Actually, it's San Clemente's beach cam, not Surfriders.
We do love it! If you watch closely, you'll get to see the Amtrak Surfliner (note tracks ~10 feet from the beach)

About 25 minutes south of this site, in Encinitas, the annual Wavecrest Woodie meet happens in September. On the beach. Lots of BUICK woodies show up. (Note Buicks on beach in photo: http://www.wavecrestwoodies.com/photos.html

JMC

I do a lot of hang gliding (it's been called "sky surfing") and we have a "wind talker" that we can acess to get the latest wind data from a mountain top launch site. Sort of a surfcam. Like I said, GOTTA luv it.........Bob

Michael88, whether a pump has ethanol or not is based on the location (i.e., metropolitan area) rather than a particular gas station or brand. Ethanol has been in the blend for years, just not to the level of current 10% or E85--probably since before the first oxygenated fuels or "reformulated gas" went on sale. Typically, now that ethanol has replaced MTBE as the oxygenate of choice, you now see labels on the pumps that the fuel being dispensed CAN contain up to 10% ethanol. Of course, E85 pumps will be completely marked as to that fact, I would suspect as E85 is only meant for vehicles designed to use it OR normal gasoline . . . designed to do it from the factory OR possibly with a carburetor modified/designed to run on it exclusively (as Edelbrock sells some of their 4bbls to do just that).

In other words, if one station has it in your area, they all most probably do.

Just some thoughts,
NTX5467

I concur with the restauranteurs selling waste oil to the rendering operations and have seen those trucks at the rear of the kitchen areas over the years. In more recent years, it's been "waste oil" companies' names on the side of the trucks. One way or another, the cooking oil gets recycled. The City of Denton, TX started running all of their city diesels on bio-diesel a few years ago, purchased from a local bio-diesel plant.

Not to forget that some private-owned restaurants would also sell the scraps from the tables to farmers to feed to their hogs (used to see the ragged pickups pull up to the kitchen area as the cooks emptied barrels, or loaded them, into the farmer's pickup). I guess they now have garbage disposals and pay sewer charges accordingly?

Enjoy!
NTX5467

OK Buick People: I Recently attended a swap meet and John Milner was there signing autographs. He didn't look so good. Maybe the recession has him in a funk too. Mitch

Nope. He was in Pittsburgh in Feb last year....he looked bad then too.

[quoteNobel Peace Awards:

2001. Kofi Annan. (No mention made of him and his son skimmimg millions from oil for food money.)

2002. James (Jimmy) Carter. (No mention made of of his bumbling ineffective efforts that did little more than give gravitus to tyrants/terrorists)

2007. Albert (AL) Gore. Shared prize. (No mention made of his 12000 sq ft house or extensive travels by private jets while he exhorts the "masses" to sacrifice. No memtion made of his justification of above by buying "carbon offsets")


Any year Acadamy Award winner. Pick any politically correct, racially diverse, sexually perverse, gay pushing, liberal over the top cause movie, and it got an award for something.


The Academy Awards have been a publicity driven joke for years. The Nobels, at least as far as "soft sciences" are concerned have been used to make political statements also for years. Were I looking to gain credibility I wouldn't cite either of those "Awards". Most "awards" of this nature are agenda driven and the awarders couldn't care less if the awardee was a Maroon or not as long as their agenda is pushed and people are manipulated into a certain point of view.....Bob
[/quote]
Bhigdog, I'm with you on this one. You've said it as well as I could have. These awards have all been jokes since the liberals have gotten the upper hand in this country. I saw a lot of talk about polar bears in previous posts also. What I want to know is, what is a polar bear going to do for my life in any way shape or form whether they are around or not. They sure as h==l aren't going to buy my gas for me!!

The issue with the polar bears, Reatta1, is that a poor, defenseless animal is having a poorer time of existing and living in the native habitat--through no fault of its own. Possibly, if the USA annexed Antartica and the North Pole, then they'd be relocated to more hospitable environments at taxpayer expense? Or there would be an expensive study group to determine where they could live?

