Written By: - Date published: 7:16 am, June 17th, 2008 - 120 comments
Categories: economy, labour, polls -
Tags: peak oil, petrol
A reader sent us this graph. It plots President Bush’s approval rating and the price of petrol. (the price of petrol is upside-down, a fall in the price is a rise on the graph)
As you can see, spikes in the price have been followed by a fall in Bush’s support and the reverse is true too. Overall, the price of petrol is rising in line with the decline in Bush’s support.
I’ve plotted the same graph for Labour’s support and petrol prices here.
(sources MED and Roy Morgan)
The pattern is the same. While it is obviously far from only factor that influences poll numbers, populations’ growing discontent with the price of petrol is resulting in Bush, Labour, and every democratic government I’m aware of are losing support. That’s a major challenge for Labour as an incumbent government and a gift to National, despite the fact they have no ability to fix the problem.
The flipside of the message is simple: there are plenty of votes in easing voters’ petrol pain. National may look at doing so with some kind of tax cut on petrol Key isn’t keen on it but that wouldn’t stop him. But tax cuts can only offer temporary relief and opens up a hole in the infrastructure budget. The real solution is offering kiwis alternatives to buying petrol, by encouraging alternative fuels and investing in public transport.
Facebook
Twitter
Scoopit!
Having thought about it on the way to work, I’ve decided to leave you to it. Everyone else here already has their own views, and your personal beliefs are based on faith rather than reason, hence it’s a waste of my time using reason to try to change your mind.
Still interested in those plans though. PLANS, not the link to a site where some liar/moron tries to convince me to buy his book.
Oh, you should probably call the dutch and tell them windmills get energy for nothing. Those fools think they get it from the wind!
As for you zANavAShi: “There is also a personal affinity I have to women whom I perceive that (like myself) are afflicted by the Cassandra curse.”
Yeah. You can see the future and that’s why you’re misunderstood.
Carry on.
Interesting that you accuse me of being sexist by the way. You see what you want to see I guess.
Tell you what – I’ll try being nicer if you’ll try being smarter. Though I’ve gotta say my challenge is a lot more difficult to acheive than yours.
Also:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/genepax-water-powered-car-japan-debunking.php
Looks like Big Oil and Newscorp have got to Treehugger as well – is nothing sacred?!?
T-rex
English is my second language what is your excuse, “acheive”? And did you mean bought like in “I paid Mensa to become a member” or perhaps “brought”. It’s so hard to understand you sometimes.
I am Dutch, you Moron, I bought the most magnificent paint pigments from a windmill several hundreds of years old and still in mint condition with huge milling stones that had another couple of aeons of milling in them and I bought my organic flour from another Windmill equally old and majestic. Oh, and I remember the most amazing windmill pressed mustard, hot and spicy and… but I digress.
Have a look at them, they are awesome: http://www.travelsignposts.com/Destination/v/Netherlands/ZaanseSchans/IMG_5316.jpg.html
Seeing these makes me all sentimental, I used to love visiting this place and picking out some new and exiting pigments to make paints with. I actually brought them with me, but I digress again.
You are absolutely right it is the wind. But I’m sure you will agree with me that you don’t have to pay for it once you have build your windmill. Free see.
It is not like someone can monopolise it and say you can only use so much wind. It is there for the taking with a windmill that allows you to translate it into an energy form that you can use.
And if you put say a hundred windmills in a row one after the other as they did in Holland those windmills all have enough easily accessible wind for them to work.
The same happens with this cell. Of course you have to use energy to break the water molecules apart to form hydrogen and oxygen, but how much and what kind of energy.
This is were you have start learning how to think outside the box. Something you’re clearly not prepared to do.
10 amps from a recharging car battery is relatively free energy when compared to the price of 40% of a tank of gas.
We don’t make energy out of nothing, we utilise different and free energy forms that can not be monopolised. Not something big oil appreciates I reckon.
I bet you would love to see how it works and I have to prove that our cell works otherwise you can ridicule what I’m saying again. But you know what FY and do what you want.
