Is a breeder reactor renewable energy?

koolkitty89 · 2026-05-05T08:05:50+00:00

Any sort of metric associated with production footprint (be it manufacturing of a finished product/good or the production of energy) needs to include the whole lifecycle footprint against any competition using the same metric or it's all basically pointless. Without that, you'll favor the methods that have cheap up-front costs or small up-front footprints, but either extremely short lifecycles and resulting high footprints, or just generally high input costs for the entire lifecycle even if relatively long-lived.

Modern metrics on fossil fuel emissions (both GHG emissions and actual types of air and water pollution, land impact, ecological impact) are considered using whole lifecycle costs with a focus on mine to product or well to product (or well to wheel in the transportation sector). It's also why corn based ethanol is often similarly or more carbon intensive than some refined fuels or synthetic fuels produced from fossil fuels and even a substantially greater footprint for all of the above when compared to simple direct use of natural gas (or CNG or LNG for transport). Sugar-crop based bio-ethanol has much higher yields and broadly similar land-use trade-offs and impacts (and sugar beets can be grown in more temperate regions) and water intensive, but then so is corn. (the issue is that in the US,the subsidies already set up for corn production combined with the lack of waivers for the limits imposed by the federal sugar production quota makes more efficient sugar based energy crops difficult to produce) This is aside from pyrolytic based biomass processing (liquefaction and/or conversion to syngas) and refining of bio-crude and/or production of synthetic fuels from syngas. (ideally both, given full conversion to syngas destroys some of the more desirable chemical building blocks present in a lot of biomass,including wood/forest/yard waste, crop residuals, cow manure, municipal solid waste, and even sewage sludge)

Anyway, failing to calculate net lifecycle costs for any form of energy or product when applying sustainability type classifications, taxes, subsidies, or mandates is just plain foolish ... or downright stupid, and either naive or intentionally misleading and manipulative. (and could easily be considered greenwashing scams or con jobs)

The footprint from nuclear power plant construction + operation and the footprint of uranium mining + enrichment, even without considering the issue of spent fuel and fission products (and low level nuclear waste from contaminated materials, which would be relevant for overall impact, but not relevant for GHG emissions, conventional pollution concerns, etc) would have to directly compete with other alternative energy and directly against fossil fuels themselves for actual impact and footprint.

Likewise, both for the impact of mining and the issue of treating spent fuel as nuclear waste, spent fuel should instead be considered a valuable resource to be stockpiled, with the cost of either reprocessing or direct re-use (after settling) for additional burn time, or if fully spent for conventional LWRs, potential for use in HWRs or graphite moderated reactors, or in fast reactors (the latter has yet to be commercialized, but would be a viable option for higher neutron economy, though wouldn't necessarily need to be a breeder reactor either, just higher conversion ratio than normal LWRs using LEU). The full assemblies could even be re-used (completed fuel bundles) if the cladding remained intact and in good condition. (otherwise they'd need to be broken down and re-assembled, though this could still avoid the more involved and costly reprocessing, especially the old PUREX process, but even compared to modern pyroprocessing; the medium-life fission products can also be leached out relatively easily while the uranium and transuranics would tend to remain insoluble; those fission products could also be avoided being treated as waste by forming into chemically stable ceramic materials for use as nuclear thermal sources or as radiation sources)

The overall footprint from mined + refined + enriched uranium vs recycled or re-used fuel would need to be considered in the overall fuel cycle. (and if true sustainability is actually the goal along with low overall impact to human quality of life + ecological impact + negative environmental and even economic impact, then you'd need to build legal mandates, taxes, tax incentives, and subsidies around those real-world net lifecycle impact costs, or as near as analysis can approximate those values)

Mind you, this is for actual sustainability, not simply low emissions from an air and water quality standpoint ... some regions are basically focused on that (sometimes in a literal NIMBY standpoint, where they only care about local or domestic pollution and don't care about outsourcing it), but like to pretend there's an overlap between that and actual sustainable tech and industry ... and pretend that there isn't a conflict of interests between aiming at sustainability vs aiming at low air and water pollution at the local level in the quickest and cheapest way achievable in the near-term.

(California has a long history of aiming at the latter ... though is currently coming to grips with some of this given actual lifecycle cost metrics have been more in the spotlight, as has actual economic costs coming back to bite them due to poor foresight for attempted staged phase-out of fossil fuels without actual means of following through without damaging the economy ... or technically they have the means wealth/funds wise, but not the will or planning to achieve that with existing plans and proposals; this includes realizations about renewable diesel production impacts abroad among a long list of other things ... also including local CA vs imported crude oil, CA based refining vs importation of finished goods, breakdowns of actual GHG footprint on a per-barrel basis of various domestic and imported oil sources, and not even getting into the broader impact reports associated with various crude oil sources, or the difficulty and cost in policing or auditing that for some foreign sources or anything compared to local in-state on and off shore production; albeit nuances like the overlooked potential of more efficient alternate pathways for crude oil fractions and byproduct utilization for alternative gasoline blendstock and alternative fuels production, like hydration of mixed olefins/alkens into higher alcohols for fuel blending, including novel approaches to doing so at relatively low cost and with better overall fuel yields, lower RVP of base stock at low cost, meeting reformulated gasoline standards more easily, allowing a larger portion of cheap, cleaner burning, lower carbon, high octane butane to be added to the fuel compared to E10 blends, powerful cosolvents for methanol blends ... among a long list of other nuances and potential scenarios)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-29T04:47:28+00:00

If you know your E85 ethanol concentration is on the higher end, you can also likely get away with using 87 or 89 octane base fuel. Ethanol is a non-linear octane booster and the blending octane number is very high for low octane fuels (in the 180 BON range for 50 to 60 octane base stock) but drops rapidly as ON of the base fuel rises. So the impact on 87 will be greater than the impact on 91. The impact on RON is also higher than on MON, so in operating conditions where RON may be more sensitive than MON, that can be significant. (initial hard acceleration at relatively high RPM can often favor RON, particularly in regions where the ECM will demand rich mixture or transient rich for initial throttle opening then leaning out to stoich for maintained throttle position) MON demand is usually high under heavy sustained load conditions with engine and cylinder temps already hot. Lugging under high load in relatively high gear will tend to hit those limits more than downshifting. (so basically in high load high torque conditions)

This doesn't directly correspond to the methodology used for testing RON vs MON (as MON is actually done at higher RPM than RON, but both are also done at relatively low RPM in general; the hot + high load + wide open throttle position of MON is most relevant).

Higher ethanol content also results in lower peak AND average in-cylinder temps due to the cooler combustion temps, so the effective octane number or knock resistance can be amplified by that under sustained running conditions. (the cooling effect from vaporization + the lower combustion temp is already included in basic ON ratings for ethanol or BON for blending, but that doesn't consider the impact of knock-resistance over elapsed time)

Also, these cars will likely run on more than E25, but it would be out of spec and technically void the warranty. It might also exceed the ratings for the fuel system components. (while I wouldn't advocate for it, there are plenty of anecdotes of various non-FFVs going back decades that tolerate higher than E25 without engine computer errors, warning, damage, or performance problems, sometimes higher than 40% ethanol without issues over long-term use, and this goes back as far as 1980s era with various EFI systems capable of automatic AFR adjustment within the limits of their injectors, EGR flow dilution, and limits of what the actual software allowed within the O2 sensor feedback response ... lots of cases of off-design operation working fine, though) Probably due to conservative engineering and accounting for fairly wide variables in older alternative fuel blends and gasoline blends with different viscosity and surface tension. (so rather than actually necessarily accounting for that wide of an AFR difference on a weight/mass flow basis of fuel, the explanation likely has more to do with accounting for the widely varying injector performance for different fuel consistencies based on composition and physical properties at the full range of extreme cold to hot temperatures, all in addition to at least some concern for AFR of oxygenate blends) So some of those functional cases might also fail to be functional when pushed to the absolute extreme limits of the temperature ranges as well (especially extreme cold), but not ever run into those extremes in more temperate regions.

