SuzukiSavage.com - Being Green, as seen by an old fart.

splash07

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #15 - 05/14/12 at 07:13:16

...and in those days cars got 5-10 mpg, and the American motorway and auto culture was born. bigger was better and aerodynamics was a four letter word.

So, no you were not green in those days.

....and in those days there was no such thing as the clean water act, clean air act, or the EPA. Back then the Ohio river caught fire multiple times (I dont think they are supposed to do that). The landfill was the ONLY way to dispose of refuse back then, and most sewer pipes went straight to the nearest body of water.

...so again, no you were not green back then.

...and back then you spread harmful chemicals to control insects without testing them. Approved the process of strip mining, invented the strip mall, and owned a refrigerator that draws as much power as my entire house of electronics.

However, everything that we do today is not green either so.....no one is green and we have all failed.

The truth is that we have made leaps and bounds in some areas and digressed in others. As time marches on each generation is faced with new challenges and each generation will come up with unique solutions. The advancement in technology often solves some environmental issues while creating new ones. For example, we have made cars more efficient and attainable, cured diseases, increased the quality of life across the board, and decreased the need for manual labor which lowers the stress, wear and tear on our workforce. But at the same time we have increased survival rates of children, increased the average life span, and facilitated an unprecedented population boom which means more cars on the road, less available fresh water and food (look to the recent famines in Africa, and even the droughts here in the states), and an overall greater pull on natural resources. Its a balancing act and we are certainly not tight rope walkers, but maybe one day things will level off. In the meantime i will continue to stock up on emergency rations, guns, and ammo for when it all comes crashing down.

p.s. please dont print this unless its on a brown paper bag

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gerald.hughes

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #16 - 05/14/12 at 07:24:51

When I was in high school, I drove a small car that got better mileage than my Prius. My parents cars all got over 35 mpg.

Yes, we had landfills, but what we put in them was almost all biodegradable. Take a sample of what goes into today's landfills, and almost none of it is biodegradable.

Yes, the fridge used electricity, but aside from lights, and the radio, it was about all the electrical in the house. Today we have little lights on everywhere, telling us that all of our electronics are on all the time and using power. If you go back and look at the data, homes in the 50's and 60's used a fraction of the electricity that we use today. I have solar panels that generate, on average, 30 kwh a day. It covers what we use and then some. When I was a boy, it would have powered the neighborhood.

PS, if you think that this country has increased the survival rates of children since the 50's, especially for those not covered by health insurance, then you need to think again.

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splash07

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #17 - 05/14/12 at 07:42:01

gerald.hughes wrote on 05/14/12 at 07:24:51:

When I was in high school, I drove a small car that got better mileage than my Prius. My parents cars all got over 35 mpg.

Yes, we had landfills, but what we put in them was almost all biodegradable. Take a sample of what goes into today's landfills, and almost none of it is biodegradable.

Yes, the fridge used electricity, but aside from lights, and the radio, it was about all the electrical in the house. Today we have little lights on everywhere, telling us that all of our electronics are on all the time and using power. If you go back and look at the data, homes in the 50's and 60's used a fraction of the electricity that we use today. I have solar panels that generate, on average, 30 kwh a day. It covers what we use and then some. When I was a boy, it would have powered the neighborhood.

PS, if you think that this country has increased the survival rates of children since the 50's, especially for those not covered by health insurance, then you need to think again.

While any one of my talking points is up for debate my overall message remains true. Being green is a dynamic process, something we still struggle to understand. What is green today might be an environmental disaster tomorrow. The best we can do is be as green as possible as it is currently understood and change as needed.

P.S. My own home uses a fraction of the electricity of the average American household, accomplished by simply turning things off when i'm not there (including the HVAC)

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splash07 Serious Thumper Offline Posts: 911 Charleston, SC Gender:	Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart. Reply #18 - 05/14/12 at 07:42:58 When I was in high school, I drove a small car that got better mileage than my Prius. My parents cars all got over 35 mpg. Which cars were those?
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Boule’tard

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #19 - 05/14/12 at 07:53:12

A Honda CRX-HF from the mid eighties puts a lot of cars to shame. Mine would get 50mpg consistently. It had a weird 12 valve head (3 per cylinder) and you had to adjust the valves every 15,000 miles, but it was easy. No FI, just a carb. 5-speed with a good tall 5th gear.. the engine would turn 2000 RPM at 60 mph. NO power steering. Gah, why do they insist on power steering on the smallest go-kart of a car these days? Must be a legal thing.

