Strange little car

A friend sent an email that at first I
brushed off. I had never heard of the
Edison2 product called VLC.

VLC stands for very light car. It is
called that because it’s light, it’s
simple, and is environmentally sound
among other things.

The vehicles light chassis and aerodynamic
body means it only needs a 250 cc engine
from a motorcycle to power it.

The Edison2 company
is located in Lynchburg, Virginia and was
started to compete in the Automotive X
Prize competition and actually won a
division prize in 2010.

Time magazine also named the VLC as
one of the 50 best inventions of the
year 2010.

The little cars run on E-85 and get
better than 69 mpg. So if sitting in
a cramped, weird-looking little box
that gets great mileage is your thing,
you may want to follow this group.

This vehicle may also be available
as an electric vehicle if things go
as planned.

We looked for 0-60 mph figures and
couldn’t find any. This could be the
car of the future, but we hope not.

Driving something that looks like a
cross between an insect and an
escape pod from a science fiction
movie just isn’t our thing.
Comments are always welcome.

A walk on the wild side

A friend emailed a video and after reading
a little about it, I almost didn’t watch it. I’m
glad I did. The one drawback for me was the
background music by Kenny G.

He is a fine musician and we’re sure he
has plenty of fans, we just don’t happen to
be among them.

But the film was shot in Yellowstone National
Park and features wildlife in their natural
habitat. If you like the outdoors, and/or
wildlife, you should give it a look.

Another friend sent a video of a debate on
ObamaCare. It becomes clear pretty quick who
wins the debate.

How about the USS Iowa firing her 16-inch
guns again?

And one old song called ‘Crazy’.

Comments are always welcome.

Are we going to glow in the dark?

We knew it was going to happen, it was only
a matter of time. And now the propaganda has
begun.

The state of Illinois is offering vouchers
to all citizens living within a 10-mile
radius of the Quad Cities Nuclear Generating
Station in Cordova.

These vouchers are for potassium iodine pills
in case of an ‘accident’ at the plant. This
gets as close as Rapid City in Illinois, and
LeClaire in Iowa.

We said propaganda for a reason. The plant
began operating in 1973! And the chances of
an earthquake big enough to cause core
damage was 1 in 37,037 when studied in 2010.

The 10-mile radius sounded fishy to us as
in the military we learned a little about
nuclear contamination, and it seemed to us
that the radius should be much bigger.

The Nuclear Regalatory Commission states
there are two emergency planning zones around
nuclear power plants.

The first zone is a plume exposure pathway
zone with a radius of 10 miles. This zone
is focused on exposure to, and inhalation of,
airborne radioactive contamination.

The second zone is an ingestion pathway zone
with a radius of 50 miles. The focus of this
zone is the ingestion of food and liquid
contaminated by radioactivity.

The population withing the 50-mile radius
was 665,207 in 2010, and Iowa is not issuing
vouchers for the two counties involved in
Iowa.

So either the NRC knows something they
won’t tell us, or this is a ploy to get
us thinking nuclear plants are bad. Or,
we may all glow in the dark.
Comments are always welcome.

The big green weenie

Remember in 2009 when Obamacare was rammed
down our throats, even though the majority
of Americans spoke out against it? Well
get ready.

Some are predicting the same thing will
happen with Obamology in 2013. He could
get his ecology themed agenda passed with
an inept Congress and an Executive order.

You may remember his re-election campaign
started with a promise of spending $4
billion on upgrades to conserve energy in
government buildings, and his wanting to
finalize an ecosystem task force.

More Czars? And how many of the companies
that got a piece of the $21 billion that
went to the wind and solar industry are still
in business?

His re-election campaign also mentioned
making climate change a priority. For
those of us with an IQ over room temperature,
that means a carbon tax and the end of the
coal industry.

We have a problem with that kind of thinking.
Even if there really is a problem, which
we doubt, it would be a global problem
and not one that could be solved by taxing
the citizens of one country.

The ending of the coal industry here may
actually be a blessing. We could just
export it all to China. They have more
than 2,000 coal-fired plants there with
another new plant opening every week.

Obama has talked a lot about the
‘greening’ of America; but isn’t revenue
from all the new taxes associated with
this agenda also green?

All this makes us wonder. Is the problem
that our planet is getting warmer? Or is
is the problem in the White House?
Comments are always welcome.

Tying up loose ends update

This post has a little bit of everything.
We’ll touch on global warming, a neat
little video, a record-breaking collector
car auction, a full-length movie, and
perhaps a little more. Here we go-

Lately it feels like the government wants
to tell us what to do, eat, drive, and
believe. Man-made global warming is one
of our pet peeves, along with the green
house gases BS.

Now it turns out carbon dioxide levels
are at a twenty year low!

And, once again leaked emails are in the news.
This time it involves James Hansen, the
“Godfather of global warming”. It seems he
got a little worried when we had record
lows in 2009.

Of course somehow,the supporters of the
theory will claim that is proof global
warming exists.

We got a neat video by email that
we thought was one of the best we’ve
seen in a while. It’s called “Flying
Over America”.

The 2012 Pebble Beach auction sold
$260 million worth of cars, which set
a record. The link has a slide show if
you want to see how much the big dogs
pay for their toys.

Might as well throw in a movie while we’re
at it. Here is the full length version of
the 1965 hit, Help! If you are
too young to remember, it starred a band
called the Beatles.