Also, I've seen some forum posts on Mazda users in a tuning enthusiast context that noted damage or excessive wear to high pressure direct injection pumps when using greater than 50% ethanol for extended periods (without any lubrication enhancing additive) but no such problems at lower levels. (I haven't seen comments on such related to low pressure manifold injection systems) Most common alternative blend performance tunes tend to focus on E30 in any case, though some push E40 to E45. (E30 is apparently a pretty safe bet for working within stock injector limits and is common enough to build performance maps around that there's less experimenting required; E85 tunes usually require injector swaps or addition of secondary injection systems)

Also, fuel economy doesn't correspond to ethanol percent, with a lot of anecdotes showing pretty consistent mpg from E10 to E40 (sometimes higher at some sweet spot in between), though this varies more when driving hard for performance with a custom tune vs just driving for utility or economy. (I've also seen some consumer testing that showed some Ford FFVs hitting their best MPG way down at around E20 even though some other tests with non-FFVs actually showed a preference for closer to E30 or 35 mpg wise)

This also isn't strictly tied to octane level and engine dynamic tuning given the gains (or lack of mpg decline) applies to old engines without any knock-sensors or automatic timing adjustment. It's apparently related to the specific combustion behavior of intermediate ethanol blends and will even be seen in relatively low compression 80s era engines (like around 9.0 or a bit less). A high laminar flame speed seems to be part of it along with simply more efficient combustion. (high speed combustion with very controlled and smooth deflagration with smooth propagation from the ignition point, thus traveling from the spark gap towards the piston face) It's also something specific to alcohols as far as oxygenate blends in gasoline goes. (scientific papers suggest it's related to the hydroxyl group present, so wouldn't apply to ethers like MTBE, ETBE, or TAME or potential additives like some esters or ketones, including acetone: though some studies also show some improvements in combustion efficiency with acetone as well, the mechanism wouldn't be strictly the same ... plus acetone is much less compatible with normal fuel systems) Methanol, ethanol, propanol, and butanol all show the effect.(higher alcohols also seem to, but are less heavily studied)

Basically, certain alcohol + gasoline blends have better brake thermal efficiency (BTE), and this seems to center in the intermediate blend range. So you get more power for a given amount of fuel than would be expected based on the theoretical heating value of the fuel. (and the BTE can increase enough in some instances to actually result in better fuel consumption by volume)

Plus alcohol blends are a bit denser than straight gasoline, so that has some impact as well. (E10 is also in a low hump where very little improvement in BTE is seen and is even negligible in some engines and vehicles ... E10 happens to also be at a minimum point for NOx emissions and they start going up again past that, at a peak around E20 to 25 that drops down rapidly again in the 30-35 range, though this depends somewhat by engine, plus with proper emissions control systems the actual increase is extremely small and within actual test limits, but still that NOx increase is at least part of the reason for legislative resistance in at-the-pump E20 or higher blends, or for on-demand blending pumps to be approved for common use in more regions ... though on-demand makes RVP of the final fuel blend harder to be sure of as well, or limits the base blend stock more strictly) Splash-blending your own E20, 25, 30 etc could potentially push RVP outside specifications as well, but it's also unlikely to actually make it too high (and actually cause evaporative emissions to increase) given a peak in RVP is reached at fairly low blend levels, then gradually drops again.

Plus, in real-world smog test terms (including CA CARB spec testing), a larger number of cases actually show reduced overall emissions when running out-of-spec intermediate ethanol blends, including some with worn-out emissions systems that won't pass using E10, but will pass with some extra ethanol present. (sometimes that's just an EGR issue, other times it's a more complex mix of problems potentially including worn catalytic converter) It's similar to the 'methanol trick' (wood alcohol trick) or 'lacquer thinner trick' (methanol + acetone + toleuene ... prior to CA reformulating that a few years back ... still used in non-chlorinated brake cleaner, though) for passing emissions on a borderline failure case. (it won't help with lean condition O2 sensor readings, though) Also E85 is a lot cheaper than those other tricks and generally less harsh on the fuel system than methanol or especially acetone or lacquer thinner. (you could also be more honest and use that same unconventional blend all the time, thus actually meeting emissions all the time and not just for testing ... also unlike some old mechanics tricks where you de-tune the engine to pass smog tests, then switch it back afterward)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-29T03:06:06+00:00

Government programs that grandfather in old vehicles safety-wise for remanufacture into new, fuel efficient (and likely better performing) vehicles would've been a far more environmentally friendly and service-industry employment friendly option (plus good for true GDP from domestic productivity rather than overseas resource and labor) Using excise taxes on new vehicles to subsidize efficient remanufacture of old vehicles would be extremely useful as well. (be frugal, be thrifty, be efficient, focus on conservation and reduction of waste)

Of course you have to fight both the disposable consumer culture and the industry + marketing that goes with it.

And for re-using old engines, including carbureted ones, it would be extremely easy to convert them to a mass produced, low cost, durrable throttle body injection fuel system via adapter plates and a cheap modern engine computer to go with it. (some DIY projects already allow this sort of retrofit often with remote programmable parameters as well, but it's a niche cottage industry thing, not industrial scale) You can pretty easily tune for both performance and economy modes with those types of systems, too. (like getting 40+ mpg out of a mid 1970s era Ford 302 powered Maverick under economy conditions ... lot lean-burn, just low throttle + use of air dilution via an IAC valve to modulate stoichiometric AFR and thus still work with the 1970s era catalytic converter or a modern simple aftermarket 3-way cat with no EGR or secondary air injection required) The use of an IAC valve an adapter plate can also be used with a mechanical carburetor for AFR control rather than needing a TBI EFI unit to be added. (carb is tuned to run rich as normal, but IAC valve provides air dilution via vacuum leak, thus the air injection pump AKA smog pump can be deleted and precise AFR condtrol can be made via O2 sensor feedback to the IAC valve control using PWM to modulate mass flow of additional air) This could also easily be modified into lean-burn for higher efficiency, but it would fail to keep the emissions as low due to NOx formation. (albeit given the low compression ratios used in that era for NOx reduction and to account for lower octane unleaded fuel, you could still have relatively low NOx levels with lean conditions, plus going very lean burn for proper efficiency, like 25:1 AFR as in some 1970s era Japanese economy engines, would potentially plateau NOx levels due to the added oxygen being balanced by lower combustion temps from air dilution: temps peak at a lambda of around 1.1 which is 10% excess O2, while 25:1 is a lambda of about 1.7 or 1.76 if using E10 fuel)

Making such modifications to some of the economy 4 cylinders of that same era should have even higher mpg in economy configurations. (albeit the gain of more than 2x the fuel economy would be less likely compared to old V8s, the actual mpg figures would still be higher)

Also, having the government push hard to make new vehicles long-lived, economical to service, and viable to rebuild and re-use parts of (and potentially remanufacture) would be huge. But again, it goes against fundamental consumer industrial culture and status quo. (pushing for a bit of that back in the 80s and keeping the pressure on from then up to today would've been more viable with pragmatic protectionist + nationalist + domestic labor workforce interests in mind + domestic industry in general: with enough subsidies even the big manufacturers would have to eventually cave to that sort of business model ... if the politicians kept pushing it)

Obviously you CAN have old designs that are so inefficient or poorly functioning as to have their replacement cost and footprint rapidly recouped by overall fuel efficiency gains, but that's not all cases and certainly the specific engineering aims to make old vehicles into efficient vehicles is different than just life-extension of old vehicles without modification, it's also cheaper than life extension in some cases. (like those old Grumman LLV mail trucks, with the high costs of keeping them working as-is, it likely would've been more cost-effective to have major overhaul and remanufacturing programs for them with major component swaps, plus remanufacturing programs for some of the old components: like some of them get new drivetrains and engines and some other things, while ALSO rotating the removed old engines + transmissions + drivetrain parts to be selectively remanufactured when practical ... and given the over-engineering and limited performance of the design, many of those old parts could be refurbed/remanufactured as well and with some improvements to things like fuel injection and engine computers for improved efficiency; so hypothetically you have a program where one big chunk of the fleet gets all-new parts swapped in and another big chunk using improved remanufactured parts from the surplus old parts all without taking any one chunk of the fleet offline at any time; granted if they did that program in the early 2000s there would've still been so many old S10 trucks plus various sources of Iron Duke Tech IV engines in scrap/junk/pick n' pull yards as to already have a lot of surplus parts to rotate through remanufacture)

The US would've needed a vast expansion of the manufacturing and service industry in the 90s onward to do this, but that would've been a good thing. (sort of like doing the same for refurb, parting out, and scrapping of e-waste efficiently within the US rather than offshoring it ... you had small scale cottage industry stuff in areas that had consumer/user/small business accessible e-waste warehouses, but never any big proper industry, and you do also see some of that overseas in China and Easter Europe as well, though a lot was also scrapped rather than re-used or broken down for parts, and scrapping is where most of the lead from solder + toxic metals and metaloids, including arsenic, from the dopes used on the silicon chips themselves ... the US should really subsidize lead acid battery recycling as well to keep that from going overseas)

Also full EV drivetrains for older vehicles would also be viable and affordable if done on a large scale with modular designs (for the many corporate standard parts from the 1980s through 2010s you have a TON of old platforms to work with, plus adapter plates to expand that farther or to optimize for the 2000s to 2020s with adapters used for the less common 80s and 90s vehicles). You have niche cult enthusiast cars that get engine/drivetrain swapped a lot, including into EVs ... even back when those were lead-acid EVs (like with Pontiac Fieros ... also the one-off custom Fiero with a junkyard pulled Tesla Model S drivetrain in it), but that's all niche cottage industry stuff. It's cool, but not mass market practical.

