines from carb to tank with stainless steel and ethanol compatible flex (rubber).
Replaced fuel pump with a pump specifically designed to handle ethanol.
New gas tank – coated internally.
No problems since – but the above measures were not inexpensive. Worth doing, of course, to me – and economically justifiable because it’s a classic muscle car and worth something.
I’d estimate I spent $1,000 to make my Trans-Am ethanol compatible.
But what if you have a same era car that’s just a “driver” – not worth a lot of money, but you like having it and being able to use it?
What about the people who can’t afford to put $1,000 (or even $500) into an old car?
I guess they’ll just have to buy a new car and eat those monthly payments for the next six years…..
Martin, 30 cents would be about 10% where I live. That would be a good trade for no alcohol. I bought a new 44 Mag Stihl chainsaw in ’88. In ’89 while it was basically just broken in, I got some gas with alcohol and it ruined it’s rubber fuel pickup. It sucked shut while operating, leaned the engine and destroyed it. Then I got to spend $350 on a rebuild. First thing I did was look in the fuel tank. Sure enough, a new hard plastic pickup tube no doubt to account for ethanol. Gee thanks ethanol and the dealer who had no warning about there being alcohol in gas. Once more, along about ’88 we were fishing in a new Ranger, got in a big storm and the engine was quitting. I’d have to lay down and blow the line open and then watch it suck closed as we died in the water. Dark, lost, wind blowing 70mph and water temp in the 30’s. Looked like we’d probably get capsized on big trees broken off at the water line and die of hypothermia before making land. Gee thank ethanol. yeah, 30 cents a gallon, sounds like a friggin bargain to me.
The oxygen corrosion solution will need to be provided at the point of sale of ethanol. It’d require more subsidies and an additional crony industry, so haven’t they done it?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131001115736.htm
http://www.equipmentworld.com/e-10-alive-the-corrosive-damage-ethanol-gasoline-does-to-your-fuel-pump/
http://www.myotherdrive.com/dyn/dl/878.010718.20032008.18221.0008fi/Ethanol%2520diesel%2520fuel%2520blends%2520a%2520review.pdf
Maybe some of those bright midwesterners can share their secrets with the rest of us. How exactly is it they manage to use high ethanol content blends with no ill effects?
First–even if it’s a Good Idea(tm), secondly even if it actually works…
…it is a violation of the NAP to force me to do it.
And the “even if” fails the economics 101 test–if it’s so great, why does it have to be subsidized?
Then we have to look at the externalities–the hammer the socialists often use to pound free-market arguments. In this case–what are all the extra acres of grassland being brought to production doing to our soil? The extra fertilizer and herbicides and pesticides? Because being part of a government program means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry.
Statism–Ideas So Good, They HAVE To Be Mandatory.
Ethanol attracts water. When the two get together, they create the perfect environment to grow a type of bacteria called acetobacter. After getting drunk on the EPA-sponsored kegger in your gas tank, the acetobacter excrete acetic acid.
And acetic acid is very corrosive. If youβre refilling your gas tank every week or two, acetobacter donβt have time to grow a sufficient size colony to damage metal parts in your fuel system.
But if your fuel sits for longer periods of time these microorganisms continue to multiply until your gas tank contains damaging levels of acetic acid.
Ethanol loving bacteria(acetobacter aceti) accelerate cracking of pipeline steels
http://www.nist.gov/mml/acmd/201108_ethanol_pipelines.cfm
“Bacteria increased fatigue crack growth rates at least 25-fold compared to what would occur in air.”
Tor, it sure did a number on my Lincoln SA 200 Redface welder. Of course it ate the hoses off two pickups as well. I had forgotten it ate up a $300 weedeater too. All this happened in a 4 month or so period. I was one happy guy too. Believe it or not, $350 for that chainsaw engine was a fair chunk in ’89 and all the rest added to our financial woes. It just ate up everything on that welder. I guess it didn’t really hurt the Merc on that Ranger, just the entire fuel system though was replaced less the tank.
That isn’t quite enough to make a perfect environment for those bacteria; they also need trace amounts of minerals, particularly nitrates and phosphates – but there are probably enough of those around anyway.