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LANCER

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #20 - 05/14/12 at 10:17:01

Bought a '71 Ford Pinto brand new from the dealer in Enterprise AL for $2000 when in flight school. It had a 1.6 L engine from the English Ford Cortina; just a plain OHV 4 banger with a 1 brrl carb (early 50's technology); basic 4 speed on the floor; got 30 mpg and would get all the way up to about 75 if there was a tail wind.
Of course it had manual steering but it was a rack & pinion system so worked very well.
At about 70k+ miles my dad and I tore it down; 3 angle valve job and shaved the head, got a brand name midrange camshaft, Mallory dual-point ignition upgrade, header/muffler for better flow, aluminum intake with 2 bbl Weber and a new red high flow air filter. Then we found a good set of shocks and some of the new fangled radial tires that had just come out to keep that puppy on the road.
It had drum brakes on all 4 corners but they worked pretty darn well.
The car weighed all of 2030 lbs. Yep, verified on a local truck scale.
The crowning piece was a High Performance Chrome Radiator Cap from JC Whitney...that is what made the real power !!!

After all was said and done and it had logged 400-500 break-in miles on a cross country drive it started to step up and out. It ran like a hopped up foreign sports car and handled equally well. It would wind up to over 80 in 3rd and topped out in the 105-110 range; would cruise down the interstate at 85 while it sang a beautiful song out the pipe (back then 75 mph was a common legal speed ... before Carter ya know ? ! ) Back then I drove Oklahome-South Carolina and back frequently so spent a lot of freeway time in that car. It was a ball to drive. During late night and the wee hours of the morning I-40 was 95% trucks and the cruising speed of traffic was 80-85. Of course passing required a burst of speed to get around the big trucks safely.

Anyway, the thing ran and drove great; had lots of power compared to what it was before and was just plain fun to drive. Driving the black line type roads in the Smokey Mountains was especially fun. (Back then I-40 was not complete in that area so there was a detour after passing Knoxville and came out somewhere around Greenville SC...lots of curves and such Cheesy

) And to top it off the fuel efficiency increased. It went from a stock 30 mpg to 32-33 mpg...overall average; not just highway.
It was simple, basic, easy to work on and was pretty much bullet proof; would cross pastures, dirt & rock roads; herd cattle; cross rain swollen creeks and flooded roads (it would float like a VW Beetle) and just keep on going.
It died a Hero's death saving my life one night on I-35 S when I ran upon some clear ice from freezing rain and plowed into the jacked up rear of a 60's model Impala. My bumper went under his and the engine and all body parts above the frame absorbed the impact. I was banged up a bit but no serious damage. It was a sad day to see it hauled off by a wrecker........deep sigh. Undecided

Improving fuel efficiency IS GREEN

A lot of the things we do here every day are GREEN (just another word coined for the time being to describe "doing something practical using basic wisdom).
We use and reuse; modify and make better; improve efficiency; etc etc.

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gerald.hughes

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #21 - 05/14/12 at 10:33:23

splash07 wrote on 05/14/12 at 07:42:58:

When I was in high school, I drove a small car that got better mileage than my Prius. My parents cars all got over 35 mpg.

Which cars were those?

I drove a Vespa 400 that got 60 mpg, and my parents drove 36 hp VW bugs that got 40. (I also had a 36 hp Ghia that would get between 45 and 50 on the highway and 40 around town. (Kind of like owning a Geo Metro.)

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Drifter

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #22 - 05/14/12 at 10:59:04

I think Nixon started the 55 mph thing. My 1200 cc Beatle got 33 mpg average and would do 71 mph down hill.

The main reason todays cars and trucks and most bikes get poor mileage is they weigh so darn much, a 4x4 ford truck weighs 6000 lbs a dodge charger weighs over 4000 lbs Harleys and Wings weigh 800-900 lbs and get 30 mpg....... Sad

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bill67 Serious Thumper Offline old tired Posts: 8517 genoa city wisconsin Gender:	Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart. Reply #23 - 05/14/12 at 11:25:43 I have a 2012 Kia Rio Sedan,It has the gas computer,Its alway in the 42 43 mpg thats over all average not trip,But I think a trip on freeway would be about the same.6-speed automatic.
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LANCER

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #24 - 05/14/12 at 12:24:06

Drifter wrote on 05/14/12 at 10:59:04:

I think Nixon started the 55 mph thing. My 1200 cc Beatle got 33 mpg average and would do 71 mph down hill.

