August 2008 Archives

A new large four, Toyota's most powerful four. I can't tell if this engine is destined for this country but it's an interesting development for a large SUV where bigger is usually considered better. Toyota will switch production at its new Mississippi plant to the Prius from its Highlander SUV.

The 2009 all-new Highlander will be equipped with either a 3.5L V6 or a 3.3L hybrid powerplant. Toyota is expanding the Highlander's powertrain line-up for 2009 by adding a more fuel efficient 2.7L four-cylinder engine. The new engine produces 187 horsepower at 5,800 RPM and 186 lb-ft at 4,100 RPM, making it the most powerful four cylinder engine in Toyota's line-up.

The new 2.7L engine comes with a 6sp automatic transmission. Toyota has not released the fuel econ figures as yet, these figures will be announced closer to the January 2009 launch date. The Highlander was first launched in 2001. The Japanese deportee version is called the Klugger. jamaica-gleaner.com

J R writes greenmesh:

When looking for hybrid mileage information, ask what MPG is in Winter. My 3 year old (Toyota) Highlander gets 28-30 in Summer, but drops to 21-23 in Winter because the gas engine must run more often to provide heat for passengers. It was better the first Winter but refineries were forced to change additives and that made MPG worse.

The new federal mileage stickers (in effect after this vehicle was purchased) are a more realistic assessment of hybrid mileage. Everyone knew a Toyota Prius didn't get 60 mpg, but that was the law and the number was legal and every other manufacturer used the same standardized testing.

Ethanol reduces mileage. I have given up trying to fill up with pure gasoline because that option just doesn't seem to exist in the York area anymore. Every pump seems to sport the 10% mix with sayings like "enriched with ethanol" and pictures of corn stalks.

Corn based ethanol is a counterproductive alternative form of energy helping to increase food prices and lowering the national fleet fuel efficiency. Compared to gasoline and diesel, the gas mileage in ethanol is the least. Ethanol yields about 30% less gas mileage than gasoline. The stuff even takes more energy to produce from field to consumer than it is worth. Ask our politicians why they love it so much.

My neighbor Chuck says his Chevy pickup with a 6 liter V-8 gets 11 mpg whether he runs it hard or takes it easy. It's basically a simple, large displacement energy converter that doesn't strain or change it's operating function to adjust for load.

Hybrids use several tools to squeeze mileage out of a gallon of gas so mileage can vary widely.

I was thinking about this while lying under my
motorcycle doing the 6000 miles service.

Being green around the year 2000 meant driving a tiny hybrid Honda Insight with a "Save the whales" bumper sticker plastered between those funky rear fender skirts. These lone conservers were few and far between navigating a sea of SUV's, consuming 5 times the fuel, labeling them liberals.

I have never understood the label liberal because it's often applied to one who chooses to conserve resources (or reduces profit?); which would be conserve-ative..? It's one of those strange spins of economic-politics, like having a trade embargo with Communist Cuba for 40 years when Communist China has become our dominant trade partner and labor force.

The innovative minds of yesterday that invented (and capitalized on) modern convenience, today capitalize on those inventions and innovate new layers of surcharge and ownership, adding layers upon layers of costs to consumers.

Green today means more about marketing than solution. Under the complicated layers of production of products and energy delivery, consumers have realized that they need to take steps to simplify and extract value out of everything that empowers their existence, but are left with more green static than tools to fix problems.

Capitalism is this wonderful/horrible thing where opportunity seems unlimited yet the long-term prognosis screams metastasized cancer without a moral thread sewing the futures of consumers together.

CEOs have replaced feudal lords. It's questionable which leader has a greater motivation to support their underclass.

I ran across this interesting, ranting article from a South Africa paper, How hybrid cars cause hunger thetimes.co.za The hybrid part doesn't make sense, but the historical perspective is fascinating.

The author relates modern agribusiness selling food stock to the highest bidder (corn for ethanol) to the emergence of apartheid where black people were forcibly removed from fertile farming land, relocated to unproductive land and forced to work on big commercial farms as underpaid laborers..

Patel points out that in the 2000 years before the British arrived in India, famines occurred once every 120 years. After the British imposed the market on India's agricultural production, famines occurred every four years.

Despite the shortcomings of feudalism prior to the arrival of the British, India's landowners fed peasants when harvests were bad. For millennia, a moral economy prevailed, which ensured that nobody starved.

Killing off the guzzlers

The 51-year-old Michigan Truck Plant, located in Wayne, Mich., will start building the Focus in November when it kicks equipment now used to build the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUV to it's Kentucky plant. A third shift will be created to boost production of the Ford Focus.