Rather than global warming causing the ice caps to melt, perhaps they are deteriorating as the weight of the ice is causing fissures and internal melting due to the weight of the ice itself? Pressure makes heat, even if it makes just enough for ice to become less solid . . . but no one really admits to that little fact of science. Dang those itsy bitsy side issues!

If too much of the surface ice melts, it can raise the level of the oceans and flood many current resort/vacation areas and further strain any levees along the coastal areas. Then millions of defenseless people would have to relocate to higher ground "somewhere". THAT could be interesting! Might make the "new coast" coastal fishing better with all of the new places for fish to live? LOTS of possibilities!

Enjoy!
NTX5467

You probably also believe in the Tooth Fairy.

The biggest ethanol producer in this area is experimenting with using corn stalks and cobs which are basically waste to produce ethanol. They have also contracted with the city of Sioux Falls to ust the Methanol from our landfill to power a plant to produce electricity to run the plant. As far as wind power if you think those barren hills in California is the only place they have it you need to drive through Iowa and Minnesota to see thousands of new wind generators. I personally think they are beautiful and would gladly have one in my back yard if I could afford it.

Welcome back Joe...we missed your wise assesement of people and situations. Looking forward to more.
Willie

Like the one where it took about a hundred thousand years of continuous, stable pack ice (which at a given thickness probably moved up and down the coasts during the ice ages but never ceased to exist) for the polar bear species to evolve in the first place. (Which makes the polar bear one of the most recently evolved mammals, like us.) They do teach you things before they hand you a Master's Degree, you know!)

BTW, polar bears aren't even the most endangered species in this crisis. We'll lose many before it's over. The narwhal is likely the first major to go.

Climate Change is real. The debate is over. The rest of the modern world is dealing with it. Like I said in the recent thread in the Legal Forum, all three remaining Presidential candidates are among the strongest supporters of action on Climate Change in all of government, so change is coming here too.

You'll be passed by (as often happens to old folks who don't keep up) when the world takes action. And like the old man sitting on his duff at the General Store yelling "BUY A HORSE!" to every passing Flivver that came his way in 1910, nobody will care that you didn't understand the coming change either.

Rant on, and have another pickle out of the barrel.

NTX,

I wonder if anyone ever considered the fact that there are far more people on the Earth now than at any time in history. And people need water.....

So, if ice is melting (don't they love to show those videos) but New York, LA, Miami and New Orleans are not underwater, maybe all that melted water is being used up by the now-present billions of people that weren't there a few decades ago?

Rats, if this were true, it means Al Gore and the Socialists don't get to shut down GM, Ford, Chrysler, and any other company that makes anything in the U.S. while giving their homeland, Communist China a pass on the Kyoto accords. Wow, this then couldn't possibly be true because it doesn't fit Big Al's world view.

It must take the perspective of somone who thinks a man personally worth over $100 million is a communist to perceive a world where people somehow consume water that then disappears, like a bunch of water-hungry Pac-Men. This isn't just a huge misunderstanding of hydrology, it's basic biology that wouldn't pass a grade school exam (unless people don't perspire, urinate, or have sewers where you live.).

When did we build a world where everyone was an expert in everything just by virtue of self-ordainment? When did knowledge and learning become passe? When did we become so small as people that we can now never admit that someone else knew more about something than we do?

Are we really this pathetic?

As usual, Dave has kidnapped the forum and redirected it to talk about his fav topic......GLOBAL SKY IS FALLING, ER, WARMING

As for getting back on topic, here's some information ABOUT THE TOPCI to consider:

From The Motley Fool Web site:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/04/26/are-we-headed-for-a-recession-who-cares.aspx
QUOTE
Are We Headed for a Recession? Who Cares?
By Rich Greifner April 26, 2008


Is the United States headed for a recession? Yale professor Robert Shiller certainly thinks so. In a recent interview, Shiller said that the American real estate sector has "trillions of dollars' worth of losses" yet to come, and it could plunge the U.S. into a "Japan-style slump."