Great post Eric – my last 65 Chevy van was done in by E10. It had never been rebuilt to handle unleaded, I was saving up for that, but then the fuel pump went out, then the carburetor,… remember when you could go to the Pick & pull and get a carb for 5 bucks? Not anymore. I got 3 carbs from Kragen’s a chain auto supply store, and each one was worse than the last, all “rebuilt” in Taiwan. The last one wouldn’t seat, poured gas all over the exhaust manifold when you hit the pedal – yikes.
I did finally get a working unit, but then some citizen punched the windshield, which was worth more than the car.
btw, EPAutos has a forum, check it out. It’s under “Tools” in the main menu.
The problem is buying remans from a parts store. Even a better one. I bought a reman distributor for my maverick because the bushings in it had failed. I then found the first one had crudely made replacement plates and the vacuum actuator had been plugged and didn’t work. It was intentionally disabled. I brought it back. They got me another one, the vacuum actuator was plugged but this still had it’s original plates and other parts. I kept that one and put my working vacuum part on it. Then I found the machined bushing that goes into the block was left as-cast. It would not go in the engine. After a lot of careful sanding I got the finish and diameter close enough for it to work. My original distributor is on the shelf. I ate the core charge because I would not give up my good original. If I ever have a problem I will rebuild the original and put it back in.
Best thing to do is buy new or rebuild yourself. Rebuild kits and bits are available if one looks hard enough. I’ve also rebuilt a starter using a junkyard starter,. but I just needed the front casting, not a wear part. Second best is to get remans from the car’s manufacturer. I’ve had good luck with motorcraft reman calipers.
Yes, there is a forum and Eric has been posting his articles there for comment as well. Anyone who likes the improved functionality of a forum discussion should give it a try. You can correct typos with the edit feature, Send Private Messages, add a new topic instantly, ignore posters whose content annoys you, etc.
Contact Dom or Eric for registration.
Hey everyone – there’s something I think you are all missing here. This isn’t a ‘back off to do the right thing’. This is a case of the EPA having their heads handed to them by hundreds of class action lawsuits from the shareholders of refiners around the US. Here’s the full background…
The EPA was about to mandate that refiners of RBOB gasoline sell a 10% to 15% blend…or pay a fine for every gallon sold below the minimum mix. Based on existing demand volumes visible in US already, this would have meant that refiners would have been *forced* to buy 18b gallons to blend in. But the catch is that the ethanol producers simply can’t produce that much ethanol in FY 2014… so there’s nowhere in the US where you can buy that much ethanol. The net result was a spike in ethanol future contracts and a recalculation of the refining cash flows by analysts for refiner expected cash flows in 2014, assuming current production rates. That in turn forced the investment community to start selling off the stocks of US refiners large and small like hotcakes.
It came to be known in the industry as the “blend wall” and was about to have a severe impact on the cash flows of refiners all across the country because producers couldn’t produce enough ethanol to meet expected mandated demand.
Then…drumroll… the shareholder lawsuits started! Hundreds of them… where the classes were ALL of the collective shareholders of all of the major US refiners. And all of a sudden DoJ was faced with putting an army of attorneys on the cases to deal with the wave… and the plaintiffs were not country bumpkins… they were the large institutional pension funds and retirement asset managers… people with deep pockets and very mature legal departments. It was about to turn into a free-for-all.
THAT’S when the EPA backed off… but just remember everyone this is only a temporary respite. As soon as the builders of ethanol plants get to a point where they can produce enough ethanol to feed projected demand for a universal E15 blend across the US, the EPA will go right back and mandate it. I give it about 2 years at most because ethanol production capacity in the US is growing at about 30% p.a.
So, enjoy the vacation everyone, but mark my words that in about 2 years the EPA will come right back and slam everyone with the mandate and you’ll probably wind up looking for fuel on the gray market if you want to save those vintage engines from being destroyed by the new blend.
Keeee-Rist I hate these bastards!
I’m with Jean more and more. Maybe it’s time to just start hunting these motherfuckers where they live.
Think the EPA would back off after a few of their minions were found spread all over their front porches by a .50 BMG round?