Ford's Cuautitlan Assembly Plant, located in Mexico, is to begin building a Fiesta subcompact car in 2010. The plant currently produces the F-Series pickup trucks. The Louisville Assembly Plant, located in Kentucky, also will begin producing a new small car in 2011. It is now home to the Ford Explorer.
wsj.com

( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News )

The freshman transition program at Susquehannock High School aims to alleviate some of the fear related to high school. Visit students on their first day.

The idea is that eating some foods, like meat, uses more fossil fuel than driving a car, so a bicyclist consuming food uses more fossil fuel than driving a car. bicycleuniverse.info

I don't know where a sedentary person who gorges on meat and drives a full-sized SUV fits into all of this...

• Meat requires much more fossil fuel to produce than vegetables and grains; about 145 times more for beef than for potatoes.


• If the entire world ate the way the U.S. does, the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years


• The typical American could save almost as much gas by going vegetarian as by not driving.

I was riding my bike through Harpers Ferry, West Virginia today with a friend and stopped at the site of an old textile plant.

Everyone is familiar with 19th century water wheels powering small grain mills, but what was interesting about this pre-1850 installation was that they used four efficient turbines (see picture below) to drive an entire factory through mechanical transfer.

Water was gradually constricted by narrowing water tunnels, condensing the volume of water creating more power. Think of your finger squeezing over an open garden hose.

It was said that the factory could make fabric cheaper than mills in Baltimore.

Free power harnessed by American innovation 150 years ago ran an entire factory.

No worries about a 30% increase in the cost of natural gas. No hostile foreign governments to feed with our dollars. No commodity speculators to profit by escalation of price brought on by an energy monopoly strangling the economy. No competing for oil with India and China.

Free domestic power by harnessing the flow of nature.

Tunnels that brought water to the mill.

( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News )

A random visit to Morgan E. Cousler Park with two Hula-Hoops. Park visitors try their hula and talk about their memories.

Shipping grapes from Chili or strawberries from California takes alot of energy.

Because industrial farming draws on the economy of scale, our food is increasingly grown in concentration in specific areas of the country. This is so common that it has shaped much of our country's geographic identities--the western Plains are wheat country, the Midwest is the Corn Belt--but it has reached extremes. For instance, approximately ninety percent of all the fresh vegetables consumed in the United States are grown in California's San Joaquin Valley.xix

This national-scale system is possible only because it uses large quantities of fossil fuels to transport food products to the consumer. It is now common practice to ship food not just around the country, but around the world. (In 2005, more than $120 billion of agricultural products crossed U.S. borders as imports and exports.)xx As a result, the average American foodstuff travels an estimated 1,500 miles before being consumed. sustainabletable.org

York is surrounded by local produce growers and this time of year produce is plentiful.

Jump to the extended entry for a list of local suppliers of produce.

I was mowing with my electric lawn mower last night past my neighbor's full-sized Chevy pickup that now sits there for weeks at a time getting dirt circles under the tires. Chuck actually put stabilizer in the vehicle that gets 11mpg because it rarely gets used.

The cheap plug-in electric mower I purchased at the beginning of the summer is great.

Some handle hardware kept falling apart, but that was fixed with some lock washers for $2. It's quiet, doesn't stink when it runs, requires no maintenance and I haven't bought a drop of gasoline for a mower since.

The scooter that replaced the truck for commuting two months ago now has over 1000 miles on it.

Chuck's co-workers asked him if we was going to keep using it now that gasoline has dropped more than 50 cents a gallon. His reply, "No, now it just costs me $3.50 cents to fill the tank instead of $4." He often marvels at how much more money he has in his pocket now that it isn't getting burned up on gasoline to push around a huge metal box.

So as the summer comes to a close and gas prices decline because of a reduction in demand, the question is will people go back to consuming as it becomes more affordable.

The steeple of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, on South George Street in York is getting a new lead coated copper roof.

There was a time when copper roofs were the longest lasting roof next to slate, however acid rain can reduce the life of a copper roof in some parts of the country to under a decade. The lead coating is resistant to acid rain.

• Moving freight is five times more efficient using a train rather than a tractor trailer.
• Four miles of new railroad line can be built for the price of one mile of road.
• Electrically powered trains can use domestic fuel sources. A century ago, York had an extensive electric trolley/inter-urban system. York's street railway is a dream of tomorrow. (greenmesh 8/06)

Innovative minds looking for new revenue streams killed the railroads.