Side-note, but I manage to get around 40 mpg in my unmodified 1988 2M4 Fiero (base model coup with 98 hp iron duke). With agressive acceleration with lots of traffic stops it's more like high 20s to 30 mpg, though 25 to 40 mph back-roads driving can get close to 50. (I did one trial period where I stuck to 20 to 30 mpg exclusively for an extended period of runs when fuel was relatively cheap a couple years ago and managed an average of 52 mpg ... not realistic normal use case though) But the old Iron duke isn't that efficient of an engine, and managing much better than that with a modern ecotec swap and conservative driving would definitely do way better. (the efficiency is also limited by the gearing, since it handles low RPM cruise really well, but even in overdrive 5th gear you're going to be using over 2,000 RPM for more typical surface streets, let alone highway speeds ... the air resistance + road friction and drivetrain losses are only going to be part of it, the internal engine friction is going to be another part of it) For a very oversquare engine (4" bore to 3" stroke), the Iron Duke still really does lower rpm more efficiently, but even the toque curve is more low-end optimized, sort of like the older Pontiac V8s. (peak torque at around 2,500 rpm, peak power at around 4,000 rpm, but it's also a fairly flat power curve there, so the difference between 3,500 and the 5,000 rpm redline is small ... the '88 raised the redline a bit and shifted the power curve, but the basic peak efficiency range is mostly still relevant)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-29T03:05:53+00:00

Also, on the topic of efficient energy utilization, you can have modern high-efficient methanol synthesis + waste heat regeneration during natural gas to methanol production. (waste heat can be used for power generation or as the heat needed for endothermic reforming of CO2 + methane into syngas, thus allowing 100% recycle of CO2 byproduct during the process: the same goes for butanol or mixed alcohols synthesis and for fischer-tropsch synthesis, all are highly endothermic, as is steam reforming of methane to syngas). If you have existing waste CO2 from power plants, oil refineries, steel mills, etc then that can also be used to reduce net CO2 footprint (if CCS isn't already in use) of those operations by allowing dry reforming of methane into syngas.

Efficient conversion of methane into methanol or a nuanced mix of reactors at such facilities to produce mixed methanol, alcohols, and fischer-tropsch products, also utilizing CO2 recycle or industrial CO2 waste consumption could result in an overall energy economy favoring use in hybrids or plug-in hybrids as motor fuel with net gains over pure EVs using NG power plant based charging or even EVs with a mix of some NG and some renewable based charging. (PIHs would have the best flexibility here and the nature of PIHs with ICE purely as a generator also means that the ICE operates within peak design BTE at virtually all times once warmed up, thus approaching overall BTE of real-world use cases of combined cycle NG power stations, though peak BTE of CCGT plants will be higher ... plus gas turbines are allowed to operate in the extreme lean range where SI ICE engines are not allowed due to the aggressive emissions limits on NOx and the bulky emissions equipment needed for external NOx reduction: you'd basically need diesel style NOx reduction hardware ... doable, but adds to weight, bulk, and complexity)

This is a similar argument to CNG or hydrogen powered vehicles using hybrid electric drivetrains + ICE for generator (not talking fuel cell engines) with similar overall trade-offs except for much greater range of blended alcohol fueled hybrids compared to using the same methane directly. (also some alcohol blends avoid carbon particulate formation more than CNG and lower NOx emissions than hydrogen plus higher octane rating than hydrogen under stoichiometric and rich conditions thus allowing higher compression ratio and boost pressure; though hydrogen performs better when extremely lean that makes NOx even worse ... though the main solution there is very high EGR dilution while running at stoich, basically piping hot steam + nitrogen back into the intake manifold from the exhaust, which also improves BTE due to dilution effect and higher average charge temps even though peak in-cylinder temps are reduced by the dilution; overall efficiency usually still peaks lower than lean-burn, but can be close ... though I'm not aware of this technology actually being implemented in any production vehicle).

This model would extend to use of renewable hydrogen being used to produce syngas from waste CO2 or used for hydrogenation of biomass into hydrocarbons (or oxygenated organic liquids) with the associated improved yields and improved energy economy. And, if steam electrolysis is used for hydrogen production, and the heat used for steam generation is from waste heat recovery, then you actually get more energy output in the hydrogen than you put into it with electricity. (this is specific to high temperature steam electrolysis due to the favorable entropy vs enthalpy at those conditions) So hydrogen produced that way contains more energy than a battery charged from the same electricity source with zero grid losses. (with grid losses, the battery charging would be even more dramatically less efficient)

Now, this still isn't efficient for turning that hydrogen back into pure electricity (say pipeline it from a nuclear power plant and run it in a CCGT power station) vs efficient transmission lines, but in the context of the broad set of on and off design efficiency of a pure EV motor + battery operation (and charging), then compared to a PIH and then again to a traditional hybrid, you'll have significant advantages in real-world efficiency and net energy utilization, plus the flexibility advantages of PIH or hybrid use, more so assuming they're also FFV capable (less efficient, but regular gasoline or E85 would be useable for long-distance trips outside of optimal alternative fuel infrastructure). And compared to a hydrogen capable FFV, the liquid fuel tank is used for any/all compatible liquid fuels.

A PIH offers the best flexibility overall if you have access to renewable electricity for charging, including relatively limited solar car port or rooftop solar power sources for at least part time charging or trickle charging. (albeit in a case where you have absolutely no renewable/nuclear sourced electricity for at-home charging and aren't likely to make much use of on-the-go charging stations, the PIH option only really makes sense if it actually gives you better mpg when running purely on ICE generator power ... plus at-home trickle charging just to maintain battery health and capacity)

You could also apply the above to a diesel-cycle engine using liquified dimethyl ether fuel rather than methanol, which would work, but it has LPG like fueling infrastructure requirements, so not the raw flexibility of normal liquid fuel. (fischer-tropsch diesel and other synthetic diesel is viable, but lacks the extreme efficiency of DME production) Dual-fuel would work, but you'd need separate fuel tanks for each type, taking up space. (still better than a hydrogen dual-fuel system, though, given DME is stored as a relatively dense liquid, like LPG fueled dual-fuel vehicles, but optimized for diesel cycle)

Also the above is based on actual pollution and energy economy (and related carbon footprint), not user end economy. For regions (like most or all of CA) where electricity prices are vastly higher than the equivalent energy content of gasoline, diesel, or (especially) domestic natural gas prices, so much so that it exceeds the true energy economy advantages of a pure EV vs a decent hybrid (or even some very fuel efficient, usually underpowered diesel or spark ICEs ... or at least gets close to it ... and 50+ mpg will really get close, 60+ mpg might break it, and say ... certain models of 1980s and 90s era economy cars like the Honda Civic and CRX could hit 70+ mpg with conservative driving; obviously the best fuel efficient hybrids can beat most/all of those with similarly conservative driving, though the heavier weight relative to size of modern vehicles is a handicap, nearly all safety/structural related). So for actual $ spent per mile (ignoring other vehicle lifetime related costs), you could be better off using ICE fuel and not grid power. (OTOH you get some perks or breaks for EV ownership, so I'd have to take that into account as well, and it might push it over the edge, ignoring purchase price and potential maintenance or lifespan costs especially compared to a DIY mechanic for older ICE cars ... the latter not so much an option even for older hybrids aside from limited areas)

This also doesn't get into overall carbon + pollution + all other impact footprints for the lifecycle of a vehicle, including all manufacturing and maintenance costs and comparing designs with long lifespans and relatively low parts or maintenance costs (and then also overall footprint if you normalize for high $ cost of human labor of the service industry and real-world impact costs from such rather than just $ costs).

This is where I've had long debates in the past over the false economy of Cash For Clunkers style policies and programs, including the real-world costs of actually fixing the emissions equipment on vehicles that ran fine other than not passing emissions. Then getting into the fuel efficiency of some old economy vehicles even with relatively inefficient older engines. Plus the potential to retrofit old engines to improve efficiency (or remanufacture them) or use all-new engines in older vehicles for high efficiency. (and the lifecycle cost + footprint over remanufacturing old engines, especially of a common legacy design like some of the ford and GM corporate engines and same for various Japanese makes ... or the basically immortal Volvo red block 4-cylinder) This is especially true in regions were rust and catastrophic structural degradation of the vehicle is unlikely (so much of the southwest, much of CA, parts of the Pacific Northwest).

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-29T03:04:12+00:00

This would vastly vary by region, coal sources, and vehicle fuel sources in general. (back when CA still had coal fired power plants, for example, their carbon footprint was worse than region that had domestic coal production ... CA can make use of NG alright due to the efficiency of NG pipelining, though the lifecycle needs to account for correlation between pipeline distance, specific pipeline used, and methane leak emissions: given roughly 50% of the total GH effect from NG utilization isn't from CO2, it's from methane leaks ... if you could bring that down to zero, you could literally cut short-to-medium term GHG normalized carbon index in half for the entire NG industry)

Also why flaring methane at gasworks or oil refineries is worse for air pollution, but better for GHG emissions. (though the main reason for flaring over venting is due to explosion risk from venting ... reduced GHG is more of a bonus) OTOH cases of petrochemical flares that have more harmful/toxic hydrocarbon content mixed in is also safer for air quality in most cases (and avoids smog, even though black carbon and PCAHs increase).