Thanks for the analysis too. I’m surprised the same hasn’t happened with Obomber’s coal-plant shutdown. A class action suit by millions of people whose power bills have doubled because Bathhouse Barry is closing coal-fired powerplants?
And the last US lead mine, also shut down by the EPA. (In employment terms, it would be “constructive dismissal” – they didn’t mandate the lead mine shut down, just mandated “cleanliness” levels you couldn’t meet. Backdoor ammo control; also puts fishing weights and CAR WEIGHTS at a premium. Why do I Caps car weights? (1) work-around on lack of lead for ammo cores; (2) fishing control; (3) since this is a car site, and I grew up in Jersey, and am now in Bean town after time in Erie – WTF? The cars don’t weight enough, you have to go buy effing weights to drive in the winter?! Another reason fuel efficiency sucks – rather than making us survive every little bump and bruise, and ensuring the car stays ON THE GROUND, we now drive plastic and tinfoil with “safety” crap up the Wazoo! And yet even with the added “Safety” weight, we’re driving cars designed to crumple, shatter, and disintegrate. WTF? Give me a CAR any day! Not a sheet of tinfoil on wheels, which I then need to weight down just to keep it on the road in stiff breeze!)
/Rant
As a firebrand, I generally suck – but I’ve been around the horn a few times, read like Number 5 (short circuit), and have had the benefits that (1) Grew up talking to lawyers, engineers, and chemists; I know things, and (2) People talk to me and trust me.
I got a lot of things wrong on individual human relations, esp. WRT women and what they want – learned the hard way.
But I also got a LOT of exposure to lots of things like fire, explosions, “I mgiht not come home from this, here’s what you need to know…”, flame propagation, chemistry, literature, how to use my brain for something other than a hat rack…
More practical experience would’ve helped – but I’ve got no qualms about disassembling things to find out how they work. And I can put them back together. (Provided I do it soon, nothing worse than being interrupted for a week or three with a massive rebuild, and then you don’t remember the order of parts and have to stumble through it. THAT is when you have “extras” … And sometimes, it goes BOOM. Which is entertaining in retrospect, but sucks at the time, especially if you lose an eyebrow… π )
I just get here ahead of the curve; these demos (greek) will never stop themselves. When you listen to fools / The Mob rules!
Thin the ranks; Darwin’s off-duty. At the very least, you break their reproductive cycle, and big morons that don’t procreate, won’t make little morons that grow up and shit in your food…
DT, thanks. I remember the big shitty with 15% ethanol demands by EPA. I take RigZone and they’ve been up in arms over this since it was first broached seriously(it’s always been in the background because big ag wants it and they get more reacharounds than big oil ….from the EPA).
The intrusion of the federal government is everywhere – from the capacity of your toilet to the fuel for your vehicle. There are 426 federal agencies, most of which are unconstitutional.
Unless these agencies are put out of existence the constriction of the county will continue unabated. Resolution: Strike The Root – not the symptom.
Tenth Amendment: βThe powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.β
Hi Liberty,
Indeed – but the root, in my view, is even deeper than that:
Assert the NAP and self-ownership. Any proposed action by an individual or group that accosts either principle is, on the face of it, an ethical breach and obviously, no legitimate basis for law (the use of force to compel or restrict action).
Dear lx,
Eric is tight on this point.
The very notion that a constitution is a sound basis by which to ensure justice is fallacious.
Have you watched this video? It lays out why “honoring the constitution” is not good enough, by a long shot. Constitutional rule is itself a violation of the NAP.
I’m allowed to rob you.
So DT – Let me see if I have this right. The corporations (and Wall St.) getting my tax money to turn corn into “gasoline” can’t ramp up production fast enough to meet the dictators 15% demand to improve the earth and ruin my old car and motorcycle.
So the dictator backs off long enough to allow their friends to do the build out the cash machine for them, all the while telling me it is because they…..?
And I thought scrapping thousands fully usable older cars driven to work by poor folks (cars for clunkers) was the stupidest fascist redistribution of wealth (back to the bankers loan departments and the car makers) that I had seen.
Brother, it don’t get no better than that.