Ford refutes 5 bits of auto advice you learned at mother’s knee.

1. Change your oil every 3,000 miles. FALSE. This used to be true, but no longer. More like every 5,000 miles. Put that extra $50 back in your pocket.

2. You need to warm up your engine in cold weather. FALSE. Maybe 10 seconds is all you need. Save your gas.

3. Premium gas is a treat for your car. FALSE. Unless your car specifically needs it, you’re wasting your hard-earned bucks.

4. The number on the side of your tire is the recommended tire pressure. FALSE. No, silly, that would be the maximum tire pressure. Look inside the door for the recommended amount and make sure that’s the pressure in your tires. You waste gas by driving around on under-inflateds.

5. Buy gas in the morning before it ‘heats up.’ FALSE. Those gas tanks are underground in non-metallic tanks. It would take quite a bit to raise the temp even 1 degree.

Pump Girl has returned from hiatus. Missed all of you!!

I had the weird experience of visiting Orlando the 1st week of Jan to find temps colder there than they were in Chicago. Yikes!! All you space heater salesmen missed the boat. Every single store in the area (probably the whole state) was sold out of space heaters.

Little tip here: insulation, insulation, insulation. Even if you don’t think you need it

Nice article by Rachel Cernansky on ‘Planet Green’ about 10 places to find petroleum, and why it’s going to take more than driving hybrids to conserve on gas.

#1. Chewing gum - uses petroleum-based polymers (we never knew this one).

#2. Hair dye - you don’t want to know.

#3. Asphalt

#4. Crayons - uses paraffin. Also see candles.

#5. Ink

#6. Pantyhose Also see any other nylon product.

7, 8, 9, 10…Ok, there’s going to be more than 10 items on this list

Heart Valves. Pillows. Aspirin. Ammonia. Toothpaste. Toothbrushes. Guitar strings. Shoe polish. Tape. Rubbing Alcohol. Vitamin capsules. Solvents. Caulking. Insecticides. Deodorant. Glue.

The wax layer of the packaging your frozen food comes in. (And, of course, the fertilizers that farmers used to grow much of that food.)

Riding a bike isn’t going to take care of all our dependence on oil. Not by a long shot!

Vacationers and energy traders haven’t had too much to worry about, yet, but both will be keeping an eye on the weather. NOAA (that’s the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) predicts that this season will be average to below normal.

So that you can personally track any hurricanes yourself, it even has NOAAWatch Web Widgets. Even though Charlie Crist keeps saying his prayers, we’d keep an eye out.

Energy traders, a tropical storm (which would be named Danny if it gets hurricane status) is beginning in the Bahamas. You might want to check out those widgets yourselves.

For some reason, Hurricane Bill went to Canada. Prefers the healthcare there, or what??

An op ed piece in the NY Times written by Michael Lynch: Peak Oil is a Waste of Energy has caught the attention of The Oil Drum, a blog that discusses energy and our future.

The NYT piece basically purports that the ‘peak oil’ theory is a gross exaggeration on par with Chicken Little.

The Oil Drum begs to differ, and takes Lynch’s points and refutes them.

We don’t know about you, but that old argument that ‘you can’t go wrong investing in land because they aren’t making any more of it’ does sort of come to mind here.