Low Tire Pressure - leak or extreme cold?

Maintenance/Repairs
21

How Did I Survive Waiting For The Bus Before Wind Chill Was Invented And When Schools Didn’t Close Because Of Low Temperature And Windy Weather? Schools Only Closed When Snow Was So Deep That A Bus Couldn’t Stop And Turn Around And For
the Opening Day Of Deer Season ( A Religious Holiday).

We, as a society, are becoming too dependent, too protected, too lazy, too dumbed-down, to be thinking, resilient, independent, productive individuals, I’m afraid.

Besides, I’m sure everybody is aware of Global Warming, by now.
BTW, I see the Great Lakes are almost entirely frozen-over, setting records! These Wind-Chill weather folks haven’t mentioned it (Global Warming) for a while. What’s up with that, even if they try and say it’s Climate Change? One warm summer day and it’s Global Warming!

CSA

22

I guess if one needs an explanation at this stage as to how global warming changes weather patterns and brings about more extremes in weather including colder temps in many areas, another attempt is unnecessary.

23

I’m all for cleaning up the mess that we and the generations before us have left for our grandchildren. Some was reckless disposal of harmful material and some was just a lack of the knowledge that these things could cause a problem in the future. At the time I think many people just didn’t know any better. I remember my grandpa walking down the driveway scooping drain oil from a bucket with a coffee can with holes in the bottom…and oiling the driveway to keep the dust down.

YetI’m not a follower of the “Global Warming” crowd.

Granted the weather has been changing, but as I understand it…the earth has been going through warming and cooling cycles for a million years.
Ice core samples prove that approximately every 300 - 500 years the earth goes through one of these cycles. There was one back when the pilgrims first came to America and the slight cooling over a 50 year period before the temperatures went back to normal again, caused many crops to fail or under produce. All in all it had only dropped by less than 10 degree’s, but it was enough to affect the crops.

There was a very good documentary about this period and it was called the “Littlest Ice Age”.
I believe it aired on PBS just like Tom and Rays show.

We should all try to recycle more, keep trash to a minimum that will be going to a landfill, and try our best not to pollute the air and water that is so vital.

Al Gore is all over himself about global warming, but I’ll bet there are enough lights on in his backyard at 3am that you could do surgery on a gnat.

Not every one can do their driving in an electric car, or some little clown car. Some people…because of their profession, the number of children, or their towing needs…just need a bigger car or truck.

Yosemite

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Yosemite, you said it beautifully. The Earth’s climate has been cooling and warming, oscillating up and down, for 4.54 billion years.

I too agree that we definitely needed to change our ways, we were destroying the air and waterways, but I’m not convinced that we know how much if any, we, humankind, are having on any climate changes. IMHO the forces creating climate change are way, way more powerful than anything we could do and way beyond our control. The dynamic chemistry of the sun, solar flares and storms, electromagnetic waves emitted by the sun, the effects of the gravity of other planetary bodies including the moon, changes in the Earth’s orbit, changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, platial shift, and even the activities happening in other galaxies. Our solar system is sort of a giant model of an atom. An atom is 98% space, yet each neutron, proton, electron, quart, and boson affects its behavior… even changes in temperature affect its behavior, as scientists discovered to their surprise when they brought matter to near zero kelvin. The other bodies in our solar system, the other forces in our solar system that we can’t see, and all the other elements and forces in the other solar systems and, indeed, galaxies all affect our planet’s climate.

But there’s a lot of money available in the field of “Global Warming”. And as long as there is, the advocates will continue to say “the science is settled”, and “you just need to educate yourself, but some of you would rather just say it’s all BS” and other such cheap insults and blather.

Meanwhile, the believers will continue to strut their stuff. And the government will continue pumping billions of our tax dollars into the field. And life will go on. I’ll eventually die, you’ll eventually die, they’ll eventually die, and 2-1/2 billion years from now the sun will burn itself out. And none of this will have changed anything one iota.

25
"In a solid, the surface area varies with the square of the change in the linear measure of the size of the solid. So, kids do very well in cold temps compared to adults as they radiate their body heat much more slowly."

Not really. Volume varies with the cube of the change in the linear measure, so the kid has a higher surface to volume ratio and will actually cool faster:

Kids seem to handle cold better because of their high energy production.

