You may have heard that David “Heavy” Sparks has been arrested. Sparks is the co-host of the popular TV show, Diesel Brothers – which is about a bunch of blue collar guys who started a shop specializing in fixing/modding various oddball things – as well as, of course, diesel-powered things. The show started back in 2016 after the Discovery Channel discovered the Diesel Brothers via Jay Leno, who featured the brothers (who are actually just friends) on his show.
Anyhow, the brothers got into trouble when when a “Utah advocacy group” that styles itself Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (as opposed to the physicians who prefer an unhealthy one) got concerned about their “rolling of coal,” the street slang term for fixing a diesel so that it smokes like one. This is something the military’s – i.e., the government’s – diesels do with impunity but civilian owned diesels are prevented from doing (via emissions controls and tuning to tamp it down) because apparently “the environment” is unaffected by the military’s rolling of coal.
National security trumps “the environment,” of course – and the physicians have yet to express concern about that. Because, of course, that is not actually their concern. “Advocacy groups” are much more concerned about advancing the agenda of the Left.
Is there any such thing as an “advocacy group” on the Right? The Left always postures as the champion of someone other than itself. This is done for the obvious, self-interested reason. It’s easier to advance one’s agenda when it is presented as selfless; detached from any agenda.
Anyhow, the UPHE bought a modified diesel truck from Sparks under false pretenses; i.e., they sent a shill to pretend to be just a guy interested in buying a truck that had been modified for off-road-use – which exempts the vehicle from standards that apply to street-legal vehicles. Whether a buyer of such a vehicle uses it on the street is not something. over which the seller/modifier can be held responsible for – or so you’d think.
The UPHE had the exhaust of the truck they bought sniffed and claimed it contained “36 times” the allowable (under federal standards) “greenhouse gas emissions” – meaning carbon dioxide – and “21 times” the allowable amount of particulates (i.e., the stuff you see when rolling coal).
This is probably true.
But let’s dissect this a little bit – and never mind that the vehicles were sold for off-road use and so exempt from compliance with the on-road standards.
First, there’s the deliberate exaggeration of the amounts. People here “36 times” the allowable limit and that sounds like a helluva lot. It is never explained to people that “36 times” the allowable standard means the equivalent of a pigeon farting under a bridge in that “36 times” isn’t that many times a whole number. It is “36 times” a percentage of one.
Say the standard says a vehicle’s exhaust must be 98 percent free of Compound X – but a modded vehicle’s exhaust is 97.5 percent free of them. That’s a difference of half a percent. Half a percent is 0.5 percent; dividing by 100 gives the decimal value of 0.005. Multiplying 50 by 0.005 (50 times half a percent) yields Therefore, 50 times half a percent is 0.25 – which is about pigeon fart’s difference in the grand scheme of things and (as regards C02) irrelevant anyhow as regards air quality since C02 has no (as in zero percent) effect on that.
It is sly trick to portray a 0.25 difference difference as “50 times” the allowable standard – and that’s just how it’s portrayed. In order to mislead people into believing there is a consequential outflowing of harmful-to-the-environment “emissions.”
And “36 times” is even less than that.
It’s the same dirty business as regards the “21 times.” Particulates (soot) are visible, so it’s much easier to foment hysteria about that. UPHE – employing shyster lawyers of the Roy Cohn school – sued the Brothers, who were ultimately ordered to pay $850,000 in fines for violating the Clean Air Act and a reported $1.2 million on top of that to cover the shyster lawyers’ fees. This amounts to bankrupting the Brothers. When they didn’t cough up the dough – which they may not even have – the court sicced the Hut! Hut! Hut! crew on Sparks for the crime of “contempt,” which is gaslighting legalese for failure to obey.
Bloomberg Law explains:
“The most recent two findings of contempt relate to Defendant Sparks’s failure to pay fees owed to Plaintiff and his violations of subsequent orders seeking to coerce his compliance. Based on the parties’ submissions, the court finds Defendant Sparks has both failed to purge these prior contempt findings and engaged in new conduct warranting an additional finding of contempt. And having exhausted all other mechanisms to ensure his compliance with court orders, the court will order Defendant Sparks incarcerated until he complies with the specific requirements necessary to purge his contempt.”