Consider all the jobs, wealth and competition that was created by our car centered, personal transport society. Cars, dealerships, parts, the insurance industry. Thousands of truck drivers, shipping companies and owner operators traversing the roads using diesel and services. All of this a major feed for the oil industry.

And it all worked as long as oil was cheap.

The once cheap oil that brought us a uniquely American car centered transportation culture is now strangling our economy and future success competing in a world market.

Pennsylvania is fortunate to have many short-line rail corridors still intact like the one along the Heritage Rail Trail and the Stewartstown Railroad waiting for innovative minds and clean technology to move large volumes of freight and people more efficiently.

Interesting thing about riding alone on a motorcycle trip is that you are never really alone. There is a bond formed by two-wheeled travelers. Perhaps it is the shared risk or the shared responsibility for each other. It's symbolized by "the wave", a synchronized passing of open palms in opposing lanes.

I decided to take the long way down to my destination on the coastal border of North and South Carolina. The Outer Banks of North Carolina connects back to the mainland with a system of ferries.

Motorcycles are strange creatures on small ferries. Ferries bounce and roll and riders are usually advised to stay with their bike.

With the first ferry, I shot past a line of 50 cars because there is always room for a bike.

With the second ferry, I was first in line with a Harley rider named Mike. We were tucked between the lines of cars in the center of the bow.

Two hours standing guard over land loving machines on choppy water. Two hours of shared conversation spanning a lifetime

My fascination with two-wheeled journeys began freshman year in high school.

Three buddies told their parents that they were staying over each other's houses; we hit the road and bicycled through the night. The exhaustion, the moments of fear, the laughing made it memorable. I don't even remember if there was a destination. We were just going far.

It was a world shared by no one. All those people trapped in their cars going somewhere or sleeping the night away were getting nowhere. We were kings ruling our adventure kingdom.

Motorcycle trips are usually framed by weather reports and last week was scheduled to fall apart right in the middle. It really doesn't matter if the weather changes because that often creates an place to stop and you might just meet someone you wouldn't have met otherwise.

There is an unwritten law about not leaving on a trip in the rain. That's just miserable. This week turned out perfect with windows of clear riding and a rain stop just as planned in the middle.

( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News)

Brent Bathory, of Red Lion, died while playing in the water in an area not designated for swimming at Gifford Pinchot State Park. A visit to the scene.

In the 1980's and 90's, I used to slam the vacation road in a VW diesel Golf.

My concept of vacation planning was to head west and make a right at North Dakota... or wander southwest until... I needed three days to get home.

Once I was having such a good time in Pitkin, Colorado after taking on a new identity for two weeks, that I left there on a Friday evening and had to be back at work Sunday morning in York.

For the past six years, my vacation has been motivated by a motorcycle. Sure there is something wonderful about driving a few hundred miles and filling up with $10 of fuel, but with simple frugality comes a richness of experience.

Smells are richer, those you come in contact seem kinder because of your vulnerability. Fellow riders strike up a conversation without pause.

Once you loose two wheels and let the air pour though your clothes, it's hard to hide in a car during a vacation again.

Cars are for work. Cars are filled with fast food wrappers and stress.

My bike is freedom.

Next: 1259 miles of adventure in five days.

( Paul Kuehnel - Yory Daily Record / Sunday News )

Dallastown swimming star Scott Conley comes back, with the help of his wife Kim Shorter, struggling bit by bit for nearly a decade after a massive brain aneurysm.

Some domestic hybrid vehicles I would love to see:

• A 4-cyl Jeep Wrangler hybrid, the size it was before it started to look like a mini Hummer.


• A 4-cyl Ford Ranger hybrid pickup. Give us a box to move things that gets good mileage.


• Anything that gets 50 mpg

Honda, who is probably wishing they had a few 60+ mpg hybrid Honda Insight's (built from 1999-2006) to sell will introduce a new $19K dedicated hybrid car that looks very much like a Toyota Prius and is expected to get 60 mpg. Cheaper to buy and more miles per gallon than a current Prius.

Honda is going to execute this by using platform parts from the tiny Honda Fit with a smaller Integrated Motor Assist engine assembly than is in the current Civic Hybrid.

I always wonder why cars like The Honda Fit (28 city/34 highway mpg) and the Smart car (33 mpg city and 40 mpg) don't get better mileage. If a Chevy Impala can get 30 on the highway, why can't a super tiny car get better mileage than 34. I could get 30 mpg out of a 6-cyl 1968 Plymouth Valiant built 40 years ago and it was a crude, clumsy chunk of car.

The Prius itself, around for a decade, will morph into a bigger, more powerful car yet promises a few more mpg than the current Prius.