Here at Casa Cruiser we are hoping the
week will end soon. It has been a week
filled with losses, and when it rains it
pours. We’ve lost the wife’s Uncle,
Cousin, and today the oldest cat. We are
hoping death does take a holiday.

Enjoy the provided distractions, or at
least check them out.
Comments are always welcome.

Dinosaur gas?

An article in the NY Daily
News got us laughing again.

We know where the proponents of the
greenhouse gas abatement movement
think this is heading, but don’t
believe it will work.

They will come out with a plea for us
to stop eating red meat, or any meat for
that matter, to stop the flatulence and
save the ozone.

This could even spread to Mexican
restaurants and baked beans availability.

But their main defense of climate change
is global warming, and yet the article
states it was warmer when the dinosaurs
were here.

Scientists are now saying that dinosaurs
farting and belching made it get warmer
and led to their end.

Don’t fret though, a NASA scientist
checked and claims the gassy critters
only emitted a fraction of what we are
burning with fossil fuels today.

So although it was warmer then than it
is now, we have global warming. Even
though the dinosaurs were full of farts,
it may or may not be the cause of their
extinction. Absense of the backfires
would be a cause.

We await a press conference from Al
Gore to hear the inconvenient truth.
Comments are always welcome.

Earth day and the Lord’s day

Since we are Christian, and this is
Sunday, we were going to do the post
along those lines.

The type that starts with the backwoods
preacher saying “GOD is not the cause
of sickness and disease, MAN is the
cause of sickness and disease”.

But we decided to broach a few items
we have come across, some of which
do mention religion.

Today is the 42nd national observance
of Earth Day. The first such event was
held in America in 1970, with a nationwide
teach in.

Proponents say it is day to ensure the
cleansing of our world and ensuring it
stays that way.

Others say the first date was chosen
because it fell on the 100th anniversary
of the birth of Vladimir Lenin.

We don’t have a car in that race. So,
Happy Earth Day if you are a believer,
and enjoy the day if you aren’t.

In one of the few positive stories
concerning our Christian faith, the
Governor of Arizona signed a bill
that would allow teaching Bible classes
in public schools.

A Christian organization at Vanderbilt
University has a dilemma. They have been
told by school administration that the
student group would lose its ‘recognized
status’ unless they removed a
requirement that group leaders have a
“personal commitment to Jesus Christ”.

Then from Virginia comes word that an
elementary school teacher changed the
words to “We Are the World” to remove
the mention of God, twice, for an
upcoming class performance.

Sometimes we miss common sense.
Comments are always welcome.

More hot air?

Another group jumped into the global
warming/greenhouse gas debate. This
time it’s 49 highly respected former
NASA astronauts, engineers, and scientists.

Yes, these alumni are now saying that
NASA is politicizing science.
This group claims “The global-warming
hypothesis has never been proved…look at
the data.”

Have to wonder what those who worship at
the altar of AlGore think about this. But
it gets better. Another article mentions
that this group wants NASA to
“refrain from including unproven and
unsupported remarks in its future
releases”.

They also claim the fact “that man-made
carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic
impact on global climate change” is “not
substantiated.”

While this will do little to stop NASA
from the practice, it should give some
cause for thought. These are intelligent,
respected people speaking up against the
belief of global climate change.

And if greenhouse gases aren’t causing a
problem, if there isn’t a problem, why is a
change needed? We have plenty of low-cost
coal, and we have oil. So if there is no
global climate change because of them;
why not use what we have?

We don’t know what is going on, but
something smells.
Comments are always welcome.

Wilted green

In our last post we mentioned the
“green industry” and how it isn’t
doing very well. As promised, here’s
a little more on that subject.

Hard as it may be to believe, the
solar manufacturing companies have
been hit hard by an oversupply of
the market.

Q-Cells, once believed to be the
largest solar manufacturer in the
world is now insolvent. Q-Cells,
Solar Millennium, and Solar Trust of
America have filed for bankruptcy.

In Germany, Solarworld reported a
loss of EUR 299m last year, and
won’t forecast this years sales.
The German solar manufacturing
industry may disappear within a
handful of years due to competition
from the Chinese.

In Norway, Renewable Energy
Corporation has said they will close
its 300MW mono-crystaline water plant
permanently. This will be done because
the company couldn’t cut cost
enough to make a profit.

But wait, things aren’t so great in
China either. LDK Solar announced that
sales were running half of last years
and they may post a negative gross
margin.

And the WilderHill New Energy
Global Innovation Index (NEX), which
tracks the health of 97 clean energy
stocks around the world, slipped 5
points earlier this month. This brought
the level up only 12 points above its
8 year low from last December.

The news isn’t all bad though. Claim
is that in the first quarter of 2012
there has been an 11.8% jump for the
US S&P Index. We imagine the bad news
will be blamed on Bush.
Comments are always welcome.

Which is it?

We caught a little bit of national
news on a government-owned local TV
station and heard of a problem with
the pollen count.

Seems the normal pollen count is
around 2,000, but in some areas of
of our country it was up over 9,000.

The reporter stated it was a very
dangerous level of pollen and that
even people who haven’t shown any
allergy symptoms in the past are doing
so now.

Those with breathing problems were
advised to stay indoors during such
high pollen counts.

This caused us to wonder. We are not
scientist or botanists, but have
always thought the air had to reasonably
clean for something like this to happen.

If the air was as polluted as some are
claiming; wouldn’t the pollen count be
way down? Can’t have it both ways.
Comments are always welcome.