I tell you what: I will post links this weekend on my site to the Forums we have been visiting and if you put in the same amount of effort into it as we have done you might get there because quit frankly I think that I’m not the one living in a faith based reality it’s you. And it is all there, all free and you don’t have to pay for “the book”.
I will also post photo’s of our cell this weekend.
And for those of you who who are genuinely interested I intend to keep posting our progress and our failures if and when they happen and if you want to get in touch with us leave an email address or telephone number on my blog site and I will get back to you.
Remember it is a work in progress but so far so good.
By the way my blog allows for comments. Only the first one is moderated and after that you are free to comment. I will only start moderating if the level of discourse starts to go downhill too much.
Outright trolling, flaming and baiting will mean instant banning as I want to create a save environment for people to intelligently play around with new ideas. Dismissing with anger rather than with arguments is another reason for moderation.
About Genepax and the water fuelled car.
The job of journalists is to bring issues to their readers, not to protect them from information that might prove to be a hoax.
It is also their job to expose hoaxes and in doing so help us make our own choices and judgements.
If Reuters deems the water car news worthy then I think it should have been picked up by journalists around the world, not as gospel but as something that might be of interest to the oil starved masses. If it turns out to be a hoax we will all have learned something. I get nervous if something like this is ignored by the mainstream media and within hours a wikipedia article calls it a hoax. Remember anyone can add articles to Wikipedia.
Unlike you I would like to make those decisions for myself and not get them force fed by manipulating media and open source encyclopaedias.
Unlike you I like to engage my own brain rather then mindlessly accepting the crap you get fed but then I guess that is why I have been accepted by Mensa and you can only fume about it. LOL
Just imagine me getting under your skin to the point that you have to think about me on your way to work, I must be touching a raw nerve.
The 911 forum is only a few weeks old and we get hundreds of hits already without having it advertised once.
Not bad for three people who haven’t even met in the real world yet. Nope mate, you lost you balls alright.
And I wish I could but I cannot predict the future, I can deduct it somewhat though after processing a lot of information.
Or they took wikipedia’s article for granted.
As I said I would like to see it for myself and make up my own mind.
I don’t know how the car runs because our media choose not to expose us to it. We only have an open source wiki page telling us this.
If it is an aluminium alloy that is used to make this car run then yes the alloy is the fuel, another way to keep the car metered. Unsustainable and monopolisable. Same old same old.
It also prevents us to do our own maths. Like how much aluminium alloy
is needed and how long will the car run on it and is it less polluting then gasoline with all of it’s carcinogenic additives etc.
All we have is big media silence and one wikipage telling us what to think which is: dismiss it.
Travellerev – It’s pretty hard to critically evaluate your views when in one breath you say “I’m a member of mensa and so I have seen past all the BS” and then the next you say “It’s all just really really hard and I don’t understand it so you’ll have to ask my husband”.
I will wait until I see the plan you’re using.
Your windmill analogy is flawed – windmills take energy out of the wind, meaning there is less energy in the wind for further windmills downstream. Hence the time and effort that goes into accurate wake modelling in wind parks.
Something to ponder in the meantime – Why is everyone spending so much time and energy developing improved battery technology if your thing works? The battery technology poses just as much risk to big oils stranglehold on transport, so it can’t be that big oil is suppressing your electrolysis thing and not batteries.
explanation 1:
None of the employees at Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Aptera, GM, Renault, A123, EEStor etc etc have heard of it because they have never heard of Google. Neither have any of the students at any of the hundreds of universities worldwide studying energy storage and generation.
explanation 2:
Some of the people mentioned above HAVE heard of it, but they don’t understand it because they’re all so much stupider than you are.
explanation 3:
Many of the people mentioned about have heard of it, and do understand it, but actually have enough of a background in the field to analyse it in a little more detail than your “the needle on the gas tank didn’t move as far as it did in my other car that’s not even the same model” experimental method, deduced it was just a big loss making entity, and got back to something that showed real promise. Which they’re doing. Despite the best efforts of big oil.