Don't tell that to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Although Paulson admits the economic outlook is challenging, he says "the economy and the markets are strong enough to absorb" rising credit losses, and he remains confident that rate cuts and rebates will ward off a recession.

But then there's financial newsletter tracker Mark Hulbert, who wrote, "The odds had increased that we were already in a recession" -- in September!

When three experts offer three different opinions, it's difficult to know whom to trust. So here's my advice: Ignore them all.

Seriously, ignore them all
Suppose Shiller's correct, and the U.S. is headed for a recession. Or maybe Hulbert has it right, and we've been in a recession for months. Does it ultimately matter? Should you alter your stock selection process? Should you sell off your stock holdings in favor of government bonds?

Just what the heck is a recession, and what does it mean for stocks? The answers may surprise you.

What goes up must come down
A recession is the period between a peak of economic activity and a trough. Recessions typically last between six and 18 months, and they're a perfectly natural part of the business cycle.

To determine whether the economy is in recession, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) analyzes changes in factors such as gross domestic product, personal income, employment, industrial production, and retail sales volume. There is no fixed rule for how the different indicators are weighed.

But there is a significant delay
It takes time for the NBER to collect and analyze this economic data. By the time it's determined that the country is in a recession, odds are that the economy is already close to recovering. For example, the last trough in economic activity occurred in November 2001 -- but the NBER didn't make that determination until July 2003. By that time, the economy had been improving for more than a year and a half!

Wait, stocks can go up in a recession?
Since 1945, there have been 11 recessions lasting an average of 10 months each. But according to a recent article from Hulbert, during these recessions, the stock market actually rose seven times -- and the average market return during all 11 recessions was 3%!
UNQUOTE

The pages of history are littered with "Truths" put forward by the "Experts" of their time who insisted "The debate is over" only to be proven quite wrong.
If Columbus had listened to the "experts" who said "There is no debate, no doubt about it, the Earth is flat" he never would have sailed.
Whenever debate ends so too does the search for truth end.
That's something every Masters candidate should learn, understand, and embrace. Evidently they are not taught "everything"........Bob

O.K. I give up. The critics are right.

The Holocaust never happened.

Congratulations, fellow forum users!

According to Dave you have been upgraded to ANTISEMITES!

Again folks, this is the Buick forum.

This thread started as a comment on the high cost of fuel. This relates directly to the "hobby" of which the gas guzzling, unnecessary, resourse wasting, collector Buicks most of us own are part. Granted we have strayed from the purity of purpose this forum was designed for from time to time. But who hasn't, in the quest for both enlightenment and entertainment, done so.
With 94 posts this thread has legs for a reason and the posts, for the most part, have been both thoughtful and civil.
What I do, when a certain thread doesn't interest me is this. I just don't go there..........Bob

Bob,

Well said!


Stevo

Don't give up, Dave. I, for one, appreciate diverse opinions.



Apples and oranges.

Please give me a break about the "this is a Buick forum". We all own Buick's and we're talking about stuff that seems to be of interest to a lot of Buick people. So, do as Bob says, don't read it if you ain't interested.

And with all due respect to the participants of this thread, the truth about most things lies somewhere in the middle of the issue. The extremists are usually just that. The sky is not falling and Al Gore doesn't give a rat's behind about anything but himself, you can rest assured of that.

Gary

Nope, just newer apples (no matter how much you and I would like it to be otherwise).

Harry, no matter how much we'd like to try we cannot divorce our hobby from the realities of this world. For a taste of how that's going to affect us (dramatically) in the coming years I urge everyone to look at the thread in the AACA Legislative Forum on this subject. and to look at the story in the L.A. Times that triggered it.