Something dopey happens to small, efficient cars on long production runs. They often get larger and dumber. Lets hope Toyota doesn't wreck a good thing.

GM and Chrysler...

Blogging at 75 mph on the Pennsylvania Turnpike with a very old Dell laptop.

In the computer industry, marketing green means recycling, using less hazardous materials and low energy use. You can buy a better computer every four months because it is better for the environment and works better... right?.

I was looking to build a laptop for free that was functional... with up to date functionality. I wanted a laptop that would supplement my high end work laptop that I use for video editing. A machine for vacations and mobility, like blogging from a motorcycle trip; places where I didn't want to risk damage, theft and data loss.

I was handed a kind donation by our office manager, a Dell Inspiron 5000e, for my experiment.

This machine was probably state of the art before the turn-of-the-century. Windows 98, 10 gig drive. 64 MB of RAM, no network connection, 1! USB port, and no wireless card. The nice part about these machines is that the screen is so small and the processor so slow, generally they don't take a lot of power. This thing will go hours on a battery.

At first I was going to build a Linux machine. I use Ubuntu on one of my home desktops and like it, but my subject only has 64 MB of RAM which is under the minimum for Ubuntu. I also wanted to use a Verizon Evolution-Data Optimized (EVDO) wireless broadband USB fob from my XP work laptop without much thinking about making it compatible.

Windows 98 is about useless. I wiped it with a copy of Windows 2000 that I had from a long dead laptop.

Added:
--Verizon broadband software connected to my one USB slot
--Firefox browser 3.0 (The IE browser that came with my old version of W2K was so old I couldn't even get into Microsoft's own download site to upgrade so I gave up)
-A 512 MB stick of RAM a friend gave me for free. Together with my 64 MB chip I now have 128 MB of RAM. You are not supposed to mix different kinds of RAM but it works. A BIOS update would probably extract more memory. I might get some real RAM, but that would cost me more than free.

Now I have the most current browser and mobile broadband. Most everything I do is browser based so I could stop here and be happy.

Joshua Tomel, Program Director Long Island Electric Auto Association comments to my post,
New dawn for electric Chevy S-10 (June 24, 2008)

Paul,
Yes I know about that. The reporter neglected to mention that my true feelings about even getting this truck came about from seeing the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?". That quote that you put up was in the part about how I thought (about) Jimmy Carter's call to change and how we fundamentally got around went unheard and unloved.

The S-10 is have charging problems since early July. I need to find a decent EE to fix it. Since the article appeared we now have a local Electric Auto Association, lieaa.org. Anyone is welcome to come, and we meet at the Automotive Technology wing of Lupton Hall on the campus of SUNY Farmingdale on the 1st Wednesday of every month.

Cycle World via the International Motorcycle World website lists nine frugal fuel sipping motorcycles. I was at one of their shows in Washington D.C. last year. Great way to see almost every model available in one stop.

1. Honda CRF230L - 93 MPG
2. Honda Nighthawk - 90 MPG
3. Yamaha XT250 - 80 MPG
4. Aprilia SportCity 250 - 75 MPG
5. Kawasaki Ninja 250R - 60 MPG
6. Yamaha WR250X - 60 MPG
7. Suzuki GSX650F - 56 MPG
8. Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 - 55 MPG
9. Suzuki SV650 - 55 MPG

Interesting to note that a home grown Harley with an 883 cc engine gets the same mileage as many bikes with smaller displacement. And they forgot the Harley's Buell Blast with a 500 cc single cylinder that gets 64/73 mpg according to the Buell website. The bike falls into the same price bracket as others on the list.

I would love to see Harley market into the economy euro/japanese high fuel economy rider market. The market is ripe for a domestically made fuel squeezer.

Build it here and squeeze foreign oil. The concept makes me giddy.

Hayes Diversified Technologies, Hesperia, CA has a 667cc diesel motorcycle that gets 105 mpg. Production is delayed due to production requirements of the military.

I ride a BMW 800 ST which gets 67mpg. Hardly a frugal ride for this cheap soul, but it was the highest fuel mileage bike I could find with an engine that suited me that I wouldn't mind riding on an Interstate at 70 mph for 6 hours (and could get out of it's own way at that speed).
67 mpg motorcycle grocery getter camper (greenmesh.com 5/08)

My Ross bicycle had some cool engine noises. On a normal day, two cards attached with wooden clothespins made it a "two-cylinder". When I was in the mood for more power, I attached four. Using six cards usually resulted in complete "engine" failure with cards and pins flying all over the place.