Which is the most likely do you think?
Just to clarify something – do you think your cell violates the first law of thermodynamics?
Or do you just think you’ve developed some method by which 100% of the energy you’re putting in is converted to some form that you can use in your engine?
Declaring Mensa membership is the refuge of the inadequate. The fact that you’re a mensa member doesn’t mean you understand electrolysis, and the fact that I refuse to join a vanity society doesn’t mean I don’t.
T-Rex, will you please stop picking that scab – just leave it alone or it will never heal.
I know. I just always cling to hope that eventually logic will deliver enlightenment. I’ll give up for now.
T-rex
just to piss you off. we just did a quick calculation of our savings based on mileage and amount of fuel used.
He has been driving 53.33333333333333333333 miles to the Gallon this week.
The car used to drive 31 miles to the gallon.
We had to use Miles and Gallons because we use a conversion model from an US forum on the subject of H/O booster cells.
His first goal was to achieve 50 miles to the gallon so it seems he has achieved just that.
Yep you could call Mensa a vanity club or also a support club, which at the time I really needed. It explained a lot to me.
By the way I met a lot of people like you there as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you are a closet case genius using your brain power to stifle you emotional insecurities.
By the way I met a lot of people like you there as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you are a closet case genius using your brain power to stifle you emotional insecurities.
It’s possible. I don’t mind that you joined Mensa, but I do mind if you use the fact to try and win arguments.
I’m not saying hydrogen doesn’t come out of your cell, I’m just saying you haven’t created a free energy machine. Will wait to see the plans.
Have you decided which of my three possible explanations above you like? Or do you have a fourth hypothesis you’d like to present? Because at the moment it really is one of those three – and I think it’s pretty obvious that the first two are ridiculous.
T-Rex:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlv7Bp-L2MM
Ha! Beautiful delivery
Everyone else can just stop reading, but presently leaving it alone would annoy me more than continuing does. When the differential annoyance changes I’ll stop.
There is no such thing as a free energy machine, but I’m beginning to see where you are coming from.
If you thought I was telling you that we are making a magical free energy machine than you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
It would be more accurate to describe it as an unmonopolisable source of energy. You will always need a battery for instance. But you can load batteries with solar energy which is again free once you have a solar panel.
There are powerful interests who would not be happy to see that happen.
But I also believe that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
While it was perhaps possible to silence or buy out isolated inventors at the time, the internet has made it virtually impossible to stifle the current developments. The forums my husband visits register thousands of members. With hundreds more joining every day. Some knowledgeable some just keen to learn. That’s all we have done in the last year or so. Learn, we did not invent anything we learned.
I am a firm believer in all kinds of laws of physics. Especially Newtons laws of Physics. It is the laws of physics which finally convinced me that 19 young Arab man even if hell bend on the destruction of the USA would have been unable to collapse those buildings the way they did. They would have violated firmly established laws of physics that day, and I have to reject that. Based on science.
Ok, lets leave september 11 for now.
I’m glad you don’t think you’ve made a free energy machine.
So do you accept that, barring the action of some oxidation element within your hydrogen cell, you’re only ever going to get out energy (as hydrogen) equal to that which you put in from your battery? I’m taking a few liberties here, but can we agree that battery energy in = hydrogen energy out is the best case outcome?
You still haven’t picked which of my 3 examples you think is most likely by the way…
Ay caramba, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind with my suggestions last night. I should know better than to try and articulate in the midst of a hissy fit in the wee hours of the morning when I’m going stir crazy at my 20th day without a cigarette (((sigh)))
Still toooooooo much personal stuff you two (whom I shall henceforth refer to as T&T if you don’t chill out). Please don’t make me have to tell you to get a room!
I am interested in your content but the personal stuff (who’s smarter, who means well, who doesn’t, who makes the best double shot soya fairtrade latte etc etc) just bores me to tears and when I try and scroll quickly through those parts I often end up missing some snippets that I really do want to read.