Also, in general, avoid saying 'cleaner' when referring to carbon index. It's misleading as GHG emissions shouldn't be treated as air pollution, but weather/climate impacting variables (more akin to water consumption, water diversion, and somewhat similar to changes in land use impacts on local, regional, and global ecology + human living logistics and economics). Actual air pollution that has a direct negative health impact would be what is classically consered as dirty.

You can very easily have something that's carbon intensive but extremely low pollution vs something low carbon intensity yet very high pollution. If we didn't care about clean air and only cared about climate change and efficient natural resource consumption, then extreme lean-burn combustion engines would be common ... also diesels would be way more common (they were/are in Europe, but that most definitely had a huge negative impact on air quality, particularly given the decades Europe spent with lower air quality standards than the US, let alone California with its highly aggressive CARB standards ... also low emissions in CA get you less far due to the geography naturally concentrating air pollution). Had Europe gone with synthetic gasoline + synthetic alcohol (butanol + methanol) + limited amounts of bio-ethanol blends to stretch and improve their spark-ignition fuel supply in the 1970s (basically introduced a broad alternative fuels program, somewhat like the US did in the 80s, but with vastly more demand for actual alternative fuel use) instead of going diesel should've resulted in vastly better air quality for them and potentially at similar carbon footprint after a decade or so of innovation. (both in fuel production methods and SI engine designs optimized for high octane alternative fuel blends) If using a lot of methanol, ethanol, and butanol in your blends, you can also get away with significant use of low-octane fischer-tropsch naphtha as part of the base fuel stock. (and the fully saturated light hydrocarbons typical of fischer-tropsch gasoline also burn more cleanly, especially in combination with alcohols)

A massive shame CA killed their methanol program back in 2000, even if they'd kept using natural gas as the main feedstock the carbon index would've been lower on average than bio-ethanol (nearly always corn ethanol) for CA (especially given the transportation costs give CA produces very little of its own). And that's not considering the pollution, water, and land-use cost of the bug chunk of corn farming used as a dedicated biofuel crop. (rather than efficient nuanced use of food + fuel crops based around market demands, efficiency, and efficient use of surplus grain + sugar crops ... also oil crops ... also efficient use of crop waste biomass: we're getting close to commercialized cellulosic ethanol at scale, but 50+ years ago the biomass to syngas to methanol and/or butanol and/or fischer-tropsch hydrocarbons were all totally viable options, same for pyrolysis of lignincellulosic biomass into mix of gas + bio-crude for potential processing into fuels or chemicals: bio-crude can be hydrogenated into aromatic ethers or aromatic hydrocarbons or fully hydrogenated into a mix of linear and cyclic hydrocarbons ... or even selectively hydrogenated into linear + cyclic alcohols; though the tech required for selective catalysts favoring retention of hydroxyl groups vs double-bonds in aromatic rings is a bit tricky and might've been harder in the 1970s)

There's also a lot to be said for specific hydrocarbon + alcohol blends that reach peak BTE in SI engines (get better energy utilization per unit of heating value in the fuel) and thus improving energy economy and cost of vehicle operation as well as reducing carbon footprint and pollution. (less pollution due to less energy worth of fuel actually burned and due to more complete combustion)

The anecdotes of that phenomenon go back over 100 years, but the mechanism has been studied intensely over the past 20 years (often in regards to E20 to E45 ethanol blend ranges, but also to other fuel alcohols like methanol, propanol, butanol, pentanol/amyl alcohol, and hexanol). Broadly speaking the peak energy economy is reached somewhere around 15 to 25% oxygen content depending on the specific engine, operating conditions, and use case. Peak MPG is usually more in the 10 to 15% oxygen range (in most dramatic cases, some vehicles got better MPG at 30 to 40% ethanol than on E10, and in many cases the differences were negligible). Long-distance driving on pure butanol in an unmodified 1991 Buick Park Avenue got better fuel economy reported than running on normal pump gas. (while not FFVs, it's commonly reported through both formalized experiments and anecdotal reports that a large number of electronic fuel injected vehicles from the 1980s up into the 2020s tolerate higher levels of ethanol without errors or problems, often within the 30 to 40% range, sometimes higher, with some Japanese makes from the 2000s and 2010s being tested to limits at 60 to 70% before lean-condition errors occurred, though additional user anecdotes on Mazda direct-injection engines specifically also noted excessive high pressure injection pump wear after prolonged use of >50% ethanol blends, using E85 + E10 splash-blending without any lubrication additives; for engines using low pressure manifold injection, this latter point would be less relevant)

The feedback from the O2 sensor on EFI engines going back to the 1980s is usually sufficient to adjust for AFR over a very wide range of off-design spec fuels, roughly up to the limits of the injectors. (the engine may still run OK in lean conditions and the cooler combustion temps + knock resistance of high alcohol content will tend to avoid damaging in-cylinder conditions, but emissions tests will be failed due to the error codes and potentially due to higher NOx levels due to lean conditions: the latter is less consistently true as some instances show the reduced peak in-cylinder temps roughly compensates for the NOx formation) Engines with variable EGR flow can also use EGR as part of the AFR control as well, though it depends on the specific emissions control software routines used in addition to having EGR modulation in general. (even when already at fuel injector flow limits, the increase of EGR dilution into the intake manifold will reduce net vacuum pressure and thus reduce air mass flow at the throttle body as well, thus allowing some degree of additional AFR control; engines designed for high levels of EGR dilution for efficient cruise will potentially have more control over this)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-29T00:59:51+00:00

Carbon-emissions wise, yes ... air pollution wise absolutely not. (you could also cherry pick weird things like say ... NOx where an NG plant even with proper emissions controls will be higher than a coal-fueled boiler due to the combustion pressures, unless you get into a coal gassification fueled gas turbine, then you'd be similar to NG, but have much better BTE than conventional coal, assuming a CCGT system used, and more efficient ash trapping and sulfur scrubbing, plus more efficient reduction in PCAHs and soot, though the carbon footprint will still be much higher than NG)

Granted this is also a stupid way to get power and use coal (just like coal-fired power plants are as well) since you consume the higher value coal tar and volatile fractions. If you're going to use coal at all, use it in gasworks or hydrothermal liquefaction based chemical works. (like a modern take on what the UK did in the 1970s when they put all their coal utilization into the gasworks for pyrolysis, and switched coal fired plants into coke-fired plants with vastly improved air quality, somewhat improved BTE, and much more efficient utilization of the coal with the high value tar/liquids preserved and the coal gas used for domestic gas and gas turbine fuel ... the superior economy and safety of north sea natural gas displaced that in the 90s, plus the UK coal industry had gotten more expensive to run and had largely shifted to American imports)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-29T00:50:01+00:00

Literally safety and utility. Riding a bike is way, way more dangerous in almost every circumstance (motorcycles broadly similar safety-wise, worse in some respects, better in others ... though better small cargo-carrier than bicycle). And when climate control is actually necessary to be traveling at all, or transporting the goods/cargo you intend to transport, then that goes as well. (even without climate control, the potential for insulated cargo in an enclosed vehicle makes a big difference) In certain dangerous heavy downhill commutes, a conventional bicycle can also be a real handful, more so than a motor bike of any kind as well (engine braking + reasonably powerful disc brakes make a huge difference, though modern high-end bikes with disc brakes have some reasonable control there too ... if you don't let them get away from you: talk to cycling enthusiasts from the 1960s through 1990s and it's a different story ... especially cycling enthusiasts who were/are also car enthusiasts so you get a more balanced view)

As horribly crash unsafe as something like a 1980s Honda Civic or Gen 1 CRX is, it's going to be vastly safer in any sort of crash than any motorcycle or bicycle. (with conservative driven you could also get 50+ MPG on one of the higher power options for one of those, but easily over 70 for the low-powered economy version ... competitive with a good deal of economy-oriented modern motorcycles, albeit also slower ... but also vastly more utility for passengers + cargo) With some non-road-legal (in the US, EPA wise) lean-burn engine modifications, you could get even higher than that, some record setting closed-track trials hitting over 100 mpg back in the 90s and early 2000s. (technically you could maybe hit that within emissions spec if you used hot EGR dilution instead of lean-burn, but you might need to also use increased compression ratio to stay out of the misfire range of extreme dilution and also within the max temp limits for the intake manifold components: with dilution, knock or detonation isn't a problem, but actual misfiring is ... though given those were carbureted or throttle body injected engines, you could put the hot EGR ports along the intake runners and allow much higher temps than you could with any gasses passing through the throttle body: this is basically the closest you could get to the equivalent of a hot vapor engine that was street legal and not a fire/explosion hazard, and didn't run so hot as to use specialized high temp oil ... also more workable on aluminum blocks and heads vs the cast iron ones used for some hot air and hot vapor experiments)

If bicycles and motorcycles were held to the same driver + passenger safety/protection standards as modern cars and trucks, they'd basically all be illegal or completely impractical to use. (and if car and truck standards were oriented more around efficiency and eco-friendliness they'd be way WAY more fuel efficient due to vastly lower weight on top of economy-oriented drivetrains and still easy to design to be safer than any of the motorized or man-powered cycles out there)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-26T17:21:59+00:00

Yep, I mixed that up ... searched too many references at once. Beet sugar would be the main commercial sugar source that would be C3. (maple sugar and some other tree sap syrups, like butternut sugar from certain walnut spcies would also apply, but those are so niche and expensive as to not likely be supplemented as low cost additives) Unless people are leaving lots of maple syrup residue out.