The main reason todays cars and trucks and most bikes get poor mileage is they weigh so darn much, a 4x4 ford truck weighs 6000 lbs a dodge charger weighs over 4000 lbs Harleys and Wings weigh 800-900 lbs and get 30 mpg....... Sad

Pretty sure the peanut farmer was running the Big House when the "Fuel Crisis" (or oil shortage) was declared to be in existence; cars lined up down the block at gas stations waiting for 5 or 10 gal of gas. Of course there was no end in sight since the worlds oil was running low so for national security's sake we needed to be limited to 55mph on the Fed. controlled freeways. Saving gas = saving oil. One result was a slowed down economy, interest rates in the 15-20% range, all that good stuff.
Yep, very interesting. It's over 40 years later and we have found more oil recently than anyone ever imagined even existed.

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splash07 Serious Thumper Offline Posts: 911 Charleston, SC Gender:	Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart. Reply #25 - 05/14/12 at 13:21:42 It's over 40 years later and we have found more oil recently than anyone ever imagined even existed. Is that a good thing? my belief is that statements like that give a false sense of energy security to car crazy Americans who do not care about their carbon footprint.
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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #26 - 05/14/12 at 17:40:17

Fuel economy alone doesn't mean s**t.

The metal in my 3 vintage full sizes could make 10 Prius or similar hybrids. But, the 8 mpg 1969 Dodge with a 318 actually smogs cleaner than my friend's 18mpg 2008 Dodge with a Hemi. No gee whiz latest greatest high tech drek to go out yet allow it to keep running in "limp home" mode. My 1994 2.3L Ranger (5 speed) gets a whopping 2 mpg more than my 1949 Dodge truck with a 230 flathead (3 spd) and road draft smog tube (look it up). And with a simple US Army PCV conversion from Vintage Power Wagons the Dodge is cleaner running. My 1972 Super Beetle gets better fuel economy than the wife's 95 Outback (same engine, just turn an aircooled bug engine backwards and add a cooling system). And is more comfortable. And is metal instead of plastic.

County inspector fined a local restaurant for having recyclable materials last week. City has NO commercial recycling program. County inspector said take it every day (lost time and productivity, plus increased fuel use), get a dedicated dumpster (loss of customer parking and therefore revenue), or send it ALL to the landfill. You ever seen a "modern" southern landfill? Regular garbage goes here for shipment out of state, haz-mat gets buried over there (just make sure no one is looking).

Want to do something that is actually green? Buy local, from small farmers, directly. Quit buying "Cheapy Chi-com's" cut rate junk. Grow some of your own food. Even the projects here have micro-gardens (mostly pot but it's a start).

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Boofer

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Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart.
Reply #27 - 05/14/12 at 20:26:33

Boule’tard wrote on 05/13/12 at 19:33:36:

Well at least you could use your used motor oil as weed killer.

Take THAT, young people! After we got done washing the poo out of cloth diapers and reusing our paper bags, we dumped MOTOR OIL around our HOUSE! Cheesy

Boule, Rotella or Klotz worked just the same...no problems. Dead ants, weeds, bugs. It worked. Grin

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justin_o_guy2 Serious Thumper Offline What happened? Posts: 55279 East Texas, 1/2 dallas/la.	Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart. Reply #28 - 05/15/12 at 00:04:38 WD said Want to do something that is actually green? Buy local, from small farmers, directly. Quit buying "Cheapy Chi-com's" cut rate junk. Grow some of your own food. Even the projects here have micro-gardens (mostly pot but it's a start). & thats a few very green ideas.
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Drifter Senior Member Offline SuzukiSavage.com Rocks! Posts: 430	Re: Being Green, as seen by an old fart. Reply #29 - 05/15/12 at 07:32:05 +1 justin, i buy all our veggies from a local stand and up north from the amish straight off the farm. You cant escape made in china so much of everything is made there. Lancer, Carter was elected in 1976 Nixon started the 55 mph speed limit in 1974.
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