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Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:29 am, December 22nd, 2009 - 7 comments
Could making the surface of cars rough be a cheap and esay way to boost fuel efficiency, thereby saving oil and helping tackle climate change?
The idea comes from the dimples on golf-balls, which hold a thin layer of air to the ball, lessening turbulence and drag. And, amazingly, it appears to work:
[the full segment on the car is …
Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 9:01 am, December 17th, 2009 - 119 comments
Here’s a prediction. Transmission Gully will never be built.
There’s a reason that Labour kept pushing Transmission Gully off. The Benefit/Cost ratio is sh*t. “It is likely that the benefit-cost ratio for the Transmission Gully route is less than 1” says Joyce. Disgracefully, NZTA is too ashamed to publish the actual number.
Transmission Gully will cost $1 …
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:52 am, July 7th, 2009 - 46 comments
Now days everybody wanna talk, like they got something to say, but nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish, and all of you act like you forgot about oil.
Yup, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the dealer’s lot, oil is back and in a …
Written By: Guest post - Date published: 4:01 pm, April 13th, 2009 - 13 comments
Remember the oil spike? Over the course of the last 4-5 years, oil kept on breaking records, culminating in a massive spike to reach $150 last June. Why did that happen? Some people want to dismiss it as just a speculative bubble but they forget that speculators come to a market that has a fundamental …
Written By: The Standard - Date published: 10:18 am, March 26th, 2009 - 10 comments
Toad’s post on coastal shipping deserves re-posting:
Coastal shipping is the most energy efficient means of moving freight. A ship consumes 75 – 80 percent less fuel than a truck per tonne hauled. It’s just got to be the way to go.
The United States finally seems to be seeing this. A Bill before the US Congress, …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:46 am, March 26th, 2009 - 39 comments
Stephen Joyce keeps saying the reason he has slashed investment in public transport to build more roads is that he is giving the people what they want. He says most people get to work in a car, so people must want cars.
What wonderful logic. Imagine if we hadn’t introduced public health-care or public education because, after …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 2:51 pm, February 16th, 2009 - 41 comments
When I heard Shell is looking at selling its service stations in NZ and its shares in Fulton Hogan, my initial thought was that the Government should look at buying – to keep profits in NZ, to help ensure competition in the market as Kiwibank has for banking, and so there is a publicly-owned network …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 1:15 pm, January 14th, 2009 - 24 comments
We all know the story of the sub-prime crisis that had developed into the credit crisis – a flood of credit saw mortgage lenders lending to anyone, including people who couldn’t really afford the repayments. To get these potentially bad loans off their books, the banks pooled them together into new, unregulated instruments and sold …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 6:11 am, January 13th, 2009 - Comments Off
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 1:54 pm, January 12th, 2009 - 40 comments
We’ve seen that oil production in oil fields and countries peaks long before the oil actually runs out, and as individual countries go, so must, inevitably go the world. Once the amount of oil the world is capable of producing starts to fall, things are going to get difficult. Our economy is the use of …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 3:24 pm, January 9th, 2009 - 27 comments
There is only so much oil in the world. It was all formed when, over the course of a few hundred million years, creatures living in shallow seas died and their remains accumulated and were subjected to a very particular combination of heat and pressure for hundreds of millions of years. We know where all the sedimentary …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 4:08 pm, January 8th, 2009 - 35 comments
The more I learn about energy, and peak oil in particular, the more concerned I get. So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I would share some of it with you. I’ll get to some concrete things we need to start doing now to mitigate as much as we can the impact of falling …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 6:46 pm, November 15th, 2008 - 34 comments
With a masterful awareness of the import of his actions, President Roosevelt termed his economic program to lift the US out of the Great Depression ‘the New Deal’. Laissez-faire capitalism, whereby the ‘invisible hand of the market’ ruled, had failed to fulfil the conditions of the social contract (a fair distribution of wealth between capital …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 12:03 pm, September 26th, 2008 - 42 comments
We all knew New Zealand was in recession in the first six months of this year. The official figures have confirmed this. The surprise though is on the upside. The consensus had been that the economy had shrunk 0.5% in the quarter. In fact, it was 0.2%. Remember that this figure occurred during the height of …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 11:01 pm, August 24th, 2008 - 30 comments
On August 1, Transit NZ and Land Transport NZ were merged into the NZ Transport Authority. The new organisation’s first major publication shows a welcome shift in thinking and an acknowledgment that the age of cheap oil is over. Managing Transport Challenges When Oil Prices Rise contains a model built on the consensus of a number of international …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:20 am, August 4th, 2008 - 56 comments
Greens on National’s plan to borrow to build more roads:
“Lonely dinosaur seeks white elephant“
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 12:27 pm, July 15th, 2008 - 18 comments
Inflation was 1.6% in the last quarter, 4% annually, the highest in 13 years.
Petrol is driving inflation. By itself petrol accounted for a 1.2% increase. Food is the other big increase, also accounting for a 1.2% and that is itself being driven by international oil prices. The price of oil is beyond our control and …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 3:42 pm, July 11th, 2008 - 69 comments
A worrying report on the future of petrol prices is out today. It predicts petrol could hit $10 a litre in a decade. Nearly all of that increase will be caused by the supply of oil falling as demand pressure grows.
Rationing will probably be introduced before that point, otherwise only the rich will be able …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 10:10 am, July 7th, 2008 - 36 comments
Ok. Now that the political theatre is done maybe National and its allies would like to engage in proper debate on the freight trucking industry.
Here’s some issues for debate:
Road user charges are less than 10% of costs and the increase, half what was recommended meaning petrol vehicles are still subsidising truck companies, is less than …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 12:55 pm, June 25th, 2008 - 60 comments
Petrol is over $2.10 a litre. The price will keep rising both with the ever upward march of the price of crude and the falling NZ dollar. Already, motorists are responding. Road usage in Auckland has fallen 3%. It’s fair to believe it is falling elsewhere too. The only reasonable conclusion is that the number …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 7:16 am, June 17th, 2008 - 120 comments
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 …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 1:25 pm, June 16th, 2008 - 38 comments
The Government’s independent report on petrol prices is bit of a sop to be the public, really. The world oil price is driving petrol prices; any efficiencies that could be gained in New Zealand would be small and would not change the upward trend. Nor is a Fuel Watch website like Australia’s going to do …
Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 9:49 am, June 9th, 2008 - 95 comments
We regularly hear calls (not backed by any major party, including National) for the taxes on petrol to be lowered or removed because the prices are so high. After all, every time the price goes up, the government gets more revenue, doesn’t it?
No, it doesn’t. Tax on petrol has two parts. There are four levies totalling …
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