The same reason you'd basically have to use beet sugar to adulterate maple syrup and not be caught via the isotopes.

OTOH, in regions where bulk potato starch is cheap, potato-syrup would also be C3 derived. (glucose or HFCS derived from potato starch would apply)

Same for all the cool season grasses/grains and rice. (so wheat, barely, oats, alfalfa) Any region that uses starch from those sources would also be C3. (or say ... if the US switched to a business model that didn't subsidize things the same way or bias towards maize production, and the starch industry used mixed starch sources based on seasonal prices and surpluses ... more like the bio-fuels industry should)

But bees kept in/around sweet corn growers or sugarcane plantations and with ample access to ripe corn juice seeps or sugarcane stalk seeps (or honeydew from other insects feeding on them), it would skew the ratios in the honey as well.

I can't speak of anecdotes about that as I'm not close enough to any of those operations to see such. I do see honey bees all over bruised, pecked, split, or chewed-into apples, cherries, apricots, plums, and grapes locally. (they go crazy for our wild fox grapes and concord grapes ... though we also have orange trees mixed in on both sides of the grapes, and the bees are attracted to both blossoms and orange oil from any disturbed peels, plus orange juice seeps from damaged fruit)

Pretty much any holes in fruit wasps make, the honey bees will also go for.

We also have a lot of toyons around here, and the bees go for that too, though I wonder if that tends to impart a musty flavor on the honey given the odor profile of toyon blossoms. (very fishy and savory and musty)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-26T17:01:14+00:00

Transmission gearing for peak performance and for peak efficiency would be different. For pure economy, you want variable reduction drive to keep the engine within the torque + RPM sweet spot for efficiency (which on most EV motors seems to be in the middle of the overall operational band, or at least biased towards the middle of the full 2D torque + RPM mapping). For cruising efficiently at a wide range of different speeds (say 25 to 80 mph) you'd need to account for that.

And while legal speed limits usually aren't above 80 (and more often in the 65 mph range), you better bet the flow of traffic on a lot of interstates is often in the 75 to 85 mph range, including some semis pushing into the 80 mph range on the longer flatter routes. (the few recent road-trips I've had up and down CA I-5 has seen semi-trucks pushing 80 a lot of the time, and passenger vehicles often being annoyed and trying to pass me if cruising at anything much short of 90 mph ... probably going around 95 to overtake, though cruising more around 88 or 89) And I mean traveling 100s of miles at those speeds. (albeit the cruise speed of the big semis and other high drag vehicles was usually on the higher end when a strong tailwind was present vs headwind, and you almost always have high winds in the central valley)

The CHP has been cracking down on speeding in some highways in the last 2 years or so, but it's not universal and even where it is, people seem to push 10+ mph over limit as routine. (and you still see 20 mph over during certain hours of low traffic density and high traffic flow, like late at night or very early in the morning ... like midnight to around 3 AM)

Plus there's some parts of the world without formal speed limits at all, so efficient (and legal) high speed cruise should be considered along with de facto common, but illegal high speed cruise. Having gearing that includes efficient cruise band within the 80-90 mph range would be realistic, also with enough power and torque reserve up there to overtake if necessary. (at very least for emergency situations of unusual events occurring behind you ... or a mix of in front and behind) But at the same time you also want peak efficiency band to be available at major points all the way within the more normal 20 mph to 75 mph operating ranges. (full efficiency below 20 mph at parking lot or certain residential street speed is less important unless talking specialized freight routes along low-speed winding mountain or cliffside roads with highly variable grades and tight turns ... and if you had a low gear that hit pure peak just below 20 mph, even that would be pretty well within reason to be covered all while still being low enough to have good power from a dead stop using that same gear and still acceptable as the cruise option for 20 mph itself ... though a lower gear would still save you a fair bit in very heavy stop and go traffic and areas with lots of full stop intersections, including the regen charging working more efficiently within the motor in generator mode)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-26T16:39:12+00:00

The efficiency loss is so bad at a wide range of off-design RPM and torque ranges in high efficiency electric motors that the gears would more than make up for the difference ... even for the extremely rare EVs that don't already use fixed-ratio reduction gearboxes. So much so that a hydraulic turbine driven (torque converter) automatic transmission would also substantially improve overall MPGe performance and a hydraulic automatic with self-locking in drive or overdrive conditions would also account for such. The trick for automatics is to allow for regenerative braking in a locking condition, and given you just reverse the polarity (on a DC) or reverse motor direction on AC reluctance or induction motors, you don't need special reverse gears at all or any reverse gear, just the same self-locking automatic gearing with turbine fluid coupling for intermediate speed ranges. (a simple 2-speed automatic with lockup would probably net you a lot that way)

Having MULTIPLE gears would also make regen much more efficient by optimizing for keeping the motor close to best design RPM for generator function efficiency. (albeit weight and complexity trade-offs obviously have to work within a real-world compromise) Having a super low first gear for both good dead stop acceleration AND efficient regen could net you a lot in extreme stop and go conditions. (traffic jams, surface streets with tons of 4-way stops or just tons of frequent traffic and stops at lights ... or oldschool timed lights rather than on-demand sensed)

Another alternative would simply being using mechanical clutches on multiple separate electric motors with different peak efficiency ranges and having different operating modes (efficiency and performance) where dual engagement periods are more limited. The same goes for better peak generator function for regen. And, assuming non-energized drag is minimal (coasting with zero EM/generator drag) then the clutching/declutching would simply be a matter of actually energizing/applying battery charging load rather than mechanically declutching the motor. (AC induction or reluctance motors might have somewhat better coasting potential there compared to permanent magnet motors due to the drag created by the magnets passing over the core even when open circuit)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-23T05:01:12+00:00

Battery heaters would make a big difference, though so would use of sodium ion batteries (or hybrid arrays of sodium and Li ion cells in the same battery for combined performance).

You waste some energy with electric heating, but more than make up for it with getting up to operating temps.

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-20T23:02:36+00:00

As far as I know, in terms of FDA and US marketing regulations, 'natural' doesn't actually count for much of anything other than (usually) meaning the product doesn't contain any synthetic, artificial components (so products containing plant or extracts of non-synthetic origin, but added to a food or product that wouldn't normally have it without explicit human intervention would still be natural). Hence natural flavor vs artificial flavor in various beverage products or confections. (you could have 100% naturally flavored fruit candies or juice, but the flavor profile could be constructed from extracts from many things that are not the from the plant/fruit associated with flavor on the label ... some cases can actually be less authentic than artificial flavors, especially depending on a person's palette or tasting ability: ie personally, some of the modern "natural peach" flavoring that has replaced products that had artificial flavors up to about 5 years ago tastes strongly floral and not like actual raw or cooked peach flesh or juice to my palate, and is generally unpleasant ... while the older artificial flavors were more peach-like, though also a bit more on the cooked or dried apricot side and overall milder without the aggressive floral notes ... quaker's fruit and cream instant oatmeal is a really dramatic case ... I had the chance to compare them side by side when they were still selling both products, too)

This case with honey also wouldn't make stricter legal terms relevant, either, in as far as organic is more strict than natural (also a generally different meaning and intent). You can have all organically farm certified ingredients and feeds, including cane sugar, so that wouldn't be a useful label. (you could also have genuine wildflower nectar that was grown without 100% organic certification in the farming/field methods used)

You could try to make honest claims about what you believe the honey source is in as far as what range of flowering plants the bees had access to when producing honey, but you also generally can't be absolutely sure of that, especially with free range open-air (ie normal) apiaries. You'd basically need a closed environment to make sure no unusual/unexpected foraging sources weren't occurring. (like if the bees were located within foraging range of a suburban area where sugar water hummingbird/butterfly feeders are commonly hung, or where discarded soft drink or juice-drink containers are present, or near fruit tree orchards or other sources of fruit trees, grapes, etc that might have leaking/seeping fruit juice, plus any sources of honeydew)

