MSNBC, the First Lady, and the Gas Engine

or
Why Progressives are Regressives and Conservatives Make the Progress

Guess WhatTrying to Get a Balanced Picture of the News

So, in my usual scanning of diverse news sources to get a balanced view of the news, I looked at the MSNBC headlines, and guess what I found?

Two headlines which begged to be linked together:

Why Would the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) Be Linked to a Gas Engine?

FLOTUS begs linkage to a gas engine because she promotes the school lunch programs in which students are widely known to throw away lunches and try to abandon the lunch programs altogether, while the MSNBC’s Gas Engine article below the FLOTUS headline claims the engine can be fueled by, among other things, discarded school lunches!

Feeding Sandwiches to an EngineSlide1

The scientist and the conservative in me had to kick in, and I had to investigate the possibility and the cost- effectiveness of feeding an engine with school lunches.
Long story short, and sparing you the details and calculations (contact me if you want them), it boils down to this-

Let’s acknowledge that sandwiches and gasoline, being hydrocarbon-derived, do actually have a similar energy density, or energy available per pound of each material.
So, if you could put discarded sandwiches into your gas tank and burned them efficiently, that might provide some energy.
Points for progressive ideas.

But you can’t put a sandwich directly into your gas tank and burn it efficiently.  Conservatives are needed to do the thinking!
Reality must be addressed.

What does it take to burn a sandwich in your gas tank?

In order to use school lunches in the GE engine described in the MSNBC (GE-sponsored) article (and yes, GE ads are now masquerading as top headlines at MSNBC), there are several steps involved:

  • The sandwich has to be industrially fermented by microorganisms to produce methane (a gas with 72 times higher global warming potential than CO2; oops, big progressive no-no! This would beg the question whether sandwich fermentors had to pay a flatulence tax. ).  The factory doing the fermenting also uses power and equipment which requires power to be manufactured and to run.Slide1
  • The methane then has to be burned in a GE engine, an engine that also requires power and natural resources to manufacture.

So, yes, your discarded school lunches could be used to run a gas engine.

What is the Cost of this Discarded Sandwich Fuel?

Initial cost: the average school lunch, about $3 per pound, already costs 7x higher than the cost of gasoline (43 cents per pound).
Next, we need to account for the intermediate costs involved in industrial processing to convert to methane and transport it to the power plant.  A generous estimate might be 10-15% efficient.  So, the use of discarded school lunches to fuel engines will cost at least 70 times more than using gasoline.

How would you like to pay for school lunch gasoline at $280 per gallon?  BTW, we taxpayers also had to pay for the discarded school lunch.

An Alternative Approach

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Sage Kokjohn, Rolf Reitz, Reed Hanson, inventors of RCCI

My husband Rolf Reitz  is a scientist and a conservative.
He has spent his entire career, together with other dedicated scientists, developing a process called RCCI, which is causing quite the stir in the automotive industry today.

RCCI increases the efficiency of the internal combustion engine by about 30% while reducing pollutant emissions at the same time.   The reduced emissions reduce the cost of engines dramatically, because expensive exhaust after-treatment is no longer needed.

If implemented in our entire fleet overnight, the RCCI process would eliminate United States need for import of Persian oil.  The United States would practically be self reliant in our energy needs.

Incidentally, the RCCI process is also compatible with numerous alternative fuels, which may be developed in the future.  It can even be compatible with the methane produced from Michelle Obama’s discarded school lunches.

The Difference Between a Progressive and a Conservative

Our progressive First Lady and progressive MSNBC have many good intentions and creative dreams.  Unfortunately, most of them, like this one, are completely unrealistic.  Also unfortunately, the First Lady and MSNBC pressure others to pay for their ideas, and to do the work.

The First Lady’s husband, our President, is about to use his Executive Order privileges to dictate a mandatory 20% reduction in carbon emissions from coal-fired electric plants.   This reduction is deemed totally unnecessary by thousands of scientists, who reject catastrophic global warming claims, believing them not to be supported by science.  This reduction would also represent a regression for the United States economy and for our energy supply.Slide1
Progressives falsely claim that 97% of scientists support global warming theories, when in actual fact alarmists are in the minority,and 60% of meteorologists (weather experts) see no potential threat.

So progressives dream, ignore facts and demand the impossible.  They insist on trying to achieve their goals without supporting, reasoned analysis.
Often their idealistic dreams boomerang, come back as nightmares, and implode their wishful plans.  That’s what’s been happening to President Obama recently.
His initial 2008 success, his popularity, and everything associated with him, including ObamaCare, have been failing and imploding, despite all the hopes, dreams and good intentions he had at the start.

Progressives turn out to be regressives, making no progress and dragging the entire nation with them into tragic regression instead, both economic and moral.

What Would a Conservative Do? 

A conservative also abhors waste, but instead of indulging in fruitless wishful thinking, spends the time analyzing the problem.  That is how sustainable solutions are reached.

This is what can happen when conservatives roll up their sleeves and get to work, rather than looking to the government for solutions.  They provide the government with solutions, rather than asking government for handouts.

The Tables Are Turned

Today, Progressives make no progress.  They cause regression instead, so let’s call them Regressives.
Conservatives should be called Progressive; they make progress by taking charge and by solving problems.

Time for Conservatives to Take Charge!
There are some elections coming!