Eve, I am very interested in what you and your loverly fella are doing here and I would love to see you start a blog about this, set out in the way of a journal. I have several fave blogs I visit where some person(s) is trying some practical experiment in alterative living or alternative energy – hell I even thought of starting a mini-blog to document my successes and failures growing a wild yeast sourdough starter earlier this year – and they are very inspiring to follow with all their ups and downs.
That would also be good for the regular Standard readers who might not have any personal interest in what you are doing, and for those of us who do it is all in one central place where we don’t miss bits cos they got lost in the threads here on this blog – plus when it becomes relevant during our regular posts it saves you heaps of duplicate typing to just flick us a link.
So, what say you (and your very loverly fella)? How about HOG Blog? (hydrogen oxygen generation?)
Captcha: seizure of (ROFL!)
Ev already has a blog. That’s mostly why I don’t get the obsession with the same three issues on this one.
L
zANavAShi
Awesome. I am glad I never started to smoke. I lived for most of my life in Amsterdam so I managed to do other stupid things galore. But I think that to stop with smoking is the hardest addiction to get rid of.
I agree with you about the personal stuff but sometimes you go through something personal in order to get somewhere.
Interesting discussions sometimes get somewhat shrill but I agree with T-rex: Everyone else can just stop reading, but presently leaving it alone would annoy me more than continuing does. When the differential annoyance changes I’ll stop.
T-rex is not baiting me, he is trying to find out what the hell I’m talking about, and I am happy to acknowledge arguments when he makes good ones. The baiting seems to have stopped.
Lew it is one thing to have a blog that is geared to give information and another to find people of intelligence that are actually ready for some debate. That is why I like this blog. Lot’s of smart people to talk to exchange ideas with and yes perhaps I can get a few of them have a second look at the events of 911.
I get plenty of hit’s a day. In fact John Key’s official site went down 4 places in the blogosphere to 43 and I went up 10 places to 44. Not bad for a Cheesehead who only arrived here three years ago.
T-rex I posted a PDF on my site for you. The post is called: for T-rex. It’s a PDF of one of hubbies hero’s see what you can make of it.
http://aotearoaawiderperspective.wordpress.com/
Haven’t tried giving up any other additions, but I’m giving up smoking at present. It is a bit irritating, as Z says. Probably explains my sharing the irritation with the whale, and dave, and……. (evil grin)
travellerev – Thanks very much for the pdf. Is this what you’ve made? At least we’re now both talking about the same thing!
We’re now down to two issues. The total energy your electrolyser can deliver, and the source of the power.
What are you using to supply it? Just the car battery? Or do you have an external battery bank?
I need to know:
1) The total battery voltage (I’m assuming 12V)
2) Whether you charge it at home from a wall socket, or whether it’s just charged as you drive by the alternator.
Thanks
Lew – Because it’s convenient, I can’t be bothered posting over there. Besides, that hairyarmpitface person might yell at me, and she’s clearly wildly unstable.
T-rex,
Good that you found it. My husband based his design on this principle. It is more efficient.
We only use the car battery as it recharges in the car by the car’s alternator. The battery is 13.8V.
Currently the cell uses 10 amps.
Its first test run this week showed the figures I gave earlier.
53.3333333333333333333333333333333333 miles to the Gallon
up from 31 miles to the Gallon. Ching, ching, $$$$$$$$$$$$$
This site is from the excellent Patrick Kelly: http://www.free-energy-info.co.uk Be prepared to go back to school though this will rock your world. (I mean that in a good way)
Enjoy.
Uuuh, I like hairyarmpit.
Wild, shocking and outrageous? absolutely but also very smart and funny.
We don’t know yet how much energy the cell will ultimately deliver but we are over the moon with the first results, as you can imagine.
Iprint I did a lot of experimenting but didn’t need to feel what would happen to me beyond that because I could see it around me and it didn’t look good. We had our P epidemic in the seventies and eighties for example. Ugly stuff, really ugly stuff.
captcha: lending pressure. subprime anyone
zANavAShi
I will probably post about it on my blog with the tag free energy )as in unmonopolisable versus monopolisable)
Running one blog takes already a fair bit of my time and I have just begun an info blog on depleted uranium. I do try to have a life in the real world as well believe it or not.