Meanwhile, an Israeli national child predator caught up in a sting was recently whisked back to the safety of Israel. Priorities, you see. We can’t have the goyim rolling coal. On or off-road. You know why? It has nothing to do with “concern” for “the environment.” It has everything to do with beating down any expression of contempt for government authority. We saw this during “COVID.” We saw it again when the government began to bare its fangs at anyone who dares to question anything the government of Israel does (no matter how egregious) and we’re seeing it now, in the over-the-top persecution of a dude who wrenches on trucks.
. . .
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They need to make a youtube channel exposing Utah physicians malfeasance and deaths.
Just for equality and such.
Eric,
Not sure how much chance that this proposed bill has, but it appears to roll back the emissions/fuel mileage requirements.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4117/text
Anon
A group of “environmentalists” has recently started blaming asthmatics for climate change. Specifically, they are attacking asthma inhalers for producing greenhouse gases. Their proposed solution is to switch to an alternative type of inhaler that uses powder as a propellant. Never mind that this type of inhaler is much more difficult to use and much less effective. If some asthma sufferers have to die from asthma attacks from using the inferior inhalers, it’s obviously worth it to save the environment. There are actually doctors that have convinced their patients to switch to the inferior powder based inhalers.
These environmental crazies really have a deep hatred for humanity.
I’m currently living in a blue state that ignores Diesel pickups. No vehicle safety inspections either. If I ever move on to another state how much they test or check vehicles would heavily influence my decision . Some states will let you put a street plate on a 2 stroke motocross bike.
I hate those ‘coal’ truck assholes. Good riddance.
Hi Den,
And that’s just the problem. What happens when someone decides you’re the asshole – and good riddance? My point is that in a free society, not liking what someone else does ought not to be warrant to go after them. VW was raked over the coals (sarc) over a nothingburger “cheating” scandal that entailed no harm done to anyone; or at least, non proved.
The problem here is perversion of law and a disregard of private property and the social order that happened a long time ago with regards to pollution.
The courts ruled that a victim had to prove the pollution harmed him. Instead of using property rights or nuisance.
Eventually people did prove harm in many instances and that’s when Nixon created the EPA and thus all that follows from a government that decides who can pollute how much when and where.
Rolling coal is clearly a nuisance and should be prosecuted as such. But since that portion of the law was disabled and never re-enabled it’s done through emissions regulations.
Agree.
Thank you for your thoughtful and intelligent reply.
Hello Eric,
What happens when you live in Boston MA where shoot up, defecate, and prostitute in the street on Melina Cass Blvd, and others, during the day?
What happens when illegal aliens blast thumping murderous misogynist noise from their straight piped spigger shit boxes at 3am in a neighborhood of real working class US citizens.
The only difference with that guy is he is a white US citizen giving the rest of us a giant middle finger. F#ck us. F#ck him. We all have our limits. You have them to.
As for our government. I was fired from Mass General Hospital after 22 years of taking care of the sickest newborn babies, neonates, for refusing the clot shot. F#ck them to. They are committing democide as far as I am concerned.
I have since moved to the mountains of New Hampshire to escape that BS. I don’t kid myself about Trump but we could not have Biden. One Fs us from the left. Then we role over and get Fd from the right. Nothing new under this sun.
I enjoy and appreciate your work. Please keep it up.
Thank you.
Dennis Gaudet
Sig Sauer
What happens when you live in Boston MA (people) where shoot up, …
Ha! Still can’t seem to get that right.
… where people …
Just shoot me now:)
Signed,
Keyboard Luddite
What’s 36 times 0……. your I.Q.
I appreciate every fan of this website. I bet we would agree on most things over a beer:)
A few things here Eric…
Regarding the findings of the Utah Prick Doctors Association: If there is 36 times the amount of “greenhouse gases” being emitted from the altered diesel, it must be burning considerably more fuel, and doing so with admirable efficiency. Perhaps they are including water vapor as a greenhouse gas?
My point is this: Here is a (questionable, morning-impaired) equation for the burning of diesel (cetane for simplicity):
2*C16H34 + 49*O2 –> 34*H2O + 32*CO2
To get 36 times the products, you need 36 times the products (due to conservation of mass) and the fuel is about 53% of that, meaning you need about 19.2x as much fuel.
