So, if we do screw up, the plants will be ok

[LostCause]

I wonder how much of the intention to build a seed repository was political. Noah's Arks is a widely famous and well understood story. Maybe they figured people would take notice that a lifeboat was being built?

- LostCause

[johnpr]

Originally Posted by zjrog

Look, I drive an evil SUV... I make no apology. I am trying to conserve fuel, and energy where I can. It is the right thing for me to do.

what evil suv, i know about the wonderful piece of american machinery which gets better gas mileage than my jeep . and honestly, i would rather see a bunch of people trying to conserve fuel in suvs than a bunch of people driving like maniacs in smaller vehicles than mine and getting either worse mpg or not much better.

and whatever your reasons for trying to conserve fuel, its ok, some of us are concerned about having a negative affect on the environment, some of us for our health, and some of us for our wallets, and of course any mixture there of. we're just happy your here

[NoCO2]

well said johnpr.

My initial motivation for doing this whole hypermiling thing was to save some money. Now, as a 80% bicycle commuter I appreciate that health benefits as well. I'm saving a ton of fuel by riding my bike and since I started doing it, I haven't lost any weight, but I have to force myself to wake up and go to bed early, which is something I've been meaning to do for a long time but have had no reason to do until recently. It seems to also give me more energy, as much as I hate dragging my ass onto the bike every morning at 7 AM after being used to sleeping till noon, I have found that after a few minutes my body is awake and then once I get to work and col down a bit, I have much more energy to sustain the rest of the day. I also know the weight thing will come. Right now I'm at the heaviest I've been in over 6 years and back when I first started riding midway through highschool, I dropped almost 50 pounds by riding just 20 miles a day for one summer...just 3 months. So, I expect the weight to start coming off again and on days like today, not driving earned me money as I found $5 in a parking lot while waiting for a break in traffic to cross the busy road.

[johnpr]

good find :thumbsup: , yep the weight thing will come, as you have already seen persistence pays off in many ways

[ttoyoda]

Two articles that suggest the global cooling proponents of the 70's might have been right. Unfortunately.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...nspot-mys.html
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com...-dives-in-may/

If we get a little ice age, that is really going to suck. A buddy of mine is going to get a fully automatic, self feeding, coal fired boiler this summer, his payback on the heating cost will be about 1.5 years. I went with him to look at it, it feeds the coal up from underneath with a worm screw like a meat grinder, and burns it on the top surface. Amazing. It is called an "underfeed retort" type burner. Made by EFM. I looked up the patents for "underfeed retort" on google patents and they go back to 1909. The last patent is 1945.

I use so little heating oil a year (due to air sealing and insulating) that the payback period for me would be a long, long time...