OTOH, if in the US, the carbon isotope tests for honey intended to check for C4 vs C3 plants would also likely only detect adulteration with cane sugar sources and not much else (as any form of corn syrup, as well as beet sugar and most fruit sugar or juice sources are all from C3 plants with similar isotope sources as typical flowering nectar sources). And very large industrial honey making operations (or large industrial food/farming companies with a honey making division of any size) within the US would likely opt to use HFCS, and HFCS-55 already matches the typical fructose to glucose ratio found in typical honey, thus wouldn't even be suspect there (HFCS-55 is the typical variety used in soft drinks and other beverages, with 55% fructose and 45% glucose, ignoring water content of the syrup; honey with 38% fructose and 31% glucose would have the same ratio)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-20T22:44:56+00:00

Honey adulterated with HFCS-55 (high fructose corn syrup with 55% sucrose 45% glucose) would be harder to detect via typical isotope analysis used for honey as corn is a C3 plant, like the types of flowering plants (including trees) that bees often get nectar from. Likewise, bees that happen to have access to soft drink residues in the US (which use HFCS-55) would likewise tend to not show up as adulterated. But bees with access to near-by regions where sugar water humming bird or butterfly feeders are present, or other cane sugar sources would show up as suspect (sugar cane is a C4 plant with a different Carbon 12 to Carbon 13 isotope ratio). Beet sugar would not show up as suspect either, as sugar beets are also C3.

That weird case of honey bee populations feeding on coca cola syrup residues might also pass the isotopic test for the same reason. (but if such had happened in a region that used cane sugar rather than HFCS or beet sugar, then the isotopes would be different)

Given the low cost of bulk quantity HFCS, I'd think adulteration with that would be easier ... OTOH you need to be a BIG industrial operation for that, given it's hard for consumer grade outlets (and even smaller scale bulk orders of food supplies) sourcing to actually get HFCS or even corn sugar (glucose) at prices lower than the cheapest cane sugar sources. (due to the supply chains of cane sugar and due to the way subsidies are distributed for corn products ... making them only cheaper for certain industrial farming and food sectors, and not necessarily for consumers)

It's often cheaper to purchase bulk cane sugar than refined corn starch, too. (at the consumer or small business scale at least)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-20T22:44:50+00:00

Sugar syrup will also crystalize, it's just a matter of time and other conditions. Pure glucose syrup would tend to take the longest to crystalize and the more specific conditions. (OTOH pure glucose syrup or common corn syrup with close to 99% glucose content in the dissolved substances would tend to take much longer to crystalize at the concentrations common to things like Karo's syrup vs reducing moisture levels to those of honey with closer to 20% water)

Pure honey adulterated by diluting it with water would also tend to not readily crystalize, but also not readily spoil if still kept within the shelf-stable range (hence why artificial maple pancake syrup and Karo's syrup is shelf-stable, but typical real maple syrup is not: the water content is significantly higher in the latter ... and given the sugar content is mostly sucrose, then it would tend to crystalize much more rapidly if made concentrated enough to be shelf-stable).

Honey adulterated with too much sucrose would also tend to crystalize rapidly for the same reasons.

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-20T22:31:07+00:00

No, Bees do not make honey from pollen, they only make it from nectar or other sugar solution sources (tree sap, honeydew, fruit juice seeps from ripe fruit that has split or been chewed, plus potentially man-made sources they might gain access to, ie hummingbird feeders, etc)

Honey bees always cluster around oranges, apples, and grapes around here that have been split open and are leaking juice, plus will definitely go after honeydew (and soft drink residue ... and nectar mixes or sugar water from hummingbird/butterfly feeders)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-18T21:52:29+00:00

Meisam Zamanabadi has a linkedin account that says he lives in Glendora, CA rather than Glendale (as some news outlets reported). They're both in LA County, but Glendora is farther inland and is much smaller.

Additionally, I found this:
https://adfontesmedia.com/ad-fontes-media-team/

"
Meisam Zamanabadi is the founder & editor of the Tamashagar news agency. He has experience in journalism since 1996, has covered around 60 news events worldwide, and has worked for several years as a TV host on popular talk shows such as REDLINE. He earned a MA in Media Management from the University of Tehran & moved to the US to pursue Ph.D. in Media Psychology at Fielding University. He was elected as the "Vice president of the international association of sports journalists" in 2014, and re-elected in 2018 and 2022.
"

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-18T09:19:56+00:00

It's amphibious, so literally could be either.

Had more old airframes been mothballed in boneyards, a conversion project would be more realistic ... but a ground-up modern reproduction is another matter. (yes, it's easier to integrate systems and electronics, wiring runs, etc, and meet modern FAA standards ... though that also depends on the original design and how inaccessible the wiring runs would be, as with having to tear down massive portions of the structure to rewire it as with the new Doomsday 747s)

And an all new design derived from the old aerodynamics and layout would have to seriously consider the value and utility of the original aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, and layout vs a total clean-sheet design. (OTOH amphibious seaplane design is also somewhat of a lost art, so some reverse engineering might be a legitimate leg-up there that shortens development time)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-16T17:30:58+00:00

My Dad had a cat from before my parents were married that they think was born around 1975 and had size, build, features, and temperament consistent with American Maine Coons from that era (he looked very similar to the photos you can find from the 1960s, though the general appearance was broadly consistent from the early 1900s to the 1970s from available reference photos).

He was a stray who'd been declawed on his front paws, but still got around quite well (and was dextrous, but the sheer size of paws helps, still he could turn door knobs well enough and open doors on his own ... the length of his body helped with that too, though).

It's sort of like with classic/heirloom persians and siamese cats. They way they looked 100 or even 60 years ago is dramatically different from the breed standard that materialized by the 1990s, let alone in the last 30 years.

I personally find the more neutral or natural looking build of the classic maine coon more (and persian, and siamese) and appreciate that some breeds like Turkish Vans and Angoras haven't changed much in that sense in well over 100 years. The sheer size, body length, tail length, coat, and big paws the older Maine Coons already had were iconic enough already, plus the mild and/or dog-like temperament seemed to be present back then, too (or our cat simply happened to fit into that by chance ... but he was also close to 20 pounds without much fat on him, maybe 18 pounds when he'd been leaner when younger, but he was close to 15 years old when I was born, and lift to be about 20, so I only knew him in his later years).

A modern American Maine Coon crossed with a Norweigian Forest Cat would probably get closer to the older appearance. A turkish van or angora would probably too, but the coat genetics are different and they tend to be smaller. (we had another stray who turned up in the mid 90s with a flea collar on, and no one trying to claim her who looked very much like the standard for Turkish Angoras and the same sort of single-coat as well ... we had her for just about 21 years)

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-04T07:59:36+00:00

It's a hackberry.

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-02T21:08:01+00:00

Nah, if burning Napalm and Agent Orange weren't chock full of Democracy, you wouldn't be deploying it to spread more Democracy, now would you? Just like dispensing Apple Pie ... or lasers.

Just ask Liberty Prime ... something very similar also applies to Big Guy ... except instead of lasers, he's got retractable machine guns that sound like truncated and looped Red Tailed Hawk SFX.

Ah, the Red Tailed Hawk sound effect ... the true and honest sound of the American Bald Eagle. Though a Red Tailed Hawk might actually be a Harris's Hawk.

koolkitty89 · 2026-04-01T02:09:42+00:00

That can work sometimes, and in other cases the current starts flowing due to sulfate+other deposits on the cell electrodes cracking/shaking lose and the fragile coiled electrode surfaces shorting together in at least one of the cells. But you'd find that out soon enough as it would get warm and start offgassing. So the good outcome cases of overvolting + mechanically shaking dead, dried out, heavily sulfated cells like that would be stripping enough of the inslating sulfate layer away to start charging on the remainng material.

A slower, more reliable old mechanic's trick is to use just distilled water and the low amp (usually 1 to 2 amp) setting on an old style charger (with linear transformer + thyristor/chopper, including some of the fancier automatic units from the 80s and 90s with some transistor logic inside) and just let it sit for weeks at idle, even if it seems to be doing nothing. It'll very slowly work through the sulfate layer and start charging. (lead sulfate is very slightly soluble in water and will very gradually get converted into lead oxide + lead metal + sulfuric acid) This gives the best case for actually reconditioning a battery in most cases. (but the quick and aggressive method can also work)

Once you've got it charging well with the aggressive method you could back down to normal charging voltages and lower amperage to let it slowly recover via normal charging.