And THAT is if combustion is perfect. Are we measuring mileage in gallons-per-mile rather than miles-per-gallon at this point?
Secondly, and not to give the Prick Doctors Association any ammunition, but…
As you put it, and I’m not sure if I follow properly, but if emissions increase 50x from 0.5%, given an equal total amount, that would indeed make 25%. But it IS a considerable increase. For example, if the atmospheric CO2 concentration were to be 5,000 ppm, or 0.5%, people would probably be feeling sick and some would probably eventually expire due to hypercapnia and whatnot.
If the atmospheric CO2 concentration were suddenly 25%, we all experience an excruciating death in minutes.
When is a many-times increase maybe not a big deal? Well, if it were NOx, for example, and the amount increases from 15 micrograms to 50*15 micrograms = 750 micrograms = 0.75 grams, say per gallon of fuel. You may have traveled 30 miles over that time, and 3/4 a gram spread over that trip doesn’t cause much harm.
Aside from all that, I love how they describe the charge as contempt. YES, I have “contempt” for your court and your entire legal system if it is set in motion to ruin the lives of hard-working people for “contemptible” reasons, such as this!
Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment is a left-wing advocacy group. I, for one, absolutely despise them. The local Utah media love to parade them out as some kind of experts when it’s simply a bunch of lab coats running around with a political agenda.
Absolute scum of the earth.
Amen, Jim –
The worst sort imaginable. Well, almost.
This group of environmentalist meddlers used deceit, government violence, and a rigged legal system to attack a peaceful free market business that was providing products to people who wanted them, while harming no one.
In a just world, this group of lunatics would all be identified, hunted down, tied with a length of rope by their feet to the bumper of a diesel truck, and dragged through the streets until there’s nothing left, the streets painted red.
Sound harsh or unreasonable? I say what these lunatics are doing to these people, and others like them, is worse than if they killed them. They are trying to RUIN them, while sending a freedom-stifling message to others who do the same type of work. It’s a warning shot. Next, they will go after all the makers of aftermarket performance parts. Doin right ain’t got no end, remember?
If people don’t start fighting back, all is lost. The legal system is rigged against us, so what other choice is left? “Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things.”
I agree with you, Man With No Name –
It infuriates me to hear about honest, decent people working for a living, who’ve harmed no one, being ruined by these people. A good friend of mine was one such victim during “COVID.” His little cafe was destroyed by the “lockdowns.” His wife had just had a baby when it all happened, too. I would not stop to piss on the people responsible if they’d been lit on fire by a good Samaratan.
The government has really been cracking down on people doing deletes over the past few years. They’ve nailed a few of the places that offer the tunes that recode the computer as well. Some guy in my friend’s shop here in NJ did a delete and then tried to sell it on Facebook (he mentioned it in the ad, dumb move) and the State had people looking out for this. They contacted the guy and said he could either put the truck back the way it was new, or they would crush it. The owner tried to use the Farm tag as a defense but that didn’t work. They don’t even care if it is never used again. Cost him almost $8k. They make you fix it or crush it.
I went to high school with a guy who works for NJ DOT. He’s in the emissions/inspection area for trucks. I asked him what they do for bigger truck fleets who delete. He said they have a program in place to do random inspections on the road and big fines but every year the Legislature never funds it because of lobbying by the trucking industry. So, they end up going after the little guy instead.
I grew up living across from the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad in the 1950’s. You want to see “rolling coal?” Those coal-powered locomotives belched out plenty, several times per day. House was on the west side of those tracks. Westerly wind wafted that soot all over us. Soot in the attic of that 1910 house to this very day.
Photographer O. Winston Link caught the last hurrah of steam locomotives in the late 1950s. He published a book titled Steam, Steel and Stars.
Probably his most famous photo, called Hotshot Eastbound, was taken at a drive-in movie theater in West Virginia in 1957.
https://tinyurl.com/45bvcek5
This is a fantastically great image — as the train roared by, an image of an airplane was being projected on the screen. I can’t imagine how he pulled off the lighting. It takes a certain obsessive-compulsive bent to make great photos like this one.