A study at the University of California found that blindfolded volunteers could hear a petrol or diesel car from 36ft away, but they did not hear a Prius until it was just 11ft from them.

The engine sound is played through a waterproof loudspeaker next to the car's radiator, with the pitch and frequency helping to identify the vehicle's distance and speed.

The front-facing speakers mean that once the car has passed, the sound is no longer heard.

The system will operate all the time in electric-only vehicles, but in hybrids, it only operates when the car is using electric power.
www.telegraph.co.uk

As many Harley-Davidson riders with screaming eagle after market exhaust pipes will tell you, loud pipes save lives.

Our 15th president James Buchanan probably never campaigned as the green candidate, but there was a plumbing system in his former Lancaster home, Wheatland, that collected water from the roof. The system dates back to around 1840.
Tap water was a rare luxury in the early part of the 19th century and though the house is about 5 miles from the center of Lancaster, five miles of rutted roads was pretty far out into the county - no running water, no electricity. This didn't stop American ingenuity.

The system collected water from a pipe in the roof and filled a cistern in the attic. The huge cistern was constructed of ferris metal plates and rivets. Water fed by gravity was piped down to a shower, tub and bidet in a room beneath the cistern

The water wasn't heated, but a hot attic would transfer heat to the metal cistern and large bodies of water generally take a long time to cool after a hot day. A guess would make this water about 50 degrees warmer than anything dipped from a well after some good sunny days of an unventilated attic.

According to Patrick Clarke, executive director for The James Buchanan Foundation, not much is currently known about the system. Clarke is in the photos.

Although President Bush hasn't campaigned as a green president, his home in Crawford Texas has a 25,000-gallon underground cistern that collects rainwater and gray water where it's purified and used for irrigation. (greenmesh 3/2007)

Check out the automated rainwater collection system I built that collects rainwater from my roof and stores it under my deck. - Part I, Part II, Part III

( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News )

The kids, from Stillmeadow Church of the Nazarene's day care center, were at Cousler Park in Manchester Township to raise awareness that children as young as five years old living in northern Uganda are forced by rebel troops to help overtake the country's government.

I am starting to hear McCain scream for offshore drilling in my sleep. His cry sounds almost frenzied in a speech I listened to Monday. There are lot of other cries (and actions) that would could motivate us on to energy independence sooner.

The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage time.com

If the price of gasoline went down to $1.50 a gallon next week, suddenly all those useless full-sized SUV's sitting in used car lots depreciating would be in demand and spring to life - because we could now "afford" them.

It's animal/human nature to consume as much resources as you can, because you can take it.

We can drill and pump and, if it were possible, double output... and then we would consume our way back to the next price hike.

Eventually we will drill everywhere, however the daily cry for drilling doesn't offer me any peace now or for the future.

Drilling for more oil is just a dead end.

( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News)

The Day of Play event at Lincoln Park, sponsored by York City and local non-profit organizations, hopes to raise awareness about childhood obesity and kick-off a community drive to update city park play equipment.

"About 35 percent of kids in York County are at risk for being overweight or are overweight," said Kevin Alvarnaz, director of WellSpan Community Health Improvement.

( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News )

The Fresh Air Fund puts city kids in rural and suburban homes. Two sisters from New York City spend the summer with the Whiteley's in York Township.

( Paul Kuehnel - York Daily Record / Sunday News

Deer Creek's southbound journey to the Susquehanna River in Maryland begins humbly at a retention pond surrounded by suburban homes in Shrewsbury.

A report by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission says the creek will become progressively stressed over the next 17 years as growth spreads and populations rise.

When North American was virgin forest, Pennsylvania was covered in old growth timber. Timber and grassland held drops of rain. Because floods were held back by so much vegetation, flooding came slowly and the banks of creeks weren't scoured by erosion. Shallow bank walls make it natural for streams to overflow and deposit silt. A healthy stream overflowing it's banks becomes wider and slower, eroding less in it's path.

Extremes develop: As development of structures and roads expand, so do roofs and parking lots. Water moves faster off these hard surfaces eroding streams faster and sending water once destined to recharge the aquifer out to sea.

Municipal water systems pull water from the aquifer and often wind up as discharge into streams from a treatment plant rather than going back into the aquifer.

Retention ponds, planting high grasses in lowland areas and terracing are all methods that have been used in the Shrewsbury area to simulate nature, though looking at some new construction down there you have to wonder if any thought was given to runoff.

As resident Jim Cathell says in my video, "all that flood water is stuff that could go into the aquifer, if it (the creek) turns into a dry bed that only has water in it when it rains, what good is that going to do anybody"