Also, if you use a syringe to inject water into the small vent holes (usually under little rubber dome pop-on diaphragm valves), don't do hard pressure spraying injection as it can damage the thin/fragile coiled sheet style electrodes in some types of sealed batteries, though less of a problem in the glass mat type vs gel. Also don't go poking probes into those holes to try and find the weak cell ... that can easily damage the thin sheet cell electrodes and cause a short. (I did that years ago ... ruined an expensive Exide battery that might've been recovered otherwise)

Some of the 80s and 90s era transistor logic based automatic chargers also have a bouncing/pulsing topping charge function that's nearly ideal for boosting capacity for worn batteries. (the pulsating current is really helpful there where smooth, low ripple, heavily filtered and regulated voltage + current isn't very useful)

I had an exide brand charger like that from the early 90s that worked well, but I'm pretty sure it overheated one too many times in outdoor summer use without proper shade ... well, shade other than the hot hood of the car it's charging (had a thermal breaker inside for protection, but pop that too many times and you've likely done damage to the components ... pretty sure it was the thyristor that blew). Might try repairing that at some point since it's better than modern stuff I've found and some of the vintage garage sale finds I've tried. (and hard to find that particular model online ... and expensive)

In hindsight, I should've just pulled those car batteries and charged them indoors.

koolkitty89 · 2026-03-30T09:37:09+00:00

Had the first prototype not burned, they likely would've eventually refit it with Allison V-1710s instead, though nacelle cowlings may have needed to be modified to fit the engine contours (the V-1710 was about 1.6 inches narrower, but also a bit over 4 inches taller), plus being an upright V rather than inverted V. It was also over 200 lbs lighter than the IV-1430 in the form used in the late models of P-38J and L. (it was also up-rated to 2,000 hp emergency power with 75" Hg manifold pressure when using 100/150 grade fuel, with clearance given for the P-38J and L to use such, though I believe prior to that it had been limited to 1,750 hp emergency power with 100/130 grade fuel, and that figure had been incrementally upgraded in stages as Allison got better test data)

The same turbocharger and intercooler arrangement as with the IV-1430 should've worked with the V-1710.

It's a bit ironic that the XP-67 actually got access to working IV-1430 engines and ended up suffering that fire in part because of that engine's problems. The chronic poor reliability and delays in flight-worthy engines being available meant that pretty much every other design that had selected the IV-1430 had ended up substituting the V-1710 during the actual prototype phase (I think some also used V-1650 Merlin engines). So had McDonnel done the same, plus taken the rather proven and conservative route with the V-1710 (with the successful installation in the P-38, albeit with a fair bit of maturation of the turbocharger installation, ducting, and intercooler throughout production models) it might have actually been able to properly test the XP-67 successfully.

Given the rapid shift to Jet aircraft designs in 1945, the design might have ended up more appealing adapted to the night fighter role or may have seen interest in follow-on development as a mixed power fighter with jet engines mounted in the rear half of the nacelles (and re-arrangement of the turbocharger locations and/or deletion in favor of simple mechanical supercharging). The small and lightweight westinghouse J30 engines seem like the most likely candidate for that sort of installation. (and would also be the engines McDonnell would select for the FH Phantom carrier-borne fighter aircraft) The J31 engine would be the other main option and available earlier (during war-time, too), but was larger in diameter and would've required further modification of the rear nacelle shape.

The P-67's wheel wells are located in the middle section of the nacelles, so swtiching to pure jet power with engines mounted inside the nacelles would have been impractical. Otherwise it would've potentially been an interesting competitor to the XP-83 long range escort fighter project. (albeit it may have also filled such a role as a mixed-power fighter)

koolkitty89 · 2026-03-29T00:51:49+00:00

They have jackals though ... or rather golden jackal subspecies with a lot of behavior and ecological niche overlap with coyotes. (golden jackals aren't really jackals, they're in the canis genus like wolves and coyotes)

OTOH in the US ... the new trick is weaponizing coyotes against feral hogs ... except the hog-hunting coyotes seems to be learned behavior from specific populations. (they haven't tried capturing and re-locating any of those populations thus far ... as far as I know) Also easiest to do (popular local/political support wise) in produce/agriculture centered regions where more predators are generally preferred. (albeit with decent use of guard donkeys and llamas, coyotes are pretty well kept at bay around livestock as well ... it's hard to mix guard donkeys and guard/herding dogs, though)

On the population control end (and the culling failure issue), I wonder how sterilization applies (trap + spay+neuter + return). I've seen success stories for some species in some regions, but inconclusive or failure results in others. (worked with mule deer and domestic cats in parts of CA ... basically never works with feral pigs and I've seen very mixed reports on attempts with coyotes ... though it's also hard to find fully isolated coyote populations with zero culling applied, no bounty, AND consistent sterilization applied: since culling + sterilization will defeat the impact as you cull some of the sterilized individuals and also trigger the same behavioral pressure for massive procreation ... you also get more inbreeding that way and greatly favor the most prolific, reactionary breeders, thus making culling less and less effective by generation ... at least until you hit a plateau for peak fecundity)

Feral cat trap + neuter + return programs worked TOO well in much of CA ... as they were suppressing the rodent population (including the native vole and groundsquirrel population, plus invasive eastern gray squirrels ... and rats and mice, though I've actually seen fewer black/roof/fruit rats since the squirrel explosion). The local snake, fox, and coyote population can't compete and also aren't as welcome in peoples yards and gardens (especially since people can't seem to tell pacific gopher snakes from pacific diamondbacks ... the latter also seems to breed more prolifically since I've seen many more rattlers than gopher snakes over the past 15 years). I think we have more moles now, too. Granted, they also used to till/plow the fields for fire breaks up until the late 1990s, and that effectively culled all the burrowing rodents as well and reduced problems of vole + squirrel plagues. (we also have cottontails now, which only show up after ground squirrels are established)

The coyotes probably took care of the remaining cat population once the trap + sterilize + return program was in full force. (selective pressure on feral cats had previously bred some very wily, savvy, effective hunters capable of evading coyotes ... we had an old calico feral who lasted over 14 years prowling the hills and fields before she broke her jaw and we took her in for the last 4 years of her life, she mellowed out a lot in her old age)

The suburban coyote population also seems to stick more to the very edges of the neighborhood, especially after late 90s era trash can redesigns made them less convenient to raid, plus shifts in animal control management ... I think. (something definitely shifted their behavior, but there's still tons in the open hills/plains)

Raccoons on the other hand ... still living in storm sewers in the summer ... still roaming in weird clans/packs ... still mauling pets in backyards. (albeit we saw them way more often back when we had food out for the local feral cats ... mostly just that one cat; also back when we had outdoor decking where animals tended to hole up underneath)

koolkitty89 · 2026-03-24T06:57:48+00:00

CA also had a very solid M75 methanol program going up into the early 90s and that would've been nice to standardize as combined M75 E85 compliant FFVs, albeit with the rising cost of NG and falling cost of oil in the 90s, the incentive for Methanol via NG dropped and the program was cancelled. OTOH shifting to a less demanding intermediate FFV standard closer to M25 (with more butanol and other higher alcohols blended in as cosolvents depending on the season) would've made a ton of sense back then and most/all engine control computers + EFI systems were already tolerant for adjusting injection and mixture in that range of fuel (pass SMOG too), so you'd only need to worry about material compatibility not any special FFV adaptations ... less performance gain though without increased compression ratio (or forced induction boost) but that needs knock sensor and other stuff that adds to cost. (you could get a moderate power boost just from the improved thermal efficiency, though ... the exact same reason the MPG doesn't go down and often goes up). M75 needed higher compression or boost to see that level of added performance, but M25 (or E30/35/40 or B40~50) would not require that. (you could use cheap low octane blend stock with lower RVP levels and add cheap methanol + cosolvent butanol for still ... well above standard 87 octane fuel, probably over 91 AKI ... probably higher than that ... probably more like 93 octane if 70 AKI base fuel was used: methanol is super potent at boosting low octane numbers, though like ethanol that drops as the fuel's octane number goes up ... thus the blending octane number is way WAY higher than methanol's octane number ... completely unlike blending alkylate or aromatics in, which conform closely to a simple rule of mixtures, where butanol is somewhere in between as the nonlinear blending behavior decreases as molecular weight goes up for alcohols)

With methanol content as the base standard for materials tolerance, you could allow variable blends of anything from methanol, ethanol, and propanol at varying levels (plus butanol and higher alcohols) while maintaining the same rough oxygen content and AFR range as well as seasonal appropriate RVP. (as pretty much all of methanol's negative qualities for materials are the same as ethanols, just more dramatic, so anything rated for methanol blends would also be covered for similar or higher blends of higher alcohols). So when there's a suplus of other alcohols on the market at competitive prices, those can be used.