T-rex
I just realised something.
You were trying to point out to me that under no circumstances you can get more energy out of something than you put in.
I was just writing a post for my blog and revisited the wiki page on the Newton’s laws of motion.
Traditional brief statements of the three laws:
1. A physical body will remain at rest, or continue to move at a constant velocity along a straight path, unless an external net force acts upon it.
2. Rate of change of momentum is proportional to the resultant force producing it and takes place in the direction of that force.[2][3][4][5][6]
3. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion
Have a look at the second law.
By your own reasoning you should be reinvestigating 911
How can an inert building change from its inert state into a pyroclastic flow in 10 seconds flat without the required energy to make that happen. In order to make this happen according to your own reasoning you should have to add a humongous amount of energy.
Hi Travellev.
I’m composing a response to your stuff on (what is actually) hydrogen augmented combustion. It may take a while because I want to structure it properly. I’ll post it here because it may be of interest to a number of people.
As to your point about around 911 though…
Go and read up on gravitational potential energy.
E = mgh
It’s called “falling”.
Hi T-rex
Yes, it is Hydrogen Oxygen augmented (just a difficult word for boosting mate) combustion. Still with the patronising. I think you could actually be a nice intelligent guy if you could kick that.
It is not intended (for now)to replace fossil fuel. It is just a way to escape the worst consequences of the fuel price rises.
I don’t need a response because I did not give it to you for that reason. I gave it to you for your information and enjoyment. Feel free to write about it all you want. I’ll be around to read it I’m sure.
I’m happy with my fuel savings and encourage everybody to study this information. I hope that with the second test update I can announce 60% or perhaps 80% fuel saving.
I don’t want to sell anything to anybody or make money of this. I just hope that people will research this as we did.
As far as 911 is concerned read up on Newtons three laws of motion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion
E = mgh doesn’t just happen, it needs Newton’s laws to be obeyed.
Oh it’s so hard not to type
Hydrogen/Oxygen augmented combustion is completely different to what you were presenting initially. It’s not a difficult word, it’s an accurate description.
Yes, it will escape a very small degree of the consequences of the price rise. The fuel savings you have reported are already outrageous for the power levels you are putting in. You said 10 amps at about 14V… that is 140W. So even assuming you’ve made a 100% efficient cell (something that no one, anywhere, has ever done, ever, despite considerable effort) all you’re going to be delivering is perfect efficiency, i.e. 2.16W/Liter-per-hour of gas. So your system would create 64.8LPH. That is nothing like “running your car partially on hydrogen” (running a 2L engine at 2500rpm for an hour would take, at optimum air mix, would take around 43,000 LPG of oxyhydrogen), it is just using oxyhydrogen to improve the burn quality of your fuel.
Your engine will burn more cleanly, and you might notice a marginal improvement in fuel efficiency. Most of that will be if your car had been very poorly tuned previously. In lab test conditions, with an already clean and well tuned engine, the brake specific fuel consumption reduced by 2.1% (a fancy way of saying a 2.1% improvement in efficiency) (http://www.ntpefs.com/idaho_national_laboratory_hydrogen_study.html).
The hydrogen is not being used as fuel. It it being used to improve the thermodynamic performance of an engine which is using a conventional fuel.
The figures you quote are likely either a) resulting from poor measurements or b) resulting from errors in your experimental method. You could probably doubly your MPG just by changing the way you drive your car for example.
You have not and nor are you on the path to escape from the “monopoly of big oil”. Your system is nothing but an emissions improvement system that will make your petrol engine work slightly better.
There are far better options, and they don’t involve hydrogen boosters. Electric engines are way more efficient than internal combustion, and don’t need oil at all. Just a decent battery, many of which are in late development – and in fact being delivered.