All I do is sit and cry
When that evening train goes by
I heard that lonesome whistle blow
— Johnny Cash, I Heard That Lonesome Whistle (1957)
Wonderful photo, Jim H. The ironic juxtaposition of that airliner on the screen and the last locomotive speaks volumes.
That’s where the phrase, “wrong side of the tracks”, came from.
In other news: “Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours….Rodrick Johnson, 67, is one of many residents who were detained by federal agents during the South Shore raid. A U.S. citizen, he said agents broke through his door and dragged him out in zip ties.
Johnson said he was left tied up outside the building for nearly three hours before agents finally let him go.
“I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” Johnson said. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”
…In the South Shore raid, neighbors said federal agents used flashbang grenades to burst through the building and several drones and helicopters were deployed. Watson said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers, she said.
“Stuff was everywhere,” said Watson. “You could see people’s birth certificates, and papers thrown all over. Water was leaking into the hallway. It was wicked crazy.”
“It was a violent show of force in the middle of the night,” Lee said. “Taking families out of an apartment building in a residential neighborhood like that is harmful, is traumatic, and that is not something that people can easily recover from, whether they themselves were taken or whether they witnessed it.”
https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated
This woman was arrested for assaulting an ICE officer. “An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Chicago is facing scrutiny after a new video shows him yelling at a local woman “do something, b—-” before pulling over and shooting her five times, a body camera video suggests.” …The video is in stark conflict with the government’s account that federal agents in Broadview were “boxed in by 10 cars” and the woman, Marimar Martinez, 30, was one of the drivers. “Agents were unable to move their vehicles and exited the car. One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon,” officials claimed on X.
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/out-control-ice-agent-yells-1436299
video of minister being shot by a pepper ball:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc6aKQHFGnQ
I wonder how many of these Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment have performed transgender mutilations on children? Maybe publish their membership list and see? Maybe send a mark in (like they did) and ask for transgender surgery?
The world has gone mad.
I hate people. Seriously, why can’t people learn to mind their own business? Who determines that this is worthy of a $844,000 fine? How is the fine calculated? This is the scariest part of government. They fine you to death. They tie up a small business or individual with fines which now constitutes the hiring of a lawyer and even more money is needed for legal fees to fight the fraudulent fine.
Amen, RG –
Although it’s only some people who deserve our hate. I often have difficulty remembering that. But it’s important to remember it.
Indeed we have a Constitution which forbids almost everything modern government does including excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishments. But these things are essential and vital for those who seek to break and rule a free people.
And what are the people going to do about it anyway?
It’s not like they have every terrible implement of the soldier little if any inferior to the weapons of the government’s minions. Or the right to travel, speak freely, and impanel juries to correct government misbehavior.
If only the “physicians” were concerned about, say, forced “vaccine” impacts i.e. healthy twenty-somethings strokin’ out.
we can only hope there will be wuflu doctor hunters looking for doctors that aided in the MRNA genocide against the world in the future, just like nazi hunters in the past. If they are willing to jail a teenage female secretary from a concentration camp simply for working the front desk 80 years earlier, it is possible we will have the same thing going on.
Why wait?
Here’s a recent death, of a 14 year old high school athlete who collapsed during a workout. Other articles stated he had myocarditis. I wonder how he got that? Most likely, the JAB, but they are blaming a recent illness.
https://www.cleveland.com/lake-county/2025/10/mentor-high-school-student-dies-after-collapse-during-wrestling-conditioning.html
What I find confusing about this case is that it deals with an off road only truck that I’m guessing came with a receipt that noted it was sold for off use road only and modified for such use.
Somehow the courts ruled off road vehicles must meet the same rules as on road vehicles even though the law does no state that and sent the defendant to jail.
Sounds like another case of GovCo overreach to me.
Shakespeare was right it seems regarding lawyers.
Hi Landru,
I see this as a political crime. The crime of “getting away” with something the government dislikes; more finely, affronting the authority of the government.
The way the feds have this regulated you can’t just say a vehicle is off-road use, it has to be registered that way and it wouldn’t have normal plates. They dye the diesel a different color for on- and off-road use so the jackboots can take a sample and know if you’re using the right one. The diesel itself contains different levels of sulfur.