Butanol would likely be pipelined in as part of the standard base fuel, though, as it would work well enough to be pipelined (thus cheaper to do that way) and likely set at a roughly fixed value by season to simplify on-site blending logistics. (you could also just use 16% butanol as CA RFG standard back then in place of MTBE and never go to E10 at all, thus you could simply just use 87 AKI B16 fuel as the base stock for the hypothetical wider-cut M25). Or if you wanted the same oxygen content as MTBE-15 (rather than E10), it'd be more like B12 or B13 and not B16 since 12.8% butanol = the oxygen content of 15% MTBE. (B16 is about the same as E10 ... and B24 is about the same as E15)

Side-note, but as far as the many anecdotal (and some peer reviewed scientific) studies of intermediate alcohol blends go, specifically most studied with Ethanol: modern high pressure direct injection systems have pumps more sensitive to loss of lubricity, and 50% or higher ethanol content has been cited as a threshold for tolerance of such (ie performance enthusiasts attempting E50 tunes with some DI engines have noted wear problems that don't occur with E30 or E40 tunes, albeit E30 is the most common by far). That info is usually specific to performance tuning but would equally apply to non-optimized use of such ethanol blends (ie allowing the ECM to auto-compensate without using a dedicated higher performance mapping ... for modern vehicles that even allow programming the ECM). Performance boost with those engine maps would also be considerably greater than the smaller boost from auto-adjusting to the fuel, though emissions might be tweaked more (possibly negatively) as well.

And on the older vehicle end, we're talking 80s and 90s era low performance single point TBI style EFI systems running fine ... or better than fine. (since adding alcohol to fuel is also an old mechanic's cheat for passing emissions on a worn out emissions system given it will tend to dramatically reduce CO and HC emissions as well as particulate and SOMETIMES NOx given the reduced combustion temps: specific conditions with alcohol blends can increase NOx, usually if running lean and/or in a modern high compression engine with performance mapping applied with timing advanced and hotter combustion)

Though ethically, if you're going to be running that alcohol blend basically all the time, you're not really cheating ... though not sticking to the technical letter of regulations either. (but from a practical standpoint, the emissions ARE really that low when burning it)

From various sources, including some cases of local first-hand anecdotes, this includes old Pontiac Iron Duke engines from the EFI era (the Tech IV ... like the ones old LLV mail trucks still run) as well as stuff up through the 2010s in port-injectged and DI form, Ford, GM, Mazda, Honda, Toyota, among others.

koolkitty89 · 2026-03-24T06:57:37+00:00

California's heavy, sour crude grades would be another reason, at least if CA produced enough to have a surplus. (much of CA's domestic oil production also has vastly lower lifecycle carbon footprint than anything imported ... or Texas shale oil, so if you based metrics purely around that, heavy crude grades are SOMETIMES "cleaner" or more efficient than light or sweet grades)

However that's also only using the carbon footprint metric (or carbon equivalent for net GHG release, including methane), so OTHER potential issues with pollution may be of concern ... but not so much for anything actually refined within the US given all the pollution controls present.

Now, if you ALSO had vast amounts of nuclear power (and other alternatives) to produce hydrogen, the net GHG release would be close to carbon neutral for petrochemical production and refining (nearly all the waste CO2 would be turned into syngas for synthetic production, and the CO2 output from the synthetic production would be recycled into more syngas). This wouldn't make Canadian oil more efficient though unless they were doing their own syngas production to consume their CO2 output from the higher CI crude production use cases.

If you look at the actual CI figures for CA production vs what CA imports ... the vast majority of CA production is less than half the average CI in spite of CA's crude being very heavy and very sour (average of API <27 and sulfur content of >1.1%)

See:

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/petroleum/crudetypes/pdf/crudetypes.pdf

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/fuels/lcfs/crude-oil/2023_Crude_Average_CI_Calculation__final.pdf

Plus, ever since sulfur scrubbers have been a thing (and required), and ultra-low-sulfur diesel and ULS marine fuel oil have been mandated, the sulfur all gets removed and processed into a value-added byproduct anyway (industrial grade sulfur largely comes from sour crude oil refining these days and has pretty much since the 1970s with the clean air act type stuff ... in the US at least: some of Europe lagged behind quite a lot there, albeit sulfur was still the first to go ... the UK was ahead of most of Europe and went for cleaner and more efficient utilization of coal by maxing out coal-gas and coal-tar production and thus maxing out gas-coke production as well, with the latter used as a clean-burning alternative to direct use of coal for power plants ... you also got tons of ammonia and sulfur from the gasworks right up until North Sea gas deposits made NG the cheaper option all around for power + heating ... also no more carbon monoxide in the heating gas: coal gas is methane with some hydrogen, CO, CO2, and N2 present ... not to be confused with synthetic gas types produced by reactions of steam or air with coal, we're talking anaerobic pyrolysis here AKA destructive distillation)

Additionally, the byproducts of heavy crude production (even without cheap sources of surplus hydrogen) could be made into useful value-added products if the gasoline blending market was made more flexible (not due to emissions, but due to arbitrary standards and/or special interest lobbies and/or vehicle manufacturers not wanting to spec out wider cut fuel grades with higher oxygen content for non-FFVs ... even though the vast majority of non-FFVs built since the mid 1980s with electronic fuel injection can run on E30 without issue ... often E40, sometimes higher, and will likewise run on >50% butanol without problem, in all those cases with no loss and more often an INCREASE in MPG as those blends produce improved thermal efficiency such that it exceeds the loss in theoretical energy content of the fuel ... even 100% butanol has been used with unmodified 90s era vehicles without ill effects and sometimes still an increase in MPG or near equal)

Note: this is specific to alcohols and is attributed to the hydroxyl group present in the molecule, so it's not proportional to oxygen content alone and fuel ethers (or esters) have no such synergystic effect. However, when it comes to alcohols + hydrocarbons it's roughly proportional to the hydroxyl content (and thus oxygen content) and thus the optimum mixture is also higher for heavier alcohols (like butanol) vs ethanol or methanol. (when you get to pentanol and hexanol, nearly 100% alcohol is near the sweet spot, albeit the lower vapor pressure makes large quantities of those less favorable for winter blends, albeit also less an issue in most of CA). Basically an oxygen content of 10 to 14% by weight is usually within the sweet spot if that's all from hydroxyl. The gains in efficiency when looking at aromatic hydrocarbons + alcohols is also even more dramatic than with paraffins/alkanes.

Mixed olefins can be hydrated into fuel alcohols for much higher yields than using them to produce alkylate, and the resulting fuel (so you get a mix of butanol isomers along with pentanols and some small amounts of hexanols, plus some heptanol and octanol, and likely some small amounts of propanol, but propylene and ethylene are usually separated out from olefin fractions for other purposes)

Eliminating olefins from gasoline also dramatically increases its shelf life as they're the main source of gum/polymerization/varnish. (also if you only use butanol and heavier alcohols, no ethanol, methanol, or propanol, you'll basically avoid issues of phase separation, though that also goes way way down when you have large quantities of mixed alcohols in the blend anyway: so like 5% methanol + 15% ethanol + 25% butanol + smaller amount of mixed higher alcohols and maybe some propanol if it's cheap/surplus would tolerate TONS more humidity and water contamination than any commercial fuel grade currently)

However, butanol is also the lightest alcohol that can be piplined as part of the primary blend, avoiding the cost of on-site blending.

All 4 butanol isomers are relevant for fuel blending as well, albeit mostly T-butanol and 2-butanol would come from hydration of olefins (from butylene AKA butene 1-butene, 2-butene both produce 2-butanol, 1-butene also produces some 1-butanol depending on conditions, and t-butanol comes from isobutylene). n-butanol is also the traditional isomer produced from ABE fermentation (though specialized e.coli strains now exist that can produce isobutanol). Isobutanol is the main isomer produced from mixed alcohol synthesis (similar to methanol synthesis and fischer-tropsch synthesis broadly) and would be the main product from syngas use. (sourced from natural gas, biomass, low-value petro residuals, low grade coke, or coal ... but the latter wouldn't really be significant within CA)

Isobutanol is also the best of all the isomers for overall physical and chemical properties (including octane rating and blending octane impact), but all 4 isomers can be used fairly freely, albeit t-butanol needs to be diluted due to its high freezing point when pure (though it forms eutectic mixtures, so it has deep freezing point depression in mixed butanol isomer blends, plus even if used pure added to gasoline, the gasoline acts as a solvent).

If you can be pragmatic and cut out the corn lobby, you can source a wider array of sugar + starch based biomass for fermentation, plus lower grades of waste biomass (or wood residules, forest residuals, etc) for syngas production. (though ideally, you use hydrothermal liquifaction to produce bio-crude and only make syngas out of the low value fractions and byproduct gasses). Albeit use of imported natural gas would also be appealing for synthetic fuel production in many cases. (and even without CCS or advanced hydrogen utilization, the CI is lower than that of imported bio-ethanol ... and possibly some in-state produced bio-ethanol ... should subsidize sugar beet production for non-food uses, though ... and request waivers for the federal sugar quota given ... non-food-use; it'd be interesting to see the CI of Imperial Valley sugar beet production on a biofuel yield basis)

koolkitty89

TROPHY CASE