26

Hi, could you please bring this back around to more automotive subjects? Thank you.

27

@insightful. I stand corrected. The point being, they still need protection from frost bite regardless of how they appear to handle the cold.

28

Fortunately, cars are scheduled to become less polluting and more efficient because our government has chosen to actually take a scientific approach and note that the increase of greenhouse gases which contributes to a global warming trend is significantly affected by the automobile. The last I noticed, cars were made and driven by human beings. I would guess then that the assumption is that man contributes to global warming. NASA, the EPA and just about every other govt agency responsible in this endeavor officially agrees. Even the military is on board. Because the US is one of the world’s biggest contributors to green house gases, our govt. has endorsed measures to make autos cleaner. They have under all administrations.

I was looking out the window the other day for a place to move to by our decendents of the doubters slow down or curtail this effort. What are the options ?

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html

29

@dagosa: Just because you believe in GW doesn’t neccessarily mean the most effective thing is to fight it tooth and nail.

The simple fact is that keeping 6,000,000,000+ alive requires the use of stored energy. Given that fossil fuels are so cost-effective, they WILL get used up, regardless. On a geologic time frame, they’ll get used up in the blink of an eye! IF we conserve strenuously, change “blink of an eye” to “the time it takes to breathe.”

SO, conservation of fossil fuels makes a small difference in outcomes for THIS generation…a somewhat bigger difference for the NEXT generation…but as far as “saving the world” or similar nonsense goes, it’s moot: all fossil fuels CAN and WILL be used until exhausted.

What are the options? Cut obvious waste, make smart decisions…but put away that hairshirt! Concentrate more on MITIGATION OF EFFECTS than on PREVENTION, (which is a fool’s errand anyways). BTW, all of this is smart thinking, regardless of the magnitude of the GW effect (if any).

Basically: consider ALL possible options. Figure out which options are too draconian to be politically viable…and then select the most effective option of “whatever’s left!”

30

I was in Watertown NY one night and the temp was -31F (actual) with a 50 mph wind and snowing so hard you could not see the end of you hood. I have been in cloder temps,but never experienced nastier weather.

I wonder what the wind chill was?

31

Cold. Damn cold.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Wind+Chill+Chart+Fahrenheit&Form=IQFRDR#view=detail&id=8733D35AACDD3A13ECFAB28A2C64B03034D46631&selectedIndex=3

32

@meanjoe75fan.
. The EPA will Inforce stringent measures to make cars more efficient, which is the big reason Toyota, a forward thinking car company, has pushed the Prius for many years and refused to consider a diesel in their newer Tacoma. It is good economics to get off fossil fuels. That’s what naysayers don’t get. This is all happening around us and it is fact and not just personal opinion. You disbelieve the reference ? It’s staight from horses mouth. Each new generation of cars will more efficient and yes, tar sands oil is a plus contributor to higher levels of CO2 emissions and should not be part of the extraction at all costs mentality.

It’s better economically in our state which has a thriving business on carbon neutral pellet burning stoves and fuel. (Yes, they are surprisingly carbon neutral) which helps keep money’s spent on energy , instate.
The Economy improves overall with each reduction in fossil fuel use. More spent on local goods, less on fuel for transportation heating and electricity. You are in the middle of this shift…it’s not only good for our destiny, it’s good economic sense now.

33

While I choose not to get into the global warming debate with dag yet again (Carolyn has rightfully posted repeated warnings about going into lengthy threads not about cars), I agree with dag’s statements that the EPA will continue to make the regulations more and more difficult for manufacturers to meet and that it’s good economics (for the manufacturers) to get off of fossil fuels. Toyota is clearly taking the long view.

I also think a good argument can be made that Tesla has breathed new life into the development of EVs and of the battery technologies necessary to power them. Before Tesla, all we had were lead-acid batteries powering EV systems with extremely short range. Now EVs usable as daily drivers are coming out with ranges in excess of 200 miles and I recently read about yet another power cell (battery) development with even more power density than Lithium-Ion. I don’t know much about it yet, but it provides emphasis to the point that new life has been breathed into the battery industry.

34

BUT…carbon savings/energy savings with electric cars are largely illusory.