Eric’s not a math major because the way these things are stated is parts per million. So an exhaust particulate count at 50 ppm constitutes 0.005% of the exhaust. If they measure 36 times that the new measure is 1800 ppm or 0.18% of the exhaust. Both are related, proportional and say the same thing. Percentage in this case is just an easy way to show a small number.
However, they are regulating dilution by stating it as ppm so a number could represent mass per volume, mass per mass or volume per volume. You have to define what you mean for it to be meaningful. They might show it as a percentage simply because parts per million is a very small number. When a number grows exceptionally small or large it will be displayed as a logarithmic, non-linear number. The Decibel exists for this.
Whether any of the numbers is “a lot” is going to be either emotionally subjective or actually observable, that’s the scientific question, at least as it relates to environment or health consequence. It’s difficult to argue that lower tailpipe emissions aren’t a positive goal. We see less smog and it’s easy to prove breathing exhaust is going to hurt your lungs. Stated another way, a normally healthy body isn’t -deficient- in unburnt hydrocarbons or carbon monoxide or nitric oxide. The argument in favor is that emissions do not have to be zero, there’s a tolerable level that dissipates or dilutes, and that we’re after finding the point where this tolerable level intersects economically with utility benefit of having heat, machines and transportation.
Mathematically it doesn’t matter if you present the number absolutely or as a percentage, both are related. The question is what the values means. Our bodies favor 21% O2 dilution in the air we breath and this usually results in about 95% to 100% oxygen saturation in our blood. But most of us can tolerate a range of atmospheric concentration. At about 19.5% a normal body’s blood-oxygen will still be about 95% but by the time it drops to 16% O2 atmosphere we’ll be at blood-oxygen into the 80% and that’s sufficient to be disorienting or physically dangerous depending on the individual.
If increasing the pollution in the air by “36 times” results in some measurable physiological effect, such as oxygen saturation, then it may be useful.
News articles present a slant favoring the propaganda they’re pushing. So I put in the same category as a reaction such as this.
Both sides are present their side using fear and uncertainty. I’d reserve the premise and ask Eric is getting a face full of rolling coal helping your health? Is it also not just annoying? We all share the same dirt, air and water. I don’t have an absolute duty to tolerate all emissions, so I think regardless of the EPA the human thing to do is at least try to be a good neighbor and not intentionally make more pollution than you need to.
Whether it’s the EPA enforcing arbitrary goals and regulations or having the opportunity to hold a person responsible for pumping out a smoke cloud beyond a reasonable amount as essentially an assault is the libertarian argument. If you achieve an ideal anarchy, zero government, where people act rationally and responsibly you have to have a way to resolve conflicts where one person consumes resources disproportionally or creates excessive pollution. What are you supposed to do when your neighbor dumps sewage in a water source upstream of you? The government approach is EPA but how is that resolved without EPA? Are you justified in seeing this as violence? What if you ask them to stop and they say no? I see rolling coal as this, egregious polluting. If a truck is creating a cloud of smoke while pulling a trailer of stuff, fine. But these jerks do it with no reason. I don’t like one bit that the EPA is involved but what is the libertarian solution here?
The libertarian solution is to mind your own business. That pickup “rolling coal” dissipates into an effectively infinite atmosphere in almost no time. No, for the autistic, earth’s atmosphere is not actually infinite, but the amount of atmosphere into which your exhaust goes renders that exhaust volume a trivial irrelevancy. Especially considering the atmosphere continuously renews itself, particulates go in and come out constantly, and trace gases like CO2 fluctuate normally over millennia, mostly as a secondary effect of normal climate temperature changes.
If he’s “rolling coal” more than occasionally he’s going to learn about burnt pistons, overfueling a turbodiesel can melt those pistons in a remarkably short time.
Dyed diesel is the same stuff as undyed, the dye indicates that road tax hasn’t been paid on it. Unfortunately all diesel sold in the US is low sulfur, which does terrible things for fuel lubricity and the longevity of injection pumps and injectors.
As to pollution, nobody ever makes a sane measurement like parts per mile, since something like a VW TDI, deleted and radically tuned and capable of “rolling coal” still inherently puts out less exhaust than a stock truck displacing 5 times as much.
Hi Ernie, lets not forget that one forest fire puts more carbon in the air than a century of human CO2 related discharge.