VW actually undersold the mileage. I think the sticker said 44mpg highway and when I drove like a normal person, I got 52 or 53 mpg. When I drove like a red-blooded American, I still got 47 mpg. They were capable of much more.
Something to consider with diesel, the oil produced by fracking in the USA, Drill-Baby-Drill, is so light that diesel cannot be produced by it. Most sources of heavier grade oil for diesel refinement come from overseas, most notably Venezuela. A definite issue with todayтАЩs geo-politics.
Cargo carrier ships use "bunker diesel", that is, used motor oil.
15 supercargo carriers using bunker oil put out more smog than do all automobiles on earth combined.
There are 55 THOUSAND cargo carriers in operation.
Yet the "economics" say it is "cheaper" to ship food grown in America to processors overseas, then ship it back (often adulterated), or to ship overseas products rather than making/growing them locally due to regulation.
Or, to depend on interstate trucking rather than railroad hub systems between towns, as Kunstler and commenter Famine Hedge have advocated.
Or yet again, to invest not only in pipelines for liquids, but pipeline and compression storage for natgas, an immediate 40% reduction in pollution (and easily used for converting coal plants, as noticed here); again, the "economics" say valuable natgas is better burnt off at the stack rather than piped. Investing in simple pipe, for eff's sake, instead of these hypertoxic, overcomplicated Green schemes!
Wow! Our school bus driver showed us his little notebook where he recorded mileage/fill-ups/MPGs .... 50 mpg on a VW diesel rabbit in 1979.
VW actually undersold the mileage. I think the sticker said 44mpg highway and when I drove like a normal person, I got 52 or 53 mpg. When I drove like a red-blooded American, I still got 47 mpg. They were capable of much more.
Something to consider with diesel, the oil produced by fracking in the USA, Drill-Baby-Drill, is so light that diesel cannot be produced by it. Most sources of heavier grade oil for diesel refinement come from overseas, most notably Venezuela. A definite issue with todayтАЩs geo-politics.
Cargo carrier ships use "bunker diesel", that is, used motor oil.
15 supercargo carriers using bunker oil put out more smog than do all automobiles on earth combined.
There are 55 THOUSAND cargo carriers in operation.
Yet the "economics" say it is "cheaper" to ship food grown in America to processors overseas, then ship it back (often adulterated), or to ship overseas products rather than making/growing them locally due to regulation.
Or, to depend on interstate trucking rather than railroad hub systems between towns, as Kunstler and commenter Famine Hedge have advocated.
Or yet again, to invest not only in pipelines for liquids, but pipeline and compression storage for natgas, an immediate 40% reduction in pollution (and easily used for converting coal plants, as noticed here); again, the "economics" say valuable natgas is better burnt off at the stack rather than piped. Investing in simple pipe, for eff's sake, instead of these hypertoxic, overcomplicated Green schemes!
Good post. I think that the AGW folks get involved in all of this.