CONSIDER: A decent plug-in gets ~100 eMPG; that is, it requires one “Gasoline Gallon Equivalent” to go 100 miles. NOW, while that sounds really good, consider that generation, distribution, et. al. of electricity is ~36% efficient, last time I checked. THAT means, on a “BTU-of-burned-stuff” basis, a plug-in is a wash with a gasser that gets 36 MPG.

On top of which, if the fuel source is coal, you’ll generate proportionally more CO2 for your energy than with gasoline! (Gasoline has all those H- bonds to oxidize; coal is mostly C-.)

(P.S. every last bit of the above discussion is car-related…)

35

There are over 80,000 dams in the United States. Less that 3% are being used to generate electricity. The discussion you’re opening gets into the whole industry of power generation as well as debates on the (over)regulation of the industry.

Carolyn has been very generous in allowing us to go off-topic, but perhaps we shouldn’t drift off into that discussion. It truly isn’t car related except in a tertiary way.

No disrespect meant.

36

@meanjoe Good post. If the electricity is generated in an old style power station and the fuel is coal there is little net environmental benefit, except that there is less air pollution DOWNTON since the power plant is usually located in a remote location. If the location is Detroit where there is a coal fired plant on the Detroit river, the air downtown will be worse.

If the power is generated by water or nuclear there is a good net improvement in CO2 reduction. But those same environmental groups are also anti-nuclear and anti-large hydro plants.

37

Apologies, Carolyn, I cannot resist.

There is at least one small hydrogenerator on the market capable of powering about 100 houses, and a number available to power one or two individual houses, but until late 2013 federal regulations required a small generator on a small stream existing on private properly to comply with the same regulatory requirements as a new Hoover Dam, including expensive environmental studies, engineering studies, design applications and approvals by the EPA and other regulators, permitting, and last-but-not-least licensing by the local power provider. It was simply cost prohibitive to try to generate power for even just your own house, even if you had an existing dam in your stream. I understand that federal regulations have since been changed to encourage generation by small hydros, but state regulations and permitting are still extremely expensive.

The industry is not regulated with an eye toward encouraging more efficient power generation. It’s regulated towards only providing absolute control by the power companies to ensure maximum profitability.

The common belief that EVs will create more emissions at power generating plants ignores the availability of enormous hydro power capabilities kept out of the equation solely by profit-motivated regulations, legislation promulgated and pushed through legislatures by the very providers that they’re supposed to regulate.

38
The common belief that EVs will create more emissions at power generating plants ignores the availability of enormous hydro power capabilities kept out of the equation solely by profit-motivated regulations, legislation promulgated and pushed through legislatures by the very providers that they're supposed to regulate

Actually, with the very real consequences of what can happen in re: “River damming gone wrong*,” I’m rather glad any Tom, Dick, or Henry Clay Frick can’t simply fabricate a dam out of Bondo and bailing wire!

Besides, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the very real ecological consequences of wanton dam construction, and the effects it’s had both in the desert SW, and the Salmon-producing waters of the Pacific NW. After all, what’s worse: burning coal, that might effect the local ecology at some point in the future, or Hydroelectric…which IS raping the desert SW, today! I’m with Ed Abbey: ain’t nothing wrong with a dam that can’t be fixed with a precision earthquake!

  • (See also: Johnstown, PA flood.)
39

That’s another reason I was reluctant to get into the debate; it gets really complicated really fast, and goes around in circles forever.

The Hoover dam was an incalculable benefit to Vegas, LA, and particularly to agriculture. But it’s also the reason only 10% of the Colorado gets to Mexico for their agriculture. There are two legitimate sides to the entire issue.

Joe, you’ve pointed out the need for regulation. I’ve pointed out the negative effects of overregulation. It’s an argument without a perfect answer.

40

I have nothing important to add that hasn’t already been said except I’m deeply hurt that my government didn’t care about my frozen fingers and toes as a child. They’d get numb every day walking to school and walking in the woods. Like the car ad says “he lived”.

I do try to impress on people though how short a time it takes to freeze once outside of your car on a below zero day on the highway. Its one thing walking in the parking lot in town, but if you are out in the open, you’d better stay in your car or have warm clothes suitable for ice fishing or snow mobiling.