You mentioned a while back that you’re going to escape from monopoly sources of energy by using solar. Really? What, with the backyard system you have producing 100% pure silicon? You still need to buy the solar panels off someone. And the electric engine. And the inverter to drive it. Energy security will be greatly improved by solar technology, but it won’t mean you can live out some isolationist backyard garden self sufficient fantasy.
I can’t be bothered with this anymore if you’re going to continue to be this close minded about it.
I notice you still haven’t picked an explanation from my list of three.
—
In closing, a brief word on 911, which has got to be the dumbest conspiracy ever. I don’t even mind conspiracies – I’ll happily entertain notions that the terrorists on the planes were lackeys of some OPEC cartel. Anyway…
F*cking hell, I don’t need to read up on newtons laws of motion, I taught university level physics. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
When the twin towers were built, they started at ground level. All the parts were raised up by cranes etc. Ground level was their equilibrium point. The cranes were converting either electrical energy or chemical potential energy into gravitational potential energy. When the towers were weakened, they succumbed to GRAVITY (the force acting on them) and fell. Perfect consistency with laws of physics.
Where does the energy for them to collapse come from in your “demolition theory”? The explosives at the base of the tower?!?!?! You really aren’t grasping the basic concepts here.
Have you even watched the videos of the collapses with an open mind?
you can PLAINLY see that the floors ABOVE the impact point falling ONTO the floors below, and collapsing them as they go. This is totally inconsistent with demolition charges at the base of the tower.
With you Bill, I’m out.
Was interesting to look into the hydrogen augmentation stuff though, seems like it does considerably reduce emissions.
Will barely do anything to improve fuel economy, but would mean cleaner air which is always nice.
Hey look Travellerev – It’s big media at it again not giving any coverage to alternative vehicle technologies!
Damn you, Big Media, and your cheap whoring of your principles to Big Oil!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4590788a30.html
T-rex, Bill, whatever.
I’ll count my blessings. 40% less gas in my tank suits me just fine.
I’ll continue to post test results and you are free to ignore them.
T-rex As far as 911 is concerned, I’ve spoken with physics teachers about it and maybe you should too.
Kia ora
Bye travellerev, I’ll wave when I pass you in my electric car.
Go easy on the koolaid.
You just pulled the “I’m a teacher therefore I know better”. Must have run out of arguments. I have met some pretty stupid teachers in my time guess you’re just one of them. In fact I can’t remember you giving one sound argument to proof your theses that graffiti could have pulled those buildings down. Only cheap shots and patronising.
I’m beginning to understand hairyarmpits antipathy towards you.
For those of you who actually want to find out why graffiti could not have collapsed the buildings they way they collapsed
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.journalof911studies.com%2Fvolume%2F200703%2FSudden_collapse_initiation_impossible.pdf&images=yes
They can’t even get it right
-While some experts say that cars fueled by hydrogen fuel cells, which rely on the conversion of hydrogen and oxygen into water and which don’t have harmful emissions, are promising, the technology is still in its infancy.-
LOL! Graffiti? I assume you mean gravity, but that’s ok, second language, fair enough.
I’m really losing interest here, but have a think about this.
Your theory is that thermite charges at the base of the building bought it down right? Well by your own logic above, all that would have happened if the bottom storey HAD been blown out is that the building would have become shorter by a storey.
You’ve still completely failed to address the fact that the collapse clearly happens from halfway down, not the bottom. Have you even watched the video?
Why don’t you go and read this
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm
and then go and get a new hobby.
“While some experts say that cars fueled by hydrogen fuel cells, which rely on the conversion of hydrogen and oxygen into water and which don’t have harmful emissions, are promising, the technology is still in its infancy.”
It is – fuel cells remain expensive and largely underpowered.
Everything they say in the section you quote is completely accurate.
Also, I didn’t pull “I’m a teacher, therefore I know better”. I pulled “I am intimately familiar with this topic, and therefore I don’t need to spend time looking up something as fundamental as newtons laws to check I’ve got them right”.
I then went on to explain exactly where the energy came from which you once again have either failed to understand or have ignored.